Google Search Funny

Although a bit unrelated to .NET, this was too funny not to share:

Every morning, I go through my www.columbussupply.com logs to see how products are doing, which are being visited, and where people come from to see how we’re placed and what other products show up. One such referral URL caught my eye: http://www.google.com/search?q=Deluxe+Model+Inflatable+Woman&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Which results in this (Note: I moved the results count to the left in photoshop to keep the image smaller):

Yes, that is someone searching for a blowup doll and found my site. As the first result in Google. At 6am. Hey, traffic is traffic, right?

Advertising Update

After speaking some more with the “powers that be” I decided to go forth with the ad units. You can find them on any product page at www.columbussupply.com. I tried to blend the ads into the theme of the site without hiding them entirely. The purpose of the ads is still for them to be clicked, but not to overpower the message of the product description, as the purpose of the product description is still to sell the product. Essentially, we’re trying to monetize the casual browser who is not really intending to buy anything but is rather looking around or comparison shopping. Those who are looking to buy something will buy something, ad click or not, since we really (actually) do have the best prices on the internet for virtually everything we sell.

I’m not new to adsense or the placement of ads. I am aware that the placement of the ad is not optimal for the best clickthroughs, but that’s not the point. I don’t want my customers to see an ad as the first thing on the page, but rather as they work their way down and have already been served the product description message. The primary goal is to sell products, and I feel that some people may get turned off if they are bombarded with ads as soon as they hit the page.

I’m interested to hear feedback on how the ads are placed, if they’re too overbearing, too obvious, not obvious enough, whatever. Do the ads serve their purpose?

To Advertise or Not To Advertise?

…that is indeed a troubling question for me and my ecommerce site. Many (if not most) sites on the intartrons leverage Google Adsense to drum up additional funds, and some make a decent profit from it. Up to this point I’ve resisted placing ads on the Columbus Supply website out of my desire to maintain a professional image for the company. We do not *need* the extra funds since we generate plenty from sales. However, we’ve started (not even started, have been) receiving some significant traffic for some time now and I can’t help but think how great it would be to supplement our company income with a bit of ad revenue.

I did a bit of research and discovered sites like amazon.com, woot.com, and buy.com do, in fact, have advertising spots in various locations throughout their site. These are pretty big sites that can be considered somewhat similar to ours. I also noticed that sites like newegg.com, grainger.com, and edarley.com do not have any advertising spots. I have admittedly tried to model a lot of our business off NewEgg’s, since I like the way they do things.

What are your thoughts on adding theme-matching, unobtrusive, responsibly-placed advertisements on the site? Would it ruin the “classiness” or “professionalism” of the site? Would it detract from the items and cause a possible dip in sales? Or do you think that it will provide a non-threatening way to cash in off the casual browser who does not necessarily intend to purchase from us?