"Algo-chasers” was the term Thomas Friedman used to describe SEO practitioners in mainstream media when he wrote The World Is Flat. Although undoubtedly not the first to use the phrase, his book finally convinced my parents that they understood what I did for a living.

Boy, did I protest.

But was my protest in vain?

I thought about this issue last night when I finally drove home. I had been reviewing a PPC campaign's ad group for a 65,000 resident county in the western US. Something wasn’t quite right. The numbers were phenomenal, but I didn’t like the creative or keywords. The response was better than I thought it should be.

My boss looked in at about 5:30 this night before Thanksgiving and muttered something about going home. After another few minutes of fussing with the ad group, I walked next door to his office to brainstorm about the landing page.

We played with the page, I liked his better and substituted with my creative since they seemed close enough. Instant panic as 17 keyword phrases went into a “Poor QS. That will be $5 please” status. Minutes before, those same keywords were “Great” with a CPC less than 10% that.

I looked over at my SEO tools folder, always open in a sidebar, and gazed at the links. Should I have run a spider simulator on each page first to spot any differences? Keyword density has gone the way of meta keywords so that wasn’t enough to trip the alarm bells, or was it?

I counted words. Nope, that’s not it either. Now it is 6 o’clock. Nutty, locked-in-the-zone time. That’s it. I’m going home. Back to the old landing page first. It’s 6:15 p.m.

A quick glance at all the old SEO tools again. (Maybe ….no, never mind.) It’s 6:30 now. Upload the changes and go home.

I market. I create excitement, intent to purchase and close on that intent. Algorithms play only a small role. Except the tools of our trade are more than just those used in a traditional direct response piece. Our world is now framed by anticipated response rates. Can the power of billions of impressions and their past click through rate accurately do that? Sure, maybe.

But to be contrary in direct mail, I just buy a different list or change the response device. In an outbound phone center, I merely huddle at the beginning of the shift, tell the reps today’s special charter offer, practice overcoming three objections and let things rip.

To be contrary online, I need to go through my creative and then ensure my creative complies with a search engine’s projection on how my campaign will resolve.

Being contrary works sometimes. Ask Tom Hanks when he produced My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Or ask the members of the 1969 New York Mets. Or ask the residents of that little 65,000 person county.

Wait – don’t ask that last group. At $5 per click, I couldn’t afford to go contrary and test a creative idea.

Were the ad group anything more than a little piece of a campaign, I might have stuck with my idea and figured out what was different. As it was, I stayed with an already better-than-expected CTR and success. My test will have to wait until I can devote some time to finding a different landing page or keyword group.

I’m not an algo-chaser, but they sure do shape my world.