There have been a couple of interesting developments in paid search in the last week. The first was that Google are planning to run their own ads linking to Google search results for a variety of high value keywords such as credit cards – and they are going to run them on the content network. They will only be advertising on head keywords rather than long tail but I have some misgivings about this move. Although I can believe that this could be a useful source of traffic, I certainly don’t think that it would be as productive as regular search. I doubt very much whether the traffic would be of as high a quality as someone who was initially resolved to look for the high value item under their own head of steam so I would be concerned about paying regular search CPC for these less intent-driven searchers.

I would be very surprised if the clicks converted at levels on a par with regular search. I suspect that conversion rates would be only marginally better than the regular content network – but of course the key to this is whether we will know. After recently writing about the new transparency of seeing Search partners separated out from Search only data, this feels like a step backwards with another level of traffic being added to search. If we can see this traffic separated out and opt in and out as we see fit then I welcome the move. Any potential source of extra traffic is welcome as long as it can be measured, evaluated and selected. If Google believes that this is a valuable source of traffic for us then they need to show their faith in it and show us the figures to back it up.

A Rose by any other name?

The second news story, from out-law.com, is that Interflora is suing M&S and Flowers Direct Online for bidding on their brand name. Brand bidding was introduced by Google to the UK in April and this is the first real test of its legitimacy. Is brand bidding, as Interflora claim, a “free-ride upon the fame of the Trademarks, thus conferring upon themselves and/or their goods or services an unfair advantage over the Claimants and/or other traders, and/or members of the public” or is it a valid tactic, albeit annoying if you are a major brand, that companies should accept and get wise to? Looking at the laws under which they are bringing the claim I can see how you could rule either way but it does seem that it is no different to setting up advertising next to the competitor’s store. As long as there is no use of a trademarked term I think most people would agree that, when moved to the real world, this is perfectly legitimate. The increased proximity of the advertising online pushes this to its furthest point and for some people this feels wrong. I don’t think that it is but then that’s just my layman’s opinion. From a PPC management perspective I have found brand bidding to be a mixed bag in terms of results but always very hard to maintain. As you cannot use the keyword in the ad text or on your landing page, quality scores will often be very low and decent clickthroughs hard to achieve. If brand bidding was banned I would certainly lose a source of useful traffic but I’d lose a few headaches at the same time. I look forward to seeing how the case unfolds.

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