Wait, you didn’t realize Rick Santorum has a “Bing problem” that’s exactly the same as his well-documented “Google problem,” where a search for “santorum” lists a web page defining that word as the by-product of anal sex above Santorum’s official web site?

He does. In fact, Santorum’s had his Bing problem for months, if not years. It’s just that everyone fixates on Google. Even Santorum does when he gets asked about it, such as telling Politico last year:

“I suspect if something was up there like that about Joe Biden, they’d get rid of it,” Santorum said. “If you’re a responsible business, you don’t let things like that happen in your business that have an impact on the country.”

He continued: “To have a business allow that type of filth to be purveyed through their website or through their system is something that they say they can’t handle but I suspect that’s not true.”

It’s A Search Engine Problem, Not A Google Problem

In the wake of Santorum’s win, and no doubt eventual questions in some quarters about why Google still isn’t “fixing” things for him, I thought it was worthwhile to flip things around and discuss his Bing issue.

It’s worth stressing that this isn’t just some gay-loving-Google-liberal-leaning-hates-Santorum thing and more a general problem Santorum has with the major search engines. In particular, it’s a problem that’s ultimately down to Santorum’s anti-gay views.

Santorum & Bing: Just Like Google

Here’s what Bing currently shows for santorum:

You can see that just after the special news area that Bing inserts above the regular results, the first listing that the arrow points to is for SpreadingSantorum.com, with a description that reads:

Santorum 1. The frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex. 2. Senator Rick Santorum

Santorum’s own official site, RickSantorum.com, appears third on the list.

Over at Google, which gets all the attention, the same issue happens:

Google’s news box appears further down on the page, probably because of the special election results box that appears at the top. Spreading Santorum, the anti-Santorum web site, appears as the first regular result. The official Rick Santorum web site appears fourth in the regular listings, one further down than with Bing.

By the way, the same thing also happens at Yahoo. Since Yahoo largely depends on Bing’s results, a search on “santorum” brings up the anti-Santorum site first, as it does with Bing — though after Yahoo’s own news units.

The news is better for searches for Rick Santorum’s full name, rather than just the word “santorum.” In that case, his official site ranks tops. Here’s Bing:

And here’s Google:

Does It Matter?

It’s becoming clear that Santorum’s Bing problem, as with his Google problem, isn’t stopping many Republican voters from selecting him over other candidates. So should Google or Bing really worry about trying to somehow fix it, especially when any type of change like that opens them up to accusations about censorship or political favoritism?

Perhaps.

The SafeSearch Solution

The biggest issue to me might be the fact that as interest in Santorum grows, you’ve got more children in schools likely to be searching on his name. Getting a fairly explicit description in their search results talking about “lube and fecal matter” and “anal sex” might not be what a lot of parents want them seeing.

Both Bing and Google have a SafeSearch filter that is set to “Moderate” by default, which means it only filters out explicit images. Setting this to “Strict” will keep the Spreading Santorum site from appearing in text listings. That’s something parents and teachers can use.

It’s Not An Irrelevant “Google Bomb”

How about a manual intervention to solve this problem, which has mistakenly been called a “Google Bomb.” Didn’t Google do something like that for President George W. Bush?

“Liberal leaning” Google did. The Google Bomb fix wasn’t specifically designed just for Bush, who found people were linking to his biography in a way to make it rank tops for “miserable failure.” It was meant to fix any type of case where people tried to make pages rank for odd phrases that they weren’t relevant for. But questions about the prominent Bush listing helped prompt the fix.

The Spreading Santorum site isn’t ranking because of some type of Google Bomb campaign. It ranks because it is entirely relevant for “santorum.” It was created years ago as a protest against Rick Santorum’s anti-homosexual views. Those views are entirely relevant, in fact arguably more relevant the further Santorum advances as a candidate to be president of the United States.

To drop the site, Bing and Google would actually be making the type of political move that Santorum seems to think that Google is already doing (he clearly doesn’t seem to think about or care about Bing).

But How About A Disclaimer?

There is something that Google is long overdue to implement. Consider what it used to show when you’d search for “miserable failure” and got the George W. Bush biography:

See the ad above the listings that the arrow points to, which say:

Why these results? These results may seem politically slanted. Here’s what happened

The ad led to an explanation at the official Google Blog. Google does a similar thing today, for a search on jew, which brings up an anti-Jewish web site:

It’s long past time for Google to do something similar for searches on “santorum.” They are going to confuse some people, who will assume Google’s trying to advance a political agenda with its search results.

