A Closer Look at Google Adwords 224
zaphle writes "This article describes an interesting experiment with the Google Adwords service; in an effort to fine-tune the price per word, a mirror site was set up, paying a different price per word. I turns out the second site had to pay more in order to reach a similar click-through rate. My questions to the slashdot community: are organizations like Google redefining the law of demand and answer? To what extent does this imply a competitive advantage for larger companies? Do we need an ethical framework to direct companies to make such algorithms open source?"
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Correct me if I'm mistaken, but I keep on hearing that "open source" is about freedom. Since when is forcing someone to behave in a certain manner considered "freedom"?
Google can do what google wants to do as long as it's within the limits of the law, you don't like it? Start your own damn company that is more ethical.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
The law, of course, is about forcing someone to behave in a certain manner; there is always a tradeoff between the decrease in freedom in telling someone what to do and the payoff which may be an increase in freedom. The law restricts your freedom to lock me in a closet without my consent because that leads to a net increase in freedom for me and anyone else you might think about locking up.
Open source licenses like GPL are intended to force people to behave a certain way (decreasing someone's freedom) because its net benefit enhances everyone's freedom. Now, requiring open source in an industry by law is a little different than a license like the GPL -- it's debatable whether the increase in freedom is worth the cost in any particular situation; personally I would not be in favor of mandating open source across the board, though I probably would support mandating open source in public sector agencies for example. But it is overly simplistic to simply take the perspective that you do, that restricting people's behavior with regard to software development, or anything else, is automatically "anti-freedom."
Re:Bad example - GPL doesn't fit here (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
There are times when secrecy has its benefits...
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
"And speaking of ethics, it's been shown that there are plenty of people out there with none. Should the exact details of the source code be public, I have no doubt that hordes of hackers and virus writers would use that knowledge to corrupt the system.
There are times when secrecy has its benefits..."
It is unfortunate that whatever Google does gets a free pass on Slashdot.
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
As you don't know my stance regarding security and open source, you can't call me a hypocrite. That said, I believe that there are times to be open, and times to be obscure. Neither one is automatically the correct solution for each and every situation.
Easy (Score:2, Insightful)
When you believe that "government is the people", or that the voting process somehow removes the element of force from the definition of government.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyway, I also don't see how Google would be more "ethical" if they made their AdWords algorithm/program "free software" or "open source" or anything. A big community of developers looking at it could find the algorithm's faults and be able enhance it for everyone's benefit, but if it's already good enough for Google, then why give it out to others, who would just use it for competing AdWords services? Maybe the poster means that the algorithm should just be made "viewable" to people, while retaining all the rights to using it... The way to implement that would probably be a patent... Are you sure it's not already patented?
your sigline (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_war#Casualti
can you 'splain the difference?
Re:your sigline (Score:2)
http://www.dior.whs.mil/mmid/casualty/Death_Rates
Re:your sigline (Score:2)
"a year than all" mean in that sentence.
I did make a mistake, the sigline referes to all #'s SINCE (therefore not including) Vietnam
but it is a comparison of many years vs' per year.
the # is still wrong however (see my response lateral to your reply) as if you include all military deaths (other than age) it's still not higher (mostly due to accidents)
no kidding (Score:2)
That doesn't bother me, but to make dubious claims about "freedom in the market" is questionable at best.
It doesn't help that the SEC rules are quite often more vague than a 4th grader making up rules to a game as they go along.
Why they can get away with it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why they can get away with it (Score:4, Interesting)
So... what ads
http://adblock.mozdev.org/ [mozdev.org]
are
zone "googlesyndication.com" {type master;allow-query {any;};file "/etc/bind/db.blackhole";};
you
apt-get install adzapper
talking
http://www.customizegoogle.com/ [customizegoogle.com]
about?
I don't ever pay for random software -- I buy only things I need to (because @#$%^& customers won't switch to usable systems), and I sometimes help with Free Software projects (donating code, not money). For non-software related things, the banking system in Poland is so abysmal that purchasing material things online is simply out of the question; also, I have a strong negative response to ads -- I make conscious decisions to boycott products that are advertised in an annoying way.
