Search Marketing Insights (Emerging Search Trends)
Google+ for Business and Personal Search
Two recent developments from Google will impact the way companies are found within the search results, as well as interact with customers and audiences. The first development was the November launch of Google+ Pages for businesses and organizations. This new feature has already changed the face of social networking from a business perspective and should be taken advantage of as soon as possible.
Predicting 2011 Holiday Consumer Behavior Using Back-To-School Trends
By: Chrissy Lynn, Search Account Manager
Marketers look at the back-to-school season as an indicator of what the holiday season may bring. For example, if parents spend big on their kids during the back-to-school season; one can expect to see them do the same during the holidays too.
Here is what we found during the 2011 back-to school season, what it could mean for the 2011 holiday season, and what to look for in your own back-to-school season results to gain insight into how the holiday season may unfold for you.
Google Automated Rules: Why You Should Adopt
By: Matt Leavens, Search Account Manager
Let's face it: everyone who manages Paid Search in Google AdWords is aware that a lot of time can be spent on managing bids and the state of campaigns, ad groups, ad copy and keywords.
Having a parameter tool for your keywords is a big help. Whether you are working with a multi-billion-dollar corporation with a huge budget or a tiny Mom and Pop store with a small budget, such a tool can save a lot of time and money through effective and efficient bid management.
Google's Automated Rules tool can provide this help. Although there are disadvantages to using Google Automated Rules, it can be a helpful tool for some marketers. Here's what this tool can do and what to consider when deciding if Automated Rules is right for you.
The (Potential) Effects of Google +1
By: Jamie Keaney, Senior Search Strategist
Two weeks ago, when Google announced their new product, "+1", marketers scrambled to understand how it would affect their business, decide if it was a game changer or another failed project by Google and some even went as far as to figure out the linguistics associated to it (is it +1'd, or +1'ed?).
With all of the point of view pieces written on this topic over the past few weeks, let's break this down to the basics. Below, we will define what +1 is and is not, while providing some pointers on making the most of Google's recent attempt to incorporate social into search.
Google Linking Algorithm Update - February 2011
By: Matt Naeger, Executive Vice President, Strategy
As you may have seen, over the past couple of weeks there has been a lot going on in the world of natural search. Google has made several updates to their ranking algorithm that have been widely discussed and publicized. We wanted to share our thoughts about the changes and what they mean to your natural search campaigns. This POV will address the first update that was done at the end of February, relating specifically to the area of paid linking, including programs like Conductor, Text Link Ads and paid for link solicitation (in the manner that Overstock got penalized for last week). In addition to these traditional styles of paid linking and link spam, Google has also made clear that any form of link recruitment, where you are attempting to conceal the fact that you have either paid a site to review your product, have provided them a "free" sample with the requirement that they post a review, and that information is not disclosed to the people reading the site, is a violation of their guidelines.
Google's Farmer/Panda Update
By: Matt Naeger, Executive Vice President, Strategy
The most recent in a series of Google algorithm updates has been called the "farmer" update - mainly because it appears to have been targeted at sites that are considered content farms and whose objectives appear to have been solely designed to manipulate the Google ranking algorithm. This algorithm update was released in late February and has affected at least 11.8% of Google search queries in the United States. The sites that saw the biggest change in rankings, as a result of the update, are those that provide many pages of very thin content on topical areas that are commonly searched for by people across the web. Although the update was designed to specifically reduce the value of thin content in the Google algorithm, it has also affected several more substantial web sites, whose business models are designed around publishing content for others that - although topical - do not provide in depth details on any particular subject matter.
For the majority of the life of search engines on the web, the primary purpose behind the organic ranking algorithms was to identify sites that provided deep levels of useful content to answer the questions that searchers have as they navigate the web. Over the past few years however there has been an assault on the engine algorithms by web sites that have identified unique niche marketplaces where, if they were to provide a small amount of content, they could achieve high rankings in natural search. Once these rankings were achieved on the thin content that the sites provided, they then began to grow authority as a place to go to for answers to a variety of questions and therefore generated high quantities of links. The links to these sites and the specific content further solidified them as valuable within the natural search results on Google. During the process of growing their rankings, these sites then utilized the traffic that they generated to aid in earning revenue from banner and content advertising programs like Google AdSense.
Search in 2011
By: Jamie Keaney, Senior Search Strategist
It's that time of year again – time for predictions and bets on what the next year will bring. In looking back at 2010, we can see that much has changed in the Search landscape. Here are just a few notable events that took place in the past year:
- Facebook overtook Google as the most popular web site in the U.S.
- Google released Google Instant and Modified Broad Match, had an update to their indexing process, and had at least one major algorithm update.
- The Yahoo!-Bing Search alliance became a reality.
- Google factored in site speed in SERP rankings.
