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RUMOUR Google Base & PPC - coming soon to a computer near you.
Google Base to become PPC Product.
The title of this post has been edited by me as this is an anon posting and can't be confirmed by speaking with the poster. If true this is big news but for now I would take it as a rumour, although almost definately (IMHO) based in a lot of fact
JasonD
The original post follows.
A converstaion with Google Base regarding the uploading of real estate listings ended up with the disclosure they plan to turn that Google Base into a PPC product. A vendor contract signed said that they would notify us once before it converts, but they have intentions to charge for each posting that is clicked on sometime in the future.
I recall a few posts on TW where people have noticed G Base listings in the SERPS. Google stock to $600?
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No way
I will personally donate $50 to this site if GOOG remains above $500 by this time in March 2007. I expect this post to become front-paged too if I am required to make a payment.
The price pressure is so high at present that GOOG is only trading ~1 million times a day now (compared to ~40 million avg on YHOO or several hundred million shares of MSFT). If there are only 1 to 3 buyers for GOOG at $500, one wonders how many there will be for GOOG $600.
Regardless, 2007 is going to be a *bad* year for investing in search engines! I've taken out 8 month put options on YHOO at a strike-price 40% less than current, because YHOO's double top happened on Friday and it will, historically speaking, be worth probably $15 by this time next year. And GOOG? Well, it's already been irrational for 2 years. If it manages to eek out a 3rd, I'll be very surprised but I still wouldn't touch it. Not when there are far less risky and profitable ventures out there, esp. in Europe these days.
What you should do is get a $600 *put* option while it's relatively dirt cheap. You generally have to have enough capital to secure the put, so you'd need ~$55,000 free, but just stick that in a money market and wait till it's much more below $500 to cash out. Right now it looks like a *lot* of people are doing this (the price has devaluded -8% over the week) and you'll only get 9657 for your March 2007 contract, but that should relatively explode in price should goog start collapsing.
(This advice should only be considered by people w/ an excess of $120,000 money not earmarked for other things. If you have, say, a few thousand, you should seriously consider $27.5 calls and $30 puts on YHOO. You'd probably earn more money if *either* of these happen than if you bought the equiv cost in 6 GOOGs.
I have to disagree about GOOG stock...
If every quarter for the next 3 years Google drops its payout percentage to AdSense publishers by .25%, they will be able to beat out their earnings expectations. It is dirty and frustrating to publishers, but across such a massive network, Google can artificially boost their income for several years to come by doing nothing but tweaking adsense payouts.
I posted it
after receiving an email from one of my vendors.
At Google Dance I spoke with Googlers on the Google Base team about how they handle real estate listings. One thing they didnt count on in the beginning was the same inventory uploaded multiple times by different people. They knew Billy Bob Ford woul want to upload their Ford inventory and Bubba Joe Chevy would do the same with their Chevys, but these two would never have a reason to upload the inventory of their competitors. Fair assumption. What they didnt understand was the real estate industry.
In the real estate industry its commonplace to display most if not all of the multiple listing inventory on their web sites to get buyer leads as long as the listing broker is named.
Companies that provide web sites for real estate agents upload the agent's listings to various places like Trulia, Yahoo and now, Google Base. Some agents have multiple sites from different providors. In addition, the company the agent works for may also upload the listings. This has since created a duplicate content problem for G Base.
One of these vendors was asked to upload the inventory of one Multiple Listing Service (MLS) of a specific metro area with the contact info of one broker. The vendor responded with this:
Is there anyone on TW who is surprised by the monetization of Google Base?
QS
I wonder whether they will leverage a better quality score on Base related landing pages to encourage users away from using their own sites with adwords or even adsense? A Googlenet seems closer than ever.
Interesting
Interesting they had the same problem not understanding affiliates would create multiple sites with very similar content, and in adwords with affiliates creating ppc landing pages that were all selling identical products.
I sent this thread to
I sent this thread to someone on the Base team to ask for more info. He replied saying that Base is not going PPC, and asked for my help to debunk this notion. So I don't expect the real estate (or any other part of Base) to go PPC. If the anonymous poster (Kirby, maybe you?) wants to give more details or who their friend talked to at Google, I'm happy to try to figure out where the misperception happened.
P.S. "He" should have been
P.S. "He" should have been "She" in my last comment. :)
Thanks for that Matt
RE estate agents
In the uk peoplke quite often retain more than one Estate Agent so it's perfectly valid that there woul be multiple instances of a property.
IS Sole agency Mandated in the US
or is the the online equivelent of puting up bogus for sale boards
Hopeseekr you are talking
Hopeseekr you are talking such bollocks you should put a public health warning on your posts.
Check out GOOG and YHOO and you will see google average volume is 6.5 million per day. Yahoo volume is 33 million a day.
But Google shares are 20 times the price of Yahoo, so the actual money changing hands is 4 times larger in Google.
Matt
Matt, I forwarded the email from the vendor to you. Do you have the ability to look at the contract that was signed? That should put it to rest.
Kirby, thanks for that. Do
Kirby, thanks for that. Do you mind if I take that info and talk to my Base person?
Please do Matt.
Personally the monetization of Google Base would help me eliminate competition, but if I'm objective, I dont think it is a great idea.
With the solution they put forth to the service providers, they still dont solve the dupe content issue, as agents/brokers often have multiple sites with different service providers who would each be uploading their version of the agent/broker listing. Plus I know one of the largest brokers in your neck of the woods recently cut a deal with Base to upload their company listings directly with the company contact info to drive leads to the broker, while their agents are having their web site vendors upload the listings with the agent contact info so the agent can get the lead.
Quite a mess at the end of the day.
$50 says a lot
Wow, hopeseekr, you've just qualified yourself.
Thanks for passing on the
Thanks for passing on the info, Kirby. The Base folks are looking into it to find out where the misunderstanding happened. But they were also quite vocal to me that they have no intention of going PPC. :)