
Longer Queries Driving Down Ad Impressions? How About Bankrupt Advertisers? - vaksel
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/16/longer-queries-driving-down-ad-impressions-how-about-bankrupt-advertisers/
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russell
Interesting discussion about the decline in ad coverage (the number of query
responses that have a paid ad). Comscore
([http://blog.comscore.com/2009/05/longer_search_queries_drivi...](http://blog.comscore.com/2009/05/longer_search_queries_driving.html))
thinks it's because longer queries have fewer ad matches. Arrington thinks
it's due to ad budget declines and better matching on the part of Google et.
al. Arrington said that techcurnch is getting more click throughs in spite of
this.

I was wondering if this is the recession or a longer term trend towards fewer
ads.

Aside: A few days ago I googled "FCC chairman" to find his name. The sole ad
was from eBay offering to sell me an FCC chairman. Washington corruption has
gotten a whole lot more efficient.

The grammar Nazi in me: has the distinction disappeared between fewer
(countable as in coins) and less (non-countable as in sand)? Arrington and
others were using less when they should be using fewer.

~~~
CalmQuiet
Off-topic:

“has the distinction disappeared” <== that's not a _question_ is it? (Don't
get me started.)

Even BBC announcers regularly use "the preposition 'and'" - as in "We need to
try and do better." ::Shakespeare grave-rolling::

~~~
cperciva
_We need to try and do better._

This sentence is entirely grammatically correct. It makes the point that
simply _trying_ better isn't good enough -- we must also _do_ better.

Now, whether this is the sentence intended is a completely different matter,
of course. :-)

