I typed a few phrases into google today to see what I came up with:
- “test consultant”
- “software testing”
- “software tester”
- “software test consulting”
- “software test consultant”
- “qa”
- “quality assurance”
- “qa consultant”
- “quality assurance consultant”
- “quality assurance consulting”
I found that for google adwords, “quality assurance” had more hits than “testing” and “consulting” beat out “consultant”, though “quality assurance consultant” and “quality assurance consulting” both had enough hits for the difference to not matter. “software test consultant” had the least, but I think it’s probably the best description of what I want to do. “test consulting” and “test consultant” had no ads, which I think shows that they’re too general.
The most surprising thing is that there are apparent tiers in who targets these adwords. Not surprisingly, “consultant” is favored by individuals and small shops, and “consulting” is favored larger shops (including IBM) or at least those that want to appear larger. “QA” or “quality assurance” has a larger number of adwords, and folks that advertise with the term “quality assurance” tend to put more into marketing than those who use “testing”.
Note that I didn’t click any adwords links and charge the advertisers. I did enter a few URLs manually, or click on the search results if they came up the same.
I don’t plan to buy any adwords, since I don’t think my target client is going to be searching google for my services in any direct way (though it might be an interesting experiment.) Now, I might try something more specific describing QA site, but the best I can come up with without thinking is “hosted software test tools” — which turns up a couple well known companies: RallyDev and Seapine, (I’m an admirer both of their products) along with one other I haven’t heard of, SmarteSoft.
By the way, the same few companies that came up repeatedly while doing a search for “software test consultant” are: trigent, alpi, cognizant, provare, AppLabs, and BrickRed
A few others came up but dropped off the list. On a refresh, sometimes it only showed one (or three) results, and sometimes filled the page. I don’t know if there’s a cost-per-click vs. cost-per-impressions factor coming into play.
To all the sites mentioned, enjoy the free advertising that traffic from my blog provides. It’s probably worth more than the google adwords, since it’s an actual link, and google search counts that. Though don’t expect too many click-throughs — my readership mostly consists of occasional confused family members (hi dad!)
A look at actual search results shows some familiar names ( Randy Rice & Brett Pettichord … I also saw Danny Faught of tejasconsulting somewhere) on the front page, as well as a bunch of companies I haven’t heard of. A good next step will be to try to contact some of these “software testing celebrities” (a dubious title, no doubt) and see if they can offer any advice. I think I compiled a more complete list somewhere on my blog.
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