Searching For Santorum: A New Surprise

I did a search for santorum a few minutes ago, and this is what I got:

See the YouTube link showing up there? It helps illustrate all that I think many people are feeling is wrong with Google right now. It’s a pretty bad result, and it’s also something getting there probably because Google’s not catching some potential old-school search engine spamming.

Universal Search Picked This?

The video result is showing up as part of Google Universal Search. That’s a system that blends content from Google’s various “vertical” or specialized search engines into its regular search results. It’s only supposed to inject this type of specialized content if it’s deemed especially relevant to the search topic.

Certainly, you can imagine that there’s video content relevant to a search on “santorum” from across the web. The Daily Show and The Colbert Report alone have over ten different Santorum comedy clips that might all be relevant.

Beyond comedy, there are news reports from across the entire web. The same search at Bing gives some examples of this, of how video content from Bing Video, as well as Fox News and CNN is inserted into its own search results for “santorum,” as you can see here:

Out of 20,000 potential matches on YouTube, out of 21 million potential video matches across the web, what does Google’s supposedly sophisticated Universal Search algorithm pick out to display as the top video content to be shown within the top search results?

A cartoon created by a company pitching its SEO software on YouTube as a way for Santorum to solve his Google problem. Wow.

You Couldn’t Have Picked….

That’s the most relevant thing that Google can show? I think most people would agree it’s not. I mean seriously, it’s better than these?

• Any of the Colbert Report or Daily Show clips
• Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum arguing with a student on gay marriage
• Dan Savage explaining how his campaign against Rick Santorum ultimately caused searches on Google and Bing to show a definition as “santorum” being related to anal sex

You Couldn’t Have Caught A 65% Like Ratio?

It’s embarrassing for Google to be doing this. And it’s worse when you look at the views the video has received: only about 2,000, at this point. That’s nothing compared to some of the other clips relevant to santorum, if you’re considering views to be one possible ranking factor. How does this video get such a boost?

Well, there’s another clue when you look at the number of likes the video has received: about 1,300, at this point. That means about 65% of people who viewed the video also liked it, a ratio that is hugely out of proportion to what you normally see.

For example, the classic Honey Badger video — which is hilarious — has a like ratio of 0.5%. How about the classic Double Rainbow video? Hey, 0.5% again. The Bedroom Intruder song? A tiny bit better, 0.6%.

Either this SEO tool video is something like 130x more likeable than any of these other videos or something abnormal is happening — something that you’d think Google’s spam detection systems would have flagged.

Can I Haz My Relevancy Back?

In this particular example, the poor relevancy isn’t caused by any of the ongoing Google+ification of Google. This result is what anyone would see, even if they are logged out of Google. It’s not caused by Search Plus Your World or anything like that.

But Google has spent so much time and energy shoving Google+ into seemingly every nook and cranny that it can find that this type of relevancy screw-up feels like another bit of evidence that Google’s original core mission, delivering awesome search results, is being forgotten.

Related Articles

• Google 2.0: Google Universal Search
• Google Universal Search Expands
• How The “Focus On First” Helps Hide Google’s Relevancy Problems
• Should Rick Santorum’s “Google Problem” Be Fixed?
• Google’s “Gold Standard” Search Results Take Big Hit In New York Times Story
• How Rick Santorum Is Making His “Google Problem” Worse
• After Santorum’s Win, The Daily Show & Colbert Report Laugh Again At His Google Problem
• An Interview With A Google Search Quality Rater
• Pages With Too Many Ads “Above The Fold” Now Penalized By Google’s “Page Layout” Algorithm
• Google Announces “Megasitelinks,” Image Search Improvements & Better Byline Dates
• FAQ: What’s The Debate About Google’s Search Plus Your World?

At a time when Google is defending against antitrust investigations on two continents this news is most unwelcome. The shares of all the other major US internet companies are tiny by comparison, though together with Google they control 61 percent of the world’s digital ad spending.

Overall the internet represents only 16 percent of global ad revenue according to ZenithOptimedia. TV, by comparison, is 40.2 percent of all ad expenditures. Hence Google’s interest in building YouTube into a bona fide TV/cable alternative.

ZenithOptimedia says that globally paid search will represent about 49 percent of all online advertising this year.

