Comments on: Google Hates Your Business Model

By: Jeff Selig

Jeff Selig — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:51:41 +0000

Hey Robert,
the whole experience was quit surreal to me. The thing I found the hardest to understand is the 30 days it took to get the true answer. I went back and forth with several teams and no one could lay their finger on why the campaign was QS=1. They kept sending me to links on landing page quality, but that was not the answer. I got the run around pretty good. The desicion came from up high and it took quite some time to filter down to the troop level.

By: Robert

Robert — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:19:25 +0000

With such impressive stats I’m surprised that Google didn’t offer a better explanation. Looking at how much revenue they were losing in the process there had to be SOME reason that they weren’t telling you. Google may talk a big game with all their free stuff, but when it comes to AdWords they are all about the money.

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By: Jeff Selig

Jeff Selig — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:20:39 +0000

yup, you hit the nail on the head. The competitive nature or lack thereof puts Google in the spotlight and potentially opens them up to lawsuits on several levels.

By: manfmnantucket

manfmnantucket — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:38:49 +0000

Right on. So this is the PPC side of the SEO problem.

What I’d like to see more discussion about is the clear monopoly dynamic at work here.

If there were a more healthy competitive search ecosystem, it wouldn’t be such a major impact on your business and not so urgent, as the ranking (or ppc) penalty would only impact a fraction of your revenue. However, because of google’s monopoly on search, business is forced to optimize for their technology, no matter how poorly it works.

Also, if there were more competition, google would have to compete by being transparent about how it ranks and penalizes businesses. Why doesn’t google offer a reasonable customer support line or means of recourse? They don’t need to compete, strictly because of their size. By contrast, microsoft at least provides a flag in their webmaster console to let sites know if they’ve been penalized. Microsoft is not the biggest, so they have to compete. The end result is that small companies are forces to spend outsized amounts to diagnose a problem with PPC or organic search traffic, compared to large companies.
The secretive practices of google and lack of recourse mechanisms can easily break smaller companies. In a market where there is only one ’seller’ (of search traffic) the seller can ask any price for its product.

I think there’s a growing case for regulation of how search companies deal with the public – it’s an issue similar to that of ‘net neutrality’, if you think about it. Anticompetitive practices force smaller companies off the playing field.

enough rambling for now, but not enough grousing

By: Marty Martin

Marty Martin — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:05:44 +0000

@Jeff @Marc -
I guess when you’re the 1000 pound gorilla (or should that be guerrilla?) you can do whatever you want. I know some bigger publishers with really big budgets have personal account managers at Google. My guess is they get by with a lot more, because it’s not just the smaller folks doing co-reg. “Don’t be evil.”

By: Jeff Selig

Jeff Selig — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 15:59:24 +0000

Hi Marc,
Google Senior PPC representative said their decision was final. That Google was loosing out on revenue too and the metrics did no matter [there's a bit of irony for you]this was based soley on the business model of co-registration. They would not answer the business decision versus algorithm conversation and were very cut and dry about the entire matter

By: Marc

Marc — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 15:52:28 +0000

Wow. I’ve heard about the Google “slap” before from a PPC standpoint, but didn’t know that it could affect your entire adwords campaign in this way. In the end, what was Google’s official response to the whole matter after you presented them with your above average performance metrics?

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