Allan S. Hansen

Company names in AdWords

Mar 012011

I’ve seen this often and it puzzles me each time. A company spending (a lot of) money on AdWords for their company name.

I’ll wager that if you look at the keywords statistics for the search for many of these companies (possible all, but that’s a large claim) you will see the main keywords of organic search being the company name in some variety.
Say you have a company called “Ajax Products” on the domain “www.ajaxproducts.com” and you run statistics for traffic; then I’ll almost put money on a wager that the top 3 searched entries to the site would be “www.ajaxproducts.com”, “ajaxproducts.com” or “ajax products” in some order.
Afterwards, the following of other keywords and various misspelled varieties of the name. (It’s just an example, right)

Now this is simply because of the very high integration of search engines in browsers which have changed many common peoples browsing and searching habits. I know this from myself.  I often (mistakenly most of the time) type the company name or even address into the search bar in my browser instead of the address field. But even my address field searches now on Google.
This will lead to a lot of hits on those words from people. However it is from people that already know your site address or company name well enough, and that are almost a guaranteed hit to your site.

So why is it that I often see companies use AdWord on their own company name?
For example – if I searched for ajaxproducts in Google, having Ajax Products come up as an AdWord as well. (Yes, still a theoretical example).

Basically I can see 3 possible and plausible scenarios for this happening.
1) Your company name is generic so other competitors AdWords might end up on searches for your domain/company name.
2) You really, and I do mean really, want to brand your company name.
3) It is an easy way to generate actions from an AdWord budget.

The first is plausible, and a result of how Google places adverts on top of the organic search thus presenting advertisements that fool the searcher into thinking they’re part of his search. If your company name is generic, others AdWords might trigger them.
Then it is a plausible strategy, however it would also mean the AdWords might be rather expensive for you and the extra revenue they bring in can be limited.

The second one is just silly. The people you target are people already knowing you, your domain and/or your company – so they know you and the AdWord money are basically wasted.

Which leads me to what I actually think is the smoking gun in most incidents. That with a limited AdWord budget it might be ……. nice – to present some pretty numbers to the decisions makers of how much traffic and revenue the AdWords bring in.  And because Google shows those AdWord ads on top of the organic search, those AdWords would bring in a lot of traffic.
However, as mentioned, those people clicking the advertisement already know you, so it would stand to reason that they would in fact visit your site anyway. Because let’s face it, if your site isn’t ranking first on a search for your company name or domain, you have bigger issues than AdWords.
So basically – the AdWords budget goes into traffic for people who were going to visit your site anyway.

It would in my opinion be much more prudent to target AdWords for keywords/phrases that are different from your company name, simply because you’ll target people who might be interested in your site but who doesn’t know it or wouldn’t visit it as a first chance.
However it takes a little guts to take away those AdWords and try to spend the money on other keywords. Simply because the revenue from AdWords of guaranteed traffic looks nice on a report, whereas the AdWords on lesser used keywords might bring in less traffic and revenue.
However it is entirely possible that the revenue those AdWords would bring in would be “extra” traffic and thereby overall be better, even if the AdWord report itself might be worse. SEO is not a single focus technique, but an overall marketing strategy.

The question is: is long tail SEO actually SEO?

Feb 172011

Yesterday I read a blog post on Search Engine Journal about a discussion on whether or not long tail SEO was actually SEO or just content writing.

Well, for those who do not know – long tail SEO, as opposed to short tail, is about SEO’ing (heh, acronym fun) content to longer key phrases and search terminologies. For example: a 3-6 keyword phrase or combination of keywords. Short tail, naturally, is optimizing to a single or two keywords.

The argument was that long tail SEO was easier to get simply by writing content, because the phrases or keywords would fall in naturally in the content and because of this – it wasn’t actually SEO, but just writing. The counter argument is primarily that, well – surveys seem to indicate long tail converting better and therefor it is SEO.

Myself, I’m fully in the “long tail is SEO” camp – however, I do recognize that it is easier to gain just by writing content.
But, the reason why I feel it is SEO is not as much because of better conversion rates or more traffic.
I feel it is SEO because you optimize your content for what person actually searches for. It might seem similar, and well – it is, but the approach is different. Instead of focusing on what converts, it’s focusing on what people need and want.

An example from one of my own other blogs which is about SQL – I have content more or less optimized for the direct error message people receive in specific situations.
I know, both from anecdotal evidence of what I and colleagues and friends do, but also from searches – people search for the error description.

