Search Engine Monkeying

Jeff Martin over at SEM Clubhouse found some interesting data concerning the Google Checkout.

If you’re a small SEM marketer not using Google Checkout this new data from Enquiro will definitely entice you more. Not only is Google running a sales discount for consumers and an AdWord Rebate incentive for advertisers, but the heat map proves that Google Checkout differentiates your ads from your competitors and can lead to a higher click through rate.

I’d like to see a more comprehensive study done on Google Checkout and click through rate. By the look of the heat map it looks like it improves CTR significantly but I’d like to see if it improves conversions. Signing up for a new service may be too much work for some people.

Popularity: 4% [?]

My friend Chris pointed this out to me today and I’m not sure how long this Easter Egg has been in the “system”.

Google Maps enables you to get driving directions from New York, NY to London, England. Most people would think that this task would be impossible but Google inserted an easy, obvious way to complete the journey.

Google still doesn’t offer a good way to get from San Francisco to Tokyo, Japan yet.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Advertisers using MSN AdCenter should be aware of an error that could be scaring away your business.

The AdCenter conversion code used to track sales from MSN Live creates the above error message when viewed in Mozilla Firefox. MSN knows about the error and as of yet has refused to create a patch that would prevent the error message from occurring.

If you are using the conversion code to track purchases, more than likely, the error message will be little more than an inconvenience for your customers. But, if the Site owner is tracking actions such as an email signup, the MSN message could confuse the consumer and the site may lose integrity because most users won’t realize that the error cannot be fixed by the website administrator.

I also believe that error is interfering with Google conversion verification. Personally, I’m stripping it out of my sites and may replace it later when MSN has a patch.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Sorry about the poor screenshots.

Google is experimenting with different colored sponsored links on their search engine results page (SERP). The new color is an egg shell yellow (#fff9dd) that appears white at certain angles and definitely differentiates itself from the top border bar. Most users will still see the light blue (#fff9dd) color that Google normally uses.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Beyond Google and Yahoo: Reaping Return from Alternative Pay-Per-Click Search Engines

Tuesday, March 27, 2007 1:00 PM EDT (10:00 AM PDT)
Speaker: Chris Sherman, Executive Editor,
Search Engine Land

Nowadays, savvy marketers and advertisers are approaching search marketing like a financial portfolio - diversification is key. Why? Different search engines have different ways of reaching your potential prospects and customers. Once you make the decision to diversify, there are important questions to consider:

What are the other PPC marketing options? How do these search engines differ from Google and Yahoo? How are they priced? How do you get started?

You’ll learn:

• What to look for with alternative PPC search engine marketing
• Success stories from advertisers that have worked with alternative search engines
• How to incorporate these new alternatives into your existing plans and reporting systems
• How to measure the effectiveness of these alternatives (since they are different than Yahoo and Google) - what sort of traffic volumes and conversions are typical?

Register now!

More Information

Popularity: 4% [?]

Looks like Google has finally announced its Pay Per Action experiment and it will be interesting to see how it is adopted. I hope I’m not violating my NDA by talking about it but hopefully, now that the news is out there, it will be alright (don’t slap me Google, I love you). The PPA experiment, to my knowledge, was another separate content network that advertisers were opting into. Seeing that the information is not on AdSense makes me believe it will still be a little while till it is totally implemented. I’m interested in seeing how Google is selling the network to publishers or if that was just how it was tested. PPA will be perfect for customers with a low conversion rate (see my last post) or customers that are worried about click-fraud.

I’m also curious about how pricing habits will develop. Will a mortgage PPA be around $2000 a conversion, Car financing, $1000 a conversion, Life Insurance $500 a conversion? This approach will definitely appeal to advertisers with fully developed backend marketing programs and less to scam artists and affiliate marketers.

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What do you do if you have a product that is converting poorly? Currently, a product I manage is getting a measly 600 clicks a week. This amount of traffic is just pathetic and I have been talking with the brand owner about increasing visitors to the site. However, the only reason I am reluctant to do this is that the conversion rate for this landing page is a horrible .15%. That means in a nutshell, if 10,000 visitors clicked on our ads and visited the site, only 15 people would make purchases. At this rate, even if our cost per click was a meager $.50 and our average order value (AOV) is $90 we would be losing money hand over foot.

(2 orders * $90 AOV) - (600 clicks * $.50 CPC) = -120

Extrapolating this data, if we increase traffic a ten-fold:

(20 orders * $90 AOV) – (6000 clicks * $.50 CPC) = -1200

Obviously, the landing page needs a lot of work. That is the biggest problem since I am only advertising to the core traffic  associated with this product. Additionally, I was trying to figure out the standard deviation of the conversion rate in order to justify not driving more traffic and I remembered a couple of concepts.

1. Standard deviation is irrelevant in this situation because an increase in sample size could dramatically change the average. If I make my net bigger, I may catch more fish.
2. Advertising and Marketing drive sales and not the other way around.

Obviously, what I am doing isn’t working and needs to be changed (lower Max CPC) but lowering my overall budget is not the answer. Being more creative and aggressive is.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Stop the information monopoly, originally uploaded by Ben Werdmuller.

Interesting promotion by Ask.com (and a lot of experts believe Yahoo.com) to persuade consumers to look at other search engines for information (by other, it’s assumed, not Google).

Most of these early promotions have been found in the London Tube. It will be interesting to see what other channels the PR Company responsible decides to pursue.

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The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) and Yahoo recently released an interesting survay detailing users search behavior before making consumer electronic purchases.

Highlights of the survay include:

• 77% of consumer electronic purchases are influenced by Internet research
• The least amount of time spent researching products was 9 hours for cell phones
• The greatest amount of time spent researching was 15 hours for televisions
• 73% respondents reported comparing products and prices online
• 64% prefered shopping online because of the wider variety of products
• 44% would research online and then purchase offline - Daily Searchcast attributed this behavior to the fact that “it is impossible for consumers to accurately gage factors like pixel-resolution (of televisions) online”.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Interesting post about how Yahoo’s Panama has improved performance for their advertiser (More Early Panama Results at Clickz).

 Avenue A | Razorfish reported the following statistics about a week ago after the agency switched their clients from Overture to Yahoo Panama:

• Search Impressions – Up an average of 5%
• Cost Per Click – Down an average of 6%
• Click Rate – Up an average of 10%
• Conversion Rates – Down an average of 5%
• Overall CPA – Up an average of 6%

Additionally, SearchIgnite and 360i also reported similar results after they switched their clients.

Popularity: 10% [?]