I’d say Bing should do the same thing, but Bing’s never even tried to have explanations like this. Maybe it should consider it.

But Spreading Santorum Is Here To Stay

As for Rick Santorum, as I wrote before, the best way to solve his Google and Bing problems would be to change his views on homosexuality or make a donation to a gay marriage-rights group. That’s what Dan Savage, who created the Spreading Santorum site, told Mother Jones in 2010:

Savage has not forgiven Santorum for his seven-year-old comments: “Rick would have prevented me and my partner from being able to adopt my son,” he points out. But Savage does have a deal for the politician. “If Rick Santorum wants to make a $5 million donation to [the gay marriage group] Freedom to Marry, I will take it down. Interest starts accruing now.”

That’s unlikely to happen, so Santorum will have to continue living with the Spreading Santorum site showing up alongside his own.

Related Entries

• Should Rick Santorum’s “Google Problem” Be Fixed?
• How Rick Santorum Is Making His “Google Problem” Worse
• Dear Google: Crappy Results Like This Don’t Give The Impression You Care About Search
• Google Kills Bush’s Miserable Failure Search & Other Google Bombs
• Google Says Stephen Colbert Is No Longer The Greatest Living American
• After Santorum’s Win, The Daily Show & Colbert Report Laugh Again At His Google Problem

I once sat in front of a dark, Netflix-enabled flat-screen, watching Netflix on my iPhone. It was just easier, and I had it on, and I could switch back and forth with Facebook, and… ok, maybe I have a problem!

In any event, our personal fascination with mobile phones shouldn’t dictate our work decisions. And one question that needs deciding more and more these days is around mobile search: is there a mobile audience for this particular client? And how do we measure the success of our efforts to get a mobile website in front of mobile searchers?

Of course, our past experience with desktop search gives us a great starting point. Search volumes, traffic, and even rankings are useful metrics, both here and there. But mobile SEO brings some special considerations, not least of which is credibility: we need to prove that mobile SEO provides value.

To that end, I’ve been working on a set of metrics to help me get some perspectives on these questions. These aren’t replacements for visitor counts or conversions – rather, think of them as supplements to help us compare the new and somewhat unfamiliar mobile SEO data to our tried-and-true desktop data.

Today we’ll look at one of the most useful, particularly in the early stages of a campaign.

The Mobile Ratio

One of the challenges in getting started with mobile search is proving the value of your efforts: is anyone using a phone to search for this client’s products or services?

To answer that with a simple, understandable metric, I’ve added a Mobile Ratio to the keyword research process. Basically, I’ll start by taking a desktop keyword list, and running the numbers to add mobile figures alongside. I’ll also expand the list if I find any mobile-specific keywords that seem interesting.

Then I’ll take the desktop and mobile volumes, and divide one into the other to compute the Mobile Ratio. For example, if I have a Mobile Ratio of 10, then I can tell the client that for every ten desktop searchers, we have the opportunity to reach one mobile searcher.

Straightforward statements like that allow a client to get their bearings, and start to form a mental model of what mobile means to them. Maybe they’d really like to add another one-tenth to their reach. Or maybe they have easier ways of getting access to those extra eyeballs. Either way, they now have some useful infomation on which to base a decision.

Getting Granular

Doing this at both the keyword and aggregate level allows you to compare and contrast mobile activity for different keywords. So if my aggregate Mobile Ratio is 10, but I have a group of keywords that have ratios in the 5-6 range, then I know these keywords are mobile-heavy: they are more likely to be of interest to mobile users.

This is key info for site-planning and budgeting activities, as it can provide a business justfication for heavying-up on landing pages that address those keywords. Likely examples of keywords that are mobile-heavy could include coupon keywords, or keywords that include a location name.

The Mobile Ratio lets you identify keywords that are mobile-heavy. Here, "pocket knife" searches are strong, while branded searches ("Victorinox") are relatively light. Good inputs for planning a mobile content strategy. (Not one of my clients, by the way.)

Driving Strategy

In the end, the Mobile Ratio doesn’t create another data point. Instead, it offers a more intuitive way of looking at the data you already have, turning it into a KPI that you can use to make decisions about your mobile marketing plans.