Losing the clicks from the rest of the company I happen to admin the servers for is just collateral damage.
Re:Why they can get away with it (Score:2)
They don't try to show you ads that are relevant to what you want to see. They show you ads that are in the same context as the page you're reading (or try to). Thereby increasing the chances that you will be interested in the ad.
And, I'm afraid that they already wasted their chance.
Well, since you "don't ever pay for random software," "buy only things I need," and "purchasing material things online is simply out of the question," th
The Google Business Model (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a common story:
"I put Google AdSense on my website. I earned about $140.00, and Google was just getting ready to send me a check. Then, out of nowhere, Google sent me an email telling me I'd generated 'invalid clicks' and that my AdSense account was terminated, and all of my profits would be returned to the advertisers."
Hundreds, if not thousands, of AdSense displayers just like me have faced this fate. But here's the question to AdWords advertisers. Have you ever seen a "refund" on your AdWords account due to some AdSense advertiser generating "invalid clicks" for your ad? I never did. Google confiscates the money from the AdSense displayer, but does not return the money to the related AdWords advertisers! That is to say, Google keeps the money that the AdWords advertisers paid to display their ads; and also keeps the money that they were supposed to pay out to the AdSense webmasters for displaying those ads.
Google is making a killing on displayed advertisements for a lot of keywords and phrases, without paying out a penny to those who are displaying the ads on their pages. They're arbitrarily cancelling AdSense displayers' accounts for unspecified reasons, and if you try to determine why, you wind up in formletter hell. "Do No Evil," my arse.
I've been on both sides of the fence. I advertised through AdWords, I displayed AdSense ads on my site. And Google decided to kill my AdSense account while I was on vacation, for "invalid clicks," and despite emails requesting details, they wouldn't bother to explain what that meant.
I immediately pulled the AdSense ads from my sites and replaced them with Yahoo Publisher ads. Good news on that front, Yahoo is actually sending me checks. And I can guarantee you that I'll never again spend a penny on any Google service, be it AdWords or any other fee-based product they come up with.
Re:The Google Business Model (Score:2)
Re:The Google Business Model (Score:3, Interesting)
Things that make you go "hmm." MSN is rarely if ever better than Google at search results.
Re:The Google Business Model (Score:2, Informative)
In the UK, this become increasingly easier to do - http://tradingstandards.gov.uk/ [tradingstandards.gov.uk] (free, quick and easy) and http://www.hmcourts-service.gov.uk/ [hmcourts-service.gov.uk] (£30 for a small claim which you will get back if you win).
If Google won't tell you what they cancelled your payment, then I am sure that they are legally required to give you your money.
Yes, they do reimburse for bad clicks (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, I have. As per Google's documentation [google.com], you can click on the "My Account" tab and look for "Service Adjustment" in your billing summary. I have received some small refunds.
Re:The Google Business Model (Score:2)
Hmm.
Let's take a high estimate of 100,000 AdSense publishers having this happen. That'd be $14 million if the average lost is $140. Most of the people I've seen complain note numbers somewhere between $30 and $200, so it's probably a high estimate too.
$14 million. For a company worth $120+ billion. They probably spend more than that on staplers.
Re:The Google Business Model (Score:2)
Re:The Google Business Model (Score:2)
> b) tell you when and by what IP each fraudulent click has been committed.
No, they should not. Every strategy can be beaten. Including Google's strategy to find fraudulent clicks. So they intentionally keep this secret.
But of course some of the rejected tricks are known:
- Google is quite clear that texts like "click on my Google adds to sponsor my site" are not allowed
- if most clicks come from one or a few IP addres
Re:Why they can get away with it (Score:2, Insightful)
Google's ads are far more difficult to tune out, hence their wide success.
Forgot some experiments... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Forgot some experiments... (Score:5, Interesting)
If Google does anything with AdWords the obvious thing to do is examine the BIDS for AdWords that it receives and figure out a VALUE for each AdWord.
By setting up a rival site and BIDDING AGAINST HIMSELF this guy drove up the VALUE of his AdWords.
How is this not obvious? Google just coded the free market.
