This is the first in a series of articles intended to convey my personal impressions of managing PPC through Google Adwords, Yahoo Panama and MSN Adcenter.
Each engine has its pluses and minuses and I thought I would write a short blurb describing my experiences using the interface for each of these. The first engine I will be looking at is the lesser utilized of the three, MSN Adcenter.
Interface
One of the things I like about working within Adcenter is the clean look. Although from time to time I wonder if the uncluttered interface is more a product of its relative youth, there’s no denying it’s easier on the eyes than either of its competitors. In part, this appears to be due to the lack of clutter that plagues both Panama and AdWords. Perhaps Microsoft hasn’t had time to fill every gap on each page as seems to be the case with the others. Part of the reason however, is the use of bullet links. More often than not, clicking on these causes the additional information to appear in place, without having to navigate to another page. This is a refreshing change, as most of my time using these seems to be spent hitting my back button and waiting for complete pages to load.
The layout of subsections is based on 4 tabs; Campaigns, Accounts & Billing, Research and Reports. Clicking on these takes you to exactly what you would expect, no more no less. Everything is laid out in a logical format and it’s pretty quick and easy to find what you’re looking for. After struggling to navigate through Panama in particular, I find this refreshingly simple.
Campaign Setup
Setting up is a 5 step process.
First off, you lay out your basic campaign structure by naming the campaign and initial ad group. One of the nifty features at this stage is a checkbox allowing you to copy an existing ad group. I have found this can be a useful time saving feature. Network targeting, campaign scheduling, language and regional targeting can all be set up on this same page. Also, conversion tracking can either be set up here or later in the campaign interface with a single click.
The next step is writing ad copy. The biggest advantage I have found in this stage is that the interface allows you to paste the entire ad description in one line rather than having to fuss with the character limitations for 2 lines of ad text, such as in both Google and Yahoo.
Now you can add your keywords. This is a very straightforward process, You have the option to add your own pre-made list of keywords and/or using a keyword tool that scans a site, or the ad destination URLs. This tool can generate a list of synonyms based on a suggested term, including the number of searches conducted in the previous month.
The last main step is to determine pricing settings. This includes setting a budget (see annoyances and oddities section), bidding and setting bidding options, such as incremental bidding. Here also you can set bids specifically targeting for location, day, time, age, or gender.
The final step is simply a review of all the information entered to this point and the option to change settings. I find this a bit annoying, as opting to change anything takes you back to that stage and after making your adjustment you have to cycle back through the entire process to the review page once again.
Keywords
The only tool this interface has at the moment is the keyword research tool. This can be accessed under the research tab or when editing keyword settings. I have found this far less awkward and time consuming to use than either of the other 2 engines. One thing to note about adjusting keyword settings is how robust the options are generally. When adjusting existing keywords it is simple to add negative keywords to individual keywords, as well as adjust the match types and specific destination URLs by keyword. Another interesting feature is the trend charts, viewable by keyword. With this handy feature you can view individual keyword trends by age and gender, geographical location, social class and affluence.
One major difference with keywords between MSN and the others is the level of editorial control exerted. Recently I was managing a campaign with a particular ad group that had quite a few different ads. Some keywords were reported by MSN as being declined for certain ads, but approved for others. This is certainly a departure from my experiences with either AdWords or Panama, where if a keyword is declined for any reason, that’s that.
Reports
The reporting feature is also quite robust. One can run single use reports or create saved templates for performance, accounting or targeting. It allows for quite a number of specific report types from account overview down to specific ad or keyword performance. A report can be set to display information from hourly, daily, weekly, monthly or yearly. Additionally, filters can be set to customize reports to only display information you wish to view. Automated report scheduling is also an option if you wish to receive emails periodically, without having to fetch them personally. The format for these reports are limited. Currently downloading one gets you a zipped csv file. Hopefully they’ll expand that to allow options for other file formats.
Annoyances and Oddities
These are some of the gripes I have with Adcenter.
For some reason, they’ve incorporated the option to select campaign settings for either daily budgeting or monthly. While this isn’t really a bad thing, if you select daily budgeting, it requires you to set a monthly budget as well. In my experience, doing this seems to have little effect on the amount spent on a given day. For example, I had set a daily budget of $10.00 while selecting a monthly cap of $310.00 to reflect 31 days in a month. Day by day this particular campaign was spending regularly up to and in excess of $20.00 daily. No amount of fiddling seemed to change that behavior, so consequently the monthly budget was used up in half the time.
Normally, when optimizing ads and keywords, I like to pause poorly performing ads. Pausing them, rather than deleting them, allows me to retain the statistics for later viewing. This is handy because sometimes I do not wish to drop an ad or a keyword entirely, but just want to turn it off for a time, for whatever reason. Unfortunately, there is no option to pause either an ad or a specific keyword. There is no way short of deletion to stop displaying a specific ad and the only way to “pause” a keyword without deleting it, is to drop the max CPC to the absolute minimum.
There is a limitation on viewing data at campaign, ad group or even ad or keyword level. One can only view yesterday, this month, last month, this year, last year or entire time. I find it very strange that unlike anywhere else in this interface, you cannot specify a custom date range. To get around this, you have to go to reports and create and run a report specifying what start and end date you wish to view data for. This can be time consuming and is an obvious flaw that will hopefully be worked out soon.
The timeout is quite short. Many times while working in Adcenter, I’ve tabbed back after only several minutes, only to find the system has logged me out and I have to re-login and navigate back to what I’d been working on.
