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Google is one very costly spell checker |
Posted by
Ken at 2/11/2008 7:02:27 PM
Ken Kilar is a skilled programmer and respected executive manager. Ken works with high-end databases, architects, builds and interfaces high availability e-Commerce and Business Information systems. Ken has a proven track record (both vision and development skills) to conceptualize and deliver complex technology solutions.
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I'm not a great speler (sic) and I don't like typing full URLs in my browser address bar, so like many others I've come to use Google as a spell-checking bookmark.
I rarely use browser bookmarks for sites I don't frequent daily, especially when online shopping. For those sites it's easier to type some word jumble into my Google toolbar and have them correct it for me. They'll even give me a clickable link. Nice! But if you're clicking the top (sponsored) link, someone is paying for it… and there could be misleading reasons why they think they're getting their money's worth.
GOOD GUY DISCLAIMER: I'm a thoughtful guy and I do my best to avoid clicking Sponsored Links if the natural results link is on the same page.
Here is an example:
I'm looking to buy some shoes at amazon's endless.com. You can see that I incorrectly spell "endless" - Google corrects it for me, then gives me a sponsored link that'll take me right there (thanks Sergey).
When I click through, Google's cash register rings and endless.com pulls the referring site ID from the query string in the URL. Master of the obvious stuff, but retailers do this so they can pass that to their analytics software, as well as store it with their orders to measure keyword effectiveness and validate conversion and such. It's an ROI thing.
WTF: Why is endless.com still in BETA? Haven't they been around for a year or so now? And why would they need a BETA in the first place? They sell shoes, right?
A minor point, but if it's truly a first-time visitor, and your site is what they were hoping for, there's a chance the new visitor will create a bookmark as soon as they land (see my endless.com bookmark below). Now every time the user selects this bookmark the retailer could see an inflation of Google's value… unless the retailer is savvy enough to be retiring keywords and creating strong affiliate reporting filters.
You can mitigate that effect by doing a quick self redirect when the user hits your landing page with an affiliate parameter in the URL, initially tracking the referring tag but removing it on the redirect before the user has a chance to bookmark it.
Be smart and study your online repeat customer behavior. If your repeat customers keep coming your way via costly Google keywords (ones that are obvious to your brand), chances are... they too are using Google as a spell checking bookmark.
Agree? Disagree? Post a comment, or email me — maybe I can add some updates to this topic if I skipped something super important. |
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