I don’t really use Google Adwords or other pay per click advertising in my own business and generally don’t click on sponsored listings when conducting searches, unless the advertisement is spot-on for what I’m looking for.

In fact, I’m almost blind to the sponsored listings, as I just naturally veer towards the natural search engine results.

This morning though, I was looking for something very specific. A consultant to help me get my asbestos company an international quality standard.

The standard concerned is called ISO17020 and it’s more specialised than a simple quality standard like ISO 9002.

So, I did what anyone would do and made a very specific search for “ISO 17020″ and “consultant” – specifying that both words should be included in the search results. Here’s the screenshot:

Click the image and you’ll see it full size in a new window.

Only one of the advertisers in the premium positions mention ISO 17020, yet all of them have placed bids on those keywords.

The one that does mention the standard is selling a pre-written quality manual, which doesn’t interest me, but even so, it is placed last in the search result.

The rest are bidding on the term I used simply because they probably figure that anyone interested in a quality standard will also be interested in the other standards that they offer.

I don’t know if that’s a good strategy or not, but every one of them paid the idiot tax today in the cost my click – but I didn’t find what I was looking for on any of their sites.

I did find it in the natural results though, which is why natural search engine optimisation is still vital to anyone selling services on-line and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

Like users of search engines, Google wants the ads on their system to be as relevant as possible to the search terms entered. It makes more money that way and users keep coming back, because they trust the system.

Today, all I saw, was more evidence to not trust the sponsored listings, but that’s not Google’s fault, it’s ignorance on the part of the advertisers who use a broad brush approach instead of accurately targeting their visitors.

This happens in all sectors. I was only surprised not to see an automated ebay or Amazon advertisement in there. They’re on every other search I do.

If you’re buying Adwords and you want to avoid paying the idiot tax, I suggest you take a look at Superlever – it’s a complete Adwords system designed to reduce costs and increase visitor numbers through the correct implementation of pay per click. It’s the system I recommend to my web clients.

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