July 14, 2004
In
This Issue:
1. Paid Search: How High is High Enough?
2. In the News - Everybody Pile on Internet Explorer!
3. More News Headlines
4. This Week's Q&A - How many of my pages are in Google?
5. Wrapping It Up
_________________
Paid Search: How High is High Enough?
We find ourselves at OWT telling more and more clients about
the benefits of paid search advertising, such as Google's
AdWords program. (When you do a search on Google, the links on the right
side of the page are paid advertisements and the program is called
AdWords.) It's a fantastic way to get exposure for your web site
if you need instant traffic, and best of all, you don't have to
have a big budget to advertise with AdWords. We've worked on AdWords
campaigns with budgets as low as $50/month!
Generally speaking, the more you're willing to spend for a click
on your ad, the higher your ad will appear. Logic tells you that
the higher your ad appears, the more traffic you'll get. But
there's never been a formal study comparing the potential traffic
of having
the #1 spot with, say, the #5 spot. Until now.
A company called Atlas DMT has
just issued a study that quantifies the trade-offs between the
top 10 ranks in paid search. The
study suggests that advertisers can expect about a 10 times difference
in potential traffic between the top and 10th rankings. In
other
words, if you spend enough to get the top spot, you should
get about 10 times the traffic of the advertiser in the 10th spot.
Not much of a surprise, really. But...
Every advertiser is faced with a decision about how high is
high enough. Is it good enough to have the 3rd or 4th advertisement,
or do you really need to spend the extra money to get that
top
position? The Atlas DMT study says that with Google there's
about a 40 percent drop in traffic between the #1 and the
#2 ad. With
Yahoo's paid search program (through Overture.com),
the drop off between each of the top four positions is much
less noticeable.
If your company uses Google or Overture to advertise, this
report may offer some interesting information that'll help
you get more
for your advertising dollar. You can download it for free
from Atlas DMT.
How
Search Engine Rank Impacts Traffic (PDF)
_________________
In The News
What web browser do you use when you're surfing the web? Chances
are you're using Microsoft's Internet Explorer, just like about
95% of web surfers. You may or may not know, however, just how
bad the security issue has become with Internet Explorer. Since
the start of 2004, about a dozen security issues have been found
in either Explorer itself, or in the browser's interface with Windows.
The Dept. of Homeland Security's technology arm recently recommended
users stay away from Explorer. Even Slate.com, the online magazine
which is owned by Microsoft (!), recently published an article
telling readers to dump Internet Explorer for a browser called
Firefox. There's even discussion about whether or not Microsoft
should recall such a defective product. The public may be taking
matters into their own hands: Explorer's market share dropped
1.32 percent in June, the first drop since 1998.
Here's a few recent articles about Explorer's problems, including
the Slate.com stunner I mentioned above.
Slate: Are the Browser Wars Back?
TechWeb: IE's Market Share Drops, Security Gaffes To Blame
2004: Internet Explorer's year of shame
Business Week: Internet Explorer is just too risky
_________________
More News Headlines
Here are a few news headlines worth your time to read.
These are just some of the headlines we've posted
to OWTweb.com in recent
days.
Report: Google aims to complete IPO this month
July 12, 2004 - Reuters
Online yellow pages beat search engines locally
July 12, 2004 - Ad Age
The yellow-pages companies are in a good position because they
have a street sales force all over the country who have already
established relationships at the local level.
Ask Jeeves CEO: Technology Matters in Web Search
July 09, 2004 - eWeek
As attention has turned to Google Inc.'s IPO and Microsoft
Corp.'s attempt to build its own MSN search engine, Ask Jeeves
has been
anything but silent.
More headlines: http://www.owtweb.com/news/
_________________
This Week's Q&A
Hi Matt,
Is there a way to find out which pages from our web site are
in Google's database, and which aren't? We have too many pages
to
try manually searching for each one and we'd like to know so
we can find out more about how customers are finding us -- which
pages they might see when they search Google. Thank you very
much.
David
Hi David --
There's a much easier way than manually hunting for every page
of your site. You can do a single search using the "site:" command
that will show you all the pages that are currently in Google's
database. Here's a link to such a search for our web site, owtweb.com:
http://www.google.com/search?q=site:owtweb.com&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
In Google's search box, you type "site:yourdomain.com" (no
quotes). In the upper right corner, Google will tell you how many
pages it found. It's that easy.
And by the way, that same command works in Yahoo!, also.
(Have a question? Email questions@owtweb.com)
_________________
Wrapping it Up
Wondering what kind of brainiacs Google is looking to hire these
days? Check out this recruiting billboard they put on Hwy. 101
last week:
http://www.google.com/googleblog/2004/07/warning-we-brake-for-number-theory.html
If you happen to know the answer to that problem, you go to http://www.7427466391.com/ which has yet another mathematical stumper for you to solve.
If you solve that one, you end up at http://www.google.com/labjobs/ where you get asked to "consider working with us." Suuuurrrrrre....
I'm
out of the office a couple days next week and won't be able
to get a newsletter done, so ... See you in two weeks!
Thanks for reading,
Matt McGee
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