Google “Comparison” Units Get New Look; Change Highlights Paid Inclusion In Some Vertical Search Areas

Apr 30, 2012 at 7:21pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Google has had what it has called “comparison ads” for some time, but these comparison units are getting a new look in Google’s search results beginning today. Google hopes the change will better explain to searchers that comparison listings come from companies it has a commercial relationship with. It also highlights how three Google search products now seem to largely operate on a paid inclusion basis. Google was once a vocal opponent to paid inclusion programs. "We’re changing the design layout of our hotel, flight, credit card and bank account results, which help users complete [...]

Reports: Google CPCs Continue To Decline And Yahoo/Bing’s Rise While Spend Overall Grows In Q1

Apr 11, 2012 at 2:08pm ET by Pamela Parker

By all accounts, paid search spending rose in Q1 2012 as compared to the previous year, but by how much depends on the source, and the sector. Covario, which serves mostly high-tech clients, says paid search in the Americas grew 15% in the first quarter, while Adobe's Efficient Frontier, which serves clients in a variety of verticals, says it saw a 16% year-over-year increase in the U.S.. Meanwhile, the retail-heavy and U.S.-focused Rimm Kaufman Group (RKG) says search spend rose 30 percent as compared to the 2011 period. All three companies recently released reports that give insight [...]

Do It Yourself A/B Testing

Apr 4, 2012 at 12:53pm ET by Conrad Saam

I always start marketing interviews with a phone screen of some variant of the following question: “Let’s say this is your first day at Urbanspoon and I show you the following data. We’ve just launched an A/B test of that I’d like you to evaluate. [The example can be almost anything you want to test different results for – from almost any search element, PPC campaigns, email subject lines etc. In this case, I’m using a PPC example.] Imagine you are running two different ads on a campaign with 50 kewords. We’ve been running Ad A for a while and have 17,235 impressions and 272 cli [...]

For Social Media Marketers, SEO Is Much More Popular Than PPC

Apr 3, 2012 at 3:18pm ET by Matt McGee

Social media marketers are much more likely to also use SEO in their marketing efforts than PPC, according to a new survey out today. Social Media Examiner announced the results of its fourth annual survey, which this year had replies from more than 3,800 social media marketers around the world. When asked what other marketing channels they use, search engine optimization (SEO) was the No. 2 response behind e-mail marketing. Paid search -- or "online ads" as the survey called it -- was far down the list at number six. Sixty-five percent of social media marketers say they use SEO, compare [...]

Dictionaries, Grammar & Feeds: A Rules-Based Keyword Generation Approach For PPC

Mar 2, 2012 at 9:45am ET by Crosby Grant

This article presents a rules-based approach for Keyword Generation using Dictionaries, Grammar, and Feeds. Essentially, Dictionaries define the various groups of words that are relevant to an account. Grammar defines how to combine them. Feeds define the data that may be changing regularly, like e-commerce inventory, store locations, etc. Readers may be able to generalize these terms to apply to existing rules-based tool if one is currently in use. First, a word about where this approach fits in to the broader picture. The Broader Landscape of Managing Keywords & Negatives There are [...]

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