Woot or Yahoo? Guess who's number one on Google?

Who googles "Google"? Well, I'd have to say that plugging "Google" into its own search engine without any accompanying modifiers is not a search I do regularly. But today I did it (mostly to check on the number of hits, currently around 753 million). The Adsense bids in the accompanying right column, however, were the real folly--whoever googles "Google" is in for some mind games:



Woot, the one-awesome-product-a-day gadget store, seems to have nearly a 100% share voice on the AdWords keyword "Google." Their ad popped up effortlessly in Position 1 for all of my refreshes of the page. Their tagline is "Filthy rich? We'll help" which is quite the appropriate reference to Google's skyrocketing stock price and subsequent millionaire-creationism. Woot's cheeky ad strategy is confirmed when Woot again pops up in near-the-top positioning for searches of Google's stock ticker "GOOG" and again at Position 1 for the phrase "Google stock." ++Woot for its sly suggestiveness.

Close contenders for Position 2 in the "Google" keyword were proxyconn.com, dreamkitty.com, and submiturl.blogspot.com But only one site outranked the underlings in maintaining the highest share voice in Position 2. Who else but Yahoo? The perpetual Number Two.

Makes me wonder if Yahoo is somehow blocked from ever attaining Position 1, regardless of how much they bid for that slot in AdWords. I find it highly doubtful that Woot could maintain such an expensive campaign at 100% share voice as I'm guessing that the CPC for keyword "Google" is a far cry from the 5 cents minimum bid.