...and so the link-building marketplace finally gets a major client kicked in the nuts.  It was only a matter of time...

Gurtie,

You need pretty decent volume to get significant results with MVT.  My experience has been that MVT is frequently overkill for various reasons.  Instead, start with big conceptual tests based on your gut -- just prioritize.  I think of MVT as a tool to "tinker" with pages...  Things like color changes frequently lead to small (but useful) lifts, but more significant changes around messaging, offers, etc often are usually where the bigger wins are.  Also, it's frequently easier to implement A/B than MVT, and therefore easier to "get the ball rolling"...

I generally think of it like this:  first, test major concepts (e.g. completely different page layout strategies) and look for clear winners.  Once you pick a direction, you can tinker with it with MVT -- but figuring out your "bigger strategy" is most important.

Not sure if this makes sense, but hope it helps a bit...

Also, as an aside, which tools are you considering using for MVT, etc?  How do you plan to implement/execute on your client's site?

-seoboy

Hi all.  Over the last few months, I've been working on pulling together a fairly complex Firefox browser extension for Google AdWords.  In short, it has some features I've wanted for myself, so I built it as a proof of concept.  Where it goes from here remains to be seen...

The main features include:

• customize the look/feel of the AdWords tables -- for example, selecting custom background colors and font colors for tables to help color-code key information, and also letting you rename columns like "Conv. (1-per-click)" -> "Orders".  You can call the columns whatever you want.
• add calculated columns that Google does not provide, using data that's already there.  For example, you can add an ROI column that's calculated from spend and conversion value, or a revenue-per-click (RPC) column calculated from clicks and conversion value.  These are metrics I frequently use for management, and now I can see them in the AdWords dashboard.

It's probably most interesting for folks who track ecomm (conversion values), or at least folks who utilize conversion tracking.

littleman suggested I offered it here for feedback...so...

If anyone's interested in trying it out, drop me  PM and I'll send you the XPI so you can kick the tires. 

-seoboy

hey Jason, thanks for that Randy Pausch video.  i've seen a different one earlier, but this one is great too...

particularly fabulous is the line from his mentor to him during his second year in school...

"it's such a shame that people perceive you as so arrogant, because it's going to limit what you're going to be able to accomplish in life". 

classic.

dougs, what kind of campaigns are having "massive" results?

i generally focus on ecom promotion, and my (limited) experience with fb for retail has not been good...

as i recall, y! was offering something roughly similar (trended search data with some demographics) about 5 years ago.  i think they called it "buzz" back then -- today buzz.y.com is trending topics, but more as a news aggregator and without the search stats.  anyone remember that?  the old buzz was closer to g trends.  you had to have an account to access it, which meant you had to have a relationship.  i think they were somehow dovetailing that product with the old y! pi product -- giving you more advanced stats on the clicks and search traffic if you paid for inclusion.  all a foggy memory for me now, but maybe this is rising from the ashes of the same product.

@gurtie, thanks for the link.  that makes me feel a bit better.  i was seeing posts from back in october, but nothing recent enough to report a trend -- until that link.  i guess no one manages their ppc accounts on the weekends...

@little, could be a case of left hand (acct services) not knowing what right hand (engineering) is doing.  happens pretty often at G, but i guess that's to be expected when your engineers outnumber your services folks like 9000 to 1.  in any event, there's probably one thing to be learned from all this: buy GOOG.

just a followup - i'm seeing folks complaining about this in various places, so it seems i'm not alone. 

one thing i'm wondering, though, is whether this is universal...or is it specifically related to the fact that my urls are running through affiliate-program redirects...  if it's the redirects, it's possibly remediable.  but if it's something else, there's probably not a point in fiddling with things too much...

so...

• anyone else running traffic through affiliate urls who has seen a similar QS crash? 
  
• anyone with a direct-linked adwords campaign seeing a QS crash?

-seoboy

i actually first found this trends-bombing being used for malware distribution almost a year ago, actually.  i remember the day: it was the day that michael jordan was inducted into the hall of fame, and he gave that crazy speech.  for some reason, i was looking at this trend-bombing strategy at the time, and when i saw the news i went and searched for "michael jordan hall of fame speech" or something like that.  sure enough, i found "bad stuff" on the first page.  several listings, in fact.  the "bad" urls were generally not too hard to visually id at the time, and you'd find several pages ranking in the top 20...

it was actually a big problem for google, because it played on the whole "real-time search" paradigm and took advantage of low-competition, high-volume (for a short period of time) kws. 

the general strategy was that folks hacked servers (typically weak WP installs) and then injected a bunch of auto-generated content and links to other hacked sites.  basically a link farm on hacked machines.  the same pages did detection (presumably UA) and when they saw a "real" browser they would serve up the fake malware scan.

howdy all.  newly joined, via littleman's recommendation...

anywho, wanted to run something by the community. 

i'm running a fairly large ppc campaign -- 7 figures/year in budget on adwords alone.  all the links are running through an affiliate network, so they are redirects.  the campaign was migrated from another account -- that account was running direct (no redirects).  long story.  the new account was launched a few months back.

things have been humming along just fine until the last 48 hours.  logged into the account this AM and saw that almost all my QS have been crushed.  i have historical data -- last data was on the 19th (2 days ago) and most scores were in the 7-8 range.  now almost everything is 3-4.  this obviously sucks because CPC rates are even higher now.  everything just went sideways, and i have no idea why.

some of my core brand-related kws are still rating ok -- 8-10, but even brand terms with more generic secondary modifiers like "coupons" are now sucking wind (the LPs dont have "coupon" text on them, but that wasn't hurting me before as most kws were still running 7-8 QS).

i have various theories as to what could be causing it, but i'm really curious if it's just me, or if it's something more nefarious like an algo change for QS.  is it just me, or has anyone else seen a dramatic shift in their QS recently? 

-seoboy

hola, i'm seoboy.  based in northern california.

first used that handle back at wmw, where i was fairly active between 00-04.  checked out when the knucklehead-to-knowledge ratio tilted, and also as business picked up on the homefront.

littleman is an old war buddy.  we started working together in the late 90s and have continued on-and-off since.

i got started on the seo side when it was the wild west.  back in the day, littleman and i built a sizeable spider database and did some pretty sophisticated stuff with cloaking and link farms and landing pages and tracking and whatnot -- well, sophisticated in 2000 anyway.  we built targeted keyword lists for clients, grabbed a lot of top rankings, and sold clicks to them on a cpc basis.  it was all in perl; i miss perl.  then goto/overture signed all their big partnerships and adwords select launched soon after, and the whole landscape changed. 

later, in 2002, my co. built our first bid management software in for arbitrage purposes (remember, we sold clicks).  that soon evolved into a full-on paid search management business.  we got pretty big, wrote some cool software, and eventually sold out.

so my old-school chops are in seo, but i'm really better known as a paid search and analytics guy these days.  i was even a moderator at SEW forums for a while, before i quickly discovered it to be a waste of time.  :)

these days i've got a few projects in the hopper, as we all do i'm sure.
i'll be in-and-out, but try to contribute when i can.