In upcoming articles, we’ll take a look at some other useful metrics for managing mobile SEO.

GMS Local found that most of the respondents spent more on local vs. national advertising and more generally on digital than traditional media marketing:

• 70  percent of marketers surveyed said they spend greater than the national average (60 percent) of their advertising budgets on local vs. national initiatives.
• 70 percent of marketers surveyed answered that they spend greater than the national average (25 percent) of their local advertising budget on digital media.
• 83 percent of marketers surveyed expect their local online spending increases to be more than the projected national growth (25 percent) over the next three years.

However, the agency observed, “There is a large gap between the perception marketers have of their local position and the reality of what they actually implement.” For example, large numbers of respondents failed to actively manage their locations’ listings and a substantial minority failed to use local paid search.

To their surprise, GMS Local concluded that there were some very basic local tactics that these national brands were failing to utilize:

With as many as 45% of survey respondents not invested in directories (e.g., yp.com and superpages.com), nor actively managing their business listings (e.g., Google Places, Bing and Local.com), and not employing the relatively standard practice of running geo-modified paid search, this exposes the need for education about the fundamentals of local online advertising and opportunities for national brands to connect with consumers at the local level.

Insufficient funding, a lack of education or just plain ignorance were the factors behind the flawed national-local approaches according to the survey. You can read the full report here.

Stock image used under license from Shutterstock

Amazing because every year, football fans flock to search engines searching for the start time, and until now, organizations like the NFL, the playing teams, and the broadcasting station didn’t show up at all in search results because none of their sites answered the question. Seem crazy?

• 2009  Results: In 2009, start-time related searches were among the most popular the morning of the game, but neither the NFL nor NBC were anywhere to be found.
• 2010 Results: In 2010, both nfl.com and cbs.com had significant technical infrastructure issues that kept search engines from crawling and indexing the content. Again, the search results were sad and this time, full of spammers trying to capitalize on the search volume.
• 2011 Results: In 2011, problems continued. But news organizations jumped in, and the Huffington Post in particular ranked well for its article that simply listed all of the various ways people were searching for the Super Bowl start time. (That article was later “edited for clarity”).

This year, things are finally getting better. Even the Huffington Post, while still getting every variation of spelling and tagging in the article for maximum search coverage (“For starters, it’s two words, not one. “Superbowl” is an incorrect spelling.”), has filled out their article a bit with actual information.

The results could still be better. While [Super Bowl start time] has overall higher search volume than [Super Bowl kick off time], the latter is the top search this morning, and NFL.com only ranks for the former (HuffPo does quite well with the latter). Superbowl.com, which redirects to the NFL site, ranks, but as I mentioned in earlier years, this domain 302 redirects to nfl.com. A 301 instead would consolidate the domains (including value signals such as links), which might cause the target URL to do better overall in relevant searches. But still, compared to earlier years, I’d call these results a win for the NFL.

Sadly, NBC, the Giants, and the Patriots, and TV Guide all fail to appear in results once again. Even though both Google Insights for Search and my articles over the years should have prepared them for this year’s search interest.

Why should these sites care about showing up for these searches? They’ve invested substantially in site content and those seeking out the game start time are a perfect audience for that content. Searchers would click for the start time and stay for the fan jam videos and view the ads.

Of  course, Super Bowl viewers will see lots of ads anyway today. But that’s a topic for the next article.

Related:

• 2009 Super Bowl Start Time
• 2010 Super Bowl Start Time
• 2011 Super Bowl Start Time
• 2009 Super Bowl Commercials
• 2010 Super Bowl Commercials
• 2011 Super Bowl Commercials

According to Goldman, 7% of all online sales Kenshoo saw over the holidays came from a tablet, and “Of the sales transactions completed via mobile, over 83% of the revenue was driven through tablets, and overall tablet conversion rate was 2.72%, more than 3x higher the conversion rate for mobile phones.

Additionally, the average order value from tablets ($149.84) actually exceeded that of desktop computers ($146.07).”

On top of that, tablet ownership nearly doubled over the holidays, according to Pew Internet.

With numbers like these, it’s clear that there’s an opportunity for marketers in tablets in 2012. What’s not clear is what marketers need to do to target tablet searchers effectively.

