Google Slap

Ken McCarthy, John Reese and several other marketeers are reporting the phenomenon known as GoogleSlap. This is the GoogleDance of Adwords, where cost-per-click has risen markedly for sites which offer “suboptimal” experience for users. Apparently any attempts at lead-generation now costs $1 per click, vs. $0.20 in the past.

Anik Singal, in Surviving Google Update of July 2006, reports four kinds of sites which were hardest hit.

  • One page/long form sales letter
  • Squeeze pages, in exchange for a free report
  • AdSense arbitrage
  • Affiliate sites

and suggests among other things,

moving the landing page to a site with a high page rank;
increasing the number of words on landing page (at the expense of conversion rates!);
using another sites’ url (sneaky! read Anik’s article)

I wonder how this compares with pay per action ads that Google is introducing? In my opinion, Microsoft wouldn’t have been able to get away with this, since Microsoft would have been required to give competitors equal access to their services. It won’t be long before the Google Anti-Trust action takes off.

The comments section lists more resources and commentary from other adwords advertisers. Some are planning to take their businesses elsewhere. Surprisingly, no one is taking this to the Trade Practices Commission.

Interestingly, Amit Argawal points that Google is hiring telecommuters to work as adwords relevance quality raters. I’m not sure what kinds of qualifications these people have. It is impossible for someone without a particular need to rate adword landing sites. For instance, showing Swee the landing pages I’m excited about sends her into an absolute yawn.

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Published:
7.27.06 / 3pm
Category:
Marketing