I had to setup my adwords account for the first time as well. 2000 uniques a day pre-jagger to less than 300 and still falling. Google's adwords revenue may not increase due to jagger but they are getting my money for the first time....
Teamshop, oh I bet Google's adwords revenue will have increased due to 'Jagger' the cynical side of me thinks that this happens every year coming up to Christmas. Companies panic because they arent' ranking well and what do they do - they buy into adwords.
I agree with you that many companies are spending big bucks on adwords to make up for lost Google traffic. Maybe not Googles's main intent but you can bet they knew that this would happen. The companies spending big bucks on Google pre Jagger are still spending and now they have a whole new group of webmasters running to adwords to make up for lost traffic.
teamshop, well I don't want to appear to be Google bashing, because that would be hypocritical considering I need them to help promote my business, but for the last four years there's been some sort of update between November - December time. I do agree with you though
yeah the big special updates always seem to happen right before christmas seems sort of odd Now we need someone to come and say "how dare you suggest that google is motivated by money, my beanie babies non profit homepage ranks great therefore google is good"
The Funny thing is people are always saying that Google reults on not manipulated. Well maybe not by hand site to site but They can play with there Algo enough to manipulate the results across the board such as Jagger..So in a sense they are manipulating the results I think?
I wish this were true, unfortunately not even close. One of my clients spends over $30,000/month on Adwords and got destroyed during Jagger - from top 10 to now stabilized around #120 for their main keyword. Adwords and organic results have nothing to do with each other no matter what conspiracies people may think are going on.
Advertising is going to go up this time of year regardless. It is a necessary cost of doing business in the retail sector this time of year. The difference is search traffic (or foot traffic) decides how much each individual store needs to spend. Those who went up in the serps will need to spend less. This year, Wal-Mart says it is only offering circulars online in December, not in newspapers. They have the foot traffic to be able to do this. The average retailer does not. They don't need good serps, they don't need adwords, but I am sure they would help. Reputation, word of mouth, and some signage in the stores will be enough. (Newspapers say ouch!) By the first weekend in December, they can go ahead and place a few ads for stores in regions that are not performing well. And Black Friday is a brick and mortar phenomenon. For online shopping, the Monday after Thanksgiving in the US is the big seller, from what I see and hear. That's when everybody is back to work, in front of the computer. They have seen the latest stuff, perhaps missed out or feel that they can do better (price or product) online. I doubt that Google's serps are the biggest source of revenue for adwords anymore. With the proliferation of adsense everywhere, it seems that the last thing they would want to do to make money is give the searchers a site that is relevant and has no adsense ads displayed. The real worry here is the competition at the product level, the lowest price generally wins. In the brick and mortar world, you can offer a product with little or no profitability - even sometimes at a loss - because there are still profitable items that will be sold along with the product. This is not always the case online, not many sites will sell the cd's and batteries and giftwrap to go with the new cd player. Let alone the laundry detergent, produce, stocking stuffers, etc. Driving the price down means that there is less to be spent on advertising, wages, and future stock.