Earlier in the week I was going through a Client’s AdWords account and saw a reference to PPA pricing. This reminded me of Google’s seemingly vanished venture.
Back in March of last year, Google AdWords announced the launch of a US only Beta for a new AdSense Network pricing model Called PPA or Pay Per Action.
Ostensibly, this would allow ads to be displayed on participating AdSense publishers sites, with cost levied only upon completion of the Advertiser specified conversion action.
What this means, is the advertiser only pays for results. If a participating AdWords client specified an ecommerce purchase completion as the goal point for which Google would charge them, then that is the only point cost would be incurred.
This is quite different from to the current CPC (pay for every ad click, regardless of results) and CPM (pay for every 1000 times an ad is displayed, regardless of result or clicks) price models.
It would be very interesting to work with this type of model, however, the question is “where is it?”
In June of last year, the Beta had been extended to advertisers for testing outside the US with pretty much nothing to follow since.
I looked this up in the AdWords help center and found a Quick Start guide to setting up a PPA Campaign. Oddly enough, if you look closely at the wording, it’s all written in the future tense, which I don’t believe I’ve ever seen before in this type of document.
Is this dead in the water, or upcoming? Perhaps someday, Net Archaeologists will find the corpse of this idea buried in virtual rubble.
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 6:00 AM
Happy Canada & U.S. Independence Day to our Friends and Clients both North and South of the border.
In order to best serve our current and future clients StepForth will remain open through the two statutory holidays next week.
On Canada Day (Tuesday, July 1st), our office will be open during regular business hours, 9:00-5:00 PST with a limited staff, and being the Canadians that we are, since we do not celebrate Independence Day up here, we will operate during normal business hours, with our regular staff complement for the Fourth of July.
We wish everyone a fun and safe time with their celebrations and respective days off.
Recently, Google announced an agreement with rival search engine, Yahoo. In their blog, Google maintains that this agreement does not signify a merger, nor will it harm competition in advertising. However there is general concern over the extent that Yahoo will make use of these ads.
Although there are not a lot of details available as yet, some further information can be found in this blog post. According to this post, this agreement will enable Yahoo to display some Google Ads on their Search and Content Networks. The real question (and concern) is how will Yahoo make use of this.
If they only use Google Ads as filler for less competitive phrases, then likely this would likely have little impact on their own advertising clients. If they go further and start pitting their client’s bids against those of Adwords, costs will soar for advertisers using Panama.
How Yahoo will determine bidding between Google advertisements and their own remains to be seen, but if cost per click is a factor (as I’m sure it will be), then Yahoo’s advertisers may be in for a shock.
I must admit, I am curious as to what effect this integration will have on AdWords advertisers as well. Will we have to optimize for a new Quality Index/Score now? Presumably they’ll work out some sort of common rating algorithm, but I’m a bit concerned about the potential for migraines.
Additionally, the deal includes adding interoperability to their instant messaging platforms. How they intend to accomplish this has yet to be disclosed, but it would be a positive step for users.
While this would be a good move financially for both Google and Yahoo, I am skeptical that the search advertising “partnership” side of this arrangement would have no adverse effect on competition. Having the two top competitors working so closely together could have negative effects for users and advertisers both.
While there is speculation as to whether or not this will even go through, we can expect to see significant changes in the industry one way or another.
While cruising Google Reader I noted some great articles and tips that you shouldn't miss. Have a great read and an excellent weekend!
Google's Matt Cutts gives tips on what page extensions Google does not index. In summary, don't expect Google to index .exe extensions or URLs that end with a ".O" such as "www.xyzname.com/web2.0"; although Matt did note that the ".O" extension is being re-evaluated and tested for less troublesome indexing by Google.
Robert X. Cringely wrote a great article on a "Microsoft-killer" strategy that he believes Apple is putting into play based on the new MobileMe service coming soon. Here is an excerpt:
"Microsoft's success is based on two products and only two products -- Windows and Office. Microsoft is obsessed with the idea that Google will undermine one or both of those monopolies through Google Apps. This is all Steve Ballmer thinks about and is what made him so eager to spend $40+ billion for Yahoo. But what if the real threat isn't Google at all, but Apple?" ...
"Given the code Apple already has for its iWork applications, how much more effort would it take to webify those apps, too? Not much, I'd say. A year from now I guarantee you that MobileMe will offer a complete suite of web-based Office applications."
"Recently, we improved our algorithms to process new information faster, and the result is quite tangible -- you should now see fresher suggestions for queries on current topics of interest."Because information on the web is constantly changing, we think this improvement will help you find relevant information faster. To give this a test drive, try searching for iphone. You should see related queries around the brand new 3G iPhone announced earlier this week."
