Is Google showing favoritism ?

prathap75 · #1 (**permalink**) 04-02-2008, 07:21 AM

Hi,
I was working for on a PPC Campaign at Yahoo SEM and it was not going well as the landing page is at all relevant to the keywords which we are using.

So, I informed the client to change the landing page accordingly. But, he declined saying that these landing pages are working really great at Google.

It sounded ridiculous to me as Google would reduce the quality score and inform us either to increase the bidding or update the landing page.

Here is the catch - the campaign at Adwords is handled directly by Google Adwords team themselves.

So, I got a doubt now. Is Google showing favoritism towards the campaigns it is directly handling ??

Inputs from your side is greatly appreciated.

carpediem · #2 (**permalink**) 04-02-2008, 11:52 AM

Hi prathap75,

Quote:

the campaign at Adwords is handled directly by Google Adwords team themselves.

Please explain more. Are you referring to the Optimization that Google offers?

prathap75 · #3 (**permalink**) 04-02-2008, 12:39 PM

Hi Carpedium,

Thanks for the reply. They have hired a team at Google itself to take care of their PPC Campaign.

carpediem · #4 (**permalink**) 04-02-2008, 05:39 PM

Quote:

They have hired a team at Google itself to take care of their PPC Campaign.

I would be willing to bet that someone doesn't have all their information straight.

You would think it would be an incredible conflict of interest to have someone from Google hired to work on their account.

Perhaps they mean a "Google AdWords Professional"?

Peter (IMC) · #5 (**permalink**) 04-02-2008, 06:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by carpediem

I would be willing to bet that someone doesn't have all their information straight.

You would think it would be an incredible conflict of interest to have someone from Google hired to work on their account.

Perhaps they mean a "Google AdWords Professional"?

Google actually helps their clients to optimize their campaigns, but from what I have seen so far, they´re not very good at it and it doesn't go much further than adding negative keywords and stuff like that.

Which reminds me of something Perry Marchal (the King of Adwords) said in an interview:

"Just because they know how to build a piano, doesn't mean they're very good at playing it."

That ranks in the top 5 of best sayings I have ever heard,..

prathap75 · #6 (**permalink**) 04-02-2008, 11:20 PM

Thanks for your replies Carpediem and Peter.
Our client clearly sent me a mail informing me that they have hired guys at Google Israel to handle their Adwords Account.

I really didnt understand what they meant by that as I never heard Google offers such services.

That's my main reason for this post.

To some extent, Google Hyderabad (where Iam located in India) takes care of checking the Ads, keywords and their relevancy to the campaign. More than that, Iam really unaware of.

ace8 · #7 (**permalink**) 04-03-2008, 02:45 PM

I just read this on E-commerce News and this was a move to quell the question of conflict of interest. "Google will sell Performics, a company that helps businesses increase their rankings on search engines -- such as Google. The move preserves the integrity and objectivity of search results, Google said. The search giant also is reportedly considering 300 layoffs."

prathap75 · #8 (**permalink**) 04-03-2008, 11:35 PM

Hi Ace8,
Thanks for the reply. Maybe I can look forward into a better future with this news.

**jawn_tech** · #9 (**permalink**) 04-05-2008, 03:05 AM

From the home page of Performics.com --

"We are happy to announce that Google has acquired DoubleClick." Looks like they need an update...

From what I understand, Performics is (rather, was) a piece of DoubleClick. So google picked up DoubleClick, then weeks later chopped off the Performic component due to conflict-of-interest.

By picking up DoubleClick they also picked up 1,500 workers, and now laying off 300. So it's the biggest layoff they've had, but it looks like in the big picture they're netting 1200 additional jobs.

Bottom line, Performics was probably the 'team', but they're no longer part of the picture.

max5 · #10 (**permalink**) 04-09-2008, 12:19 PM

I could see a ton of people running around going "I still have a job, what do I do", maybe thats where it came into play and now Google is trying to get ducks in a row to avoid being seen as a company that does favoritism?

ArthurNYC · #11 (**permalink**) 04-18-2008, 08:14 AM

Even if Google did work on the campaigns, there is almost no interaction/conversation/glances back and forth between the Optimization Teams and the tech guys that produce the algorithms and results. We spend somewhere well into 6 figures a month with Google and still never seem to get much of an intelligent answer from the multitude of 20 something reps that we get.

Okay ... I may be a bit angry that my Google fridge almost burnt down my office.

I don't think they are laying off 30, I think those 300 go with Perfomics.

A