For example a page like: An explicit value for the identity column in table can only be specified when a column list is used and identity insert is on (yes, long title, too long I know – but it matches an error in SQL Server directly and therefore I opted for the full title) which ranks high amongst some very tough competition without many links, but simply because it is relevant.
And that is why I personally think long tail SEO indeed also is SEO.

It is however – as mentioned – easier to optimize for long tail, and you’ll target rather specific traffic with it and therefore you should never forget the short tail SEO.

The annoying internet adverts

Jan 272011

Okay, I know this blog have been somewhat quiet as of late, well as of long – so time to kick it up again with a complain post.

Oh, how sick I am of advertisement on internet pages.

I see many pages with adverts are about using 2.5+ MB for a page, when without adverts the page size is under 1MB.….. that is insane.

Now, I know that for many independent sites, advertisement income is the main – if not only – source of income, and by blocking them I’m not providing them with income.
Well – frankly – I do not care anymore.  They brought it upon themselves.

The few sites out there I actually want to support, which have no other source of income, I’m more than willing to donate money to and have done so in the past when possible.
But for example news sites – their income should be news and news distribution. Not advertising for random irrelevant movies in the cinema or shopping malls.
If they do not earn enough money by making and selling news – they are irrelevant.
And well – I would never ever once even click an advert on a webpage – so there really is no loss by me blocking them either – it’s just saving me the annoyance of having to look at them.

I do not really mind “text adverts” or similar – but “loud” advertisement is the reason people are blocking more and more adverts and the reason why plug ins exists for doing so.
Adverts which play music, overlays, blinks and all those things are instant block for me.  Also because some of them are made by such inept people that they actually can completely disrupt navigation on a site.

They also make the site annoying difficult to surf via mobile devices (yes, I know certain products don’t do well with flash, but – well, some of us use devices which can) which are becoming an increasingly large part of the internet traffic.

Sites like these must adapt or die. Well unfortunately those two sites won’t die out soon because as said – they’re part of the news media – but luckily – we’ll see other sites die down.

I’ve also started blocking Google adverts, because while I do appreciate at least a mediocre of actually relevant adverts, I do not like the Big Brother aspect of them, and therefore those cookies and script blocking will also become a larger part of my browsers.

I hate adverts. I change the channel when they’re on TV or in the radio – and I block them on the internet, and I will continue to do so as the adverts become increasingly invasive.
I will recommend everybody go get the anti-advert plugins for their browser and the anti-tracking cookie plugins. The only way the websites will learn is if they get hurt on their wallet.

Migrating to Wordpress

Nov 242010

Blog is being migrated to WordPress. Back up soon (hopefully)

Google SSL search - Google Analytics and SEO.

May 262010

I read that Google will start offering SSL search to keep the search safe and encrypted.

Now this does indeed sound as a good thing, it means your searching will be more secure. All you’ll need to do is use https instead of http.
So – is Google really only worried about the privacy of users? Let’s dig a little deeper.

The encryption will naturally not mean anything for Google themselves – they’ll continue to collect the data as they’ve always have. Anything else could be hurting their AdWords and peoples trust in them.

However enabling SSL in search via the https will mean the referrers will be turned off.
“As another layer of privacy, SSL search turns off a browser’s referrers. Web browsers typically turn off referrers when going from HTTPS to HTTP mode to provide extra privacy. By clicking on a search result that takes you to an HTTP site, you could disable any customizations that the website provides based on the referrer information.”

This looks to mean that the search terms aren’t transmitted from the browser to the website, and means that the information about them aren’t collected, by for example Google Analytics.

My first thought was “Google Analytics: Premium Service“.
Google as said still collects the information meaning they can still be coupled in with the website, however if they aren’t immediately accessible from the client, and thus the JavaScript transmitting data to analytics it will mean analytics can’t display them in the current setup.
Is it farfetched to think that Google might divide Analytics up in two services?
One free with basic features, and one premium to buy if you want to know the search terms people enter your site with?

I guess we will see eventually how this SSL affects Analytics.  But to return to the AdWords issue once more – if people don’t know which search terms their sites pull in, how would you trust that Google AdWords are actually working and which AdWords to target? You can’t check up on it other than trusting Google. Previously – you could couple the information with Analytics and make deductions on that information.

A side issue is SEO. If the search terms aren’t displayed, then people will be unable to actually figure out which terms the visitors of a site use and how and where to optimize content for the audience.
SEO people often battle it out with search engines because they play the same game.
Search engines wants to provide the most relevant results to a search. SEO people want people to see their content. Google removing or hurting one factor could potentially be another move in that ongoing dance

As both a user of Google’s search and Analytics – I’m torn myself. I welcome the privacy (although Google still records my searching, so privacy of course is to be taken with a grain of salt), but as a professional user of Analytics and SEO, I’m a bit wary of what this could mean as well in that area.