In 2011, Search will continue to evolve and become an even more complex and necessary funnel for marketers. Here is what I predict will have the most influence on shaping Search in 2011.
Google Modified Broad Match (MBR): A Match Made in Heaven
By: Jessica Clark, Senior Decision Support Analyst
Google has implemented a new match type: Modified Broad Match (MBR), which was developed to strike a balance between traditional broad match's tendency to be too broad and phrase match's tendency to be too narrow. Phrase match can be too limited because, while it could include phrases like "how to buy pastry," it would not allow potentially relevant terms such as "pastries to buy."
Broad match, as the name implies, matches to a broad swath of potential searches. It can introduce a lot of uncertainty, as it shows ads to qualified and unqualified traffic alike. Traditional broad match terms often have low conversion rates, leading to low ROIs, because they can match to what Google considers synonyms. For example, the broad match keyword "buy pastries" could also match to "buy cookies," "purchase baked goods," or even "find cake recipes. "
It's Not You, It's Them: Campaign Performance and User Differences Across Search Engines
By: IMPAQT Team
If you are running Paid Search campaigns across the three major engines, you may ask yourself one or all of the following:
- Why do my campaigns perform differently from engine to engine?
- What causes these performance differences?
- What can I do about these differences?
- How should I allocate resources across the engines for the best ROI?
Research by Forrester, Wunderman, and Hitwise shows that there are indeed differences between the three major Search engines in terms of who uses them, how searchers use them, and how they perform in a given vertical. Knowing these differences can help you pinpoint differences in Paid Search campaign performance across the engines and make the appropriate adjustments. It can also help in allocating your resources most efficiently across the engines and target the most profitable searchers.
Google Instant POV
By: IMPAQT Team
On Wednesday, September 8, 2010, Google released a new feature called Google Instant which dramatically changes the search experience for many users, and which will affect both Paid Search and SEO.
This Point of View explains Google Instant and some of the ramifications, as well as IMPAQT's position on Search campaign management moving forward. The effects of Google Instant will evolve over time, and we will continue to evolve our approach to accomodate them.
What is Google Instant?
Google Instant provides predicted search results with every character typed into the Google search box. With each character typed, Google guesses the searcher's completed intended keyword or phrase and instantly provides both paid and organic search results for that keyword. Though the results are always based on the top prediction, Google also provides a dropdown list of alternative predictions.
Twitter Begins a Revenue Model
By: Jamie Keaney, Senior Search Strategist
After much speculation and criticism, Twitter announced plans for generating revenue from their 30MM+ user base. The lack of a revenue stream has long been the elephant in the room in discussions about whether Twitter is a fad or the real-deal. It appears that Twitter has attempted to answer that question, so long as marketers buy into the model.
Many brands have claimed their own handles (usernames) on Twitter in an effort to create one-on-one relationships with their customers. Those brands now have the opportunity to purchase “promoted tweets”.
The model is rather simple and closely resembles Google’s ad model. Marketers bid on keywords that trigger their promoted tweets to appear at the top of search results when a user queries that keyword. These tweets are labeled with a small icon labeled “promoted tweet.” Starbucks, Red Bull and Virgin Airlines are among the first advertisers taking part in the CPM-based ad program. In the coming months, Twitter plans to expand this CPM model into an ROI-based pricing model. Take a look at the example below:
Real Time Search
By: Jamie Keaney, Senior Search Strategist
Search Engines are jumping on the social network craze. They are using Real-time Search as a first step to utilize these networks. Marketers are scrambling to answer compelling questions about this new addition to engines like Bing, Google and Yahoo!. Most importantly, marketers want to know: how will this change the perception of my brand and how can I capitalize on this momentum?
Bing:
Bing started the real-time search results by creating an exclusive partnership with Twitter, allowing them to produce results based on topic popularity.
Bing’s real time results are not integrated into the main search results pages, where you’ll typically see both natural and paid search results. Instead, they’ve stored real-time search results on a page dedicated to Twitter. A benefit to Bing’s results is the keyword cloud that quickly shows users what the top Twitter topics are at that exact moment. Twitter results are streaming on this page and can be paused. Another value-add from Bing is the fact that they order results based on which tweets are being shared most often. Now, Bing is testing the inclusion of real-time search results within their organic search results.
Canonical URL Tag Upgrade
By: Jamie Keaney, Senior Search Strategist
When Google announced the addition of the canonical tag element to reduce duplicate content on the internet it was met by marketers with both praise and skepticism. The announcement of upgrading the current tag with cross-domain functionality came just eight months after the major search engines agreed to honor the tag.
As a quick review, the canonical tag is added to a Web site’s HTML code. The tag indicates to search engines where they can find the canonical version of the URL and begin indexing only that version. It works similar to a 301 redirect, but only directs the search engine, not the visitor, to the canonical page.