[ssharp]

This guy completely discredits his company with a nonsense post like this. The reason Geico wouldn't PAY for the Caveman keyword is because it's not going to have much benefit. When someone types in "caveman" into Google, they aren't looking to buy car insurance. When someone types "car insurance quotes" into Google, they are. Geico wouldn't be dropping 90MM a year into that keyword if it didn't have a positive ROI. Althought "Caveman" might be cheaper to buy, I would bet any amount of money that it still have a negative ROI.

[tplDrew2]

Thanks for your comment. You don't need to buy the Caveman keyword... that's my point. What you need to do is convert people who are looking for caveman content at the height of it's popularity, and turn them into Geico loving insurance consumers. That IS the goal of the ad campaign, I would assume. I'd be surprised if their keyword campaign is THAT effective. If they don't buy the keyword, I'd imagine they see little to no drop in conversions. Thanks again for the dialog.

[ssharp]

So all Geico needs to do is convert people who are looking for cavemen into paying customers and they can stop paying $90 million a year to AdWords?

Honestly, your article doesn't make any sense. You're title is that Geico "wastes $90MM" a year in paid search. Yet you offer no evidence that Geico has a negative ROI on this spending.

If your point is that Geico isn't concerned with organic traffic, they are ranked #1 for "car insurance" and #2 for "car insurance quote". I think they seem to be doing alright.

What do you think the point of the Caveman commercials were? The appeal was "it's so easy, even a caveman could do it". The cavemen were an added benefit of a recognizable character. While Geico probably could have spent some time and money getting higher ranking for "cavemen", you don't provide any evidence that doing so would actually covert sales. Missing this is huge because common sense tells me that folks looking for the Geico Cavemen are probably more interested in some quick entertainment than car insurance.