Re:Forgot some experiments... (Score:3, Insightful)
It may appear that he is trying to own the advertising space to the right by paying for the same ads at differnt levels, effectively owning all positions. Google does not want that to happen as it will allow those with larger b
Re:Forgot some experiments... (Score:3, Interesting)
Honorable Sir, (Score:4, Funny)
Google scares me, this I know! (Score:3, Interesting)
Companies grow from profit, Google has grown a lot. To maintain growth percentages (which as you become gi-normous like Google, becomes harder to do)
I think that paid search priority is somewhat ethically questionable, but I am not at all surprised.
Given that Google has been taking efforts to make themselves appear even more friendly to the open source community (those huge contributions awhile back)
Who knows, though?
===
However, Google doing things that are questionable and quite publically, in my opinion, spin a dangerous message for the future. They may be progressing into a more pervasive position than Microsoft in the years to come, with increased power comes increased corruption.
Scary stuff!
Re:Google scares me, this I know! (Score:2)
Seriously, why do people here think they should be allowed to do anything they want, but others should not be afforded the same liberties? Google is a company made up of people that are exercising their freedom to create a company. You don't like it? Start a competitor that isn't evil. Can't do that? Well then cry me a river about your freedoms, you don't have to use google, and they don't owe you a god damned thing.
Too much inference, old bean! (Score:2)
I was pointing out the fact they are a company, it seems obvious to you or me, however, some people seem to think they are the second coming.
===
They are not breaking the law, doing what they are doing, while I wouldn't do it and think that it is only a sign of future problems... if they want to do it, that's their business (pun not intended)...
Cheer
Re: Google scares me, this I know! (Score:4, Funny)
for ibiblio tells me so.
Little ads to It belong;
My site is weak but It is strong.
It shouldn't (Score:2)
taking away MS's power is a very different matter. MS holds it power via monopoly. That monop
Re:It shouldn't (Score:2)
Cringely answers own question (Score:5, Insightful)
Cringely, near the end of his article, drones on and on about how he has "no idea what the heck is happening here." But, in fact, he very clearly states what is going on at the beginning of the article:
Google places you higher in the rankings of of paid search results based partly on your volume of click-throughs because, again as Cringely very claearly pointed out, the more people click the more money Google makes.
Why then, Cringely, is it so hard to understand that since the first site has been opperating for what I assume to be months or even years, it would more easily place at the top of the paid search results than the brand new experimental site you created?
Your experiment proves what you already knew: popular click throughs means higher placement for less money. What don't you get?
Re:Cringely answers own question (Score:4, Insightful)
There are two possible explanations here. The first is that by a pure fluke the tester managed to pick the adwords cost/click that exactly compensated for the newness of the site (as the performance of the test site and the adwords site was the same) and that when the price was reduced the ad went into a twilight zone of uselessness. The second is that google, as part of the algorithm to place adwords, punishes people who reduce their adwords cost/click.
I think the first is pretty unlikely.
The test that needs done is to start a third trial site at $0.40 and look at that - if it shows similar effectiveness as the $1 test site and $0.10 original site, then that would demonstrate reasonably convincingly that Google punishes people who reduce their adwords cost/click.
Re:Cringely answers own question (Score:4, Insightful)
My experience has been unless you're somewhere near the top of the adwords list on the first page (and you pay more per hit obviously), your hits will plummet precipitously, not necessarily because Google is spiking the algorithm, but because people who conduct searches get what they want in the first few listings and don't see your ad.
Try a third answer. (Score:5, Insightful)
So start a new site with zero page rank and it will have to pay more to get the same placement, if it can do so at all. Older sites will pay less because they've been around longer, and their ads will have shown themselves to actually have been relevant.
It boils down to a simple axiom: Google rewards relevance.
Re:Try a third answer. (Score:3, Insightful)
So it makes perfect sense to suggest that the algorithm is:
Established site @ 10c -> 15,000 clicks
New site @ 1$ -> prolly about 15,000 clicks because the high price counteracts the newness
New site @ 4
Re:Try a third answer. (Score:2)
The point I was making is that it unlikely (but possible) that the site owner happened to pick the adword cost/click that counteracted the pagerank boost the old site got.