Do tablet owners search? If so, how do they search, what do they search for, and is it different from desktop and/or mobile search? How can content owners and advertisers build content today to effectively engage this highly lucrative tablet segment?

Fortunately, there are some things that we know about tablet owners that can help us get a better sense of what they’re looking for and how to give it to them:

Tablet Owners Are Searchers

Not only do tablet users buy a lot on their tablets, but they search a lot too. According to Google research, tablet owners reported that searching was the second most frequent activity (with 78% of users responding that they search for information on their tablets) behind playing games.

Tablet searchers account for a significant portion of mobile searches, according to Performics, who reported tablet accounts for 34% of mobile impressions on average, and as much as 50% for some advertisers. Marin Software reports that tablet search accounted for 3% of total impressions and 4% of total clicks in the fourth quarter of 2011.

Tablet Search Behavior Is Different

Last week, Resolution Media spent two days with the search engines planning strategy for 2012. And while I can’t talk about most of what was discussed, both Google and Yahoo! made a point of saying that tablet search behavior is different than mobile or desktop search behavior, and that campaigns and ad groups should be separated by platform for the best performance.

Last year at SMX West, Jacquelyn Krones of Bing and Taylor Schreiner of Yahoo! presented research to this end on tablet searchers’ user experience and goals. Krones gave marketers a model for understanding tablet users’ needs based on Mission, Excavation, and Exploration:

Unlike mobile (i.e. smartphone and featurephone) searchers, tablet searchers are not focused on completing a task (Mission), but are instead using the search engines on their devices to find new and interesting content, without really knowing what they are looking to find (Exploration). And neither tablet nor mobile searchers are using their devices for multi-step problem solving (Excavation).

Indeed, a Yahoo! Research/Reprise Media study at that time on mobile and tablet search behavior called “Searching on Glass” indicates that tablet searchers are more likely to search different categories (e.g. Real Estate, Investing, TV/Cable) and less likely to search others (e.g. Insurance, Deposits, Brand) than mobile and PC users.

Tablet users are also searching at different times than mobile and PC users. According to Google research, desktop searchers search during the day, and tablet and mobile searchers search at night. Google later draws the conclusion that desktop and laptop computers are for work, and tablets are more for entertainment at home.

Tablet Searchers Are Not Quite Mobile

A lot of people consider a tablet a mobile device, but research shows that most people aren’t mobile when they’re using it. Most of them are, in fact, on the couch, watching TV, in the kitchen or in bed.

If you’re lumping tablets and smartphones in the same ad group, or serving content created for mobile users to tablet users, you could be serving your customers content they don’t want.

Google (or at least Maile Ohye) recommends serving desktop content to tablet users, as they more closely resemble desktop users than mobile users in terms of behavior; but Adobe says the best option is to build tablet optimized experiences, separate from mobile or desktop sites.

Tablet Searchers Are Not Quite PC Searchers

One reason to build separate experiences rather than providing desktop content to tablet searchers is that tablet searchers aren’t able to access certain technologies that PC users are. The iPad, for example, is the market leader with 58% market share, and none of them run Adobe Flash.

If you’re using Flash to run videos on your site, or if you have a restaurant or other local business that tablet or smartphone users are likely to visit and you have a user experience that relies on Flash, you have two choices in this era of smartphones and tablets:

1. get rid of it and build an experience in HTML5 that can be dynamic and accessible to multiple devices, or
2. be invisible to the majority of tablet and smartphone users and risk frustrating this large and growing audience and/or losing them as customers.

Tablet Searchers are Looking for…?

It’s strange that all three major search engines tell us that tablet search behavior is different, but give us only desktop keywords in keyword tools to help us develop relevant content.

You can find tablet keywords in analytics, of course.

In Google Analytics, it’s as simple as going to the mobile devices report and then filtering with the following regular expression to isolate popular tablets:

tablet|tab|pad|slate|thinkpad|viewpad|ipad|lifebook|nook|windpad|xoom|xtablet|flybook|g-slate|ideapad|kindle|modbook|multipad|olivepad|paddle|playbook|quadpad|slimbook|t-touch|tuftab

Select the secondary dimension “Keyword” to see what tablet owners are searching for.

The problem with this method, of course, is that you can only see keywords that your site is optimized for, and not keywords that you should be optimized for.

