Is Google Trying To Control The Weather?

I wonder what might be worth advertising on a search like that?

Just ran a test in Texas. Ad preview tools shows my ad does get displayed. Will leave it run for a bit to see if it gets any impressions.

OK, test complete.

I was getting impressions and my ad was in #1 spot, above organics, not to right.

Seems nobody just bothers to advertise for weather searches. Could be good branding opportunity though. Lots of eyeballs, even if the targeting is just way too broad.

I am not sure I totally buy it Stever. Why does Yahoo have two advertisers for “San Francisco Weather” when G has none?

Why is TravelNevada.com advertising on Yahoo against “Las Vegas Weather” and not on Google which only shows a Google Mobile ad?

Local weather searches have huge volume. Weather brings in a lot of $ for local TV and newspapers. There should be competition for any given market. That said maybe these guys are not aware of the opportunity or don’t like the idea of buying traffic.

I see a pile of travel related advertisers on that San Fran Yahoo search too over on the side. Their ads may be showing because they are bidding on searches that include the words “san francisco”???

For the Vegas examples I see 4 travel ads on Google vs. a full ad inventory for Yahoo.

Either way it is odd that google has so little. The city I ran my test in was Houston. There were no other ads running other than mine, according to Adwords Ad Preview tool. I let the ads run for 1.5 hours during mid evening. Had 5 impressions for “houston weather”.

My ad and landing page did not have the word weather in it, but did have Houston in it . So some relevance. Was bidding over $3 too. Ads geo-targeted to Houston.

You would think that some advertisers bidding on keywords with “Houston” in it would be running broad match ads, and would appear for such weather searches too, like the travel ads on Yahoo. I don’t imagine all the advertisers are savy enough to use weather as a negative keyword.

Surely somebody must appreciate the branding opportunities there.

Maybe my test did not run long enough to get “disabled”.

I’ll guess no advertisers because if they come, they don’t do anything but look at temp and leave. The good news is, they come to your site. The bad news is, it’s just for a second and leave. I would feel sorry for anyone who had adsense on that page!

Interesting.. I tried “brighton weather” on Google which neverhad any paid advertisement while yahoo had a few (on right). And for search term “london weather” – I don’t see any advertiser other than google’s “Latest weather forecast” which directs user to http://www.google.co.uk/ig !

Interesting how people aren’t even bothered to get the adspace for terms like “london weather” which I believe is very vital?

And as the previous commenter pointed out….the bounce rate of the site that are displayed in such ads might experience high exits!

Great find though.. I ran search for 10 terms (city) in UK and none had adverisement and very few of other terms had and with that of Google’s!

Funny and Interesting!