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The Big AdWords Update: Enhanced Campaigns Puts The Focus On Mobile

Feb 6, 2013 at 3:00pm ET by Ginny Marvin

“If we were going to build AdWords today, what would it look like?” That’s the question Google’s Nick Fox, VP of Product Management, and his team began asking last year. The result is AdWords enhanced campaigns, a major update announced today that is designed to simplify campaign management across multiple devices, and to increase adoption rates of mobile advertising among small and medium sized businesses. PPC managers have become accustomed to the time-consuming workarounds needed to target ads by device type and location by cloning campaigns and managing granular settings and bid [...]

Adwords For Video Gets Reporting Enhancements

Jan 31, 2013 at 2:29pm ET by Ginny Marvin

Google has added three new measurement features to the AdWords for video reporting interface. The enhancements are designed to make reporting more goal-oriented and to make it easier to compare campaign performance across platforms and other forms of media. Reach & Frequency Reach and frequency metrics, including Average Impression Frequency and Average View Frequency, have been added to the interface to give you more insight into how many unique viewers have seen your ad and the average number of times they’ve seen it. It's now easier to tell if your ads are getting enough im [...]

Google Tests B2B Market With Google Shopping For Suppliers

Jan 30, 2013 at 1:10pm ET by Ginny Marvin

Google is entering the B2B shopping segment with Google Shopping for Suppliers. CPC Strategy reported yesterday on the quiet roll-out, noting that the beta is open only to electrical and electronics industries at this time. The beta started about two weeks ago and is showing in the US only. Google has built Google Shopping for Suppliers to accommodate the unique aspects of B2B selling that has limited supplier participation on Google Shopping. Recognizing that B2B transactions often involve negotiations on shipping costs and volume discounts, many Google Shopping policies on Pricing and [...]

Advertisers Increased PLA Budgets By 600% In Q4; Trend Likely To Continue

Jan 29, 2013 at 9:07am ET by Ginny Marvin

The Google Shopping gamble paid off – for both Google and e-commerce advertisers who ran product listing ad campaigns last quarter. A report from Adobe and a study by RKG each highlighted consumer interest and advertiser opportunity in Google product listing ads. Today, Marin Software released findings showing that, after the transition of Google Shopping to an entirely paid model in October, advertisers increased their share of search budgets directed toward product listing ads by nearly 600%. Those advertisers were rewarded with higher click through rates and lower cost per click than [...]

Comparing Mobile Blog Designs: What Works Best?

Jan 28, 2013 at 12:27pm ET by Sherwood Stranieri

One area of mobile site design that is particularly important for mobile SEO is the blog. Blogs get special treatment in search engines, as sources of fresh content and easily-digested RSS feeds. In the mobile space, blogs are also one of the few areas where users expect to find lengthy text -- so, the pressure to abbreviate content for a small screen gets dialed back, making blogs even more useful for mobile SEO. Cobblers’ Shoes To take a closer look at the different approaches available to mobile marketers, I decided to look at the blogs of mobile phone manufacturers. As a writer cove [...]

Report: 25 Percent Of Search Clicks Now From Mobile Devices

Jan 22, 2013 at 10:54am ET by Greg Sterling

The Search Agency has released its "State of Paid Search Report" for Q4 2012. It follows similar reports from Marin Software, IgnitionOne, RKG and Kenshoo and contains a range of data based on US client campaigns. Overall The Search Agency observed that paid search is experiencing a "healthy growth rate." Impressions, CPCs and paid clicks all grew in Q4. But, consistent with findings in other reports, the share of searches generated by smartphones and tablets grew significantly in Q4. Unlike some other reports The Search Agency says these did not come at the expense of the PC: Desktops [...]

Sign of Hope? Banned Advertisers Rises Just 8 Percent in 2012

Jan 18, 2013 at 12:52pm ET by Ginny Marvin

The battle against bad ads getting past the AdWords review process rages on. Google announced in a blog post this week that the company axed 224 million bad ads in 2012. That’s up 67% from 2011. The 2012 numbers underscore that there is no shortage of scammers, however they may also point to a sign of hope. The number of banned advertisers plateaued from 2011, rising just 8%. Last year the number of banned advertisers increased by 70%. That leveling off could mean Google’s efforts are paying off and scammers aren’t flocking to AdWords the way they used to. Last year, Google announce [...]