To see that, we want to use a keyword tool, but at the moment the only keyword tool that I know of that includes tablets is the Google Keyword Tool. It’s currently impossible to find popular tablet keywords with it, however, as they’re lumped in with smartphone keywords.

Given that tablet searchers have different needs and search behavior than desktop or mobile searchers, it’s likely that they also use different keywords with different frequencies. The Reprise Media/Yahoo! study hints at that with the different categories that they uncover, but marketers currently can’t do much keyword research on their own without a specific tablet breakout.

My hope is that Google and the other search engines break out tablet queries separately in the Google Keyword Tool and similar tools so that marketers can optimize the user experience based on what tablet searchers are looking for.

Google has optimized their user experience for each platform, so they must understand content owners’ desire to do the same for their users. If you want to join me in this request, please show your support in the Google Adwords Support Forum, where I’ve formally posted this feature request.

Until then, hopefully this information on tablet searchers and their intent gives you a better sense of of what’s necessary to target tablet searchers in this oft-described “year of the tablet”.

Earlier this month, we released the RKG Digital Marketing Report with this in mind. Our goal is that it serves as a credible benchmark for advertisers who don’t enjoy the luxury of viewing results across multiple sites with multiple channels each. In our report, we offer our insights and data for paid search, SEO, and Facebook, as well as comparison shopping engines and multi-channel attribution.

We’ve covered the big trends, but we also tried to uncover some subtler ones, a few of which we think you’re unlikely to see anywhere else.

Generally, RKG’s Q4 results are directionally in line with the emerging consensus out there on the higher level metrics. We saw paid search spend growth accelerate in Q4 to a 31% year over year rate, up from 21% in Q3.

A significant increase in click-through rates was the primary driver, while cost-per-click actually fell 1.4% Y/Y. With revenue per click increasing modestly, our advertisers enjoyed an 8% increase in return on ad spend.

Paid search growth on Google was even more impressive, with ad spend up 39% Y/Y on a 46% increase in clicks. Click-through rates on Google were 26% higher than in the fourth quarter of 2010, speaking to Google’s efforts and ability to drive more and more users to the paid listings through appealing new ad formats and tweaks to existing ones. CPC fell 5% on Google though, and that may give some pause.

Increased mobile traffic, which has lower click costs, is certainly a contributor here, but we also have to consider what ultimately enables higher CPCs: higher revenues per click. We only see RPC increasing 2.6% Y/Y on Google in Q4 and that serves as a significant constraint on CPC.

Google’s Product Listing Ads format, which migrated to AdWords and shifted to a CPC model in the Fall of 2010, generated 8% of Google spend for the quarter and, for some advertisers, represented a larger traffic segment than Bing and Yahoo combined.

Even though we see Bing and Yahoo making some strides, our figures for them seem to be a little more pessimistic than those we’ve seen elsewhere. In Q4, our combined spend for the two engines was down 6.1% Y/Y, an improvement from an 8.7% Y/Y decline in Q3.

Our revenue per click was roughly 23% higher though, allowing CPCs to rise 12% while our advertisers took home a 10% higher ROAS. Click-through rates did improve on Bing and Yahoo, but not to the same extent as we saw on Google.

At least part of the problem for Bing and Yahoo is a continuing decline in traffic from its search partners. Last fourth quarter, Bing and Yahoo generated over 28% of their traffic from partners, but that has fallen steadily to 21% in Q4 2011. This helps advertiser revenue per click, but if adCenter is unable to deliver much additional ad inventory for subsequently raised bids, we see our ROAS increase, rather than volume.

It’s important to point out that we are now comparing to post-Search Alliance numbers and, given that the Alliance appeared to hurt Yahoo traffic at the time, we would expect a growth rate improvement for that reason alone.

Also, there may be some upside to these numbers as our analysis factored out brand keyword performance to limit the impact of extrinsic variables like offline media buys. Unfortunately for advertisers, we saw brand CPCs soar on Bing and Yahoo.

In the end, we see Google increasing its dominance it paid search, taking nearly 87% of clicks. On the organic side, we see Google with an 84% share, giving us all a couple more reasons to scratch our heads at comScore’s figures. Google is losing some of its advantage in CPCs commanded, but again, mobile is factor here and Bing and Yahoo have almost no mobile share to speak of.