I even suggested how to test for it. Here's another one: setup two identical sites, advertise one with $0.25 and one with $1.00 per click for some suitable adword. See what the click rates are. Then change both to $0.50, and see what the click rate
Re:Try a third answer. (Score:2)
If you read carefully though, Cringely doesn't even state the click rates were even. So there's not even enough data to support his own conclusion.
Incidentally, I would suggest even your test won't prove it, unless the two sites got the same click-throughs at different rates, because we know (well, we think) that google puts well-clicked-on sites higher, and there will be a feedback between high price and high click rate that creates higher apparent relevance. This w
Re:Try a third answer. (Score:2)
Actually, this will be a good way to test if price change is one of their criteria. If price change is NOT a criteria, then the
Re:Try a fourth answer. (Score:2)
I can't speak for the other posters in this thread, but I for one have no trouble believing both: 1) that Google is a profit driven enterprise out for it's best interests and 2) The adwords algorithm factors the age of the site into it's determination of rank.
In fact, Google confirms this themselves when it describes the page-rank algorithm. It's not inconcievable that it would apply to the paid rankings algorithm as well. Nothing dastardly (assuming optimizing profit in and of itself can be considered da
Re:Try a third answer. (Score:2)
As such, I meant what I said. Create relevant, popular content, and Google with reward you with a higher page rank. Create relevant advertising pointing to said site, and Google will reward you with higher ad placements and with a reduced cost per click.
Try gaming the system, creating content that doesn't match the keywords, ads that don't match the content, or any of a number of other things, and Google will most definitely NOT reward you.
Punishes? WTF? (Score:2)
"Punishes"
Re:Punishes? WTF? (Score:2)
Re:Cringely answers own question (Score:2)
Without knowing how much your competing advertisers are bidding, you
Re:Cringely answers own question (Score:2)
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/archive/ [pbs.org]
Just a thought (Score:5, Interesting)
The result may be due to the original pages higher pagerank. I wouldn't be surprised if google would give higher position to "better" sites even in ads. In Googles context, higher pagerank means "better" site.
Hmm... (Score:5, Interesting)
Then when the experiment began, it disrupted things. The advertisers who were initially offering a premium found themselves with fewer clicks as their ads were placed on less advantageous pages, or when their ads were displaced entirely. They then changed their own behavior, perhaps by choosing different keywords and/or paying higher rates. This would have cascaded, causing other advertisers to change their behaviors.
The end result would've been a shift in AdWords' performance with those keywords, one that wouldn't easily be reversible, and which could account for the poor performance when the experimenter reduced his bids for clicks.
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
When he increased the price to $1.00 he also changed the demand, so of course all the "market" (for that specific word) was modified, until his demand changes where assimilated by the market. When he lowered again the price, the supply/demand was not the initial one, and that was the reason of the changes in the number of clicks. With the new combination, $0.40 per click was "worth" 1200 clicks.
The only missing piece is (and was not clear for me from the article) if the original site clicks decreased after doing the price change.
Re:Hmm... (Score:2)
Advertising is a free market, not a dictatorship (Score:5, Insightful)
If you ask google to justify every detail of their pricing, you may as well demand it of oil companies & every other business.
If you don't like it, dont use it.
Re:Advertising is a free market, not a dictatorshi (Score:4, Insightful)
But that's just simply not true. Big refineries pay less than small ones. Big distributors pay less than small ones. Smart retailers that commit to longer-term contracts pay less than those living more hand-to-mouth. Prices paid at every level of the oil (and every other commodity) market and distribution chain fluxuate wildly, and the long-term viability and business flow of each player can impact what they pay. Just like Google rewards long-time customers, long-lived established (and relevent) sites, etc.
While not illegal this does not justify a claim of "NOT EVIL"
How is evaluating your customers and striking deals that seem appropriate, according to your own interests, evil? It's not like Google (or search, or advertising in general) is some natural resource or government service that Google is on the hook to spread around evenly in some utopian socialist model... they're a private sector company deliverying a service in a way, and according to methods that they have established. If you think it's Eeeeevil for them to evaluate their customers, looking at the big picture, then all you have to do is spend your money somewhere else. They have competition: Overture, MS, Yahoo, etc.
