Is Google a Basket Case?

Tue, 2008-Jun-3 by nmw.

How Much does Google’s “Quality” cost?

Yesterday there was an interesting article in the New York Times about Google’s “Quality” measurements. You need to understand that since Google is not “about” anything, it is quite difficult to gauge whether the results on Google are good or bad — they just simply are. But what the Google team has come up with now is a new & improved “market basket” of keywords — so I guess that just like the CPI includes spaghetti and meat sauce, Google’s basket might include such keywords as “dating”, “social network”, “free money”, “download movies” (and similar strings that are often “bought” on the open market).

Brand name keyword advertising

Now since Google is the “brand name” in keyword advertising, it might be interesting to compare such market baskets of keyword prices between, say, Google.COM, Microsoft.COM, Yahoo.COM and VacationRentals.COM (do you ask why I mention “VacationRentals.COM”? that’s simple: VacationRentals.COM is a search engine focused on finding information about “vacation rentals” — and that was the example given in the New York Times article).

I am willing to bet that for each & every keyword in Google’s keyword market basket:

1. the price is of that keyword is significantly lower at least 1 other search engine

2. the greatest benefit per unit cost for advertising for that keyword is found at that keyword domain (for example, the greatest benefit per unit cost of advertising for a “vacation rental” is available at vacationrentals.com [or perhaps vacationrentals.net, vacationrentals.org etc.])

I wonder how long it will take before Google will say that they have the “best prices” — and perhaps that will never happen….

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