Speaking of mobile, by the end of the quarter we saw traffic from smartphones and tablets generating over 14% of paid clicks, but for the entire quarter, mobile share was just under 10%. This was right in line with our organic search figures which also pegged mobile at 10%.

Tablets are the major driver here — even though the “mobile” moniker may be inappropriate for them — and we saw tablets overtake smartphones in December. The iPad remained dominant with a Google-esque 88% share of PPC tablet traffic, but the Kindle Fire was able to carve out a solid niche for itself with nearly 4% of tablet traffic after Christmas.

While Facebook garnered increased attention and budget dollars from marketers, it largely remained a growth opportunity given the sheer scale of its traffic and its grasp on its users’ time online.

For our SEO clients, Facebook generated a little under 4% of referral traffic in Q4. Those running Facebook ads found that they were able to generate an average of 90% of their unique impressions on Facebook from paid activity.

As we move deeper into 2012, the importance of social media, particularly to SEO, looks like it will only grow by leaps and bounds. Google’s Search Plus update may have been as controversial as it was significant, but don’t expect Google to back down on this one, and if they can finally play nice with Facebook and Twitter, things will really get interesting.

On the paid search side, we are seeing the major Q4 trends continuing into the new year with strong spend growth fueled by CTRs giving advertisers a solid return on their investment.

The ad network analyzed search referrals on “hundreds of millions” of impressions across sites in its network between January 9th and 12th. And the longest search referrals — at an average of 4.81 words — came from Ask.com. AOL users are at the other end of the spectrum; their user queries average barely above four words, by far the shortest of the five sites that Chitika studied.

It makes sense that this would be the case, since Ask.com has been refocusing on questions and answers in recent years — and asking questions tends to involve more words than other types of queries.

It would be great to get real search query length data directly from the search engines, but they’ve never made a habit of sharing that kind of information. In May 2010, Google did release data showing that 54.5 percent of queries are more than three words — which falls in line with the Google (and Bing) data that Chitika shows above. But that’s the last time I’m aware of that either Google or Bing shared such information.

Nor is Google without blame. I started digging into Google’s figures expecting to find that Google had actually seen a fantastic success at the end of 2011 – but had miscommunicated this with the city.

There is some truth in this but it is, by no means, the whole story. Google didn’t and doesn’t communicate fantastically with city slickers – but there are also some surprises in the figures when you look beyond the headlines.

A Wall Street Communications Issue Or The Figures?

On its webcast, where Google explained its figures, there was some puzzlement over an 8% drop in the value of clicks combined with a 34% increase in the number of clicks.

This definitely worried some analysts – it’s a complicated piece to explain and Google didn’t say, “The value of our inventory dropped, but we sold much more inventory” which actually might have been a better presentation of the truth.

However, looking at the figures in more depth what was interesting was that Google seems to have performed relatively better in the US during the last quarter growing by 12.7% over the previous quarter. The UK grew by just 1.6% quarter on quarter and the rest of world managed just 6.8%.

However, last year at the same time, Google was reporting 15% growth in the US, 4.5% in the UK and 19.85 in the rest of the world – so there does appear to be some softening of growth.

Share Of Google Revenue By Region Q411

When you look at the growth rates over time on the chart below, it all becomes a little clearer. Growth is “drooping” in the US and the UK, but has fallen back very sharply by some 15.7 percentage points in the rest of the world. Now, not many folks would sniff at an almost 30% (29.5%) rate of growth internationally, but this is the city we’re talking about.

In its announcement, Google talked about launching new ad formats which had reduced the revenue per click – analyst hearts could be heard beating faster.

Then like me, they popped the new growth rates they’d just heard into tracking spreadsheets and spotted the droop. Whoops. 2 + 2 = 15. Or rather, new ad formats + decline in revenue per click = seriously worrying downward trend.

International Growth Rates Q411

You will recall that Larry Page worried the city on his first set of figures by revealing huge growth in sales and marketing costs and in the headcount of people employed by Google?

The promise was all to do with what he now terms “velocity”. He wanted to get Google’s core products to a wider audience faster, before the doors closed and the first mover advantage was gone.

So are we seeing an appropriate return from the that investment? The uptick in investment started at the beginning of 2010, as you can see below. Would you expect a return by the end of 2011 and roughly 8 quarters?