No matter how you look at the data, that’s a lot of eyeballs and a lot of time spent on a single site that a marketer can take advantage of. But creating a video is only half the battle; attracting viewers is the other half.

YouTube Promoted Video Ads operate similar to Google search ads and offer advertisers a way to draw attention to a video, gain viewers and channel subscribers, and eventually influence downstream conversions. Promoted Videos show up according to visitors’ search results either at the top or to the right of the page.

Promoted Videos in YouTube

Additionally, with a Promoted Videos account, marketers can add overlays to their videos and link directly to their site, offer a promotion, etc. Given the popularity of video and YouTube, here are a few suggestions to best take advantage to YouTube Promoted Videos.

Create The Complete Package

First and foremost, to maximize your presence on YouTube you need good, engaging videos (not just one) and a YouTube channel to showcase them. Just as important – maybe even more so – to the videos are the video titles and descriptions as these will be used by YouTube to match your video with visitors’ search queries.

Once you have a channel with several videos, monitor the feedback and if a video achieves a good response, then it’s time to invest in promoting it.

Like other Google ads, Promoted Videos are managed through AdWords and follow a similar format to paid search.

When creating the ad, it’s imperative the thumbnail of your video and ad-copy reflect the nature of your video so as to attract the right audience. Words and concepts related to your video(s) should be used in the ad. The words “official” or “original” in a headline tend to increase views.

Choose Keywords Wisely

YouTube visitors are looking just for video content; consequently, search habits differ from traditional search. Given the difference, simply porting over keywords from search or display campaigns won’t have the desired effect.

Keywords must relate to the video you’re promoting, and thus should be chosen independently. YouTube offers advertisers a keyword suggestion tool that provides recommendations based on your video description, video id/url, or target demographic (in beta).

The tool will also give you an idea of the monthly search volume for each keyword so you can see which keywords visitors tend to use more often and incorporate them appropriately.

Like paid search, you can select between broad, phrase, exact or negative match types.

YouTube's keyword suggestion tool

Bidding Time

When it comes to keyword bidding on YouTube, think of it just as you would for search or display campaigns. You’ll want to set a conversion goal and determine what your expected volume and budget will be each month. Naturally, you’ll want to determine the value of each click. A third party bidding tool, particularly one integrated with your other SEM campaigns, proves useful in managing your YouTube bidding decisions and assessing the results of your promotions.

Don’t Forget The Overlay

One of the primary perks of running Promoted Videos is the ability to include an overlay ad in your video that appears at the bottom of your video while it plays. The overlay allows you to link from your YouTube video to an external site and is an invaluable technique for driving viewers to your site and transitioning them from learning about your brand to purchasing.

Overlays within a YouTube video are a great way to drive viewers to your site

Engage Your Viewers

YouTube is a social network. As such, a video provides you an opportunity to interact with your target audience. A successful video doesn’t just get a view, but also elicits a response.

If viewers ask for a follow-up video be sure to provide one, and if your video is shared by viewers on other social sites, be sure to respond as well. Responding and participating in the conversation with viewers allows you to strengthen your brand and may provide insight on how to create better videos.

As online video continues to grow, a strong presence on YouTube will become all the more critical to your marketing efforts. What’s been your experience with YouTube and Promoted Videos?

U.S. Internet users watched an all-time high of 42.6 billion videos during October, with YouTube accounting for 20.9 billion of those views — 49.1% of the total. ComScore credits YouTube/Google with an audience of just under 161 million unique viewers, almost triple the reach of Facebook, which was second with a little less than 60 million unique viewers.

ComScore says Google/YouTube also had the highest engagement with users averaging more than 7 hours of video each during the month.

Create A Brand Channel

Establishing a YouTube presence is the critical first step. Setting up a brand channel and getting it whitelisted will open up a host of customization possibilities, from custom background designs to the ability to add gadgets, like a booking widget.

Brand channels also open up a host of metrics via YouTube Insight, so you can measure engagement and success as well as conduct deeper analysis.

Then, of course, it’s time to add some videos, and preferably well-organized ones. Grouping videos into thematic playlists helps with video discovery for viewers and opens up the possibility of appearing as a playlist in YouTube search results.

