Google’s share of the Web search market has continued to
increase. Google, depending on whose research data you look at, controls
anywhere from 68 to 80 percent of the market. With hundreds of millions of
queries per day, that is a lot of eyeballs.
In June 2009, Hitwise reported that Google had an 87 percent
share of the market for online advertising. Yahoo had a market share of 4
percent. (http://www.adwords-advice.co.uk/?p=52).
In November 2009, AdWordsBuzz.com wrote: “Predicting Google is tough. It seems
like every other week, they advance the game. … And often it’s done by
surprise.” (http://www.adwordsbuzz.com/2009/11/2010-adwords-predictions-from-a-google-insider.html)
AdWords are paid listings that appear above and to the right
of a Google results list. Paid search means that an advertiser can bid on the
words in a user’s query. When one of those words appears in a user’s query, the
advertiser’s text ad appears. The advertiser pays when a user clicks on a text
ad. These ads are referenced as “pay per click” or “cost per click” ads.
Unlike an ad on a billboard, the ads are ranked and scored.
Google’s system considers the page rank of the landing page, the cost per click
(bid price for a word) and the click through rate for an ad. Complicated? Yes.
Do AdWords work? Usually. Expensive? AdWords ads can be. Alternatives?
Microsoft’s adCenter and Yahoo Search Marketing.
But with an 80 percent plus share of the market, Google is the
place to be for the foreseeable future. The online advertising game can change,
but for now, if a company is not advertising in Google, it may be almost
invisible. More and more businesses are advertising on Google to get Web site
traffic, generate leads and make sales.
AdWords has spawned its own mini-ecosystem. Your local
advertising agency may offer Google AdWords support. You can attend conferences
like Perry Marshall’s AdWords Elite Master’s Summit, held this year in Maui,
Hawaii. Amazon lists more than 40 books that teach you the basics to the
secrets of the top 3 percent of search advertisers. If you want an expert to
assist you, a query on Google for AdWords consultants will show you more than
700,000 Web pages to explore. Don’t have time to read 300-page books or talk on
the phone to AdWords experts? You can navigate to YouTube.com and pick from
more than 17,000 videos. To get insight into the inner workings of the Google
AdWords system, watch Google’s chief economist explain the plumbing. Buckle
your seat belt because Hal Varian is a Ph.D. and has a laundry list of
publications and honors. Google has grouped sequences of videos into playlists.
You can fire up your notebook and let Google pump the information you need to
generate leads, make sales and pump up your Web traffic with a mouse click.
Navigate to www.youtube.com and enter
the query AdWords. Google also publishes “Inside AdWords,” a blog that covers
the newest features available to advertisers.
Google won’t say how many AdWords customers it has, but to
generate the company’s $20 billion in revenue from ads that cost from 5 cents
to $50 or more, Google clearly has hundreds of thousands of customers.
Google publishes a number of AdWords success stories. The
First Crush Restaurant story is representative. The owner of this San Francisco
eatery experienced a fourfold increase in business. He told Google, “I’ve had a
busy decade. And Google AdWords will play a big part in keeping us busy for the
next one.” (For more about First Crush’s success with AdWords, point your
browser to www.google.com/adwords/select/success/firstcrush.html.)