Lessons Learned from our earlier study: Google search advertising

 

When we first tried to recruit for our earlier study, we used Google Adwords. To use Adwords, one identifies some key words or phrases related to one’s recruitment goals, creates a brief text ad on the topic, and pays Google a small amount (e.g., $2) whenever someone clicks on the ad. When they click on the ad, they are taken to our study webpage (http://milestoneshome.org).

 

We identified key words like elimination communication and had almost no visitors to our site. We realized that our target group, folks who had used elimination communication methods, weren’t on the web searching for information about it. Search based ads might be effective for finding searchers, but not for those already familiar with the topic.