Critical Reading on Google, Especially if you buy CPC ads
In a post entitled Google's Silent Monopily on the corporate website of Centraldesktop, the CEO writes:
See this short retort on Google Blogoscoped.
This has major implications of how one should handle ad bidding on Google for spots in which Google promotes itself. Interestingly, Yahoo does not do this...yet.
I also recommend this string of articles on Publishing 2.0 by Scott Karp.
BEWARE THE DIGITAL GENERATION BS DETECTOR
BRANDS AS MEDIA
CONTENT BUSINESSES DON'T SCALE ANYMORE (I TOTALLY AGREE)
SOCIAL MEDIA IS A MARKETPLACE FOR TRAFFIC
Google Cheats
Google holds the top advertisement (Adword) slot for the following key words:
intranet, spreadsheet, documents, calendar, word processor, email, video, instant messenger, blog, photo sharing, online groups, maps, start page, restaurants, dining, and books (somehow Amazon has managed to appear in the #1 ad slot for 'books').
For spreadsheet, blog and video, in addition to squatting the premium ad position, Google Products also dominate three of the first four search results.
In such cases, Google Product Links and Ads can account for up to 25% of your viewable screen resolution - 30-40% for lower screen resolutions - almost guarantying that users will click on a Google Product over any other search results, sponsored links or text ads.
What this tells me is if you are trying to advertise a product that is competitive to Google, then you'll never be able to receive the Top Ad Position, no matter how much money you bid and spend.
See this short retort on Google Blogoscoped.
This has major implications of how one should handle ad bidding on Google for spots in which Google promotes itself. Interestingly, Yahoo does not do this...yet.
I also recommend this string of articles on Publishing 2.0 by Scott Karp.
BEWARE THE DIGITAL GENERATION BS DETECTOR
BRANDS AS MEDIA
CONTENT BUSINESSES DON'T SCALE ANYMORE (I TOTALLY AGREE)
SOCIAL MEDIA IS A MARKETPLACE FOR TRAFFIC
posted by Michael Eisenberg at 5:46 PM
6 Comments:
Better Google than Microsoft!
As Google itself mentioned in their official comment to this debate, it is hardly uncommon for a publisher to use its media assets in order to promote its own products and services. Does Fox pay Fox for promoting "American Idol" in almost each and every commercial break? Although TV commercials are not auction-based (yet!), it's basically the same concept: If there weren't so many network "promos", there would be more room for paid commercials, which would have probably pushed their prices down.
Banning Google from advertising its products in Google's advertising platform sounds to me as a bit 'over-ethical' demand. The question is if Google uses its power to deprive other competitors. The fact that you see many other advertisers in keywords of all Google's products proves differently. And look at that: If you search the term "adwords" in Google, one of the paid ads you'd get is for Yahoo/Overture! It's like Channel 2 advertising Channel 10 (which it was actually forced to do after a court order).
Also, as we found out in one of the campaigns we supported, you CAN beat Google's product in AdWords if you have the right bid and quality score.
Generally speaking, I think we should focus our concerns to the field of the organic search results; I believe that Google is meeting this challenge very well. I don't take it for granted that in spite of all the recent investment of Google in 'Google Finance', you still get finance.yahoo.com as #1 when you search for almost any finance-related keyword. Search for "Free Email" and get Gmail in number 7 (!), way below Hotmail, Yahoo or even Lycos.
The expectation from Google to be super-democratic and unbiased, together with the latest trend of slandering this fairly-new "Godzilla", sometimes make us forget that it's a for-profit company which is mainly liable to its shareholders.
Lady -
I chuckled at your comment
alon -
I completely agree with you. They should be allowed to promote their services. I just think this has big implications for how you think about bidding for key words.
I would read Matt Cutt's post and how he debunks this whole thing.
Matt is a Google employee in charge of web spam and all around good guy :-)
I would take the article your linked in your post with a huge grain of salt (like the ones they use in India to put on your face after they shave you ;-) )
I would think that Google should limit themselves to 1 or 2 sponsored links for their own products, so as not to "muscle out" their own paying advertisers. One would be better, but surely not 2 or more, would be over the top.
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