GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 17 - September 2011

By James Lowery T here are two ways of fishing: with a rod and line or with a net. The methods employed by a fisherman using a rod and line are based on using a highly targeted methodology: a specific bait, a specific part of the water, and a specific type of hook. Line fishermen target the best fish in a particular area and hook them one at a time. The initial effort is greater, but generally, so are the rewards. Net fishermen operate under a com- pletely different paradigm: they spread their nets as wide as possible to catch the largest number of fish at one time. They catch fish they do want, and fish they do not want. The fish they do not want are thrown back into the water. Fishermen using nets from trawlers found that the bigger the net they cast, and the smaller the holes in that net, the more fish they could catch. Nets got big- ger and bigger, and holes got smaller and smaller until no fish could escape. The fishermen found that they were able to catch many more fish, which inevitably meant that they also had to throw more back into the ocean. Competition increased. As more fish were being caught, there were fewer fish left to catch, which meant that bigger and bigger nets, now stretching down to the ocean floor, scraping up everything that they passed over, were deployed in the hope that something of value would be captured. Eventually it became clear that at some point there would be no fish left, and gov- ernments around the world took action. They put in place rules that limited the types of fish that could be caught, restrict- ed the size of nets and kept the trawlers in port. They reasoned that by reducing the number of fish that were taken in each net, the overall ecosystem that provided the fish could be protected. Search marketing is the same. Some people run a highly targeted campaign in which they know exactly which users they want to capture, and they expend all of their effort to find them. These market- ers spend more time on acquiring each visitor, warming them up through a con- version process, and then hooking them when they’re ready. Google Panda – What it means, and what you can do! Google Panda – What it means, and what you can do!