Jerry explained his reasoning for the Google partnership in 3 statements which I summarized below:
1) "First, it does not signal that Yahoo! plans to exit paid search. Quite the contrary. Through the financial benefits of better monetizing our search traffic, we’ll be investing in search services and ad platforms, including Panama. ..."
2) "Second, this deal is good for competition. ... as search and display continue their convergence, it puts Yahoo! in a better position to innovate and compete aggressively with Google and others for ad dollars. It also offers advertisers more choice and publishers gain better distribution and monetization to grow their business."
3) "Finally, this agreement is non-exclusive. We remain completely free to display any paid search listings across our properties — whether from Yahoo!, Google, or any other third parties."
New details have surfaced of Microsoft's most recent dealings with Yahoo and another offer from Microsoft that was again swatted down by Yahoo. BoomTown's Kara Swisher talks of Microsoft's most recent bid that was designed to stifle the Google and Yahoo partnership before it was signed; a very tempting bid at that.
"Yahoo decided that the strategic drawbacks of the Microsoft deal outweighed the potentially huge financial and operational benefits... and told Microsoft to take a hike."
In closing, I noticed that Microsoft put out a plain-jane press release in response to Yahoo's signed partnership with a few very simple words indicating that doors are still open for partnership:
“In the weeks since Microsoft withdrew its offer to acquire Yahoo!, the two companies have continued to discuss an alternative transaction that Microsoft believes would have delivered in excess of $33 per share to the Yahoo! shareholders. This partnership would ensure healthy competition in the marketplace, providing greater choice and innovation for advertisers, publishers and consumers.
“As stated on May 3rd and reiterated on May 18th Microsoft was not interested in rebidding for all of Yahoo!. Our alternative transaction remains available for discussion.”
Today I happened across an interesting speech on YouTube from the always engaging CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt. The speech was made on June 9th, 2008 at the exclusive Economic Club of Washington, D.C. and it is available below for those who wish to watch it. If you don't have the time I compiled a rough list of statistics, thoughts and quotes from Mr. Schmidt that I related below. Incidentally, the introduction by the venerable Vernon Jordan is lengthy but well worth the time; after looking up Mr. Jordan online I am definitely going to read his memoirs - a fascinating man.
Speech Notes in Point Form:
When discussing the growth of the Internet Mr. Schmidt discussed burgeoning countries such as:
China where over 50% of all Internet users are in their early 20s and live in rural areas
In India mainstream Internet use is accelerating and the country is a powerhouse for mobile phone use.
He then noted some interesting stats:
There are currently over 500 million registered domains,
There are at least 120 million blogs with, he noted humorously, an average of only 1 reader each,
There are 30 million photos uploaded to Google per day "in one form or another" he said,
There are currently 3.3 billion mobile phone users,
Every minute 10 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube,
After these introductory statistics Eric Schmidt then launched an example of the combined power of Google Sky, Google Maps and Google Street View. A dramatic presentation illustrated the immense combined power of the three Google applications and how generally inconceivable it is to imagine 100 times the power of technology that is expected 10 years from now (Moores Law).
In the following exerpts from his speech Eric Schmidt relates Google's values based on open technology and knowledge:
"Open beats closed and competition is better."
When addressing the future of the Internet Mr. Schmidt captured what is required to be successful in the present and future Internet eloquently with this quote: "The traditional model of control and exclusivity and so forth is replaced by speed and distribution."
To round off his presentation Mr. Schmidt provided some business advice:
He feels strongly about "establishing a principle of yes" with employees to bolster positivity.
When hiring outside contracters Google requires them to provide a single sentence overview at the end of every week describing what was completed that week. He noted that this is more difficult than is imagined but it is a good practice for ensuring work is being completed.
It is understood that every discussion at Google must begin with facts.
And that's all folks. Eric Schmidt did answer some questions from the audience that were pretty interesting but my notes are spotty on that; if you are interested I suggest skipping ahead and watching that portion of the video.
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 2:32 PM
The latest numbers are in, and Google continues to dominate search - we already knew that, but by how much?
The latest figures from HitWise released this morning show Google up a little over 3% compared to May of 2007. Google was accountable for approximately 68.29% of searches performed in the US in May of 2008. Yahoo and MSN fell to 19.95% and 5.89% respectively.
Yahoo’s figures for May 2008 are down marginally by about 1% and MSN down nearly 2% compared to the same period a year ago. HitWise figures are based on a sampling of 10 million U.S. Internet Users.
Over the course of a day we tend to run into situations where some basic and occasionally not so basic tips and tricks need to be applied to a website. Here are three that come to mind at the moment and might just help you improve your web marketing results.
