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Avatar Went Hot: April 15, 2008 - 5:55 am
Posted By: SlightlyShadySEO 129 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.slightlyshadyseo.com)
Category: Microsoft Other
Live Search and AdCenter have reached a truly depressing state. With this in mind, I am pleading with them. Please, get better. There are basic and obvious problems. None of them too hard to fix. This is just getting depressing.
5 Comments     

Comments

from crimsongirl 129 days ago #
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I disagree about their PPC. First, in my experience, the prices are higher per click on MSN than on YSM or AdWords. But the cost per conversion is lower. No crap affiliates and fewer random non-buying surfers than the other programs. I see no reason to think that the demographics are different or that MSN users are less sophisticated, and even if they are, so what? Maybe we marketers want visitors who actually buy and don't shop around too much.

I do agree their search engine could be better. Every search engine could be better, of course, but Live seems to be getting worse. They give high rankings to sites with keywords in the domain and to sites with low quality paid links. And sometimes I see sites placing on their first page that make me say WTF? Sites that shouldn't be in the top 1000 results, much less the top 10.

from SlightlyShadySEO 128 days ago #
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@crimsongirl: While I've had different experiences with the PPC prices(perhaps just based on which niche we both advertise in), and can agree that the traffic quality is good, my primary criticism PPC wise is on the technical end, and really is almost a deal breaker.

from streko 127 days ago #
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@crimsongirl - what niche are you promoting where the PPC is higher??? From Mortgages to sports bra's i have never found that.

from Chris1 127 days ago #
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I agree 100% on AdCenter.  Horrible (almost unusable) interface, everything is slow and convoluted, little regulation of affiliates or arbitrage sites, limited payment options, etc.  And they overcount conversions if you use AdCenter conversion reporting.  That being said, our ROI there is great and it makes it worth it, even with relatively small volume.

As far as their organic results... they are useless for users and decades behind Google and Yahoo.  As Shady points out, they are obviously easily manipulated.

from crimsongirl 127 days ago #
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I can't state the niche in public, but for what I was thinking of, we paid 2.1 times as much on MSN as on YSM last month, for a comparable position.  Google was somewhere in between.

And, yes, it's difficult to use, but at least you get clean traffic.  YSM is easier to use, but then when I count in all the time spent tracking down click fraud, writing nasty letters to Yahoo (I have never complained to Microsoft about click fraud, ever), and doing the blocked domain dance, I'm not so sure AdCenter is so hard to manage.  It will be a sad day when AdCenter starts taking affiliates the way YSM did.

Anyhow, Microsoft should spend more time worrying about natural search than PPC at this point.  With inferior natural search, they will lose market share even more.


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