Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with sem

Will search engine users ever pay a user fee to use a search engine?

jonp72 — Fri, 10 May 2013 06:09:51 -0800

I've been presented with a business idea for a search engine or Web application that would require the user of the search engine to a pay a fee for the search results. Intuitively, I don't think this could work, but I'm having a hard time actually saying why. Historically, I think most search engines have been funded through advertisements or marketers who purchase profile data on searchers. Is there anything I could point to, such as a case study or an article in a journal or magazine, that would explain why a business model based on getting somebody to pay for the results for a search engine will or won't work?

How much will SEM model fit vary if I only change the final variable?

aaronetc — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 12:33:18 -0800

I have five structural equation models that are identical except for the final outcome variable. Should I expect the model fit statistics to vary more than negligibly? I am working on revising a study that looks at the impact of partisanship, media use, and political discussion on five different opinion outcomes. I'm doing this with five structural equation models that are exactly the same -- partisanship in the first level, then media use, then discussion -- before getting to the opinion outcome at the end. My model fit statistics are nearly identical across the five; some statistics are identical to three decimal points, some vary just a tiny bit at that level. A reviewer said, "Surely it cannot be the case that all five models had the same fit to the data." Is this surely not the case? I'm a technician and not a theorist when it comes to SEM, but it seems to me that most of the influence on model fit is coming from the relationships among the other eight variables, which are not going to differ at all based on one endogenous variable that comes later in the model. I can't find any papers that use multiple SEMs like this (the closest I found was one with multiple just-identified models, which have no fit stats), so I have no idea if I'm just overlooking something obvious. Can anyone provide some insight?

How can I get back into SEM volunteer work?

reticulatedspline — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 08:16:36 -0800

Where would I look for charitable volunteer SEM opportunities? I used to work at Google and they had an internal program where SEM Strategists could donate some of their time to working on marketing campaigns for charitable organizations. It was a wonderfully unique volunteer opportunity, because many of these org could never afford to hire an agency to manage SEM campaigns, and it allowed a way for people in my profession to contribute a valuable service to further a good cause while leveraging our unique skill set.

I would love to do it again, but unfortunately, it was for Googlers only. I've only found one site which seems to offer a similar placement service, but it seems to not have been updated in ages.

Any thoughts on how I might get back into SEM volunteer work? If no programs exist which match talented SEM strategists up with needy charities, is there any way I could independently seek out charities and offer my services?

How do you adwords?

windbox — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 07:09:28 -0800

CALLING ALL SEM SPECIALISTS: How do you scope out a large SEM (google adwords) campaign? How do you anticipate how much it will cost per month and how many hours will be put toward it? This is from an agency perspective. We're a very small traditional ad agency that is slowly trying to take on more digital work. I have a very rough idea of how to run PPC campaigns - I've successfully run Facebook campaigns and a very small campaign for a family friends small business a long time ago (think 100 dollars per month small), so I'm no pro and am really rusty.

A client has about a 30k budget for the year...I don't even know where to begin. They did it last year with another vendor - do you request their current keyword list? Ask for how much they were spending per month last year? Then what?

Do we offer to work off of their account so we can keep all the current reporting data? Or do we transfer everything to our own account? Do you charge per hour, or take commission? I'm just clueless.

I realize this is no million dollar budget but I've still never worked with a campaign this large. Is there any sort of step-by-step guide to this sort of thing?

I feel confident that I can run the campaign itself (bidding on terms, pausing terms that are too expensive/wasteful, etc) - but the "business" side of it, I'm completely lost. If anyone is a pro at this - or has any good websites that offer really crystal clear guidelines on this sort of thing - I'd be really interested in hearing about it.

Help me learn in order to make it, while I fake it.

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 10:47:32 -0800

What are the best interactive marketing resources available to learn from in a hurry? Just started a new gig in an interactive marketing department. While I feel pretty knowledgeable about the basics of marketing from my classes in college, interactive marketing best practices (from search to email to web to social and mobile, etc.) seem to escape me. What are the best blogs, books, tutorials, websites, Twitter users - whatever - to learn more about the industry?

Search traffic dropping for queries of company name, domain or URL

ao4047 — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 10:25:55 -0800

I'm seeing a weird drop in August in search-related traffic to my company's site. What's odd is it is for searches of the company's name, domain name or URL. I've seen a significant drop in traffic to our homepage in August (both Google and Bing). The strange part is it is for queries involving our company name. So let's say we're Blue Widgets. There's fewer search queries referred for blue widgets and bluewidgets and bluewidgets.com and even the URL being typed into the search box http://bluewidgets.com/. If I run these searches in Google or Bing, we are still in top set of results. There have been no changes to the actual HTML of the homepage.

