Re: Bidding up search terms at GoTo.com

From: Robert J. Woodhead (AnimEigo) <trebor_at_animeigo.com>
Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 05:49:26 -0600 (CST)

MARKWELCH_at_ADBILITY.COM WROTE:
> Obviously, these are all very small response rates, and
> statisticians will not view these as adequate sample sizes
> on which to base conclusions -- but I still think my
> observation is worth sharing.
>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Good observations, Mark. The one thing about Goto that
drives me WILD with what would be rage if it wasn't that I'm
such a nice person is that their interface for adding and
changing bids is a flaming disaster, as is their reporting.
You get a nice report every month about how many clicks you
got, but it doesn't tell you ANYTHING about your current
position on the results, what the top bid is, etc. So you
have to go and look, manually.

And when you go to change bids, you have to do them one at a
time, instead of being able to say "for these terms, make my
bid high enough to be position X or higher on the page, but
don't bid more than Y cents".

I've been pleading, begging and threatening goto.com for 6
months to fix these problems. I even went so far as to
mock-up a page for them to show them how the interface ought
to work (http://selfpromotion.com/gotoform.t).

Nary a peep.

It is incredibly frustrating because they are costing
themselves a ton of money because I can't properly update my
bids, and they are costing me a bunch of clickthroughs as
well. It's gotten to the point where I am almost ready to
unleash the selfpromotion.com spider on them and have it
gather the information and submit the changes I want
automatically.


=======================================================================
http://selfpromotion.com/ The Net's only URL registration SHARESERVICE

Alex, my 3-year-old, has a Y2K bug in his operating system. According
to him, the year after 1999 is "nineteen-ninety-ten."

====== Robert Woodhead, CEO, AnimEigo -- Purveyors of Fine Anime ======


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Received on Fri Feb 19 1999 - 08:07:49 CST