Bing Ads announced a number of updates last month, including new campaign filter options, improved search query reports, more visibility with appealable ads, and new keyword competition insights. Also, the Keyword Suggestions feature was made available to Bing advertisers in the UK. New Filter Options The new filtering options let advertisers filter and search from the Opportunities tab on the Campaigns page. Now, advertisers can view a subset of bids and keyword suggestions that meet specific campaign criteria without browsing through individual suggestions. Improved Search Query Reports [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Bing Ads | SEM Industry: General | Yahoo: Display Ads

Google's head of search spam, has decided to publish a bunch of blog posts that were sitting in draft mode on his personal blog. He said his blog needs to cough up a hairball - hence the animated GIF used here. But, we can learn a few things when Matt Cutts coughs up hairballs. A few of the 16 blog posts he published last night contain some Google insight. Helping The Masses Versus Individuals Matt wrote a blog post named email backlog where he explains the rational about responding to individual emails requesting help versus producing videos or posting a blog post that can help hundreds [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Other | SEM Industry: General

A new Dilbert cartoon once again takes a jab at SEOs and what they do or can do. The latest comic reads: Woman: Asok, your meeting stole an hour of my life. Woman: According to international law, I may now claim you as my indentured servant. Man: Wow. That.... Actually is a law. Woman: (Thinking) Or I'm really good at SEO. It is a play on you cannot always believe what you read on the Internet and that SEOs can create content that ranks well on the Internet that may be completely inaccurate. Postscript: Today, yet another cartoon on SEOs was released. Here is a snippe [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | SEM Industry: Community | SEM Industry: General

Local SEOs are being invited to take the Local SEO Industry Survey 2013, which is being organized again this year by the local SEO software company, BrightLocal. The survey contains 20 questions and should only take about 5-10 minutes to complete, I'd guess. It covers topics related to the following: business and staffing clients, rates and revenue specific local SEO services offered etc. The survey is now in its third year. BrightLocal says that more than 1,150 local search marketers participated last year, and they're hoping to exceed that number this time around. The surv [...]

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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 [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Features: Analysis | Google: AdWords | Search Marketing: General | SEM Industry: General | SEM Industry: Stats | Top News

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 [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Search Ads: General | Search Ads: Mobile Search | Search Marketing: General | SEM Industry: General | SEM Industry: Stats | Top News

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 [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Search Ads: General | Search Ads: Mobile Search | Search Marketing: General | SEM Industry: General | SEM Industry: Stats | Stats: Spend Projections

SEMPO and ClickZ are partnering to find out how much money search marketers are earning. The Search Marketer Salary Survey 2013 can be accessed over here and is open for all agency or in-house search marketing professionals. This survey is an annual industry wide survey to assess the current state of compensation of search marketing professionals in relation to region, experience and responsibility. The variables the survey hopes to collect include SEO and SEM jobs, from entry level to executive; salary variations by geographic markets, the total compensation package beyond salaries s [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | SEM Industry: General | SEM Industry: In House | SEM Industry: Stats

Conductor has announced what it says is the biggest financing round ever in the SEO industry: a $20 million Series C investment led by Investor Growth Capital. In a news release, Conductor says it'll use the money to continue development of its Searchlight SEO platform and to scale the company's operations internationally. Conductor launched its Searchlight product in June 2010, and the company says it's used by the "top four big agency holding companies ... as well as more than half of the top 20 Internet Retailers and more than 100 of the Fortune 500." Existing investors FirstMark Capi [...]

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Google's head of search spam, Matt Cutts, a name familiar to most of the readers here, was inducted into University of Kentucky's Arts and Sciences Hall Of Fame last Friday. This was reported in the Kentucky Kernel. The article explains that Matt Cutts attended the University of Kentucky while working for the Department of Defense as part of the university's co-operative program. During that time, he became very interested in information retrieval and search engines and became one of Google's first 100 employees. On Friday, Matt Cutts visited the University's Student Center to talk to [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Employees | SEM Industry: Awards | SEM Industry: General

SEO has been declared "dead" almost from when it first began, as our post from a few years ago, Is SEO Dead? 1997 Prediction, Meet 2009 Reality, covers. Now, a new infographic is out looking at how SEO has been "dying" over the years. The infographic is from SEO Book and is interesting in that rather than taking a timeline approach, it instead shows examples of various types of people who've declared that SEO is dead and why they are, as the infographic puts it, "deluded." The infographic is below; click to enlarge it: If you want the infographic for yourself, you'll find it here: Info [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Infographics | SEM Industry: Community | SEM Industry: General | SEO: General

