What is PeopleAnalyst?

PeopleAnalyst is the front door for people-analytics research: 205+ works indexed and profiled, 40+ citation-grade findings extracted, and peer-reviewed behavioral science translated from academic to actionable — the missing manual for the people analytics you always meant to do.

What is people analytics?

People analytics is not a dashboard. It is behavioral science and statistical inference applied to workforce decisions — a discipline with its own methodology, spanning measurement, organizational design, talent, leadership, and analytics craft.

Why does AI in HR need measurement science?

AI is being deployed in high-stakes people decisions — hiring, performance, attrition — without the measurement science to evaluate whether it works or whom it harms. Construct validity, effect sizes, and criterion validity are the vocabulary for asking an AI vendor the right questions.

How is the research made accessible?

The evidence is indexed and searchable: 205+ works, 40+ citation-grade insight cards, and 8 research arcs, so the right finding reaches the right decision at the right time.

What separates good people measurement from assertion?

Good measurement has a method: construct validity, reliability, and effect-size interpretation are not optional — they are what separates evidence from assertion.

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Mastering search advertising how the top 3 of search advertisers dominate Google AdWords

Stokes, Richard, 1971-

In a sentence

A data-driven playbook revealing the unwritten rules and statistical tactics the top 3% of Google AdWords advertisers use to dominate paid search.

Mastering Search Advertising distills more than a decade of search marketing experience and proprietary competitive-intelligence research into a step-by-step system for outperforming rivals on Google AdWords. Rather than reciting common knowledge, Richard Stokes backs every recommendation with hard numbers and experiments—showing how a tiny elite of advertisers achieves dominant 'coverage,' why limiting your daily budget hurts you, how the customer life cycle model lets you match keywords and ad copy to searcher intent, how to choose thousands of niche keywords, how to find the bidding sweet spot by position, and how to reverse-engineer Google's Quality Score. It promises immediately applicable strategies that require no expensive software, that can cut campaign waste dramatically while increasing qualified traffic and profit.

The four lenses

Science
Statistics
Systems
Strategy

The model

A causal framework in which campaign design levers (keyword selection, ad group structure, keyword matching, bidding, budget policy, ad copy, landing page quality) shape psychological/behavioral states of searchers and algorithmic responses (relevance, clickthrough rate, coverage, Quality Score) that drive outcomes of traffic, cost efficiency, conversions, and competitive dominance.

Keyword Intent Targetingdesign lever

The practice of selecting many specific, relevant niche keywords categorized by searcher purchase intent (browse, shop, buy, navigate) rather than relying on few broad terms.

Ad Group Structuredesign lever

How keywords are organized into a reasonable number of ad groups by category and behavioral bucket so each group can be paired with optimized, intent-matched ad copy without unmanageable complexity.

Keyword Matching Controldesign lever

Use of broad, phrase, exact, negative, and negative-exact match types to refine targeting and eliminate unprofitable impressions and clicks from unwanted search queries.

Bidding Strategy by Positiondesign lever

Setting maximum cost-per-click bids to target specific ad positions (e.g., position 7 for broad, position 2-3 for niche) based on a financial model of CTR, conversion rate, and average order size.

Budget Cap Policydesign lever

The decision to remove or retain a maximum daily budget cap, where removing the cap prevents the search engine from diverting spend to low-profit keywords and reducing coverage.

Ad Copy Qualitydesign lever

The relevance, persuasiveness, and intent-alignment of search ad text including keyword phrases in titles, benefits, calls to action, and continuous A/B split testing to improve effectiveness.

Landing Page Relevancedesign lever

The quality and topical relevance of the landing page including keyword density, site genre, site focus, site age, and inbound/outbound linking that Google uses to assess advertiser relevance.

Searcher Purchase Intentpsychological state

The psychological state of a searcher reflecting their position in the customer life cycle (browse, shop, buy, navigate), inferable from the length and specificity of their search phrase and correlated with likelihood to purchase.

Clickthrough Ratebehavioral pattern

The percentage of people who see an ad and actually click it, serving as the primary algorithmic signal of ad quality and relevance and driving position, coverage, and Quality Score.

Google Quality Scorecontextual condition

A dynamic algorithmic metric assigned per keyword based on CTR, ad/keyword relevance, landing page quality, and account history that determines minimum bid and ad position.

Coveragebehavioral pattern

The percentage of the time an advertiser's ads appear when people search on targeted keywords, representing the share of total possible impressions captured and a key separator of dominant campaigns.

Cost Efficiencyoutcome metric

The relationship between spend and value obtained, including cost-per-click and the elimination of wasted spend on low-profit or irrelevant traffic.

Qualified Trafficoutcome metric

The volume of relevant visitors driven to the site who are likely to convert, maximized by high coverage, high CTR, and intent-aligned targeting.

Conversion and Profitabilityoutcome metric

The rate at which visitors buy and the resulting profit, the ultimate measure of campaign success driven by intent-matched traffic, efficient bidding, and effective copy.

Competitive Dominanceoutcome metric

The state of being among the elite minority of advertisers who appear far more often than competitors and capture the majority of available search traffic in an industry.

How they connect

keyword intent targeting → influences searcher intent state
searcher intent state → predicts conversion outcome
ad copy quality → predicts clickthrough rate
keyword intent targeting → influences clickthrough rate
clickthrough rate → predicts quality score
landing page relevance → influences quality score
quality score → influences coverage
clickthrough rate → predicts coverage
coverage → predicts qualified traffic
coverage → influences cost efficiency
bidding strategy → predicts cost efficiency
keyword matching control → predicts cost efficiency
budget policy → moderates coverage
ad group structure → influences ad copy quality
qualified traffic → predicts conversion outcome
coverage → predicts competitive dominance
cost efficiency → influences conversion outcome

A candidate measure

Mastering search advertising how the top 3 of search advertisers dominate Google AdWords — derived measurement candidates