Report: Don’t Buy AdWords, Focus On SEO

Jun 26, 2007 at 8:58am ET by Greg Sterling

Over the weekend, with the sensational headline “Search & Destroy,” the New York Post wrote up the forthcoming results of an “audit” from UK-based Internet Search Metrics (also called Internet Search Management). The Post article says the audit, which is not yet released, argues that the spending on paid search is often unjustified and that more resources should be devoted to optimization.

If the audit is simply calling for balance and arguing in favor of devoting more effort and money to optimization, that’s a sober recommendation. If it concludes rather that paid search advertising has little or no merit, that would be a mistaken position.

On Monday, eBay resumed its AdWords campaigns on a “much more limited basis.” Indeed, the highly publicized temporary withdrawal of eBay’s paid search campaigns on Google may prompt other big spending advertisers to take a closer look at their dependence on AdWords.

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Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land, and writes a personal blog Screenwerk, examining the broader world of media and advertising. He also posts at Internet2Go, which is focused on the mobile Internet.

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2 COMMENTS ON Report: Don’t Buy AdWords, Focus On SEO

Halfdeck, June 26th, 2007 at 10:39 am ET:

“Just this month, in a spat, eBay angrily pulled all of its advertising money from Google – and saw little drop-off in traffic. ”

Everyone knows exactly how many clicks are generated by their PPC campaigns, yet this guy frames the event as if eBay changed all its TITLE tags but found out their search traffic didn’t take a nose dive.

I am glad he’s discouraging people from spending money on PPC though. That means less competition for the rest of us.

BarbaraKB, June 26th, 2007 at 5:00 pm ET:

Halfdeck, you took the comment right out of my keyboard! I just love it when MSM gets the story *all wrong* thus, more Google love for my clients.

People in MSM:

One can build both for a client: organic search and AdWords at Google. Why does it have to be either/or?

Peace!

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