The Investment In Marketing & People Must Show Results

People I’ve spoken to about changes in search technology tell me it can be as long as two years before you see the fruits of your labor.

So we should really have seen it by the end of 2011 and mid-2012 will definitely have to show some serious uplift if Larry Page’s dream is not to begin to be heavily questioned by analysts and shareholders. The stopwatch is running, the finish line is in site and at the moment Google isn’t going to hit the tape as it should.

Google Headcount And Sales Marketing Q411

But it also seems that Larry Page and Patrick Pichette, CFO have already spotted the danger as you can see above. The rate of growth in headcount and in sales and marketing costs softened already in the last quarter of 2011. Don’t forget though, these figures are percentages – the spend is still growing, but now by less than the company is growing.

Turning to the topic of inventory and the value of a click, Google has been providing up and down percentages for sometime, so below you’ll see a model based on all clicks having a value of 50 cents at the beginning of 2009.

In fact, the shape of the graph doesn’t vary regardless of the value – but it doesn’t affect the average value axis which is not shown here because it is simply a guess.

Average Google Value Per Click Q411

What you can see from the chart above is that in fact there has been a two quarter drop in the value of clicks which has the result that a click today has roughly the same value it did back in the depths of the 2009 recession. The clicks volume has naturally increased to compensate.

This is potentially good news for smaller businesses and for adaptible search marketers since if there are many more clicks to fight for at lower value – there will be opportunities for some to capture leads or business and to really make a mark.

Google's Rough Market Share Outside US And UK Q411

The above chart warrants some explanation and some words of caution. We are only looking at Google, Baidu and Yandex figures to create the shares above and are ignoring Seznam, Naver and Yahoo-bing.

However, even when those figures are added back in, it is unlikely this picture would be that much different. Google is the clear leader in the rest of the world (excluding US and UK) but it’s share does appear to eroding very slightly at the edges.

Is Google Affected By Fear Of Losing Leadership?

Google will have much more data and analysis than this – but it might well explain the behavior of the company in terms of its sales and marketing and recruitment efforts.

One of the latest Googleplexes to open was in Paris for the purpose of targeting the Middle East and Africa, for instance.

Rough Search Market Size Rest Of World Q411

$22 Billion – Now That Is Good News!

There is also definitely good news for international search marketers in Google’s figures and in the chart above. The global search market (yes with a little display inter-mingled) is at least $22 billion!

Happy (belated) New Year. Let’s face it, 2012 isn’t the first year someone has christened the “year of mobile.” But it is the first time consumers have done so – and continue to.

Still in the market for resolutions? Let me suggest 10 that’ll charge-up your brand to set pace – and lead – with mobile in 2012:

Think Mobile First

Smartphones most likely rang in 2012 by blowing past 100 million US subscribers. That means there’s a 50% chance your customers are now holding a smartphone; and 80% are using it to change how they shop. Plus, 2012 forecasts call for a 73% rise in m-commerce sales and 60% rise in tablet sales.

Resolution number one: challenge yourself to see your brand as mobile consumers do. Align marketing strategies with these expectations.

This may require difficult change – like relaxing desktop-biased ROI requirements that impair mobile resourcing. (The same “innovator dilemma” that trapped RIM!) Just do it.

Listen To Mobile Searchers

Google mobile query volume is up 400%. Smartphone and tablet keyword data is a goldmine for quantifying mobile impact and understanding intent.

Google began stripping this from organic search results in 2011. But they’re not yet stripping smartphone or tablet keyword data. (Read more here).

This will change (probably later this year), once marketers are more vested in mobile content. For now, resolve to take advantage: listen to what smartphone and tablet users want from you, while you can!

Invest In Mobile Pages

Consumers expect every desktop web page to have a relevant mobile equivalent.

In fact, lack of mobile content decreases mobile PPC quality score, drives 80% of mobile site abandonment, and forces nearly 20% of consumers to seek your competitors. Ouch!

Armed with data (as above), challenge yourself to prioritize and create mobile formatted content, starting with those that get traffic from smartphones and tablets. And don’t stop there! Continue optimizing smartphone and tablet pages for mobile SERP keyword rankings.

Connect With The Long-Tail

Mobile content needs to be accessible from any entry point. Last year, we found 81% of retail web pages fail to direct mobile consumers to relevant mobile pages.

