Googletestad

When pursuing an Internet business of any type, you conduct keyword research before beginning. The humorous case of Googletestad reveals this can be an inaccurate science.

Googletestad

Google is the king of search engines regardless of whether you are pursuing search engine optimization or go with pay-per-click advertising on Google Adwords. Given this fact, keyword research and tools for working with Google are very popular issues with webmasters or should be. In a meshing of the bizarre, this brings us to the infamous Googletestad.

Every so often, one will do keyword research on the most searched phrases on the Internet. Sex and celebrities tend to dominate the results. In the summer of 2005, however, a new term started appearing – Googletestad. As the year passed, the number of searches for Googletestad started growing exponentially. Ah, a new tool for battling with Google? Not quite.

What was Googletestad? Was it some brilliant tool for optimization or tracking or what? Rumor had it that Googletestad stood for Google Test Ad and was a monitor or program that let you do something tricky with Google Adwords and Adsense. For those not familiar with these programs, Google Adwords lets you pay to have an ad listed on Google search engine results while Adsense allows you to put Google ads on your site. Regardless, this must surely be a windfall for the Internet marketing community!

Well, not really. As far as anyone can tell, there isn’t any Googletestad or Google test ad program, strategy, monitor or anything else. Yes, it was much ado about nothing. So, why do so many searches appear each month for the term when keyword research is done? Pretty much for the same reason you are reading this if you came off a search engine. Everyone is trying to figure out what it is, which breads more searches, which breads more people trying to figure out what it is and so on.

Simply put, Googletestad is a false positive. It is a term with lots of searches that have no bearing on anything real. When conducting keyword research, you need to watch out for such terms. If it seems unlike that a million people are searching for a particular phrase, it probably is unlike. Googletestad is a fairly humorous example of this, but you will not be laughing so hard if you base a site on a similar false negative.

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