Has anyone else experienced this? Any explanation search-minded folk can add?

How to learn SEM

Anonymous — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 13:45:23 -0800

I need to learn SEM/AdWords, and I'd like to learn it fast. Google's AdWords learning center just isn't doing it for me. This is sort of embarrassing - okay, really embarrassing - but I can not pay attention to the Google Learning Center videos for the life of me. As in, my ADD goes completely off the rails. I have never learned anything just watching a presentation, and the narrators voice may as well be an ambien pill.

From what I've heard, this stuff is supposed to be very easy once you get the hang of it. How do I get the hang of it? Are there any other free resources out there for learning AdWords? Something more interactive or intuitive? Best practices recommendations? Tips for being the best SEM manager ever?

I feel like all the blogs out there when you google "learn SEM" are spammy and sleazy and weird and have more to do with SEO garbage.

Hopefully this is not one of those things where if I can't follow the learning center videos I'm probably just an idiot destined to fail in life. Anonymous because I'm just embarrassed, but also because this is for my company.

Stuck in early 2000 web experience. Need 2010 web training in Chicago

stormpooper — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 11:14:51 -0800

Need to get up to par in 2010 web training--social media, mobile devices, SEO/SEM...where in Chicago can I get this minus a degree? I've been stuck in late 90s/early 2000s web experience--copywriting, project management, basic HTML. I know key terms, what needs to be done but anything 2010 such as SEM, mobile apps, and social media...I have no formal experience. I successfully SEOed my DH's business site (and other sites) But no one cared. I know FB, Twitter, Digg, etc. and their value, but since I haven't formally done it here at this company (earlier proposals were rejected by gun-shy co.) then no one cared. And mobile apps--I don't know anything beyond popular devices. But the ins and outs and implementing apps? Nope.

So the short of it is I have been pigeon-holed into a late 90s/early 2000 job experience so no moving up or out for me. And I don't want to go back as a full-time copywriter. I really, really love the variety of my job but it seems this job only exists here.

I want that to change.

I need recommendations on where to get training in Chicago (I'll probably have to fund it myself).

Do I need a degree? (by god I have a BA/MA and not looking forward to school, even if co pays 90%. I don't have the extra 10% to fund).

In general, how do I keep up with trends and getting experience if where I work won't move forward until 5+ years too late?

Help me bust these SEM Scammers.

reticulatedspline — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 07:59:55 -0800

Help me bust these SEM scammers. I'm just a humble SEM account manager, so I don't know nearly enough about programming, web services, etc. to crack this nut.

Here's the scoop:

For the past week, there have been various ads showing up on Google on travel-related queries. These ads all direct to a co.cc domain, and make insane claims like "All Tickets 90% Off!" or "$15 Flights". When you click the ad, you get taken briefly to the domain listed, and then redirected to some other site, seemingly at random. Clicking the same ad several times will send you to a variety of sites, some of which are actually airline related, some are not (one time it sent me to an online pharmacy selling tamiflu), and some are just pages with nothing but content ads. This is clearly in violation of Google's Adwords policies, since the destination is not reflected in the display URL. Each time I see one, I report it to our Google reps, and they remove it. Problem is, each time they remove one ad, another one pops up under a new domain name after an hour or so. So far since Wednesday I've seen:

http://afeelgon4.co.cc/
http://afeelgon2.co.cc/
http://quanuker4.co.cc/
http://rasnoty5.co.cc/
http://pertolen4.co.cc/
http://muklok5.co.cc/

These are making my job a bitch for a few reasons: a) they always show up in the top position for pretty much every single air travel related query imaginable: any query with "flights" "travel" "airfare" "tickets" "airlines" "air" etc in it. This means my position is worse whenever they're showing, my CTRs are thus lower, and my CPCs are the same or slightly higher. More importantly b) they provide a shitty user experience. Slow load times and a destination page which is not related to the ad the user clicks, and which does not in any way support the insane claims made in the ad. This means the user is left with a shitty taste in their mouth and is much less likely to actually buy from a legitimate site when/if they click on another ad. It doesn't help that c) they seem to frequently closely mimic the ad copy I use, thus meaning my ads get even more negative association.

