Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google & Bing (Still) Handle Underscores & Dashes Differently It’s one of the longest-running SEO questions around, and still something many of us get asked by clients, readers, conference attendees and […]
Two well-known online marketing agencies are joining forces. RKG (Rimm-Kaufman Group), based in Charlottesville, Virginia, has announced its acquisition of Bend, Oregon-based AudetteMedia. The acquisition allows RKG to continue expanding its service lineup. Long established as a leader in paid search marketing, RKG has recently added services such as shopping engine management, social media advertising […]
Bing’s traffic acquisition deal with Conduit, the toolbar company that claims to work with 260,000 publishers and 200 million users, appears to be paying off, according to analysis from Rimm Kaufman Group (RKG). Senior research analyst Mark Ballard looked at traffic from Conduit to Rimm Kaufman Group clients from before the toolbar company switched to […]
Best Practices With Google’s New Ad Features Presentations from SMX West, March 2011 Google has breathed new life into the text-based AdWords format, introducing an entire new lineup of ad formats. These include AdWords video ads, AdWords sitelinks, local AdWords, product AdWords, comparison ads and more. They’ve also added modifiers, extensions and other features that […]
The dust seems to have finally settled on the long holiday weekend, and according to several reports both formal and informal, that dust is largely colored green. Green, as in money: transactions, average order size, revenue, and other metrics are widely reported as being up this year compared to 2009. Here’s a recap of several […]
Google AdWords has made some changes to their AdWords policy recently. They also have expanded the reach of their new billing tab, as well as given more users access to the broad match modifier. AdWords Policies: If you look at the AdWords Policies release notes, you will notice serveral updates occurred this month. The updates […]
Data driven anticipatory bidding can turn an ordinary holiday bump into something extraordinary. Here are some tips for how to take apart and act on the data.
The Rimm-Kaufman Group reports eBay has quietly dropped Yahoo in place of Google to power the paid search ads on eBay. Mark explained that over the past several months, eBay has been testing Google ads on about 1% of the ads shown on eBay. On August 26th, he said, eBay “flipped the switch” and began […]
Proving & Improving ROI In Paid Search As budgets get tighter, proving that paid search is worth every penny becomes even more important. This session explores methods of proving that paid search is paying off more than its share in marketing dollars received, plus it examines ways to get even more ROI out of your […]
The editorial staff at Search Engine Land has just learned that over the weekend, on July 18th, Alan Rimm-Kaufman passed away following a 16 month long battle with leukemia. He bravely faced countless rounds of chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant in hopes of a cure. Alan Rimm-Kaufman was just 41 years young, and is […]
Slate’s “The Big Money” site lays out what is certain to be an interesting debate over the course of the next year: Google’s anti-trust position and how the company should be evaluated. Google argues, according to the piece, that it should be seen not in the context of search or even online advertising as a […]
I have been fascinated watching how the search ad space has been impacted by the current global recession. Rimm-Kaufman has posted early first quarter PPC data showing the weak trends in retail for search advertisers. Let me summarize his retail client data: Approximately 20% reduction in sales from search ads from last year Approximately 20% […]
Last week, the Rimm-Kaufman Group disclosed what is apparently an inadvertent bug in Google’s Broad Match algorithm. Last summer’s switch from minimum bid to first-page minimum bid wasn’t supposed to impact broad match logic at all, but it did in a big way. The result? Agencies and advertisers who pay attention to the numbers saw […]
It’s remarkable that in 2008 there are still many bidding systems in use by SEMs and in-house PPC managers dedicated to “finding the right position” for each keyword. These position crawling systems guarantee inefficiency and lost opportunity; to put it concisely: they’re playing the wrong game. Here’s why:
You’re hitting your pay-per-click (PPC) efficiency targets and everyone is pleased with the results. Congratulations, but are you wasting money in your PPC program? Averages often hide waste, and in this economy it may be worth taking a look at how you’re getting to that average. Suppose you budget $200 to buy a DVD player. […]
As anyone who has seen the Terminator or Matrix movies can attest, if machines rule the world humans are in deep trouble. Similarly, if you allow machines to control the PPC keyword creation process you are guaranteed to both leave opportunity on the table and flush money down the toilet. The reason is simple: language […]
Forget the business issues over the deal where Yahoo will selectively serve Google ads on the Yahoo site. What about the impact on the advertisers? Overbidding on Yahoo and potentially underbidding on Google’s network system will likely be the most immediate changes. But there are positives, as well.
As the competition in search becomes more sophisticated, refining tactics becomes more important than ever. For online retailers, bidding by margin is all but essential. Every firm has a different marketing objective: some look for maximum ROI and some are willing to spend to break even in hopes that future orders will drive the profit, […]
The nice folks from Google were in for a visit a week or so ago. One of the topics on the day’s agenda was Ad Quality. If you read extremely closely, much of what they presented in their briefing is also described at the AdWords help center (see What is a ‘Quality Score’ and how […]
Matt Greitzer and Chris Boggs of Avenue A/Razorfish have compiled a report based on the experiences of 33 Avenue A | Razorfish since the release of Panama, Yahoo’s new search ad system. As you know, when Yahoo released the new algorithm, it changed the core foundation of how search ads were positioned within the Yahoo […]