YouTube and "private" unlisted clips

May 172010

I saw the other day that YouTube now will start to allow “private” videos which means videos which are unlisted in the search result.
Now – this seems like a good idea, but I foresee two major problems with it.

1) How will this work with copyrighted material.
Google have gotten a lot of flak from copyright holders since they bought YouTube and many clips are pulled from YouTube due to infringement.
How will these companies who like to complain about copyrighted material handle the new unlisted service? If the movies are unlisted, how will companies be able to uphold the copyright?

One could imagine that perhaps the movies aren’t as unlisted as claimed and certain individuals are allowed to search through them for material – or one could imagine that these companies aren’t allowed to search them and the clips then will be a haven for copyrighted material.
Which is more likely? Well – given Google’s behavior lately, I’d say scenario one is most likely.

2)  People have a strange tendency to share …. let’s say rather private material online, thinking nobody but them in the world ever uses that strange thing called the internet.
My guess is that many people will use these unlisted postings for private – perhaps even rather much private – material and be very surprised that it finds itself publically all of the sudden.
Because you see – the privacy is just it is unlisted. If you have the URL you can still view it. That means you can basically just make a crawler and wade through content if the URLs follow a naming logic.
Given the lawsuit happy country – that might result in “funny” situations.

Well – time will tell.

Update: I’ve just noticed a “put porn on YouTube part 2″ campaign. The jist of it is that people will swam YouTube with porn. This is now made much easier with these unlisted “private” services as people can upload their movies now, make them unlisted, to avoid getting them flagged too soon.
And then when the go-word is given, they can make all the clips public and listed and presto – YouTube can/will be full of pornography.

Mythic/EA bills hundred of people hundreds of dollars too much each.

Apr 092010

Apparently – Mythic/EA and their billing vendor have billed hundreds of people many times over for subscription to the Warhammer Online MMO.
This forum thread shows just how insane the whole thing is.

Some player report upwards to 20 times the subscription, others report having multiple erroneous withdrawals happening over two days, some incurring heavy overdraw fees and some even report it happening to inactive or trial accounts.
We’re talking of many thousand dollars here, erroneously taken from peoples accounts.
To make matters somewhat worse, the information from Mythic seems rather …. insincere: “We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience that this issue may be causing our players.”
Inconvenience is the understatement of the year. (And saying “sincerely” does not automatically make you sincere)

Now anybody working within this field knows that errors can and will happen – also with billing procedures. However this looks to be on such massive scale and occurring up to and exceeding 20 times for some people that it looks like untested code somehow have made it into production.  I know I’m always paranoid when it comes to coding billing services, so this event just strikes me as completely odd.

It is a reminder to how much care one should take with credit card information. I also play MMOs and have had reoccurring subscription running (without problems), however next time I touch a (EA) MMO, I’ll most likely consider time cards, unless I have the option to remove my credit card information after each subscription period to avoid accidental withdrawals. I also personally never use “save card information” on various sites even if purchasing there often.

This incident really is an eye opening experience. Now the question is – what repercussions this incident will have for EA/Mythic and their billing vendor.

Bioware's "epic community" fail

Mar 312010

Bioware have just recently announced its big community event for celebrating its 15 years.
It was hyped up with a count down on multiple of Bioware’s subsites and had many people speculating what the counter was for.
It could be announcements for Dragon Age Origins 2, Mass Effect 3 or have something to do with the Old Republic MMO and what not.

But it was revealed to be some sort of auction system where you could win many prizes via tokens which could be earned in different ways by spamming up forums and twitter and so on.
That was supposed to show Bioware’s appreciation for its ….. “community”.

Funny thing though – contest rules removed all other countries then the US and even Florida and New York. That means – this big community event was limited to one country, well most of one country.

Needless to say that Bioware’s community is thus excluding a huge segment of people who otherwise thought they were part of the community. Say for example the Canadians – after all Bioware was original Canadian. And the Europeans are not a part of the community either.
Now most gamers in the EU are accustomed to US based companies not caring one bit about them, however the forum complains still rose quickly because – after all – it was supposed to be a “whole community” event.

YouTube videos started springing up, complains on various Bioware related forums, twitter and what not.
This have now resulted in this apology from high on up in Bioware

Hi everyone –
The BioWare Bazaar was launched this week as the start of a year-long celebration around BioWare’s 15th anniversary.

