Search Engine Monkeying

Found a couple of interesting articles pertaining to critical Google Account management.

Tyler Huston’s article, 10 Worst AdWords Campaign Management Mistakes, contains some good tidbits.

4. Directing users solely to your home page; this is a common mistake for businesses. All AdWord ads should be targeted to a specific landing page for your company that needs to directly tie in with the desired conversion.

10. Entering the content network without modifying bids; Even though the CTR is a lot lower in content, the impression rate is a lot higher and there are a lot of unnecessary clicks. Bids need to be lowered to compensate for the increased traffic and the lower conversions.

Additionally, Kevin Gold’s 5 Ways NOT to Manage Your Google AdWords’ Campaign has a couple of noteworthy suggestions.

3. Using position preference; this is a common mistake if you are new AdWord and haven’t read the fine print clearly. Position preference won’t guarantee you position, it means that if you choose position 1 or 2, and your ad is slotted to show in the third position, the ad won’t be show at all. Using position preference will severly limit the impressions you would receive.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Richard over at golem.de noticed something interesting about Google Image. By adding a short addition to the query string in the URL you can activate the facial recognition app embeded in Google Image.

For example, a search for Paris in Google Image returns a variety of images showing Paris the city.

However, if you add &imgtype=face to the end of the URL, Google Image will return results related to people named Paris.

Popularity: 14% [?]

I’m not going to take credit for noticing the apparent weirdness going on at Google Trends. Both 10e20 and Bumped Tek posted articles pertaining to the way Google is ranking it’s search results.  It seems odd that “what part of a graduate’s costume gave the cordon bleu cooking school its name” is the top listing but I guess it’s not unimaginable. I do like how Google  is ranking it’s top keywords as “spicy”.  My guess is they still have a few bugs to work out.

Popularity: 5% [?]

ClickZ.com had an interesting article today about Google Experiments Search. Google Experiments allows user to sign up and try out new Google developments before the features are released to the general public. Try it out if your interested in playing with some new search technology.

Current list of experiments:

Timeline and map views: Timeline view (add view:timeline to your query) features a timeline near the top of the SERP and the results are displayed in chronological order. Why didn’t they have this when I was doing reports in high school. Map view features a large Google map with search results displayed on it.

Keyboard shortcuts: A list of keyboard shortcuts that make navigating the Google SERP faster.
J: Selects the next result.
K: Selects the previous result.
O: Opens the selected result.
<Enter>: Opens the selected result.
/: Puts the cursor in the search box.
<Esc>: Removes the cursor from the search box.

Left-hand search navigation: Adds contextual search (photos, video) and related searches down the left-hand side of the page. It looks like the related search options plugs the term right back into the search bar as a query. I like when search engines do this because it makes it easy to find the top searches and buy them as exact keywords.

Right-hand contextual search navigation: This feature displays a box on the right-hand side above the sponsored results with additional contextual searches. The box effectively pushes the competing ads down the page and leaves the top sponsored ads (above the organic results) in the same location. One of two things may happen. First, the top two positions will become even more important (most likely). Second, user eyeballs will be drawn to the right-hand side and notice the sponsored ads. I don’t see much chance of that.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Simple Instructions to create a new Google AdWord keyword campaign.

