Google corrects some misinformation, which I, and many others in the SEM community, were pretty skeptical about yesterday:

“I never said that our click fraud rate is less than 2%. Instead, what I said is that the quantity of invalid clicks which we detect as a result of reactive investigations is a “negligible proportion” of the total number of invalid clicks…. So what is our overall “click fraud rate”? As noted in the diagram in the story, it is virtually impossible to know the intent of every click. However, we can do a very effective job using statistical techniques to detect potentially malicious behavior, and the total number of invalid clicks we detect – whether for suspected malicious or non-malicious intent – is in the single digit percentages. So third-party estimates which say that click fraud is 15% or higher appear to clearly be substantial exaggerations.“

I was tweaking one of my PPC campaigns today, and it strikes me that pendulum may well be shifting back to SEO - well, for me, in some areas, anyway.

For one particular site of mine, I’m bidding in a competitive keyword area. The bid prices are sky-high, double digits $ per click and you still won’t get near the top ten. The landing pages are high quality, and the account has a good history. But I don’t get many clicks, even at those prices. There are few ways to distinguish your ads, there is only so much you can say on two, short lines, and there is only so much campaign optimization that can be done. Really, the keyword area is over-saturated and it’s probably time to move on to greener pastures.

However, the same site is getting organic traffic. I didn’t really design it for that purpose, and there has been a little work done on links, but hardly any. Yet, the site is making money from the organic clicks, without really trying.

Time again to zig while others zag?

I missed this one last month when I was travelling, however it’s still worth mentioning for those who may have also overlooked it.

Interesting multivariate analytics tool from Google.

“The Website Optimizer allows you to test changes in the website content of your pages in order to determine what will be most effective in getting conversions. You choose what parts of a page you’d like to test — headline, image, promo text – and we’ll run an experiment on a portion of your site traffic to determine which content on your site users respond to best. When we’ve collected enough data, we’ll provide you with reliable reports and a suggested course of action in order to optimize your site for maximum business results.“

This tool works with Google Adwords and Google Analytics. By testing various combinations of page elements, such as headlines and text, against each other, you can determine which landing page results in the most conversions.

Software like this can be expensive and tedious to use, but this system is free, and appears relatively straightforward.

Since Google continue to be vague about what exactly they mean by “page quality” in relation to PPC advertising landing pages, I thought I’d have a stab:

The Unofficial Guidelines To Page Quality

• Stop sending people to pages with yet more PPC advertisments on them.
• Stop sending people to pages with all your affiliate links on them.
• Why can’t everybody just play nice, like…Disney? Or the Portal Of Evil?
• If it makes us look good, and makes us more money, we’re all for it.
• If it makes us look bad, and makes us less money, you’re for it.
• No, Larry doesn’t find your bidding on his name funny.
• Neither does Sergey.
• You may have bidded on the term “knockers” but that picture you’re displaying certainly isn’t related to door fixtures!
• If in doubt, look up Wikipedia.
• We don’t care how high quality your gay porn is, the answer is still no!

And the updated guidelines, a few weeks later…

• Ok wise guys - Stop cloaking! Please.
• And stop cloaking your links as well.

According to this post, Google are going to make two changes:

1. “….incorporating landing page quality into the Quality Score for your contextually-targeted ads, using the same evaluation process as we do for search. Advertisers who may be providing a poor experience on their site will notice that their traffic across the content network decreases as a result of this change”
2. “..Second, we’re improving our algorithm for evaluating landing page quality and incorporating landing page content retrieved by the AdWords system”.

What do Google consider to be a high quality landing page?

That’s a secret.

“…we don’t provide more specific recommendations because there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to best create landing pages. We therefore encourage you to focus on building landing pages that are best for your users…”

Oh, FOR THE LOVE OF….

What if users really, really want to click on more contextual ads? My guess is that is they very thing Google is trying to prevent. So the inevitable result amongst the webmaster community is probably going to be “huh”?

If it’s any help, Google suggest the following:

• Link to the page on your site that provides the most useful and accurate information about the product or service in your ad.
• If your site displays advertising, distinguish sponsored links from the rest of your site content.
• Try to provide information without requiring users to register. Or, provide a preview of what users will get by registering.
• In general, build pages that provide substantial and useful information to the end-user. If your landing page consists of mostly ads or general search results (such as a directory or catalog page), you should provide as much information as you can beyond what your ad describes. For example, if your ad mentions <'Free travel information,' your landing page should feature free travel information (versus links to other sites that do).
• You should have unique content (should not be similar or nearly identical in appearance to another site).

