Google results falling fast. Here's why.

Google isn't exactly bragging about it, but results from Google PPC campaigns are down across the board. Here's what you need to know before kicking your internet marketing manager, and how to fix the problem.

1. First, the downward trend is real. Go to Google Trends, type in a keyword phrase, and Google will serve up a graph showing worldwide search volume. Search use at Google is down about 50% in the past four years for a range of topics including "advertising agency," "heating oil," "furniture," "music lessons," "office supplies" and "new car dealer." It's hard to get a real look inside Google's black box, but play around with the Trends findings and you'll see slippage in most categories.

This look at search trends for "office supplies" proves the point. If anything is constant in business, it's that we all need paper clips and paper. When global search volume is down 50% for the bedrock of business ... something is going on.


2. To make fewer searches worse, more competitors have jumped aboard to chase the reduced number of searchers. The glory days of being first out of the gate with a PPC campaign on Adwords are over. As competitors bid on your category, placement on the page remains difficult. A few industry bargains remain, including healthcare, where most hospital administrators have not yet discovered they can capture patients online in search engine marketing. (See: Pew.)

3. The likely scapegoats are new social media such as Facebook ... but they are not to blame. A new report by Pew notes that social media has been around for as long as the internet (starting back with Usenet and electronic bulletin boards). Pew researched email use and found it has been almost constant from 2000 to 2007 (about 55% of internet users type email on any given day), showing consumers haven't really migrated more to interacting with each other.

4. The real answer: Consumers are more savvy. Today about 68% of online shoppers now search at least four online resources before making a purchase decision -- and all that clicking around drives up PPC costs. Mediapost reports that users are also gravitating toward reviews written by other consumers, not company paid ads, which helps explain the decline in Google search volumes.

It's simple, really. More competition + smarter shoppers + consumers gaining control over product information = tougher PPC results. The only solution is to build more sophisticated PPC campaigns with bid management software and to extend your brand online with other entry points, such as microsites, blogs, and video. Search still works. But like everything else in advertising, now it's going to take hard planning to make it work right.