Do I Think Google is Evil? No.

The Register recently ran an article outlining some critical issues with Adwords. I was quoted in the article, along with Andrew Goodman, Dan Thies, Aaron Wall and others. I thought it was fairly balanced and well-researched. I want to make clear that while I don’t consider Google an “evil” company in any sense, I recognize that without sound consultation or education about the Adwords network, advertisers can bleed money by using it.

The article above does a good job of outlining the issues. To summarize, here are the major problems with Adwords that every advertiser needs to get a handle on:

Automatic Matching

What it does: uses Google’s proprietary technology to match your keywords to related terms.

Why worry: broad …