How much does Google value you ?
As you know, Google last year introduced a feature that dynamically sets the required Minimum Bid for a given keyword (before that they had a flat $0.05 minimum bid for all keywords). I commented on this change as being smart but evil at the same time, since it lets Google price its keyword inventory to perfection and capture every penny possible, thus leaving a small margin for you, the bidder.
This allowed Google to drop the default minimum bid from $0.05 to $0.01, which allows them to capture more listings from keywords that were not ROI positive at 5 cents and above. However, at the same time it protects the high value keywords since Google can over-ride the minimum keyword bids for those terms individually.
So for fun, I went to Google today and checked what is the minimum required bid for some people names, here are the results:
| Alicia Witt | $1.00 |
| Courtney Love | $0.50 |
| Rene Russo | $0.50 |
| Arnold Schwarzenegger | $0.30 |
| Ken Norton | $0.30 |
| Julia Roberts | $0.30 |
| Steve Jobs | $0.20 |
| George Bush | $0.20 |
| Isaac Newton | $0.20 |
| Britney Spears | $0.20 |
| Terry Semel | $0.10 |
| Tom Cruise | $0.10 |
| Osama Bin Laden | $0.10 |
| Albert Einstein | $0.10 |
| Chris Anderson | $0.10 |
| Jeremy Zawodny | $0.10 |
| Guy Kawasaki | $0.10 |
| John Battelle | $0.10 |
| Larry Page | $0.10 |
| Mark Cuban | $0.10 |
| Bill Gates | $0.10 |
| Matt Cutts | $0.10 |
| Amr Awadallah | $0.05 |
| Caterina Fake | $0.05 |
| Chad Dickerson | $0.05 |
| Jennifer Sleg | $0.05 |
| Udi Manber | $0.03 |
Its really hard to figure out the logic behind their algorithm, if any, so for example, consider these facts based on the numbers above:
- George Bush is valued at twice Osama Bin Laden
- Arnold Schwarzenegger is valued three times Tom Cruise
- Steve Jobs is worth twice as much as Bill Gates
- Isaac Newton is worth twice as much as Albert Einstein
- Alicia Witt is the most valued among this list, she is worth five times Britney Spears
- Terry Semel, Larry Page, Mark Cuban and Bill Gates all have the same value
- Among the bloggers I checked, Ken Norton topped the list at $0.30
- I, Caterina, Chad, and JenSense were tied as the cheapest bloggers, at $0.05 each
- Poor Udi Manber is valued at $0.03, hopefully his recent move to Google will help improve that 😉
— amr