5 ms·

Keyword wise? Yes. Useful services I'd like to purchase? Fuck no. I'm not even bothering with !g anymore.

stevesearer 11y ago
What makes them not useful services you would want to purchase and what would be your ideal search results? The companies that advertise on that query for me are Vistaprint, Moo, Staples, Uprinting and a few others. I've used both Moo (business cards) and Uprinting (Christmas cards) and found them to be great.
- fweespeech 11y ago
  1) Visaprint [ I've never had a good experience] 2) GotPrint [ ditto ] 3) NextDayFlyers [ Never tried them but a friend has and told me they were awful. ] 4) SirSpeedy [ Never heard of them, but given how terrible their landing page looks and the fact its a Request a Quote - http://www.ppc.sirspeedy.com/printing?sfranid=SSI01470&kw=business%20cards http://www.ppc.sirspeedy.com/printing?sfranid=SSI01470&kw=bu... yeh, sorry not touching that ] After that comes the map Then VistaPrint again. Moo, Staples don't come up until I've hit page down a couple times. Uprinting is on the second page. --- DDG? Vistaprint, Gotprint (Ads) that are relatively subtle and don't consume a little over a page worth of real estate. About 50% of the places on the first page are useful results. [e.g. Uprinting is on the first page, Moo is visible without having to hit page down twice] It also includes the company which we actually got our business cards for $DayJob.
  - stevesearer 11y ago
    On the 1st page of DDG the first organic result is to Vistaprint's homepage and then later down the page is a result for Vistaprint's business cards page. Duplicate search results for Zazzle, 123print, and overnightprints as well. I understand that you've not found Google's paid results to be high quality and that they take up a lot of real estate, but they are definitely relevant and their organic results are more distilled and better than DDG. That said, I'm much more easily influenced when someone I know and trust tells me about a service they've used personally and vouched for, which was how I found Moo for business cards.
    - fweespeech 11y ago
      ...so your argument is you take off points for problem Google has [duplicate results] because DDG has the problem also? That doesn't make any sense to me but okay, its your worldview.
- jessriedel 11y ago
  Google ads seems to be useful/relevant when the best businesses in the sector are national, but crummy when the best ones are local. For instance, most folks want funeral homes that are locally owned (which is why lots of national organization pretend to be family owned). The ads returned when searching Google for "casket" are mostly useless link farms that try to pretend they are local. Of course, there's only so much Google can do to encourage local businesses to advertise with them, but given the paucity of ads that the user is likely to find useful, they'd be better served with few or none on those sorts of searchers.
  - anexprogrammer 11y ago
    Google could make one change for smaller and new advertisers and have a dramatic uptick in retention. turn off broad match as the default Usual scenario for a new small adwords advertiser is join, spend $500 for little noticeable gain, leave. Most of their traffic will have been irrelevant because of the broad match default.
grahamburger 11y ago
If you search for 'business cards' and get results of companies that make business cards that seems like a difficult thing to make a serious complaint about. Maybe you should try a more specific query?
- fweespeech 11y ago
  Or y'know, I can use a search engine that actually surfaces results Google is now pushing to the second page. I'm sorry but the fact I basically have to hit page down 1-2 times to get useful results on Google gives me basically the same problem I have with DDG. [e.g. The first couple results are useless] The difference with DDG is I can usually find it after skimming the page. Now with Google I have to hit Page Down -> Scan, probably hit it again. Google has completely destroyed the value proposition for my use case.
- Spivak 11y ago
  The problem is that almost universally the businesses that pay for keyword ads fall into two categories: 1. Complete shit or obvious scams. 2. A copy of the 1st or 2nd organic result. I don't know what can be done about this from a business perspective but when an ad blocker about doubles the usefulness of a search engine it's a tough sell to get me to turn it off.
  - ssharp 11y ago
    I'm not entirely sure what you mean by #2, but I think you're number #1, combined with "universally the businesses that pay for keyword ads" is way, way, way, way off-base. Of course shit and scams surface in search ads because Google doesn't do a good enough job of policing them, but they aren't completely ignoring the issue either. Ultimately, you're not buying ads to lose money and making high-intent keywords cost A LOT of money per click, so it's hard to play the game if you're not producing sales from it.

