Forum:Google Ads

Since I've been using (and contributing, here and there) to WoWWiki/Wowpedia for years, I decided that I would donate a little bit to the project to give it some help with the split. Since Curse is taking on hosting, obviously you won't need contributions of money. So instead, I've decided to help in a different way: I have a few dollars in my Google Adwords account that are just sitting there, so unless anyone objects, I have set up a temporary campaign that will make it so that whenever someone types "Wowpedia" in the google search bar (english parts of Canada/USA only), they will see Wowpedia.org appear as a sponsored link. Since we are extremely low on the page rankings (being a brand new site), I thought this might help establish visitors early on. If anyone has a problem with these ads, I can take them down just as quickly as I put them up. Alternatively, if you think its a good idea, I'm happy to keep them up until the money in my account runs out from clicks (which will probably last a month or two... and that should be enough time to establish a page ranking).

The details of the ad are as follows:
 * Seen when: searching from Canada/USA for "Wowpedia" at google.com or google.ca. It is not seen if you search for something else.
 * Link: Wowpedia, "A wiki with 84000 pages you can edit".  (The ad cannot contain copywrite names, hence the blandness).

As I said: let me know if this causes problems. I can have it down within minutes. If you want to see it for yourself (but don't click on it!), just google Wowpedia.

--Ddcorkum (talk) 20:34, 25 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Update -- from the same author.  I thought about this for two minutes, and I realized that maybe I'm putting the cart infront of the horse.  I'm going to pause the ads, because rather than this be "hey, here's some ads, let me know if there is a problem", maybe this should be more like "hey, I'm willing to put ads up, what do you think".   So I'm going to pause the campaign I just made (which means you won't see the ad if you try googling wowpedia), but I would be all too pleased to turn it back on if no one objects. Ddcorkum (talk) 20:43, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Sounds fine to me. -- 20:45, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
 * That would be good, cause otherwise, people would still think that wowwiki is the official source instead of wowpedia. Overlord Divine (talk) 21:09, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Too easy. I'll reactivate the ads then.  This brings us to question two:  what should the ads look like, and what other search terms (or services, such as YouTube) should trigger the ads?  I have a lot of flexibility.  The only thing I can do is say "World of Warcraft" because it is trademarked.  Ddcorkum (talk) 23:20, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Once google has parsed Wowpedia (maybe add some portal-type pages via http://www.google.com/addurl/ ?), wowpedia should make the first spot on these searches anyway. It then makes more sense to take out ads for "wowwiki", and I suggest the ad should say that "wowwiki moved to wowpedia" or some such, i.e be informative even without getting clicked. --M.mendel (talk) 00:26, 26 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Until we get parsed and the page-rank goes up a bit, I'm hesitant to advertise agressively on the search term "wowwiki". It is kind of hard to say "we moved" when users also see a giant top entry with search bar and additional links.  Google advertising in general becomes easier once the page rank goes up --- and on that note, we my advertising will be much more effective once those press releases go out.  A search for "Wowpedia" is starting to turn up results of discussions of our fork at different lcoations, such as on WoWWiki, SoL, MMO-Champion, Wikipedia, etc.  Those press releases would really help to make it more solid. Ddcorkum (talk) 00:54, 26 October 2010 (UTC)


 * After running the campaign for a few days, I've found that with my limitted budget, the most efficient thing to do is have an ad up for the search term "wowpedia". We are not on page one of google (though a lot of other fan-site articles talking about the move are), but the ad on this search term has been increasingly effective.  It started out at around a 2% click-through-rate (meaning 2% of the time it was displayed, someone clicked it) and it jumped to 10% on October 27th.  Unfortunately this ate through my initial budget, but since it is proving effective I am topping it up with enough money to last another four to five days.  Something to note: if the page rank goes up, the cost of the ads will decrease and so they will appear more often throughout the day on my limitted budget.   I am also tweaking the ad slightly to sometmes appear with alternative text that I am experimenting with to improve its efficiency. Ddcorkum (talk) 19:24, 28 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Update -- The search term Wowpedia now has a page-rank of 10/10. That means that my currently running ad is estimated to be a very good fit for users wishing to search for something called a "wowpedia".  The cost per click has dropped to 8 cents (CAD) and so my budget is much more affordable. Ddcorkum (talk) 20:34, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Topic-Based Advertising
One of the things I can do is make ads focussed on specific topics, and link them to specific articles in Wowpedia. For example, I am trialing "wow headless horseman" and "Hallow's End" to our article on the subject. Perhaps this could be done for some of our feature articles, or something? Ddcorkum (talk) 00:54, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
 * For this it would help to have access to wiki statistics on the most popular searches? --M.mendel (talk) 03:38, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
 * On Wowpedia for the last 4 days, the content pages people have been accessing most often are:
 * Patch 4.0.1
 * World of Warcraft: Cataclysm
 * Deathwing
 * Class
 * Pre-Cataclysm event ( -> Timeline of pre-Cataclysm events)
 * Patch 4.0.3
 * Worgen (playable)
 * Mount
 * Elemental Invasion
 * Thrall
 * BlizzCon 2010
 * Blackwing Descent
 * World of Warcraft API
 * Cataclysm map comparison
 * Hope that helps. -- 03:43, 26 October 2010 (UTC)