I won’t go in depth on the myriad best practices for optimizing video descriptions and titles, but you can read more about all these SEO tactics and more on Search Engine Land’s Video Search area. In short, set up the best YouTube channel possible, with compelling and search engine optimized content.

Now that you have a fantastic library of video content sitting around, start promoting it to your website visitors, email subscribers, Facebook fans, Twitter followers and anyone else possible. Start growing viewers and subscribers for your YouTube channel; they will come in handy later.

Promoted Videos

Similar to AdWords’ paid search targeting, in-house marketers can set up campaigns for search-keyword-triggered promoted video placements on YouTube to appear in YouTube search results.

In addition, TrueView is YouTube’s rebranded instream video ad product. The basic model is to target a promotional instream video to appear on other relevant videos. Viewers can skip the video, but advertisers pay only when a minimum viewing threshold is met. A companion banner accompanies the instream ad as a call-to-action point.

Paying for promoted video has some ROI challenges since the video itself is not really a direct revenue driver, but it’s no more challenging than scenarios like paying for Facebook ads to grow fans, or promoted accounts and Tweets to grow Twitter followers. YouTube subscribers and viewers will have value; the key is testing and discovering what that value is for your organization.

Remarketing

Earlier in the article, I wrote that your YouTube channel viewers and subscribers will come in handy later, and that time is now. Start remarketing to them. Via the AdWords Audiences tab, in-house search engine marketers can set up a remarketing campaign for users who visited their YouTube brand channel.

Visitors to a YouTube channel are highly qualified customers, and many, having stumbled across videos while browsing or searching YouTube, will have never visited a channel’s associated website. Encourage them to stop by with remarketing ads. Check out more information on YouTube remarketing on YouTube’s blog.

Beyond YouTube: Video Ads & TV

There are a host of possibilities for in-house marketers to promote great video ad assets. Besides YouTube, there are Google video ads, Hulu and other online video streaming sponsorships, and most banner ad platforms support video assets. Leverage great performing video across channels!

With the rising popularity of online accessible entertainment, it seems like no one is watching television anymore. But still, it’s important to remember how many people still have cable in the USA — 104 million subscribers, according to the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, or about one third of the total U.S. population.

TV is still one of the biggest audiences out there for video, so taking some great video and making a low-budget TV ad to run via targeted Google television campaigns might be a great test for in-house marketers, and a great résumé addition.

While these ideas only encourage in-house marketers to look at establishing a basic YouTube video presence and paid promotional options, there’s even more in-house teams can consider with promoting video via social media channels, viral campaigns, integrating into websites and the overall SEO benefits of video for natural search!

“Buying video has traditionally been a difficult process, especially within AdWords,” says Lane Shackleton, product manager at YouTube, noting that the new product is meant to ease that pain for advertisers.

The ad formats offered — some of which build on what YouTube already offered — include TrueView in-stream, TrueView in-search, TrueView in-display and TrueView in-slate.

TrueView in-stream are ads that appear as a pre- or mid-roll on short or long-form YouTube videos. TrueView in-search ads (formerly branded as Promoted Videos) show up when people search on YouTube or Google video search. TrueView in-display (similar to the old Click-to-Play format) go onto the Google Display network, and TrueView in-slate appears in a “slate” of multiple videos before long-form video on YouTube. In-search and in-display videos that play on YouTube can also have call-to-action overlay elements.

Additionally, Google has integrated the ability to manage and receive reporting on these video ad types from within the AdWords interface. Advertisers still have to upload the video assets at YouTube, but can connect multiple YouTube accounts to their AdWords account.

Advertisers will then be able to target, place and bid on inventory via AdWords, and get reports on things like thumbnail views, video views, view rate (how many times people click to play after seeing an impression on display), an average cost-per-view, the total cost, and the number of click-throughs to the advertiser’s Web site. Video views are counted after a user clicks to play an ad, or, on ads where a user isn’t specifically clicking on an ad (on in-slate or in-stream, for example), a view is counted either 30 seconds in or by the end of the ad, whichever comes first. Targeting can be done by demographics, keywords, interest categories, topics, and specific publisher placements.