How to Get an Uncompetitive Term to Rank Well
Situation: You have a keyphrase that is not incredibly competitive and you just can't seem to figure out why it is stuck on the second page of results.
Remedy: In the less competitive marketspaces where your phrase is either very niche (i.e. like part number searches or created with industry jargon) or detailed (i.e. 3+ words like "BMW Victoria BC") you can just increase the frequency those words are used within the page. By increasing "keyword frequency" you leave less doubt that a search engine algorithm will determine your Keyphrase is what the page should be ranked for. If competitiveness is truly low this technique will work decently on Google and often very well in Yahoo.
Frequency Tip: Don't go nuts and add 20 more incidences of the Keyphrase if only 4 will do. Also, do not sacrifice the quality of your writing just to get a ranking or you will drive off visitors when they arrive. Take baby steps! Add only 2 occurrences of the Keyphrase within your content and watch how that affects your rankings. Then you can add or remove from there depending on how your ranking responds on the various search engines.
Decreasing a Webpage's Exit Rate
Situation: The numbers are incontrovertible, your home page has an intolerably high exit rate (percentage of visitors that enter by that page and quickly exit the site). So how can you lower the exit rate?
Remedy: First do some research; what keywords are driving the traffic? Are they relevant? If not, ignore that portion of traffic because obviously you cannot make a visitor happy that is looking for something you cannot provide. By the same token look at the referrer of the traffic; it could be another website has misrepresented the purpose of your website thus sending highly irrelevant traffic; again strike this traffic from your view. Once you have considered these issues and separated the wheat from the chaff then you may just need to improve the stickiness of your home page.
In order to improve the home page it helps to understand a little about your visitors and their needs. In some testing I have been conducting for a service-oriented website it was clearly determined that a home page (effectively your chief landing page) should satisfy two types of visitors.
> Visitor A just wants to get to the heart of the matter and find out what price you are charging for the product/service they want. So they want an immediately actionable menu.
> Visitor B needs to trust you and is fully prepared to read the content on your home page to get a feel for the kind of business you represent.
So what now? The ideal step would be to create various versions of your home page and then use Google Optimizer to compare the reactions to each version and provide you with a clear winning design. That is what we do at StepForth and I can't say enough how well that has helped us. That said, that may be too much for you so just make some changes to your home page and monitor the result over the next month. If you already have a high exit rate (75% or higher) then this test really can't hurt and I imagine you will see some intriguing fluctuations in your page's exit rate and your visitor's time on site.
When you do create a new version of your home page I suggest writing a quick intro to your services and having that appear first thing on your home page. The intro should have very visible and easy to click links to the key sections/products/services of your website so that hasty visitors can navigate quickly and effectively. Then follow up that intro with the detail and whatever personal touches you want to add to the home page to appease Visitor B.
Essential Content Management System Optimization
Scenario: Your website is operated on a large content rich Content Management System (CMS) which uses a nearly identical Title and Meta Description tag throughout the whole site. Your website is not ranking well and you cannot understand why since each page has a wealth of content and your prices are competitive.
Remedy: Consult the documentation of your CMS or tap the resources of your programmer to determine how you can automate the creation of unique Titles and Meta Descriptions across every page within your site; much more feasible than manually optimizing these tags on huge sites. In most Content Management Systems there is a relatively simple fix that can be employed which will allow you to mass-optimize the titles and Meta Descriptions within your web site.
For example, a real estate website may want to dynamically include the town name and area that a particular home is located within the Title and Meta Description tags; to increase the relevancy of the pages.
Basic SEO Rule: Title and Description Meta tags must be unique to set the topic of the page for visitors and search engines alike. Also, I strongly recommend starting the Title tag with content unique to the page and then following it by any generic prose. For example Good = "Victoria BMW Sales - Sam Spade Inc." BAD = "Sam Spade Inc. - Victoria BMW Sales".
More to Come I really enjoyed sharing these tips with you and while writing I came up with even more so I will try to write a few more segments in the same format over the next few months.
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 3:37 PM
Very recently my old laptop started giving me a world of problems ranging from minor software to rather serious hardware issues. For a three year old laptop it just didn’t make sense to fix it, so I decided to take the leap and buy a replacement.
I originally had hoped on finding something with Windows XP, and the only new machine I could find with XP was through Dell - my now dead laptop was a Dell, so I decided to pass and jumped over to a Toshiba running Vista.
Surprisingly thus far I like Vista, and it has only given me a few correctable & minor inconveniences.Of course, only after purchasing the new machine did I read that Microsoft has again opened the doors to selling Windows XP, and it will be made available on "Ultra Low Cost" Notebooks and PC’s.
