On September 8, Google announced Google Instant. This new feature uses a predicated query technique to establish the user’s intent. Although part of me finds Google Instant really intriguing, as a paid search marketer I have my concerns, despite Google’s assurance that this feature will not impact the ranking of ads (see Danny Sullivan’s notes about Google Instant from live blogging at the press conference.) Those concerns range from interesting, to wait and see, to alarming. Below are my early observations and first reactions to Google Instant.

Regional impact

Maybe I missed it, but during the live announcement, I did not hear mention of regional differences in query prediction. The example of starting a query with “w” and showing San Francisco weather drew a round of applause from the local, live audience. That sounds great! I would love to get my weather with one letter click.

However, my Nashville location fails me. My “w” returns WalMart. Okay, no problem let’s try this again. “John” returns “John Deere”. [Insert your Southern, redneck joke here]. Without going into too much on my personal life, let’s just say WalMart and John Deere does not appeal to me. I rarely visit WalMart.com and I have never visited Deere.com, but apparently “my people” do.

[By the way, those examples above also varied per browser]

From a paid search angle, this can be a very serious concern. When targeting keywords, I need to have consistency across regions. Having that consistency allows me to target regions the way I want to with ads, not how Google Instant chooses.

Effect on ad impressions

Counting impressions with Google Instant happens in three different ways.

• Any click – If the user starts typing, then clicks anywhere on the page, an impression is counted. Whether that’s an ad, spell check, or link, it’s counted.
• Search Selection – An impression is counted when the search button is clicked or a user selects a query.
• 3 Second Rule – When the user stops typing and does nothing for 3 seconds, an impression is counted

Source: http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=187309

I am actually not sure yet how this will affect my ad campaigns. At a minimum, I would expect an impression count to go down. Impressions are a great way to draw brand awareness without accruing cost. It makes sense that Google would want to eliminate this “free” form of advertising. I am at the “wait and see” stage with impression count.

Long tail affected

The status of the long-tail query is my biggest concern in the paid search world. For years, I have been eliminating broad and short keywords. Although the volume was there, the conversions were not. As many marketers have learned, the real “value” in AdWords is in the longer-tailed, specific keywords.

For example, a hotel in Las Vegas would expect more conversions bidding on “Las Vegas 5-star Hotel” vs. “Las Vegas”. Bidding on “Las Vegas” would surely bring in lots of clicks, but the cost per conversion may be too high. Lower budgets can easily compete by bidding on longer terms.

Now with Google Instant, that changes. With our example, starting the query with “Las”, shows ads for Las Vegas. Some of those ads are for hotels. Why would a user continue typing if they see hotel ads already? As an advertiser this forces me to bid on “Las Vegas” to compete. Thus, making me put more dollars in Google’s pockets. This kills the need to bid on long-tail keywords. Users may never even get to “Las V…” much less “Las Vegas 5-star Hotels”, “Las Vegas hotels on the strip”, “Las Vegas hotels on the North Strip”, etc.

What are your thoughts? Maybe I am missing something. While you ponder, I need to go turn all my broad matching back on and add shorter keywords to my list.

Ambulance Chasing, Google-Style

Lawyers are using Google, Bing and Yahoo to actively bid on oil spill-related terms such as bp oil spill claim, oil spill sue and bp lawsuit:

Oil Spill: The New Mesothelioma

It feels similar to the competition on search engines that’s long gone on among legal firms to find people who may have high-damage claims, such as suffering from mesothelioma. In fact, consider this:

That’s the landing page at oil-spill.com, where legal firm Beasley Allen hopes to catch some potential clients. Beasley Allen also runs mesothelioma.law.pro, where you’ll find this:

Look familiar?

Google is just one of many advertising channels being utilized to reach out. Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal spotlighted the chase for those who might have claims:

Hoping to reel in more clients, attorneys have snapped up domain names such as bigoilspills.com and put up billboards along highways saying “Oil spill hurt your business?” and advertising their services.

BP Battles On PR Front

It is not just litigation lawyers that are using online marketing to gather steam. BP is engaging in damage control by bidding on related terms through Google AdWords. In fact, they are casting a pretty broad net. Currently, they are bidding on everything and anything related to the spill. This broad match strategy is probably costing them thousands, if not millions of dollars in AdWords spend.

British Petroleum is using this money to compete for top placement amongst news stories and lawyer ads. Apparently the company is anxious for the public to “Learn More about How BP is Helping” by sending the paid search ads to a dedicated landing pages like here and here.

BP recently acknowledged the AdWords campaign. BP spokesman Robert Wine told The Fiscal Times.

The main aim is a marketing tool, to help the people who are most directly affected — fishermen, local businesses, volunteers in the cleanup. We want people to be able to find us, so we can work out how to minimize the impact on their lives and businesses.

