10 years ago this month, I tried a little experiment. Blogging about search was becoming all the rage. Industry movers and shakers were all starting up their own blogs. So I decided to set one up for myself as an experiment.
Back then, there was no WordPress. There were a few paid blog platforms (Movable Type, anyone?), but really the only free game out there was Blogger. So that’s where I started.
I came up with Beyond the Paid as a play on Jim Gaffigan’s Beyond the Pale comedy album, which had just come out. He’s hilarious, by the way – go check him out if you’ve never heard his standup. Anyway, I thought it’d be a fun name for a PPC blog. Little did I know that a few years later, I’d end up creating an LLC for myself with the same name!
I took a look back over the last 10 years’ worth of posts. Here are some momentous occasions from the past 10 years in search, or at least in my life in search.
2006
It’s amazing to think that in 2006, I’d already been doing PPC for 4 years. Looking back on my posts from that year, you’d hardly recognize we’re talking about the same job. Topics included MSN, which exists now as Bing; click fraud, which still happens, but isn’t the big to-do it was back in 2006; and Danny Sullivan leaving Search Engine Watch. How many PPC pros today even know that Danny started SEW? This was HUGE news at the time, with everyone wondering what would happen to SES and the SEW site.
2007
The pay per click version of Adwords had been around for 5 years in 2007, and nefarious advertisers figured out that they could make a lot of money gaming the system. Garbitrage, the practice of creating crappy Adsense domains and then running Adwords to send traffic to them and make money, was rampant. I wrote about garbitrage in May of 2007. Note in that post that I also mention the beta of Google’s placement report. It’s hard to imagine search without that now, but it was new and exciting in 2007.
2007 was a momentous year for me personally, too. My twins turned 10, I won a trip to the very first SMX Advanced, and in October, I left the in-house world to work for an agency. 9 years later, I still miss my MagazineLine colleagues (many of whom are still there), but I’ve been thankful for the opportunities the agency world has given me.
2008
The huge news of 2008 was the Microsoft-Yahoo deal. Prior to 2008, PPC pros had 3 major search engines to deal with: Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Adwords was then, as it is today, the market leader; Yahoo was second, and Microsoft was a distant third. But Yahoo’s search platform, Panama, was awful. It lacked an offline editor, was slow, and just painful to use. MSN adCenter, as it was called at the time, wasn’t much better, but Microsoft was actively innovating, much like they still are today.
I was happy when the deal was announced. I found it interesting in 2014 when Yahoo decided to re-enter the fray with Gemini – but not interesting enough to actually try it.
2009
The search engine Bing officially launched in 2009. It was announced at Microsoft’s Search Summit, a sort of predecessor to Bing Ads Next. I was lucky to be in attendance, and the Bing hype was real.
Not to be outdone, Adwords continued its frenetic pace of change. In 2009, they updated their policy to no longer permit multiple display URLs in a single ad group. This wasn’t something I’d done on a large scale, so it didn’t affect me, but I know plenty of advertisers had a lot of restructuring to do.
2009 also marked my very first speaking engagement, at SES Chicago. I’d been attending SES since 2003, and blogging since 2006, and yet somehow had it in my head that no one wanted to hear what I had to say. I owe a debt of gratitude to Kevin Newman, then my editor at Search Engine Watch, for pushing me to pitch to speak. Speaking at search conferences is one of the best parts of my job – I love sharing and teaching others about PPC.
2010
2010 marked the official demise of Yahoo Search Marketing, which had been brewing since 2008. While there were aspects of YSM I missed, it made it easier to deal with only 2 PPC engines rather than 3.
Modified broad match made its debut in 2010 – can you believe it’s been 6 years? Finally, we had our “old” broad match back – MBM works the way broad match used to in the early days of Adwords, before close variants ever became a thing. It’s hard to imagine life without MBM now.
Adwords also launched Segments in 2010. Data that used to require running a report, or data that wasn’t available at all, became visible right in the UI. Segments is a feature I use regularly to diagnose trends and issues in accounts.
2011
I only have one milestone for 2011, and it’s a huge one: Google’s SSL change, aka the beginning of Not Provided. While this change didn’t have a big impact on PPC, it changed the whole game for SEO. I’m still not a fan.
2012
In January 2012, I started at my current company, gyro. I can’t believe I’ve been here 4 years! I’m eternally grateful for all the opportunities I’ve had in my career.
I also finally moved my blog to WordPress in September of 2012. After 6 years on Blogger and being frustrated with its lack of flexibility, I took the plunge and have never looked back. If you’re thinking about starting a blog, WordPress is the way to go.
Finally, in 2012 I wrote one of the most popular posts on the blog, about Adwords DIY. The post was in response to a New York Times article about a guy who was trying to run PPC on his own for his business, and failing at it. The post generated a lot of discussion, with the conclusion being that PPC had really gotten too complicated for most small business owners. Funny to think that I started in PPC as a sort of DIY side project!
2013
2013 was all about Google. The biggest news of the year by far was Enhanced Campaigns. We’ve all gotten used to Enhanced Campaigns by now, but there are still little things that frustrate me to this day. Maybe the upcoming Adwords redesign will solve some of the issues. I’m not holding my breath.
I also noticed a big decline in service levels from Google around 2013. Long gone were the days of the Google Fridge and lava lamps, but we’d still had a semi-regular Adwords rep – until 2013 when they moved to the quarterly model. I’m still bitter about the poor Adwords support, by the way.
2014
I got lucky in 2014, writing 2 of the most popular posts on this blog. The first was 26 Free Tools for PPC, which also ran on Search Engine Watch. This was a crowdsourced post from PPCChat, and I’m ever grateful for my friends there who are always a source of ideas and inspiration.
I also wrote a post on how not to do remarketing – which ended up being the most-commented post ever on my blog. Suffice it to say, there are a lot of different opinions on how to properly remarket to people.
2015
Ah, 2015. The year of the infamous Call Only Ads. A year later, we’re still getting terrible performance from call only ads. I hate when Google takes a good thing and turns it into a bad thing.
Google created yet more fun with the launch of the new Adwords Editor. I’ve gotten used to it, but I still don’t love it. Alas, Bing Ads is working on a new Editor that mirrors Google’s, so I guess I’m stuck with it.
On a personal note, my twins graduated high school in 2015. They were starting kindergarten when I started doing Adwords. It’s crazy how fast time has flown by, especially when I’m doing a job I love. Now if time could slow down with the kids just a bit…
2016
We’re not even halfway through the year, and I can’t even imagine what’s in store these next few months in PPC. Already we’ve lost right hand side ads and have seen “wider” search results. We know Google is revamping Adwords. Bing continues to innovate and is rolling out with Bing Ads Editor for Mac later this year. It’ll be fun to see what happens next!
So, here’s to the next 10 years on this blog. If they’re anything like the first 10, I’m in for a wild ride.