“Who Sent Me Chocolates?” – Company Tries Sweet Twist To Tap Into Google Traffic

Jan 17, 2013 at 9:08am ET by Barry Schwartz

Yesterday, I received a package all the way from the United Kingdom. It was a chocolate bar but it was packaged differently. The cover around the bar had a personalized message to me that read: Hey Barry, We wanted to send you a treat to introduce ourselves! To find out who we are type: "Who Sent Me Chocolates" into Google. So, I naturally went to Google and searched for [who sent me chocolates] and then clicked on the first result. It took me to a marketing company named CMA Digital and asked me to type in my code. After I entered the code, it took me to a customized landing page wit [...]

Report: PLAs Drove 28% Of Google Non-Brand Ad Clicks In Q4

Jan 16, 2013 at 3:51pm ET by Ginny Marvin

Google Product Listing Ads generated 28% of Google non-brand clicks in Q4 according to RKG's latest Digital Marketing Report released today. PLA CPCs were 26% lower than CPCs for competitive text ads. RKG also found a larger than average gap between bids and actual CPCs for PLAs, suggesting competition is still relatively light. Product Listing Ads are also having a big impact on non-brand Google ROI when compared to Bing. RKG reports, “As Google CPCs have declined overall and compared to Bing, the non-brand ROI for Google now stands 22% higher than that for Bing.” Google Nonbrand Paid [...]

Report: Global Paid Search Spending Up 18% In 2012

Jan 15, 2013 at 8:07am ET by Ginny Marvin

Advertiser spending on paid search rose 18% in 2012 according to Covario’s Global Search Advertising Spend Analysis, which tracks paid search spending in more than 45 countries. That growth trend is down just slightly from the 21% annual increase Covario reported for 2011. In Q4 Google commanded 86.5% of global paid search spend and a whopping 93% of impressions. Advertisers spent 13% more on search spending with Google than they did a year ago. Spending on the Yahoo Bing Network increased 23% over the past year, however spend fell 6% from Q3. Source: Covario Regional Outloo [...]

Reports: Tablet Paid-Search Spend Surpasses Smartphones

Jan 10, 2013 at 10:55am ET by Greg Sterling

Two reports out this morning from Marin Software and IgnitionOne capture a range of Q4 paid search ad spending data. For purposes of this article I'm going to focus only on the mobile component of the reports. Both show paid search spending on tablets surpassing smartphones. The IgnitionOne report, focused on the US market, shows that mobile devices now account for 18 percent of total paid-search budgets. However in Q4 tablet metrics grew dramatically faster than those for smartphones. Right now IgnitionOne says CPCs are lower on tablets, while impressions and clicks are much higher for tab [...]

Stats On Mobile Content & Impact On Google Rankings

Jan 7, 2013 at 8:18am ET by Barry Schwartz

Bryson Meunier from Resolution Media posted an update on his personal blog about the correlation between mobile content and ranking in Google. The study came out with three findings: (1) Having mobile optimized and rendered content is still highly correlated with getting organic traffic from Google. The study showed that 89% of the sites in the study that rank, all have either mobile URLs, dynamic serving, responsive web design, or some hybrid. But 89% of the sites that rank well, have some form of mobile rendered web site available to mobile users. (2) [...]

eBay Offers A Mobile Search Shortcut For Online Stores

Dec 31, 2012 at 11:52am ET by Sherwood Stranieri

Last month, I touched on several ways that businesses could use apps as an alternate channel to reach mobile searchers. Online retailers have a couple opportunities to use apps in this way, by tapping into the eBay and Amazon marketplaces. Let's take a closer look at eBay, and some strategies for using it to extend the reach of your existing catalog. Starting At The Desktop Before mobile was part of the equation, there was a well-established practice for leveraging eBay for online retail. Of course, it goes without saying that many retailers use eBay as their sole storefront, taking advantag [...]