Despite the statement above, it is hard to imagine BP has a hard time being found. While I’m a fan of paid search marketing and know how extremely effective it can be for marketing, I can think of better ways to spend massive amounts of money in the gulf. How about cleaning those oil-poisoned pelicans?

Postscript: Since this was written, Search Engine Watch has done a nice post trying to estimate how much BP might be spending on its campaign — around $1 million per month, it figures.

Claudia Opdenkelder, founder of CougarLife.com, said the campaign, which cost $100,000 USD a month, generated referrals that accounted for almost two thirds of its traffic. On an interesting side note, Opdenkelder knows her target market well. She is 39 and lives with her 25-year-old boyfriend.

In an e-mail to Cougarlife.com, a Google representative said, “The Policy Team is sticking pretty strongly with their assertion that the concept of “Cougar Dating” will be classified as Non-Family Safe for the time being. We’re hoping to revisit this policy with them in the future.”

Clearly, Google AdWords is not banning all dating site, so why this sector?  Google has a list of “trigger words” that flag sites as non-family safe. However, these tasks are not completely automated. They usually just throw up a red flag and prompt a manual look and approval (or in this case disapproval).

The use of the word “cougar” is not just a red flag for Google. The American television viewing public is also not a fan. “Cougar Town”, a Courtney Cox show on ABC was renewed for another season. That is the good news. The bad news is they may be dropping the title, according to Parade.com. Apparently, the title has kept people away from the show. Replacing the word “Cougar” with “Mellencamp” is probably not the solution that the television show is looking for either.

From Cougar Town to CougarLife.com, evidently the stigma continues. “We just want to be treated the same way as all the others, and the discrimination against the word ‘cougar’ makes it even worse,” Opdenkelder told The Vancouver Sun. “It makes us  feel like dirty perverts. I’ve been trying to fight so hard on every interview that I do that the old stigma on cougars doesn’t exist anymore, and that we’re just strong, powerful independent women who just happen to enjoy dating younger men.”

CougarLife.com is a self-proclaimed “premier online dating service that pairs women in their prime with younger men and ends the double standard”. Well, maybe the double standard does not end. In fact, Google allows dating sites of various ages, religion, and sexual preferences. Websites that serve older men seeking younger women are not banned, nor are sites where younger women can seek rich older men.

“It’s just wrong all around,” Opdenkelder told The New York Times. “It’s age and gender discrimination. It’s just about older, successful, independent, strong women who enjoy someone that’s younger. Some of the men sites, they are borderline prostitution, and Google has no problem having them advertise”.

One such site is, the very appropriate, ArrangementSeekers.com boasts itself as “Sugar Daddy service catering to ambitious and attractive girls seeking successful and generous benefactors to fulfill their lifestyle needs”. Getting past the creepiness factor of that last statement, how is that any different than CougarLife.com? Interestingly enough, CougarLife.com and ArrangementSeekers.com are owned by the same company, Avid Life Media.

To recap: Old rich men looking to pay for young women, good. Older woman looking for a relationship with younger men, bad. Double standard?  Apparently so Mrs. Robinson, apparently so.

The Plaintiff, Microsoft, “… seeks injunctive relief and damages to remedy Defendants’ fraudulent conduct in perpetrating a sophisticated click-laundering fraud scheme on the online advertising network operated by Microsoft and to protect the integrity of Microsoft’s advertising network against the fraudulent actions of Defendants.”

The Defendant is RedOrbit and several John Does. Eric Ralls, president of RedOrbit Inc. denies these accusations. In a statement made to SeattlePi.com, Ralls says “I did not engage in click fraud. That’s absurd. It’s professional suicide.”

According to the lawsuit, Microsoft defines click laundering as “… herding otherwise innocent individuals to websites where they can be tricked into triggering clicks on advertisements, and using scripts or other methods to alter the information sent, for example, to adCenter.”

In the cases of “Microsoft v. Eric Ralls” and “Microsoft v. John Does”, Microsoft said they noticed “dramatic and irregular growth in click traffic” on two sites within its adCenter network.

The Google API platform is structured to allow developers to interact with AdWords. This permits agencies to create their own bidding and reporting tools. Through these tools, agencies are able to automate keyword generation, ad text, dynamic URL’s and much more.  However, many of those enhancements have been limited because of the cost constraints.

The recent API announcement was buried with changes to Google AdWords Certification program on several Google blogs, including adwordsagency.blogspot.com.  Because of this, many may have missed the significance of this enhancement.  However, it wasn’t missed by agencies.

“We have, for more than two years, advocated for the removal of API fees with Google to encourage innovation and to even the playing field for end marketers who choose to utilize the services of agencies,” said Robert Murray, CEO, iProspect. “This isn’t an instant API fee removal for all agencies and technology providers. It sounds like this will be a six month process with rigid requirements that will require agencies to become fully certified, but it is absolutely a step in the right direction.”