1. Brainstorm and figure out the different uses for your product. Your trying to be really broad and come out with different groups and niches that would be interested in your product. Freemind is a great open-source application for mind-mapping (brainstorming and organizing your thoughts)
2. Use a product such as WordTracker to come up with the main AdGroups. A lot of the terms are going to be similar so you don’t have to use everything WordTracker kicks out but remember Google highlights plurals differently then singular terms so you’re going to want them in two separate AdGroups.
3. After adding an AdGroup to Google, I use Google’s Keyword tool next to find keywords. Try to make sure the keyword is placed in the most relevant AdGroup. After adding keywords, make sure to run the tool again to find negative keywords.
4. Use other tools to find even more keywords. I think Keyword Discovery (Trellian) does a great job. ThemeZoom is another tool that pulls down a lot of keywords. However, the tool wasn’t meant for PPC and a lot of results are based of obscure tangents and aren’t relevant at all.
5. Usually, I do a variety of internet searches and check Wikipedia to try to find related products and brands which I will then add to a new AdGroup.
6. Additionally, check glossaries of books related to your product field to find more keywords.
7. You may want to create an Excel document containing common phrase prefixes and suffixes for your product and run these against the keywords that you have and add the new phrases to your AdGroups. Common prefixes include “new” and “newest” and a common suffix would include “information” or “support”.
8. Use the keyword edit tool in Google to add Exact and Phrase matching for all your keywords. Google’s instructions say this step is unnecessary but I’ve noticed that it dramatically lowers bid prices.
9. Use AdWord Editor to copy and past your old campaign creating a new campaign that is identical. Change the setting on the first campaign to be Google and Search Network only and the second campaign to be Content only. Content bids should generally be half of what your search campaign is. This will save you a lot of money. Also, if you want, you can erase all the Exact and Phrase keywords from the Content only campaign. If your feeling really motivated, you can separate the search campaign further into a Google only campaign and Google and Search Network campaign and adjust the bids but I really haven’t noticed an advantage.

Popularity: 5% [?]

I’m not sure if I’ve been spending too much time using the Stylish plug-in for Firefox or if it’s only because I’m logged in, but I noticed some recent layout changes on the Google’s SERP that I thought was worth pointing out. Instead of the of the different search options being placed above the search box, they have been moved to the top of the page and left aligned. Also, a My Notebook link and a Web History link are now displayed at the top of the page right aligned with the account information.

Additionally, it also appears that there are a lot more search options when you click on the “more” link at the top of the page.

Popularity: 4% [?]

LifeHacker.com has an interesting article about creating comparisons in Google’s search and finding the results.

Using phrases similar to:

“better then -keyword-”
“reminds me of -keyword-”
“just like -keyword-”
“similar to -keyword-”
“reminds me of -keyword-”
“sounds like -someband-”

You can uses Google’s search engine results page to compare items that meet the phrases criteria.

Popularity: 14% [?]

(I’m taking Master’s classes and this is another post expanding upon a topic that came up in class).

In class the other day we were talking about search arbitrage and if the practice is inherently evil.  Arbitrage is an economic term describing the “practice of taking advantage of a price differential between two or more markets“.   Search Arbitrage takes advantage of the inherent difference between the cost driving users to your site using a search engine and the amount advertisers are willing to pay a site for the users viewing their ads.  Taking advantage of the relevance and immediacy with which you can customize a search campaign, marketers are able to target a news story that lots of people will be interested in and deliver the traffic to the publisher’s site.

There have been several articles questioning the morality of Search Arbitrage from a customer stand-point; Search Arbitrage: Good or Evil by Catherine Seda and Search Arbitrage Issues on Search Engine Roundtable.  These articles question the decline in the user experience that poor search arbitrage can lead to.  Driving traffic for the sack of driving traffic is like herding buffalo off a cliff.  Neither the landing page/site advertiser nor the user get the experience or the relevancy they desire.  The only person who seems to benefit is the publisher from inflated page impressions.

Additionally,  recent articles have criticized marketers for buying keywords associated with tragedies.  While this may be considered poor taste, I don’t feel that this type of search arbitrage detracts from the user experience and instead, adds additional value to the search engines, the publishers, and the advertisers on the landing pages.  Because of the redundancy and precautions taken by search engines, new content doesn’t have as much relevancy and essentially must “buildup steam” before it will begin to rank high in organic listings.  It’s the marketer’s responsibility to second guess ranking and historical data and determine what consumers are really looking for.  Otherwise, marketers should just let computers do their jobs.  For the Virginia Tech massacre for example, search engines would have organically returned older articles, probably related to basketball or the NCAA, with the keywords “shooting” and “massacre” until the search engine algorithms would have determined that these articles were no longer relevant to consumers.

It is definitely easier for a marketer to determine that  “Virginia Tech Massacre” or “World Trade Center disaster” (for that matter) are going to be high traffic keywords.  However, the human element that search engine marketing offers to the equation can instantly make decisions about consumer relevancy that a computer cannot.

Popularity: 9% [?]