Mobile SEO Is Not A Myth: 8 Popular Claims Refuted

Dec 10, 2012 at 1:38pm ET by Bryson Meunier

Last year at this time, I refuted 7 myths in mobile SEO, saying mobile SEO isn’t a myth, but there are myths in mobile SEO. As we near the end of 2012, there are still too many SEOs who put mobile SEO in the same category as Santa Claus and his elves: good story but entirely mythical (sorry, kids!). I’m seeing mobile search and mobile SEO on too many “let’s stop talking about this next year” lists, and I think that’s a shame. To illustrate why, here are eight of the most popular reasons given for mobile SEO’s nonexistence, refuted: 1. Mobile Search Behavior The Same As Desk [...]

7 Key Takeaways From BIA/Kelsey’s ILM Conference

Dec 10, 2012 at 12:36pm ET by Stephanie Hobbs

I just returned from the jam-packed annual BIA/Kelsey ILM West conference in Los Angeles, where there was a lot of excitement about what’s next in local SMB advertising. As we head into 2013, local businesses have some important trends to consider when developing their marketing plans. The ways in which consumers are both searching and finding local businesses are rapidly changing, and local businesses and marketers are quickly adapting to take advantage of new opportunities to drive business in the door. Here are my 7 key takeaways from the event: 1. Local Business Spending Remains The [...]

Mobile Search Beyond Google: In App Search Tools

Dec 3, 2012 at 2:49pm ET by Sherwood Stranieri

A couple months back, I covered the rise of a new generation of Windows Phones, and how they will slowly bring more mobile search market share to Bing. But, there's more to mobile search than just Google and Bing. The app stores for iOS, Android and Windows offer countless of downloadable apps that offer built-in search engines. Some of these apps are from major players in their respective verticals and may have a more direct impact on your business than the general search engines. Let's look at a few business types and the apps that provide good search opportunities. [caption id="att [...]

Glogou Launches Products To Help US Companies Do Search Marketing In China

Nov 29, 2012 at 11:24am ET by Pamela Parker

Everyone knows China is one of the hottest, fastest-growing markets for consumer goods, but how does a U.S. company become known by Chinese consumers via search marketing? One Silicon Valley-based company by the name of Glogou is working to bridge that gap with two new offerings -- an English-language interface to the ad market on the popular Chinese search engine Baidu, and a service that helps US businesses gauge their accessibility and visibility in China. The company, which also has offices in Boston and Beijing, has long offered related translation services, keyword research and search [...]

What Google’s Webmaster Tools Tells Us About CTR In European Markets

Nov 13, 2012 at 9:46am ET by Andy Atkins-Krüger

Last time, I was talking about the analysis of click through rates by position based on data from Google's Webmaster Tools and I promised we'd look at a wider range of countries. The chart below shows you exactly that data extracted from a wide range of webmaster data to give some relatively consistent averages. The data covers many tens of thousands of clicks. At first sight, you can see a fairly regular pattern (something we found across most European nations) and since the results are presented in largely similar ways by Google wherever you are, there's a certain inevitability to that. [...]

Google Offers Tips For A Search Engine Friendly Tablet Experience (Not Recommendations)

Nov 12, 2012 at 9:22am ET by Barry Schwartz

Google posted some tips for building a search engine friendly mobile tablet experience for users and search engines. Google is clear to point out these tips are NOT specific "recommendations for building search engine friendly tablet-optimized websites." Google does not have guidelines or official recommendations for tablet-optimized web sites but they did want to offer some tips based off their official smart phone recommendations. The tablet-optimized tips include: (1) Unless you offer tablet-optimized content, users expect to see your desktop site rather than your site’s smartpho [...]

Does Mobile Search Matter In A Multiscreen World?

Nov 12, 2012 at 9:14am ET by Bryson Meunier

This is my 25th mobile search column and my 30th post for Search Engine Land in almost four years. Mobile search has evolved quite a bit since I started writing this column in 2009, and even more since the iPhone turned everything on its head in 2007. In my first column, I argued that the iPhone didn’t kill mobile SEO, saying that it instead made mobile searching mainstream, and ushered in a whole new type of searching that Google and SEOs would have to account for at some point. I still believe this is true today, almost four years after that first article; but, there are many still w [...]

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