10/25/2006
Google Website Optimizer - Does this fit their mission?
Google recently announced the release of their website optimizer, which I heard about from googleicious.
Now, this tool looks like it will be cool and all, but I don’t see how it fits their mission statement:
Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
How does this tool help them to organize and make information accessable and useful? I mean, I see how it helps them by knowing which sites are performing the best (may be incredibly useful as google releases a ppa program as well as their current ppc (adwords) program). But how does it help me, as a searcher? How does it help put better information in my hands? It certainly helps me find the best marketer and the best marketed information, but that’s not necessarily the best information and it doesn’t appear to make anything more accessible to me.
I felt the same way about google checkout, but then realized that google checkout will probably make it easier for people to sell information at some point so people will make more information available…ok, that fits their mission.
Searchviews touches on some of the problems that come with all the google tools. Interesting.
Thoughts?
Filed under Search Engines by John
Comments on Google Website Optimizer - Does this fit their mission? »
Blake Snow @ 11:22 am
“Accessible” - easy to approach, reach, or use. Optimized sites should do just that.
larry @ 12:42 pm
Google is a business. Their goal is to make money for the shareholders that own them.
John @ 8:20 am
@blake: Yeah, I see your point. However, I would argue that this tool doesn’t make information any more easy to approach or use. It just makes you more likely to use it. It was just as usable before, and just as easy to get to, but now with this tool in the hands of a good marketer, it makes you more likely to use that information.
I guess my point is that it doesn’t really help the end user. This tool is designed to help marketers…period. I can see how it might help an end user…if it gets in the hands of someone who has really good information but doesn’t know how to tell people that he has the good information or doesn’t know how to tell them how good the information is.
In my view, this tool was built to help google know who is the best marketer in order to help their adwords program or their future ppa program.
But…I can see how you could argue this in favor of their mission…
John
Bart Gibby @ 11:30 am
How about the other issue here. I mean Google has so many tools now that sometimes you end up not owning your own accounts. Paul Allen had this happen to him, he was invited to use website optimizer but becasue someone else’s analytics account is associated with hsi adwords account that person needs to add him as a admin to the analytics account. Which makes no sense to me at all. Why can’t they just destroy the relationship between the analytics account and the Paul’s AdWords account?
Personally, I think there is a mishap here, Perhaps Paul was invited not becasue his AdWords account but becasue of this other person’s AdWords account… so this could be a marketing glitch on Google’s part
Here is part of the email that Google sent in reply to Paul (I have this becasue I have been assigned to fix the problem):
Hello Paul,
Thank you for your questions regarding the Website Optimizer. I have
reviewed your AdWords account for Hisemail@gmail.com and found that
there is an Analytics account associated with your AdWords account.
Currently, we only allow for one Analytics account to be linked to each
AdWords account.
The Administrator email for the Analytics account associated with your
AdWords account is Anotherguy@gmail.com. If you know this person, you
can contact him directly and ask that he grant you Administrator access to the Analytics account so that you may utilize the Website Optimizer.
However, if you do not know Anotherguy@gmail.com and the accounts should not be linked, you can reply to this email letting me know that you would like us to unlink the accounts.
Additionally, after the above issues have been resolved, you will need to
make sure that at least one of your AdWords ads is active in order to use
the Website Optimizer.
If you have additional questions about the Website Optimizer, please visit
our Help Center link at
https://www.google.com/analytics/siteopt/siteopt/help/overvw.html.
We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising
available.
—-end email —-
John here is also an swer to your question about this website optimizer tool. “We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available.” The tool is not made to optimze webpages or sites for keyword rankings as the name would suggest rather they used the name to get more peopel to use the tool to optimize the Google’s PPC ads (AdSense) optimized on webistes. Which like you mentioned doesn’t fit their mission. But did their revenue model ever fit their mission? Has Google’s AdSense ever help anyone find anythign they wanted? I perosnally have bought very little from the ads, but I know I have made good money from them.
Perhaps you are confusing results with means. PPC is the means in which they are able to fund their results or their mission. But you could argue that a company’s revenue model should be the business service which defines their mission or vice versa. But in reality this happens seldom. Especially when the advertising revenue model is concerned.