What is WEB 2.0? A lot of people seemed confused and most don’t even recognize a shift in the way information is presented and authored on the Internet.  This is just a short list of examples that seem to encompass the main ideology of the Web 2.0 shift. A lot of these ideas and examples overlap each other and so some examples are used repeatedly.

Web Applications

Social Networks - Large communities of users that can build links to each other and more importantly, customize the content (and the majority of the time) the look/style of their information that other users can then view. A lot of MMORPGs (Massive Multi-player Online Role Playing Games) can be considered social networks because of the extent that you can customize characters.
Examples: MySpace.com, Facebook.com, Friendster.com, SecondLife.com, World of Warcraft (software purchase).

Aggregates - A collection of information submitted by users or moderators that is usually discussed or expanded upon on the site.
Examples: Fark.com, Slashdot.com, Sourceforge.net.

Meta-search - Dogpile.com to the next level, sites that search a large variety of related sites.
Examples: Kayak.com, Technorati.com, Isohunt.com.

User-generated Content - Sites that consist of content generated by the users. Almost all social networks can be classified as user-generated content (all khakis are chinos, but not all chinos are khaki).
Example: Flickr.com, Youtube.com, EBay.com, CraigsList.com, Wikipedia.com

Mash-up - A combination of the resources of more then one site to improve a site or create a new site.
Examples: HousingMaps.com (a combination of CraigsList.com and Google Maps) , Photobucket.com and YouTube.com content on MySpace.com.

Social Bookmarking - Tags and ratings added to user submitted or generated content that add relevance and influence position or prominence.
Examples: Digg.com, Del.icio.us, Furl.net

Marketing

New marketing techniques considered Web 2.0.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) - Old ideology but making a recurrence due to the way SEO can lower cost of pay per click SEM which has become increasingly competitive.
Paid-Inclusion - Paying to influence organic ranking.
Blogging - Businesses use this method to connect with customers and because blogs make your site more appealing to search engines which will index the site with greater frequency. Blogging also helps with deep-linking, and aspect of SEO.
Sponsoring (Video, Feature, Site) - Why buy a banner ad when you can get your product or message throughout the entire site (including email) or throughout a video. Check out this Business 2.0 Article for more info (fourth paragraph down).
MMORPG advertising - Google buying AdScape, Microsoft buying Massive (TechCrunch Article), now it will be easy to place your ads/products in video games.
Affiliate Marketing - Why market yourself anymore when you can have other people do it, LinkShare.com, Azoogle.com, CommissionJunction.com.
RSS advertising - Place your ads in Really Simple Syndication articles.
Sploging - Spamming blog comment sections to display ads or build links for SEO (already obsolete or will be soon).
Social Network Profiles - Your business doesn’t even really need a website if your profile is crafted perfectly for your market, Mulligen’s Pub on MySpace.com
Podcasting - Ongoing relevant content related to your product (Burton Snowboard videos).
Interactive Banner Ads - Ads that react to user input by expanding, changing color, playing video, etc (check out AdBrite.com).

Technology

Some of the new technology that would be characterized as Web 2.0.

AJAX - Asynchronous JavaScript and XML: changes content without reloading page.
RSS - Really Simple Syndication: a condensed way to distribute content.
BitTorrent - Asynchronous and inexpensive way for a host (seeds) to distribute massive amounts of content using multiple consumers (peers).
CSS - Cascading Style Sheets: older protocol that has finally matured. Separate content (HTML) and style (CSS) and you can use an infinite number of different styles to display the same content. Content can then be customized for mobile, large type, cleaner pages, or just about anything else. CSS editors are being included in the Firefox Browser so users can customize the content of any page they want (userstyles.org).
XML - eXtendable Markup Language: a stripped down version of html that is customizable.

Popularity: 14% [?]

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article yesterday called “You’re a Nobody Unless Your Name Googles Well” about the uniqueness of your name when entered into the Google search engine.

I know I’m being a little vain but I had to see where I ended up when I Googled myself. I’m proud to say that I rank first when both my proper and nickname are entered. Must have been the LinkedIn.com link on my Myspace.com page. Now only if I can get added to Wikipedia.com.

Popularity: 4% [?]