George Michie
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George Michie

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About George Michie

George Michie is Chief Marketing Scientist of Merkle|RKG, a technology and service leader in paid search, SEO, performance display, social media, and the science of online marketing. He also writes for the RKG Blog. Follow him on Twitter at @georgemichie1.

George Michie's latest articles

PPC

Effectively Prioritizing Your Paid Search Tasks

In my last Paid Search column I wrote about six common business fallacies that lead paid search managers to spend time unproductively. Unproductive work is costly in that someone internally or externally is paid to do work that adds no value, and that same person is prevented from doing work that is valuable. Prioritizing tasks […]

PPC

The Cost Of Multichannel Cannibalism

"Revenue sharing," "commissioned sales," "cost per action," all sound like attractive, safe pricing models for marketing programs. But cannibalism can turn the economics of these "safe" programs into a disaster in a hurry.

PPC

User Behavior In Paid Search

We've theorized that people who search by trademark usually search by trademark and that those who use more specific search terms rather than more general search terms behave that way consistently. Now we have some data to back that up.

PPC

Maximizing ROI: The Wrong Game

How could something that sounds so right, be so wrong? This post explores the sometimes dangerous implications of the phrase "ROI maximization" and advocates an alternative approach.

PPC

A Rational Plea For Paid Search Syndication Controls

Traffic value varies widely not just by the words users type into the search box, but whose search box they use. Syndication network partners vary in quality and giving advertisers control over how much they pay for traffic from each would be a win for the advertisers and the engines.

Analytics & conversion

Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due

How your PPC efforts are tracked can have a significant impact on the programs performance. Javascript-based tracking systems used by most web analytics systems typically lose 10 - 30% of the sales driven by paid search. Find out why and how to plug this hole.

PPC

Smart Bidding Requires Smart Ad Clusters

Proper bidding requires smart, flexible data structures that allow keywords to be tagged with attributes. If bidding clusters and analysis are wedded to account structures you're leaving opportunity on the table.

PPC

Evaluating Paid Search Performance In A Down Economy

Is it time to fire your paid search managers? Many online advertisers are seeing their first-ever year-over-year declines in PPC performance. Because of this, and the general need to find something, anything that will generate more sales cost effectively, PPC programs are coming under serious scrutiny from corner offices. We welcome this scrutiny, and hope […]

PPC

Is Your Search Advertising Budget Harming Your Results?

Investment banks call me just about every week these days, asking whether our clients’ search budgets are growing or shrinking given the state of the economy.  Their interest is in valuing Google and Yahoo stock, but I’m not sure my responses are terribly helpful to them. Very few of our clients have set budgets for […]

Google Ads

Heads-Up, Google: Broad Match Controls We Need

Last week, the Rimm-Kaufman Group disclosed what is apparently an inadvertent bug in Google’s Broad Match algorithm. Last summer’s switch from minimum bid to first-page minimum bid wasn’t supposed to impact broad match logic at all, but it did in a big way. The result? Agencies and advertisers who pay attention to the numbers saw […]

PPC

The SEM RFP: Questions You Must Ask

Picking the right Search Engine Marketing (SEM) firm is hard. The quality of service and performance varies wildly, but the marketing materials often make it difficult to separate the experts from the pretenders. These questions should help cut through the marketing spin.

PPC

PPC Holiday Tips: It’s all about Execution

The Rimm-Kaufman Group manages paid search for a great many retailers across just about every vertical and the October pain was felt by all of them. We know that the stakes are incredibly high going into this holiday in particular, placing a premium on getting the details right. Here are some tips to help out.

PPC

The PPC Buying Cycle: Buyer Beware!

How often have you heard that keyword level performance data can be misleading? That PPC managers need to consider the phases of the buying cycle when evaluating terms? That specific keywords tend to steal conversions from the more general keywords that started the customer’s consideration, and that you should keep spending money on the general […]

PPC

Why Position Bidding Wastes Money

It’s remarkable that in 2008 there are still many bidding systems in use by SEMs and in-house PPC managers dedicated to “finding the right position” for each keyword. These position crawling systems guarantee inefficiency and lost opportunity; to put it concisely: they’re playing the wrong game. Here’s why:

PPC

9 Keys to Successful Day-Parting

Taking advantage of intraday fluctuations in traffic value can be important to maximizing the efficiency of your pay-per-click (PPC) ad spend. We see statistically significant variances in traffic value on the order of 5% to 25% for many retailers, and much more than that for some. However, measuring and acting on these value differences requires […]

PPC

Pay-Per-Click Averages Hide Incremental Realities

You’re hitting your pay-per-click (PPC) efficiency targets and everyone is pleased with the results. Congratulations, but are you wasting money in your PPC program? Averages often hide waste, and in this economy it may be worth taking a look at how you’re getting to that average. Suppose you budget $200 to buy a DVD player. […]

PPC

Don’t Let Machines Write Your Keyword Lists

As anyone who has seen the Terminator or Matrix movies can attest, if machines rule the world humans are in deep trouble. Similarly, if you allow machines to control the PPC keyword creation process you are guaranteed to both leave opportunity on the table and flush money down the toilet. The reason is simple: language […]

Google Ads

Should Advertisers Fear GoogleHoo?

Forget the business issues over the deal where Yahoo will selectively serve Google ads on the Yahoo site. What about the impact on the advertisers? Overbidding on Yahoo and potentially underbidding on Google’s network system will likely be the most immediate changes. But there are positives, as well.

PPC

Bidding For Dollars – Margin Dollars, That Is

As the competition in search becomes more sophisticated, refining tactics becomes more important than ever. For online retailers, bidding by margin is all but essential. Every firm has a different marketing objective: some look for maximum ROI and some are willing to spend to break even in hopes that future orders will drive the profit, […]

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