Traditional direct marketing theory and testing shows that inquiry returns are often highest when an advertisement has a catchy headline. This is also useful theory to apply to online marketing, when, often, all you’ve got to grab peoples’ attention is a short phrase and/or description.

One book I keep coming back to is “Tested Advertising Methods”, by John Caples. While some of the theory and examples are getting long in the tooth, the underlying theory of appealing to self-interest is sound and as relevant today as it ever was.

Luckily, with PPC, we’re got an excellent environment in which to test ads against one another, and quickly determine the results.

So, what makes for a catchy headline?

1. Self Interest - great headlines appeal to the readers self-interest. What is in it for me? For example: “Make $1000 a day on Google alone”.

2. News - Give news. For example, “Search Marketing Industry Collapses”.

3. Curiosity - Arouse curiosity in the reader. Questions are good. “Are You Using These Top Ten Blackhat Techniques?”

Of the three, it has been found that #1 - Self Interest is by far the most powerful. Curiosity is the weakest, although it very much depends on the context and the audience.

If you’re tweaking an Adwords campaign, try these long-established direct marketing tactics:

• appeal to self interest
• suggest the quick and easy over the time consuming and difficult
• if you’ve got a new product or service, make sure people know it is “NEW!”

This article by Mike in Clickz brings up some good points about the current state of search marketing, and where it is heading:

“SEOs are going to have to embrace marketing….SEOs should read more marketing books than Apache Server manuals. As search marketing becomes more sophisticated, clients are going to expect something closer to demographic targeting out of organic listings, too. And that means understanding more about the clients’ overall marketing strategy, not just their Web site“

PPC is a lot closer to a corporate idea of a marketing campaign. SEO has always been difficult to factor in to corporate reporting cycles and metrics. The downside of PPC, especially for the little guy, is that they are easily priced out of the market. PPC traffic is easy to get if you have deep pockets.

SEO is most valuable when it drives web strategy, rather than as a marketing campaign bolted-on at the end. And this is where the little guy can beat the corporates. Not that SEO success is as easy as it once was - but hey - if the bar has been raised, that means it is going to be harder for the guys following behind you.

Meanwhile, the most important aspect of SEO in 2006 is this: (Mike) “SEOs are going to have to embrace marketing”

More on this over the next few days…

How are search engine PPC fraud measures ever going to stop this sort of thing?

“A high-volume PPC lead gen advertiser on the verge of shaking down a Yahoo search distribution partner in order to recover money stolen via click fraud?“

Meanwhile, click fraudsters get edgy when their networks are shopped to Google and the funds dry up:

“I HOPE YOU LAUGH SO ###### HARD YOU CHOKE TO DEATH. I’M CALLING ON A FEW OF MY WICCA FRIENDS. SEE IF WE CAN MAKE LIFE AS MISERABLE FOR YOU AS YOU HAVE FOR ME AND MY HONEST MEMBERS.”

Note use of the word “honest”.

Funny guys.

If you said “paid”, you’d be right, at least according to this study outlined at Clickz.

Perhaps not overly scientific, but it illustrates a couple of points worth considering. With paid ads, you can control the descriptions, which as any good marketer knows, helps with conversions. Secondly, since people know the PPC listings are advertisments, they are probably likely to be clicked following commercially-oriented queries.

The organic links tend to be high credibility, especially when looking for information, but the surfer who is looking to buy risks wasting their time if the snippet doesn’t relate to a purchase process.

But then, why choose? Having the best of both worlds, if you’ve got the time and the talent, is probably optimal.

And can the majority of surfers tell the difference anyway?

Business Week dive into the click fraud debate.

Click fraud is probably always going to be a part of PPC. The search engines don’t want it to happen, up to a point, because the negative publicity may prevent people using the system, but one has to question quite how far they are prepared to go on behalf of the advertiser when the search engine also benefits from the clicks. In any case, the black-box approach, taken by Google and others, will do little to help make the speculation go away.

Summary of main points:

• Advertiser shaken by clicks coming from such places as Botswana, Mongolia, and Syria
• The search engines say the click fraud problem is manageable, and the problem is exaggerated
• “Paid to read” rings have hundreds or thousands of members each
• Some ex-fraudsters say the detection methods aren’t working well
• A cybercrime unit led by the FBI and U.S. Postal Inspection Service assigned two analysts to examine whether federal laws are being violated.
• “But if we can’t fix this click-fraud problem, then it is going to scare away the further development of the Internet as an advertising medium“

Roll on CPA…