I don't see anything wrong with this. (Score:4, Insightful)
And I don't see anything wrong with this.
Sure, in some cases, larger companies have a competitive advantage when it comes to this.
Mind you, larger companies also have a competitive advantage when they have a crap-load more money than smaller companies... they can hire a boat-load of top-knotch engineers, spend way more on advertising, etc. Does this mean it's unethical? No. That's the way it works.
Of course, there could be Monopoly issues, but I doubt that they are of issue in this case.
So, do we need an ethical framework? No. The smaller company needs a better negotiator to enter into the agreement and get the better rate and the service they want.
Re:I don't see anything wrong with this. (Score:2)
Let's face it, two companies may be doing marketing, but the large multi-national with a $5 million global marketing budget will have a huge advantage over the home-based company with $5k.
The end result is that the smaller company, due to lack of funds, cannot implement the same marketing strategy as the larger, well-funded company. Is this not a competitive advantage?
Sure, the marketing itself is the advantage, but it is a dire
Ignorance of the Law (Score:2)
Google on the law of demand and answer [google.ca]. It would seem the law of demand and answer doesn't register. Maybe it's outside the law, maybe an outrage. "I demand an answer", with an implied, or else I'll tell my Mom!
Maybe it's the law of the hidden CIA prisons, but, surely, if it's the law, well then, as we demand so shall we receive an answer.
Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm assuming that the lawsuit [slashdot.org] posted earlier this week was what prompted this - which by the way, in my opinion is total nonsense and has a snowballs chance in hell of winning in court.
Google Has become Advertising Platform (Score:4, Interesting)
welll (Score:2)
Google has ethics: make money (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyone can bid prices, but the costs you need vary based on how well your ads do.
Useful pages that are well typed to keywords (lemonhead ads for a search for lemon chicken would have to pay more for instance) are good for us, which means good for google, because google want to make more money.
Advertisers are stupid, they want to be top of EVERY SEARCH no matter how useful it is, and they want it cheap.
Google says, the less relevant you are to the search, the higher the click through, the higher the cost.
If you happen to convert your audience, and you now become more relevant, you prices go down.
So if I start selling neckties to skaters, I might have to stump up a bit in the long run, but if I hit a craze, they would go down, until some chump makes his own neck ties and starts bidding above me.
I think it is dumb to make this public, and the guy behind this has an ulterior motive anyway.
Misleading ads change the equation, but what can you do.
please type the word in this image: revamps
random letters - if you are visually impaired, please email us at pater@slashdot.org
Re:Google has ethics: make money (Score:2)
It is entirely possible that this man was penalized for running duplicate ads for duplicate products concurrently. Google states that this IS NOT allowed. If they allowed this strategy, a business with deep enough pockets could bid their ads at differnt price teirs to effectively
Re:Google has ethics: make money (Score:2)
Seriously, no sense.
Adwords (Score:5, Informative)
"We want to ensure that your keywords get a fair chance to run and that we do all we can to properly gauge their performance. We use a Quality Score to do this. Each keyword is given a Quality Score based on data specific to your account, including your keyword's clickthrough rate (CTR), relevance of ad text, historical keyword performance, the quality of your ad's landing page, and other relevancy factors.
Quality Score = keyword's CTR + relevance of your ad text + historical keyword performance + other relevancy factors
Your keyword's Quality Score and maximum CPC (at the keyword or Ad Group level) determine your ad's rank on Google search and content sites. (For the top positions above Google search results, however, we use your keyword's actual CPC.) Remember that improving the relevance of your ad text and keywords will increase your keyword's Quality Score and reduce the price you pay when someone clicks on your ad."
If you start a new campaign, it is no wonder that Google will not be able to give you the same placement as with a campaign that has run for years. It's new, it's unknown, the visitors / clicks are unknown, heck - even the cost-per-click value is jumping around. It looks weird to the system, it gets placed lower or even removed from some of the results.