We recognize that BioWare has a global community, and the Bazaar this week was originally intended to be an international event to reflect our truly global fanbase. Unfortunately, we encountered some last-minute legal complications around how contests can be structured in different parts of the world that prevented us from including all territories in this first event, even though that was our original goal.  And for that, we sincerely apologize – our goal with this sort of celebration is to show all our fans worldwide how much we appreciate your support!

BioWare definitely really values all members of our world-wide Community, no matter where you live.  Accordingly, in the coming weeks, we will be announcing details about future events specifically for fans living in those territories which were excluded from participating in the first BioWare Bazaar.  The future events will be a bit different from the first Bazaar in how they’re set up and structured, but our goal is to feature the same caliber of awesome prizes and great BioWare collectibles.  We’ll announce more details in the coming weeks :)

The reception from those fans who have been able to take part in this first event has been incredible – thank you for participating! – and we’re looking forward to future events where we can enable fans from additional territories to also join in the fun.
Thank you all for your continued and ongoing support and participation in the BioWare Community – we really appreciate all your support over the past 15 years, and the future will be even brighter!

Sincerely,
Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk
Co-founders, BioWare

Now – I know I’m cynical, but frankly – this apology makes Bioware seem all that more incompetent.

Who on earth launches a big celebratory “community” event without clearing the legislation out beforehand? Last minute complications, indeed.
Did they have a meeting and decide “Oh swell, let’s make this and then just worry about legality afterwards” ? Doubtful.

They knew this would happen – they knew they were US-centric (once more). They’re not amateurs, so last minute complications sounds very hollow.

What will be interesting to see is if the “future events” will exclude the Americans due to “legal complications” or if Bioware never would risk “upsetting” their community, only the rest of us.

All in all – poor poor management of Bioware. Epic fail is becoming an internet “meme”, but in this case – it does fit.
Hyping up an event for the community only to ignore huge segments and thus tell them they’re not part of the community and do not count.
That’s indeed an epic fail of a gaming company like Bioware.

Technological stupidity

Feb 042010

Time to rant a bit about a "new technological advantage" I saw the other day.

I just got my BluRay player hooked up to the internet, so I can marvel at the genius of all the technologies now available for me.
Sure it is fun to watch YouTube videos on the BluRay/TV without having to hook up a computer – but well, this isn't about that….

I popped in some disc I just bought and there was a notice for some kind of "chat" system.
Interested to see what benefits I could take advantage off now that my player was finally hooked up, I navigated over with my remote.

Well – in essence it was just a basic chat system, which would place a big chat box in the side of the screen and I could then invite my friends to "watch the movie" with me and "chat with them" while doing it ….. all from the comfort of each our own couch.
Now that is stupid enough to begin with – if I want to watch movies with friends, I – you know – visit them, and if we watch movies, I sure as heck would not want a chat box taking up the screen.

But that was not what struck me …. one method of chatting was using the remote and the keys like on phones, but the alternative was using a computer to type on, which of course also needs to be online.
But if you have a computer, hooked up to the internet, and you can use to chat on – why on earth would you then chat via a BluRay movie system?

Isn't that what you would use a – you know – chat software on your computer for? Wouldn't it be much better to just use your usual IM client and chat on the computer, if you have a computer anyway? Seriously – How irrelevant can one technology be…..

(And yes, I understand the irony in me complaining about such technology after hooking my BluRay player up to the net)

 

Google is … censoring?

Jan 082010

I noticed this blog: thenextweb.com: Google Blocking Negative Search Recommendations On Islam – Why? today (a bit late possible).
It tells about how Google possible is censoring search suggestions which could be controversial – in this case towards Islam.

Most everybody knows about Google in China so we know Google does … lets call it fiddle to be neutral … with the search results in various situations.
However this begs the question – how do we actually know that Google is acting fairly and doesn’t censor or cheat with the search results in ways we cannot know?

Their revenue comes from advertisement and being able to provide a clear picture of what people search for to provide targeted advertisement.
So it would stand to argue that they can’t really afford to suffer doubt about their objectivity and whether or not they alter or effect or even censor search results.
However how would anybody know?

Is Google now so big that it doesn’t matter if they do questionable things? Can … would … people even stop using Google if it was confirmed that they are actively censoring? Is it even possible? Or are Google now so big that they can do what they want, when they want?

One can only speculate but my trust in Google is diminishing as they keep growing bigger and spand more and more features of the web, and with situations like this and China.
I still use their services, however …for now.

Do no evil.

 

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