Indeed, despite reports of eliminating fees, it’s not elimination right away, at least not a clear one.  Agencies have to pass several requirements in order to reach the “preferred” level. Google has setup a pricing path plan for agencies who want preferred AdWords API pricing. Parts of those requirements are directly related to Google’s recent changes to its AdWords Certification process. Because of these constraints, it does mean that several large vendors may not qualify for the free API pricing.

Google uses a unit pricing to measure API costs. Every API operation represents a certain number of units. Currently, Google charges 25 cents per 1,000 API Units (source.) Understandably, with thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of API calls, this can be very costly for software developers.

Agencies that are approved for preferred pricing receive 250 free units for every AdWords $1.00 that’s spent. As an example, managing $100,000 of spend in My Client Center equates to 25 million free API tokens for the following month.

If the change goes as fluidly as Google seems to indicate, it will be a relief for many agencies. This seemingly small change will set the stage for major changes to the AdWords community. Eliminating price constraints will lead to more development, innovation, and possibly open-source. Although imagining open-source development in the current AdWords arena seems impossible, it’s not a stretch to believe that it could happen.

“As Google moves closer to true real-time search results, real time optimization will be vital for complex campaigns,” said Murray. “For the technology platforms and the larger agencies, removing the cost barrier will become even more important, because we have more freedom to play in the Google Sandbox and create innovations for the industry.”

Another ripple effect of this change could affect the way in-house marketers manage AdWords. Coming from an in-house world, I was never satisfied with many of the bid management tools available. Thus, I manually managed all bidding options in-house. These new changes by Google will surely lead to improvements and enhancement to those tools.

It’s too early to tell how many agencies will qualify and ultimately be certified for these new, free API tokens. Like many of Google enhancements, we are at the “wait and see” stage.  Until then, agencies (and all of us) anxiously stand by for a chance to compete and innovate.

And if your ads aren’t attracting clicks and conversions, you’re simply not recognizing or filling those needs. Here are a few things to consider if your paid search campaign isn’t delivering the kinds of results you’d like.

Do not make marketing decisions based on consumer surveys

The poor showing of paid search advertising in the Nielsen survey shouldn’t come as a surprise—and the findings are worth very little when it comes to making any major business decisions for search marketers. It is not that I do not believe the numbers—I do. I also believe The Nielsen Company is a very reputable company, and I have no reason to question their numbers.

But there’s a simple unspoken truth that this survey doesn’t address: We all dislike advertising when we do not want advertising.

When someone is asked if he or she trusts advertising, saying “no” seems like a logical choice. We know what consumers think about advertising. I am just as guilty. I change the channel constantly just to avoid commercials. I am also not shopping. This is the very reason mass marketing is dying. Consumers are bombarded with messages that are unrelated to the task they are performing, such as watching TV or driving.

It is true that most users will not click on paid ads. However, as any expert in paid search marketing will tell you, we do not want “most” users—we want buyers. If your paid search ads are targeted with specific keywords and well placed on the search result page, then some buyers will click on your ads.

Advertising works when it’s not advertising

The simple fact is, if done well, advertising works. Not only does advertising work, but paid search marketing provides the best return on advertising spend available. Again, it is important to state: “when done correctly.”

Consumers need advertising. The catch is not to make adverting seem like a nuisance. If a consumer is in the market for “widget A” and an ad for that product is shown to them, then the ad is not a nuisance. In fact, the ad is filling a need to the consumer.

That is what paid search marketing is at its core. Pay-per-click marketing provides a service. It makes it easy for shoppers to find what they want more quickly. Thanks to quality ad scores, consumers today are even getting more of what they want. Paid “spam” ads are not as prevalent as they use to be. This means that consumers are finding useful ads.

I am often told, “Oh, you place those ads. I always ignore those.” It’s a habitual response, just like:

• “I don’t like television commercials.”
• “I never read billboard ads.”
• “I don’t listen to radio commercials.”

Well, for many people those statements are simply not true. Of course you do. We all do. How else would you know what products to buy? It’s not coming to you in a dream. You know because you saw the advertising. The catch was you didn’t even realize it was a “commercial.”

As the title states, if paid search is not working, then you are doing something wrong. Advertising does not get more targeted than paid search marketing. If you can not convert a user to purchase “Widget A” when he is in fact looking to purchase “Widget A,” then clearly you must be doing something wrong. The customer should be seeing your pay-per-click ad as filling a need, not another “commercial.”

I realize there are price constraints that do not allow certain keywords to be purchased and still return a profit. However, there is still a list of niche keywords that can be purchased. There is always an angle that can return a strong profit with pay-per-click. It takes research to find those keywords.

I would love to hear your story. Is paid search not working for you? If it’s not working, share your frustrations over on Sphinn and let the community help you get your campaign on track.