What happens in the end: those who target properly (right keywords) and have a good ad copy get lots of clicks, those clicks end up making your placement better (while paying the same amount of money). The users are voting for your ad (whether they buy or not is partially unknown to Google -- "partially" because you can track it through Google if you want to).
A new factor coming into play is the landing page - the page that the ad takes you to. According to their blog ( http://adwords.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com] ) they are now evaluating the quality of the landing page. So if you search for "children" and click on the "Get children at ebay" ad, and the page they link to does not offer "children", then sooner or later (heh, hard to guess, it depends on the amount of automatisation behind the checks) Google will either remove the ad or move it down, while the advertiser is still paying the same amount per click.
Is that evil? Is that being greedy? or is that just watching out for the "user experience"?
I wonder.... (Score:4, Interesting)
.... if this guy didn't trip over a duplicate content filter. I would be very surprised if Google didn't check to make sure it wasn't being fed the same content from multiple sources. From Googles point of view checking for duplicates is a good thing. They don't want their natural listings (or ad listings I imagine) to be filled with hundreds of copies of exactly the same site.
I would have been more interested to see the results of a test that modified the wording of ads and how that affects placement.
Finally, I wish I was getting 15000 click throughs a day. Sigh.
Re:I wonder.... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I wonder.... (Score:2)
That would make sense. While Google were making enough money off him they a willing to turn a blind eye. Perhaps, though, the duplicate filter is expensive to run and a huge drop in what he was willing to pay was enough to trigger it to run. My guess is stepping away from the average is the quickest way to get Google to black list you. I know one of the sites I run swithed from php to jsp and the number of clicks went through the floor. I put this down to google getting scared that the site had been taken o
Re:I wonder.... (Score:2)
If this guy is paying $0.10 per AdWord and is getting 15,000 click-throughs per day ... correct me if I'm wrong, but he's paying $1,500 per day to Google for advertising? $500,000 per year?
1) Price your item higher than $100What do you do if you get 15,000 click-throughs per day but only 15 sales because of it?
2) ????
3) Profit!
I welcome relevant ads (Score:5, Interesting)
I was thrilled with the ad-block extensions of Firefox, and welcomed the relevant ads from google. I'll admit, I have actually clicked on, and even (shocked) bought a few things.
I hate desperate ads, like those on TV and everywhere else. Advertisers realise that they are failing.
When/if google starts flash, popups, then start to complain.
Tired of online retailers charging extra to ship products to Alaska? [suvalleynews.com]
Google haters? (Score:2)
For some reason... there is a tendency for anything that isn't directly supporting Google to get modded down.
This includes relevant points.
===
So for the most part, unless you have something against Google to say, you're pretty much 'preaching to the converted'...
Cheers!
Something that I only realised the other day.. (Score:4, Interesting)
And I'd be quite appreciative of that as I've no idea what to get my Dad this year, and a few casually placed Google Adwords undermining my own thought process wouldn't go a miss!
Article is just wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
Vote with your dollars, not your brand of ethics (Score:3, Interesting)
You mean supply and demand, the cornerstone of capitalism? More like - Google is redefining the rules of advertising and IT for the entire world.
To what extent does this imply a competitive advantage for larger companies?
Well, just like the superbowl, only companies with big bucks can get prime time advertising real estate.
Do we need an ethical framework to direct companies to make such algorithms open source?"
Keep your ethics and morality out of my consumer choices. If I dont like how google does business, I will stop buying from them. I live on Kauai, and I turned my girlfriends dying massage business into a thriving business (www.kauaioutcallmassage.com) spending only 20$/month over the last 2 years. Google has been incredible for my family, please don't rain on or change my parade with Google!
Too expensive (Score:3, Insightful)
Minimum price for 'cringely': $0.42
Too expensive for me..
BTW, the article is quite bad. All the important information is missing like the positions, CTR, minimum prices and CPC. OTOH, the algo is probably quite complex and it seems the higher bidder is not the winner.
Just follow the money... (Score:5, Insightful)
A less nefarious explanation (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, another possibility is that they have a bug in their code. I've heard that some programmers actually make mistakes sometimes.
