Right now (as of June 2) there is a conversation ongoing at Webmaster World about the declining value of a #1 organic search ranking.  The argument is that the #1 position doesn’t attract as much traffic as it used to (on Google in particular) because of the way that Google has placed ads and added ad sitelinks, etc… all around the top of the page.  Not surprisingly there is much bellyaching by the SEO community many of whom have staked their pitch to clients on the claim that 75% of people skip over the ads and go straight to organic.

I have been labeled a PPC guy before, but that’s not quite accurate.  I’m just lazy and cautious.  I go for the most income for the least amount of effort and risk.  If that result can be achieved through organic listings, so be it.  However, that’s rarely the case in more competitive spaces.  And while dramatic algorithm shifts are less likely today than they were a few years ago, I prefer not to put myself and the expense of my time at risk.

Besides, if you really think about it, does Google REALLY want you to get a #1 ranking?  Sure, there’s the whole ‘user experience’ spiel from them and it’s true, to a certain extent.  If they delivered total junk results, they’d go the way of Alta Vista, Lycos, Alltheweb, etc….  But they do walk a fine line with wanting to deliver quality results organically (where they make no money from the clicks) versus driving the visitor to the paid listings.  Their stock share price doesn’t rise and fall by organic click-thrus.  Of COURSE Google wants people to click on the ads and not the organic.  But can they really be considered ads anymore?

Google has dealt with this tightrope walk by implementing the Quality Score on paid search, an algorithm that works similar to the organic algorithm.  The most relevant ads/landing pages show higher.  There are other benefits as well, like lower average cost per click.  Quality Score has been around for a couple of years and Google is always improving/refining.   Through this Quality Score refinement Google is making the paid listings just as, if not more, relevant as the organic listings.

I think what Google is doing is making the organic results supplementary to the paid listings with no decline in the sacred ‘user experience’.

Does this make me sound like a PPC ‘homer’?  I prefer to think of it as walking with the wind at my back instead of in my face.

Everybody is calling for more transparency. Domainers say the parking companies and the PPC ad networks need to be more transparent. The advertisers pull their hair out because it seems that every ad network and publisher goes out of their way to obfuscate data for the sole purpose of driving bid prices up. Yahoo’s Panama was supposed to be the savior for them, right? That program was going to increase revenue for Yahoo and it wasn’t by opening up the ad network to more exposure. And the PPC networks want to put conversion tracking on advertiser sites so they can get an idea of the cost per conversion.

EVERYBODY wants the OTHER guy to be transparent! Yet, nobody wants to let anybody else know their business. After all, it’s in those secrets where you maximize profitability. Gordon Gecko hates transparency.

Having been involved in internet marketing since 1997, I’ve traveled far and wide online and participated in many different communities and forums as I learn different facets of the trade. There’s always one general common theme: the other guy is cheating!

On search engine forums you read a lot about how Yahoo and Google (mostly Yahoo) are cheating advertisers out of their PPC dollars by allowing rampant click fraud through their distribution network.

On domainer boards, you can always find people challenging the parking companies because they’re either having their accounts terminated or the parking company is fudging the numbers and keeping an ever-growing share for themselves. Or it’s Yahoo and Google who are keeping the share.

On affiliate marketing focused discussion boards you can find lots of posts about how various affiliate programs screw affiliates paying paltry commissions or by letting them run up huge commissions and then terminating the account right before it’s time to pay the affiliate but also divulging some of the shady methods in which they go about generating traffic and making sales which means the affiliate program managers need to pay small commissions to hedge against all the junk that comes their way.

Put it all together and what do you get? A general state of distrust. It’s the OTHER guy that’s always doing the cheating! Kind of sad, really. Makes the internet look sleazy and unprofessional. But, when you have such a low barrier to entry, you attract all types.