blog.centraldesktop.com — 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.How successful do you think *your* ad buys would be if your competitor trumped your position no matter how high you bid your key words?
Dec 6, 2006 View in Crawl 4
mitchgroupDec 6, 2006
Excellent analysis. How long will it be before everyone stops being enamored with that which kills?
Closed AccountDec 7, 2006
Google doesn't need to allow a single advertisement for a competing service on their site, They could just link to bad reviews for the competitors product if they wanted, Its THEIR site. Note the possessive.Its perfectly acceptable. How often do you see advertisements for Fox News, Fair and Balanced on MSNBC, Nobody would think thats "unacceptable" Thats just good business.
anuragiitDec 7, 2006
hell
Closed AccountDec 7, 2006
Small mom-and-pop pez dispenser merchants had better watch out, as I'm sure eBay gives its own pez dispenser auctions top listing positions in their search results!
franksandsDec 7, 2006
Of course a google story has google ads. The ads are content sensitive, remember?
enjourniDec 7, 2006
A few points.- Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending upon how you look at it), google owns search on the web. In that case I don't see a problem with them putting themselves at the top of certain keywords. Microsoft put their name on a lot of computers sold with windows pre-installed. This is a free market guys, and google has a right to get their name out there for their own services.- Knowing something about adwords, you have to understand that fat cats will always get the top spot if not the top 3. Amazon, yahoo, ebay. These kinds of companies don't care about ROI or making a good ad- what they care about is building brand name. To do that, they will simply outspend the competition to get the #1 spot. Trying to compete with a company like that (with massively big pockets) not only is foolhearty, it's a waste of time.- How do I know google or what-have-you's strategy is to outbid the competition? Easy. "intranet, spreadsheet, documents, calendar" .... these are all extremely vague and untargeted keywords. Few people bid on them, because they convert so poorly. One of the golden rules in business is to target the right person (niche, or market). A person searching on "calendar" could be looking for what this month's calendar is. Or to buy a calendar for their grandmom. Or to compare the gregorian calendar to some other calendar. We have no clue, based on the keyword "calendar", what the person is looking for- it could be almost anything. In this case I think google is right. There's a strong possiblity that a person searching google itself for calendar might be looking for google's calendar service. So showing google's calendar as an option is relevant to the keyword searched. So long as google's results are relevant and there is a chance I can get into the top 10, then I don't know what people are complaining about. Those are the rules google established, and they seem to be playing by them (google calendar is relevant, so I don't mind them showing it).
etnuDec 7, 2006
1. Google doesn't have a monopoly. They have the leading search engine, but it's not even close to a monopoly. Just because you and most of your friends use Google doesn't mean everyone does. Yahoo and MSN still take about 35-40% of the combined web searches in the U.S., and outside the U.S. Google isn't even #1.2. Every search engine does this. At least Google puts their sites in the paid listings. Yahoo and MSN just drop them in as the #1 "organic" result. Try it for yourself.3. The practice of promoting your own product over the competition is not illegal. Having a monopoly is not illegal. ABUSING a monopoly by using it to gain or hold position in a new market IS illegal.
etnuDec 13, 2006
You don't have to have a "complete" monopoly to have a monopoly. Microsoft was found to have a monopoly in a court of law, and was guilty of abusing that monopoly to unfairly compete in other markets. This is illegal. Google does not have a monopoly (near or complete) because they only control about half of the search market in the U.S.
trevornkFeb 16, 2008
This was never true. I use adwords extensively and have never run into this.For accurate information on adwords and ppc visit <a class="user" href="http://trevornashkeller.com">http://trevornashkeller.com</a>