I've been watching closely every day for these ads to show up, and each time they do, the conversion rates on my ads showing on the same keywords drop like a rock and do not recover until the fraudulent ads have been removed. Yesterday one of my highest converting campaigns ended the day with a conversion rate of 0.12% (the average to date was 2.13%). At this point I'm pausing many of my campaigns when the ads show up, to avoid killing my CPA, but doing so means my sales numbers drop like hell.

Since they're new ads each time, these guys must be bidding insane amounts to hit the top position. On certain keywords I've been running on for close to a year, I have a historical CTR of close to 40% and bids of over $1.50 and they're still beating me for top position every single time. The only way I can see this behavior of theirs functioning as a profitable business model is through a combination referall fees, content ad payouts and affiliate payouts (probably per visitor, since I can't imagine they're getting high conversion rates from these misleading ads), so they're making money from a variety of sources on each click, enough to offset the huge CPCs they must be paying on their ads.

At this point the Google reps seem helpless to do anything other than remove the ads each time they pop up. They've said that they don't think it's the same person doing it, though they find the coincidences between the ads "alarming". I personally would disagree, considering the MO is identical in each instance. That alone suggests that somewhere behind it all there is one entity responsible. Either way, I don't think they have a deep understanding of what the methodology being used is, exactly, for them to do anything about it other than play whack-a-mole with the ads.

At this point any insights into this would help. Like I said, I don't really know enough about the nuts and bolts of web coding to understand how they're doing this or what clues they might be leaving that could be used to identify a culprit. I don't know how to stop on the landing page for long enough before it redirects for me to view the source code, and even if I did, it probably wouldn't mean anything to me.

Any suggestions, explanations, insights, etc. would be greatly appreciated.

Best keyword research tool

Blue Buddha — Thu, 29 May 2008 07:22:11 -0800

What are currently the best keyword research tools or software? I'm looking specifically for something that can give me the amount of searches performed by keyword/phrase on major search engine, by time period, and by country.

For example: "2,020 searches for 'metafilter questions' in Google Canada for 2007". And of course, Yahoo! and MSN numbers would help, too, if possible. Thanks in advance.

I used Google's free keyword tools, but they don't offer concrete numbers.

Tracking organic search and paid search referrals

superfurry — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 08:13:35 -0800

Under the hood of Google Analytics. GA does a great job of segmenting paid and organic search metrics - traffic, keywords, etc. How does it know one from the other ? I'm trying to build an organic search tracking system on my website. I want to cookie people who've come in from organic search differently to how I want to cookie people who've come in from paid search. My problem is, I don't know how to differentiate between organic and paid referrals. The referrer is always the same for both isn't it ?

I also need this to work across different search engines - Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc etc.

Anyone have any experience of doing this ? How do I tell an organic refferal from a paid one consistently across multiple search engines ?

Pay Per Click Question

quiverandquill — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 18:54:07 -0800

Newbie SEM question: .I want to launch a search campaign on google, yahoo, ask, msn, and aol. Since Google & AOL work together, do I only launch one campaign--on Google, or can I run separate campaigns on Google and AOL? Same question for MSN, Ask, etc. Also, aside from Gather.com, can you recommend other PPC site? Thank you! (any recommendations much appreciated)

Paid Search: Google or Yahoo?

paulinsanjuan — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 20:12:46 -0800

Sorry for the banal question, but I have to make a decision in the next couple of weeks. We have a new website with a unique product to promote. As of 2007: Paid search. Google or Yahoo? Combination of both? What percentage for each? Does it depend on the product / website? I've been told to budget 70% on Google and the rest on Yahoo (and a bit on MSN). Is this accurate? Would this be based on Google's dominance in searches? Will Yahoo get better in 2007 thus justifying more even spending between the Google and Yahoo?

Client is sold on using paid search campaign. Just want to know how to break it down and what factors go into making those decisions.

Many thanks.

Yahoo SEM account management

superfurry — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 02:44:55 -0800

Yahoo paid search. I run online ppc marketing for my company in Europe. I have a question about the way Yahoo make us pay our bills and manage our account. We spend around Eur 6k per month with Yahoo. Unfortunatly they are telling us right now that we need to pay each Yahoo account seperately in each country. This is a nightmare from a billing and invoicing perspective. Google don't operate this way - we pay them one big bill for all the countries we run our paid search advertising in, and I only have to deal with one account manager.

Has anyone has similiar experience with Yahoo and does it change when you spend more with them ? Any way to convince them that this is an insane way to do business ?