What makes them not useful services you would want to purchase and what would be your ideal search results? The companies that advertise on that query for me are Vistaprint, Moo, Staples, Uprinting and a few others. I've used both Moo (business cards) and Uprinting (Christmas cards) and found them to be great.

fweespeech 11y ago
1) Visaprint [ I've never had a good experience] 2) GotPrint [ ditto ] 3) NextDayFlyers [ Never tried them but a friend has and told me they were awful. ] 4) SirSpeedy [ Never heard of them, but given how terrible their landing page looks and the fact its a Request a Quote - http://www.ppc.sirspeedy.com/printing?sfranid=SSI01470&kw=business%20cards http://www.ppc.sirspeedy.com/printing?sfranid=SSI01470&kw=bu... yeh, sorry not touching that ] After that comes the map Then VistaPrint again. Moo, Staples don't come up until I've hit page down a couple times. Uprinting is on the second page. --- DDG? Vistaprint, Gotprint (Ads) that are relatively subtle and don't consume a little over a page worth of real estate. About 50% of the places on the first page are useful results. [e.g. Uprinting is on the first page, Moo is visible without having to hit page down twice] It also includes the company which we actually got our business cards for $DayJob.
- stevesearer 11y ago
  On the 1st page of DDG the first organic result is to Vistaprint's homepage and then later down the page is a result for Vistaprint's business cards page. Duplicate search results for Zazzle, 123print, and overnightprints as well. I understand that you've not found Google's paid results to be high quality and that they take up a lot of real estate, but they are definitely relevant and their organic results are more distilled and better than DDG. That said, I'm much more easily influenced when someone I know and trust tells me about a service they've used personally and vouched for, which was how I found Moo for business cards.
  - fweespeech 11y ago
    ...so your argument is you take off points for problem Google has [duplicate results] because DDG has the problem also? That doesn't make any sense to me but okay, its your worldview.
jessriedel 11y ago
Google ads seems to be useful/relevant when the best businesses in the sector are national, but crummy when the best ones are local. For instance, most folks want funeral homes that are locally owned (which is why lots of national organization pretend to be family owned). The ads returned when searching Google for "casket" are mostly useless link farms that try to pretend they are local. Of course, there's only so much Google can do to encourage local businesses to advertise with them, but given the paucity of ads that the user is likely to find useful, they'd be better served with few or none on those sorts of searchers.
- anexprogrammer 11y ago
  Google could make one change for smaller and new advertisers and have a dramatic uptick in retention. turn off broad match as the default Usual scenario for a new small adwords advertiser is join, spend $500 for little noticeable gain, leave. Most of their traffic will have been irrelevant because of the broad match default.

grahamburger 11y ago

If you search for 'business cards' and get results of companies that make business cards that seems like a difficult thing to make a serious complaint about. Maybe you should try a more specific query?

fweespeech 11y ago
Or y'know, I can use a search engine that actually surfaces results Google is now pushing to the second page. I'm sorry but the fact I basically have to hit page down 1-2 times to get useful results on Google gives me basically the same problem I have with DDG. [e.g. The first couple results are useless] The difference with DDG is I can usually find it after skimming the page. Now with Google I have to hit Page Down -> Scan, probably hit it again. Google has completely destroyed the value proposition for my use case.
Spivak 11y ago
The problem is that almost universally the businesses that pay for keyword ads fall into two categories: 1. Complete shit or obvious scams. 2. A copy of the 1st or 2nd organic result. I don't know what can be done about this from a business perspective but when an ad blocker about doubles the usefulness of a search engine it's a tough sell to get me to turn it off.
- ssharp 11y ago
  I'm not entirely sure what you mean by #2, but I think you're number #1, combined with "universally the businesses that pay for keyword ads" is way, way, way, way off-base. Of course shit and scams surface in search ads because Google doesn't do a good enough job of policing them, but they aren't completely ignoring the issue either. Ultimately, you're not buying ads to lose money and making high-intent keywords cost A LOT of money per click, so it's hard to play the game if you're not producing sales from it.