We called this the invisible Web of mobile content. It’s a mobile ROI killer! Forge these connections between deep desktop and mobile pages. You help people buy more across mobile channels (Display, SMS, Email, Social, PPC).

With Google’s new smartphone bot, you also increase rankings in mobile SERPs for long-tail keyword searchers. Bonus!

Make Local Connections

Mobile users search with local and immediate intent. 60% visit a local business. 88% take action within the day.

Google Maps is the second most used app across iOS and Android. So claim, and optimize, business/store profiles to display at the top of mobile SERPs for your brand.

Go beyond Google Places/Maps and Bing Maps. Optimize for social networks that provide location information through apps too, like Facebook Places, now Foursquare, and others.

Simplify App Discovery

You’ve got iOS and Android apps. Discovery is the challenge. Fortunately, app profile pages can act like additional “sitelinks” in Google’s mobile SERPs. (See last month’s column on App SEO tips.)

Searching the app stores stinks. Help brand searchers discover your apps easily! If your apps are already ranked on the first page of mobile SERPs, try showing up for head terms.

Turn Searchers Into Followers

Mobile helps us be social. Devices already drive 55% of Twitter traffic, and 33% of Facebook’s. Like apps, social profiles also present opportunity to monopolize the first page of your mobile SERP listings.

So help motivated searchers find your Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, LinkedIn, or other profiles on page 1 of mobile SERPs. Measure increases in follows, likes, and subscribers that result!

Don’t Ignore “App-tribution”

People prefer apps over web when using popular Social and Local services (Maps/Places, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Foursquare). The problem is, apps aren’t “referrers” (read more here).

As these apps increase in popularity, more of your clicks get classified as “direct” traffic. Challenge yourself in 2012 to be accurate with mobile attribution.

One method gaining traction among retailers: seed Local and Social profiles with branded redirect links that populate web analytics. By giving ROI credit to the right channel, you can optimize your marketing spend!

Give Thoughtful Shortcuts

You may have a complete digital presence (web, mobile, apps, social, locations, video, etc). Make it more inviting for mobile consumers to navigate!

Consider how QR technology can help. QR isn’t just for print; it can actually provide the perfect “screen-to-screen” mobile link that consumers expect for faster access and deeper engagement with your content. Here are a few cross-channel ideas:

• Mobile apps: Don’t make people search app stores. Displaying app QRs on your site increases downloading, engagement, and popularity.
• Store locator: Don’t make people type your address into the Maps app. Displaying QRs on your desktop page can launch a location on the device’s Map app.
• Product videos: People prefer to watch videos on their device. Displaying QRs on product pages can launch video content and drive mobile viewing and sharing metrics.

Challenge yourself to make these shortcuts for time-strapped consumers. (Read more on converting URLs to QR here, here, here or consult our free Guide to Creating QR Codes.)

Re-imagine The Landing Page

People are spending 30% more time with popular apps vs sites for good reasons: faster access, native tools (like GPS), less login hassle. But this also pretty much shatters the concept of a Web “landing page.”

Trying to maximize engagement on, say a Facebook campaign? You may want to launch the user’s app. But what platform are they using? Is the app installed? Does it support URL schemes? Does the scheme differ by platform? Is there a fallback URL? (HTML5 apps aren’t the answer yet.)

New link routing logic is in order. So your final resolution of 2012: Consider strategies and deploying app-sensitive link technology to connect more mobile consumers with your campaigns in the optimal fashion.

Make no mistake: Mobile consumers have spoken emphatically. Here’s to you, making 2012 the “year of mobile” for your brand!

IgnitionOne said that among its retail clients, “Mobile search [  ] accounted for 24% of retailers’ total paid search budgets on Black Friday, compared to 14.2% of the total during all of Q4. This represents enormous growth compared to Q4 2010, when mobile search spend accounted for only 5.2% of total retail paid search spend.”

The following chart from IgnitionOne shows the growth of mobile impressions, clicks and search ad spend vs. 2010.

The Marin Software report says the company is seeing increased adoption of mobile and tablet advertising among its clients. More significantly, however, its clients’ campaigns on mobile are “showing significantly better performance than similar campaigns on desktop computers.”

Marin published comparisons for its aggregated search campaigns across PC and mobile. As the chart below indicates, paid search ads on smartphones and tablets outperformed those on the PC in terms of CTRs.