Comments on: As We Head Toward A More Conversational Interface, Can AdWords Keep Up?

By: corfu

corfu — Tue, 19 May 2009 02:14:22 +0000

I think adwords will not disappear in a short future ,but it’s hard to say the reason.

By: Brook Shepard

Brook Shepard — Mon, 18 May 2009 14:19:20 +0000

Well, I think this is great news for SEM agencies like ours.

For years, top sales guys at Did-It, SendTraffic, ICrossing, or wherever have sold clients on the idea of HUGE keyterm builds being paramount to their success. The account managers running the campaigns, by contrast, will tell you that's nonsense, and that properly focusing on the top 5 keyterms is a better use of one's time than building out endless lists.

It'd be nice for us if these bigger builds really did equate to client success.

By: amit

amit — Mon, 18 May 2009 07:15:00 +0000

is this based on US data only? I wnoder if the growth is from geographies which have a poor ad coverage resulting in lower clicks…

By: Jim Kovarik

Jim Kovarik — Sun, 17 May 2009 13:34:22 +0000

John - interesting to see your post as I've sensed this was occurring, and so we're working on something now that we think addresses this oppty.

And I agree with Eric above, that Adwords just hasn't caught up to the increased specificity of how people are searching. But that's more of an opportunity for Google than a limiting factor, and if they provide more targeting capabilities in Adwords marketers will continue to spend heavily on search.

By: Hamilton Wallace

Hamilton Wallace — Sat, 16 May 2009 14:24:39 +0000

People are simply getting better at search queries; with the natural result being more words used. Isn’t that the news here? Especially to the 98%+ of advertisers that should not consider brand advertising. Sponsored search is a wonderful direct response vehicle and won’t be going away anytime soon.

By: Free PPC

Free PPC — Sat, 16 May 2009 13:25:48 +0000

Cost per click is very expensive. Adwords can't keep up any longer.

Brand advertising is the new trend that's why Google will allow now to bid on trademark terms in their Adwords.

But still Adwords ppc can't keep up any longer.

By: Giuseppe

Giuseppe — Sat, 16 May 2009 08:39:16 +0000

It's wrong to consider longer queries as closer to natural language, therefore more conversational. what we see instead is a trend toward more refined and specific queries. 5 years go people would search for "Hotels in London", whereas now they tend to look for "Hotels in Central London close to British Museum".
Stan Schroeder also gives an interesting point on Mashable

http://mashable.com/2009/05/14/semantic-web/

By: nmw

nmw — Fri, 15 May 2009 23:10:07 +0000

It's a fallacy to think that longer search queries are closer to natural language than shorter queries (i.e., by number of words)

In fact, they are probably more removed.

It's mainly novices who do not understand that Google queries are "artificial" just as the command line (e.g. DOS) is artificial.

By: James

James — Fri, 15 May 2009 21:58:49 +0000

I remember seeing a Google presentation by Udi Manber, Google's VP of Engineering, a few years ago that mentioned offhand that 20-25% of all searches on any day had never been done before.

Details: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lynetter/649325804/

This explosion of variance and complexity, combined with the orientation of marketers to adhere to budgets, had to reach its tipping point sometime.

It appears the complexity of purchasing the ads has started to prevail against the management tools in place to make it accessible.

By: Eric Friedman

Eric Friedman — Fri, 15 May 2009 20:56:48 +0000

I think this might mean something different - that people are creating more targeted intent and marketers will be able to target better in the future. This equilibrium will create a gap for now, but as it fills in you will actually be able to reach people in better ways as a result of a longer query.

I think there is still a large amount of people who do not understand advertising accountability, and paid search provides a way to track this.