Do recruiters understand Google Adwords?

Recruiter magazine ran a short article around the recent changes from Google:

'Google changes may see advert costs rise tenfold'.

OK, headlines are written to get the article noticed and the first paragraph is written to get the second paragraph read and so on but if an article such as this is to be written at least give some accurate facts and EVIDENCE.

The change the article relates to is that Google will now allow advertisers to bid on specific names.  For example, if Boots wanted to bid on the terms 'Lloyds Pharmacy' and 'Superdrug' they could now do so whereas previously they were not allowed to do so. 

According to Lewis Lenssen, MD of Netizen Digital, job boards pay Google 2p every time someone clicks on an ad but he predicts this will rise to 10p - 20p after 5th May.  How can an online TRAVEL marketing specialist advise the recruitment industry particularly when I can PROVE pay per click rates of 2p are pie in the sky.  We bid against job boards for many search terms and can tell you that we don't even get 20p for most terms (and we know what we are doing).  OK, we can get very specific, very low volume niche terms at a very low cost but this is driven by quality match and will never be low for any of the higher volume search terms (and I don't mean a generic term such as 'jobs').  Lewis, you need a holiday!

Moving on to Joe Slavin of Fish4, he states:

'If Google raises its rates, we will use Yahoo or Microsoft'. 

Glad to see Joe demonstrating his online knowledge as ever.  Joe, listen up I'm only going to explain this once.

1. Google DOES NOT dictate the rate; YOU the advertiser choose how much to pay.
2. The rate you pay is called a BID rate i.e. YOU choose how much you want to pay (got it?).
3. Google gets nigh on 80% of all search traffic; you may be somewhat lonely on Y and M.
4. If only job boards worked in the same basis - nope, they'd go bust.

So what does it all mean?  As per my opening statement Boots (for example) can bid on Superdrug or Mothercare.  Currently, only Superdug bid on Superdrug whereas not even Mothercare (or anyone else) currently bids on Mothercare.  Try searching for your own brand name and see what is happening currently. 

What some job boards have done previously is target phrases such as jobs at Dixons as shown.

The fact that none of the ads go to any jobs is another issue.  I know that Inretail for example DO have DSGi jobs but you try finding them.  Not sure if they actually care as long as you are on their site; maybe a good traffic generator for Inretail but not that much use for DSGi.  But, a link to the Dixons/DSGi site was nowhere to be seen in the natural search results so DSGi should be:

1. Optimising their own career site.
2. Running their own Google ads.

In the meantime, anyone who would like to be supplying people to Dixons could now run Google ads against the name Dixons and generate a list of people who would like to work there.  Agencies can work out the rest.

Hopefully that has given you a better insight to the changes; if you need any further explanation let me know via the post comments section and I'll answer via the same method.

Joe, you also need a holiday.  Maybe you and Lewis could get yourselves a book on Adwords and come back a bit smarter?

Comments

[Andy Headworth]

Fantastic - I think you have created a new Peter Gold invention, a twin bore version of your famous sniper rifle!!
I agree that I find it strange that the Recruiter Magazine goes out to a travel company for quotes on PPC rates in the recruitment industry!
Does that mean that recruiters have yet to 'find' that PPC can be used for recruiting staff directly?

Andy