Do you know what today is? Why, it's the first day of Search Week, happening through October 4 in New York City. We've just received the proclamation from Mayor Michael Bloomberg, declaring it so. It happens in conjunction with our SMX East search marketing show in town this week. New York is home to any number of "weeks" throughout the year, such as Fashion Week. I've always wanted to see it play host to a "Search Week." New York is such a capital for advertising and marketing. Search is the biggest and most thriving aspect of online marketing there is. I've wanted to see it celebrated [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | SEM Industry: Conferences | SEM Industry: General

About nine out of 10 search marketers say Google's recent algorithm changes have had a significant impact on them, and about the same amount say that the rise of the mobile internet and local search are also having a significant impact. The data comes from the SEMPO State of Search Marketing Report 2012, which was just released this week. Nearly 900 search marketers responded to this year's survey, which was conducted online between March 12 and May 15, 2012. Survey takers represent 36 countries, with about 64 percent being in the US. What Impacted Search Marketers Most Whether workin [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Features: General | SEM Industry: Community | SEM Industry: General | SEM Industry: Stats | Top News

SEO continues to be the top lead generating channel among U.S. digital marketers, while PPC's effectiveness as a lead gen channel is dropping significantly. B2B marketers are even saying that social media marketing is now more effective than PPC as a lead gen channel. That's according to the 2nd annual State of Digital Marketing survey from WebMarketing123, an online agency based in California. As they did a year ago, Webmarketing123 surveyed more than 500 U.S. marketers, 65 percent of whom self-report as B2B marketers. Reps from companies including GE, Sony, Cisco, Olympus, Bose and Fed [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search | Features: Analysis | Search Marketing: General | SEM Industry: General | SEM Industry: Stats | Stats: General | Top News

One of the seminal moments in George Orwell’s 1984 occurs when the hero – Winston Smith – is finally convinced by his torturers that 2+2=5. The point of the scene is to show how Oceania (the totalitarian regime in which 1984 is based) has so much control over the mind of its citizens that it can even convince them to reject the fundamental rules of mathematics! Another of my favorite moments from 1984 occurs when the ironically named "Ministry of Truth" retroactively changes an old newspaper article regarding chocolate rations so that a new change in rations looks like an incre [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: General | Paid Search | SEM Industry: General

If there's one thing that stands out in the 2012 SEO Industry Survey, it's that the SEO industry relies heavily on the free SEO-related tools that Google provides. SEOmoz released the results of its semi-annual survey today -- a survey conducted between March and May that drew responses from almost 6,500 people in more than 100 countries. Almost half of the respondents (47.3 percent) were from the U.S., and 77 percent were males. There's some interesting data about marketing budgets (for example, 34.4 percent say they spend $1,000 and up on consulting each month) and tactics used (76 pe [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | SEM Industry: Community | SEM Industry: General | SEM Industry: Stats | SEM Tools | Top News

iAcquire, banned by Google in late May after allegations of buying links for clients, has now has been restored to the Google index after two months. The company has blogged about the news and changes to its business model. iAcquire never says itself that it was banned over buying links for clients. Instead, it uses the "financial compensation" euphemism it has used before. From the post: Google’s war on paid links came close to home when we were accused of buying links for clients, which subsequently led to Google’s big hand swinging hard on the back of our head. We admitted that f [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | SEM Industry: General | SEO: Spamming | Top News

As Google becomes more mainstream you hear random people in coffee shops, the grocery store, church and even kids in elementary school talking about Google's updates. Google's head of search, Amit Singhal, tweeted early this morning that he was at a local Starbucks and overheard a conversation that proved to him that Google's latest updates were doing their job. He tweeted: Overheard next table at Starbucks, "With Google Panda and Penguin our tricks don't work." Glad they didn't recognize me. — Amit Singhal (@theamitsinghal) May 31, 2012 Search Engine Journal has a story from Gl [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | SEM Industry: General

Last week, iAcquire found itself accused of purchasing links for clients. Google seemed convinced, banning iAcquire from its index. Now, iAcquire says that it will no longer purchase links for new clients and will phase out paid links for existing customers and campaigns. "In certain cases, we have allowed finanical compensation to develop links, not as our only tool but one of them," said Joe Griffin, cofounder and partner with iAcquire, when I spoke with him earlier today. "Effectively immediately, we've removed that tool from our toolset. We've issued a company-wide memo and told everyo [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Link Building: Paid Links | SEM Industry: General | Top News

The search marketing agency, iAcquire, that was allegedly responsible for buying links for clients was just banned from Google's search results. iAcquire was cited as the agency behind Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corporation's link buy request emails. For more on that see our story named What Can We Learn From The Latest Brand To Be Called Out For Paid Links? A site command search for [site:www.iacquire.com] returns no results. Here is a screen shot: iAcquire's robots.txt file and source code has no signs of them manually requesting to be deindexed from Google. So this seems [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | Link Building: Paid Links | SEM Industry: General | Top News