For the limited public beta, Google is trying to recruit advertisers across the spectrum, but hasn’t said where it will draw the line. Advertisers can sign up to be considered on the AdWords for Video landing page. As an incentive for new advertisers to join, Google is offering a $100 coupon for new accounts created.

Google, the owner of YouTube, is one of a handful of companies, including Yahoo, Amazon and DirectTV, that are rumored to be going after Hulu. The anticipated, competitive bidding could fetch as much as $2 billion for the site. Google purchased YouTube in October 2006 for $1.65 billion in an all-stock transaction.

Hulu would help Google in numerous ways. From an advertising standpoint its safer and more attractive to brands than YouTube. Hulu also provides broad access to premium content, which Google has begun to acquire.

If Google were the winner of the “Hulu auction,” despite the plethora of video destinations and ad networks you see above, it would likely face another round of intense regulatory scrutiny because the company would potentially own both the largest video site and the most successfully monetized.

YouTube remains the dominant video site online, but it’s built around user-generated, amateur videos. Hulu, on the other hand, has agreements with major TV networks that gives it access to current (and professional) programming — an area that YouTube has been trying to beef up for a few years now. That kind of programming is what attracts ad dollars, as the Times report explains:

Hulu’s rights to the current season’s TV shows have drawn interest from Google and Yahoo, in part because these popular programs have attracted more than 600 advertisers — including such major brands as McDonald’s, Johnson & Johnson and Toyota. Indeed, the site expects to bring in $500 million in revenue this year from advertising and proceeds from its Hulu Plus subscription service.

According to the most recent comScore numbers, Hulu showed about 1.3 billion of the 4.6 billion total video ads displayed in May.

(ComScore’s numbers include streaming ads only, and don’t include ad overlays or banner ads — both of which are common to YouTube.)

Hulu was the 10th most popular video destination in May, according to comScore’s count of unique viewers. But it was second overall in minutes-per-viewer, behind only YouTube.

None of the companies mentioned provided a comment to the LA Times.

Today Google is trying to find more ways to generate and capture display and video ad revenue, which it views as a massive growth opportunity for the company. And YouTube is in the center of that opportunity.

According to the NY Times, Google is testing a new program for pre-roll on YouTube called “First Watch.”

[A]n advertiser can buy a preroll spot on most people’s first view of a YouTube video each day . . . The commercials on the youtube.com home page have been “highly successful,” Baljeet Singh, senior product manager for video monetization at YouTube . . . They have been so successful, he added, that they are “starting to sell out.”

Users see an ad — the same ad — the first time they watch (non-UGC) video on YouTube and not thereafter. The Times quotes Google product manager Baljeet Singh, who says that the tests of First Watch have “performed really well” (CTR of 1 percent apparently).

The program offers advertisers reach that far exceeds anything they can buy on traditional television. YouTube is by far the largest online video property. However it lags in terms of ad impressions. Hulu generates the greatest number of ad impressions of all online video sites.

On a related note video ad serving platform FreeWheel found that 80 percent of mobile video streams were on Apple devices in Q1.

Source: FreeWheel Q1 2011

No Music Store, Google Still Hopeful

There is no music store associated with the new Google Music beta. However Google made clear that it’s still trying to strike agreements with record labels and that it’s optimisitic that it will be able to do so in the future. Google made a point to say that Google Music is entirely legal, though it may not make everyone in the music industry happy.

For the time being users can upload their own music collections (up to 20,000 songs) and then stream those songs to their PCs and Android handsets. Users can also transfer music from iTunes. A nice secondary feature Google introduced for Music was a Pandora or Genius-like capability called “Instant Mix” that allows users to automatically create a playlist of similar or compatible songs.

Streaming Movies to PCs and Connected Devices

More of a surprise this morning was a streaming movie service for Android devices (smartphones, tablets) and PCs. It’s effectively an extension of the recently launched YouTube movie rental service. The same titles are available through both YouTube and the Android Market. Accordingly you can watch movies on your PC via the Android Market, YouTube or on Android tablets and smartphones.

One of the really nice features of both services, but especially movies is that users can “pin” movies and watch them when there’s no data connection (e.g., on a plane).

Google has launched two products that now directly compete with Netflix, Sonos, iTunes and Amazon’s services — not to mention Microsoft. The battle for the cloud and the living room is on.

Click here to view the embedded video.