It seems that Microsoft, in the wake of so many complaints about Vista, and so many people wanting new machines with XP, has decided to extend its availability, and manufacturers are able to produce and sell XP based systems, possibly until June 2010. Microsoft has officially stated that technical support will still be available for Windows XP until at least 2014, giving you a solid 6 years of life left using XP.
The catch is, XP will only be made available on these new "Ultra Low Cost" systems, which are limited by CPU speed and screen size, so if you want that high power machine, you better keep thinking Vista.
If you are one of those users in need of a new machine but are holding off due to distaste for Vista, you do have options. According to an article published today at InfoWorld, Asus will have machines available with XP until June 2010, and manufacturers such as Dell and HP will have "downgraded" XP systems available until Jan 31, 2009 and July 30 2009 respectively.
If you plan on purchasing a custom built PC from a local shop, January 31, 2009 is the last date that XP will be available.
Personally, all this seems kind of strange. If so many customers are complaining about Windows Vista, and want to purchase Windows XP, why not sell it to them? I can understand the desire to move forward, but with such a high demand on a product, it only seems to make sense to continue offering and profiting off of it - at least until ALL the bugs are worked out with Vista. Hmm, has there ever been a ‘bug free’ Microsoft product?
The Washington Post posted an interview with the CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer today that touched on topics such as Microsoft's bid for Yahoo and the future of advertising. What I enjoyed most was the segment on the Future of Advertising where Ballmer, in his animated way, discussed Microsoft's plans for the future and their continuing contest with Google.
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 10:13 AM
Yahoo signed a multi-year deal with Walmart to start displaying advertising on its company website a press release stated Wednesday. The deal will enable Walmart.com to utilize Yahoo's ad platform for presenting new offers to their customers.
"This announcement builds on our strategy to be the partner of choice for leading brands looking to engage more customers with compelling offers online," said Todd Teresi, senior vice president of the Yahoo! Publisher Network. "By combining Walmart.com's leading position as a multi-channel retailer with our industry-leading display advertising sales and ad management technology and sales force, we will be able to provide advertisers with the easiest, most effective way to deliver targeted, relevant marketing messages to Walmart.com shoppers."
Marketers are expected to be able to start taking advantage of this partnership sometime near the end of this month.
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 9:58 AM
As Google Earth advances, they have offered 3D views of several major cities and attractions world wide, but with the help of Disney providing intricate models, a 3D walk through has been created providing users with incredible detail in their virtual visit.
Information is made available on all of the parks 1500 attractions and contains videos and photos as well as booking details. Restaurant menus are also available for the many dining establishments at the theme park.
While currently the virtual tour only includes the outside of the parks buildings, a future update will allow visitors to see the inside of hotel rooms and enter the various attractions.
If you are interested in taking a break and viewing the 3D tour, ensure you have the latest version of Google earth and the "3D Buildings" layer is enabled, and perform a search for "Disney World". Clicking on any one of the colored Mickey Mouse logos, will get you started.
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 9:33 AM
A case was brought to French court surrounding the use of certain keywords through the use of Google AdWords.
Google AdWords offers advertisers a keyword tool which will often suggest variations of certain keywords to be added to a given campaign. Fashion retailer, Louis Vuitton is unhappy as AdWords has been noted to suggest terms such as "Louis Vuitton fakes" and "Louis Vuitton replicas".
Because Google is essentially selling the advertising rights to these trademarks, Louis Vuitton alleges a trademark violation, and took the search giant to court - and won! Naturally Google has appealed and the case will now go to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 2:16 PM
For a few years now Google has offered their AdWords advertisers an alternative to the online interface with AdWords Editor, a downloadable program offering additional functionality to make managing your campaigns just a little bit easier. Today at SMX Advanced, Kevin Johnson, Microsoft’s Platform & Services Division President, announced the launch of a similar such product for Microsoft adCenter, in Beta of course.
Microsoft’s vision is a fully functional desktop client version for adCenter, rather than just an editor. This means that tools such as those used for keyword research will be integrated into the software, a feature lacking by Google AdWords Editor.
This product launch will likely make many advertisers happy assuming it all goes smoothly. Our experience with adCenter is that of awkwardness as their interface is far from user friendly, taking several steps to complete a task done with only a single click over at Google.
Unlike many other beta launches that are accessible to only a select few deep pocket advertisers, adCenter Desktop beta is available to anyone with an account in good standing. If you meet the adCenter terms and conditions, you are eligible to apply. If interested in giving the beta a try, fill in their application form to be considered.
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Robert X. Cringely wrote 
On the Yahoo Anecdotal Blog Yahoo CEO and co-founder Jerry Yang announced 
New details have surfaced of Microsoft's most recent dealings with Yahoo and another offer from 