Advertising mechanisms (Score:2, Insightful)
From my point of view this is just normal, not some EVIL doing of Google.
Do we need an ethical framework? (Score:2)
If you want an ethical framework, you have to practice what you preach.
WTF? (Score:2)
Anyone have any idea what the "law of demand and answer" is? Wow, a completely nonsensical slashdot summary -- must be Thursday.
redefining the law of demand and answer? (Score:2)
What!? Pay more to get more?! (Score:2)
Get over it, big companies, (or anyone who is willing to pay more per word) are going to get shown more frequently. That's just basic economics. I'm sorry to burst the Open Source Free love bubble, but money does still have a role in many everyday transactions.
I guess you'll just have to accept that.
Open Source (Score:3, Insightful)
Since a corporation's primary charter is to make money for it's owners, revealing information like this could be considered unethical under current norms. This is why we have the concepts of patents and other IP. A patent is a contract betwwen the government and the patent holder in which the patent holder is granted a limited term monopoly on an invention in exchange for publishing the details of the implementation of the invention. The strength of the patent system determines how willing the corporation will be to publish the details of their invention.
The main alternative to patents is trade secrets where (like in the case of the Coca-Cola formula) the corporation decides that that it is not in it's best interest to publish it's invention.
This is the framework we have now. An ethical framework that would result in a company publishing all of it's inventions without any compensation would be a very different society and much more collective than what we have now. Whether such a thing would work is not well supported by history.
Simple algorithm - Just like drugs (Score:2)
Deeply flawed experiment (Score:3, Interesting)
The better experiment would create two or more new sites and test adword on an even footing of history with both Google and searchers.
Funny stuff, Cringely (Score:2)
...
"It's like Vegas," said my friend. "They want you to lose. Try to game the system and they cut off one of your legs."
If they "want him to lose", w
Best strategy: start out low? (Score:2)
$15000 experiment? (Score:2)
The article is a little shaky. It's not clear what happened with the first site: how were those click-throughs changed from day 1 to 2? Certainly, the "market" for that word isn't large enough to sustain two identical campaigns with two identical sites?
the article is from September 22, 2005 (Score:2)
Re:Cringley discussed this back in September (Score:2)
Re:Cringley discussed this back in September (Score:3)
That's the exact same link that the original poster provided.
Yes, an article from September is hardly "news".
Move along, nothing to see here.
Re:Sadly its all true: An insiders view of Google (Score:5, Interesting)
I skimmed this and thought, "Hmm, this looks like the kind of text that would be generated by a script." A couple of minutes of searching (via Google, ironically enough) turned up the Automatic Complaint Generator [pakin.org].
Sigh. Remember when trolling was an art form, when people would put time, effort, and (dare I say it?) heart into inciting flame wars, even when posting as Anonymous Cowards. The kids these days are just phoning it in, and that saddens this oldtimer's heart.
Re:Sadly its all true: An insiders view of Google (Score:2)
Okay, let's do it. Let's call people to their highest and best, not accommodate them at their lowest and least. The first thing I want to bring up is that the complaint generator is like a magician who produces a dove in one hand, while the other hand is busy trying to manipulate public understanding of academicism. Did the complaint generator get dropped on its head when it was young, or did it take massive doses of drugs to believe that all it takes to so
Re:Phoning in my complaint about SpecBear (Score:2)
Argh! Do people even read before they mod? It's funny, people , laugh! I did.
Re:An ethical framework for advertising? (Score:2)
The first implicication from this, is that google puts out the ads to various groups. IOW, it does not go to everybody. More importantly, they have somehow prioritized their groups. Pay more, and we send it to better groups. I would guess that it really matters once there is competition for a word, but they did not say what happened to the original ad. I wonder if google is getting more info about
Re:An ethical framework for advertising? (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:PageRank or Adwords ? (Score:2)
(Disclaimer: there were SEO elements to my last job - I stayed strictly white-hat, but will still agree that most SEOers (outside of those who simply "design a site properly"), as fucking scumbags who will quite happily piss in the communal well for their own selfish gain.)
Secondly, if you want your site
So why respond? (Score:2)