Summary
Overall, I’d have to say that MSN Adcenter is quite easy to use. Although MSN gets the least amount of traffic of the 3 engines, this isn’t entirely disadvantageous. One result of this disparity is that spend for a given campaign is generally significantly less than in either Adwords or Panama. Given that, when a conversion is achieved the difference in ROI is notable. This engine is certainly worth advertising on and with some improvements will be a fine choice.
Mike McDonald of WebProNews conducted a great, very informative interview with Live Webmaster Tool's Product Manager, Jeremiah Andrick.
Jeremiah discusses paid links, cloaking, the backlink function at Live Search and my special favorite - the incident where Adwords ads got indexed. Check it out, I think you will appreciate the frankness of Jeremiah's answers. You can certainly tell that Microsoft has finally figured out that Webmasters need to feel the love.
Special thanks to Barry Schwartz and the SE Round Table for recommending this video. I am glad I fit it into my busy day.
The search world appears to have renewed its interest in Microsoft's potential in the search industry since the company reportedly put in an offer to acquire Norwegian search company Fast Search for 1.23 billion.
So why all the hullaballoo? Well, Microsoft's Live Search has some good technology behind it but it has not exactly impressed those that want highly relevant search. The acquisition of FAST search technology, however, would provide Microsoft with an infusion of established processes light years more developed than its own.
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 7:34 PM
Years ago MSN stopped displaying Google AdWords ads in favor of their own PPC advertising platform, MSN Adcenter. So why, after all this time have they begun to display AdWords ads again?
On Tuesday Jon Henshaw blogged an interesting find: A search for the phrase "colorations paint" brought up the standard MSN Adcenter ads at the top, a typical #1 & #2 listing for DiscountSchoolSupply, and a rather interesting third and fourth result. Sitting at #3 for this phrase appears to be Google. The URL indexed a link generated for DiscountSchoolSupply's Google AdWords account!
Henshaw notes his assumption that this is most likely an unintentional bug, which I would have to agree with, but it could be a positive thing for those advertising with AdWords by purchasing the sponsored link, and finding your ad appearing in the natural SERPs, with the title www.Google.com. Many searchers may find your listing attractive and if your destination page is highly relevant to the search term this could generate some qualified attention and sales. Now that said, this is certainly not a common item, and I am sure it will be resolved quickly.
I don't recommend clicking on the paid ad as I am sure the people at DiscountSchoolSupply do not want the extra charges to their Google account - but at least they have the top 4 results in MSN for the time being.
Thanks for planetc1, for posting this article on Sphinn for me to find.
Wallstrip published a great newscast heralding, with some disbelief, that Microsoft's stocks had just reached a 5 year high. The video is worth the watch and I followed it up with my less than glowing opinion on the mega-corporation's current path.
So according to stocks Microsoft is doing quite well and it is apparent that part of that success is a result of their high sales of Vista. Unfortunately for Microsoft, I can say with relative certainty that a significant percentage of Vista sales were forced upon new PC buyers and many would switch back to XP if they had a chance. In fact Dell even switched back to offering XP products after they received a myriad of complaints that Vista-only PCs were becoming the norm.
Additionally, Computer World UK posted an interesting article that cited "most IT professionals are worried about Vista and that 44% have considered non-Windows operating systems, such as Linux and Macintosh, to avoid the Microsoft migration."
In short, it seems that a considerable portion of Microsoft's gains are from a product that sold well due to hype and forced use with new PCs. I don't know about you but that has reinforced my skepticisim over Microsoft's continued gains in the OS marketplace. In fact, I think the demand for a newbie-friendly Linux OS is getting stronger as many small business owners like myself tire of the costly upgrades from Microsoft; costly not just financially but from a stability standpoint. Is Microsoft Doomed to Complacency? Now I understand that comparing Microsoft's grip on the OS industry to the search industry is a long shot; Microsoft is the Google of the OS industry after all. However, stretch your imagination and compare where MSN was when it was arguably a significant player in search and where Microsoft's OS division is now. Why Microsoft lost search market share can be put quite simply... a lack of innovation. MSN lost its edge and fell into obscurity while relying on Windows to maintain its user base; nowadays Microsoft's share of search has faded to appalling levels. In fact, as the MarketingPilgrim blog noted brand is becoming more important and Microsoft's pride that Live Search's results are highly relevant is, frankly, outdated. Proudly announcing relevant search results is akin to a company saying they offer "professional services"... umm, yes I would hope so. Comparatively Microsoft is wildly insistent that its OS is the present and future of the PC, however, the simplicity and innovativeness of Apple and the out-of-the-box stability and low cost of Linux is eroding Microsoft's market share and in-turn its brand.
All-in-all, I have a hard time remembering any significant advance that Microsoft released before any other company. Doubtless there are many but the fact that I, an ardent computer geek, cannot think of something right away... well I think that speaks volumes. Microsoft needs to learn a few things from its competitors (like Google); empower your massive research and development department by allowing them to launch betas and innovate in the public forum! Without some innovation and some sense that Microsoft is something more than a follower the mega company will always seem to be one step behind the competition and that is going to do nothing good for its brand. In fact I think their brand will slowly rot away unless they show they deserve the continued respect they so often expect.
Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Round Table posted screenshots of Microsoft's Live Search Webmaster Portal in Beta. Head on over and check it out. So far nothing appears to be all that dissimilar to the other portals out there but it is still an interesting peek
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 2:03 PM
J.D. Power and Associated rated Dogpile with the highest rank in customer satisfaction among search engines for the second year in a row.
Based on 1,000 points, Dogpile earned a score of 818 this year, up 14 points from 2006. Google fell in second at 794, with Ask filling in the top 3 at 784 points.
Dogpile users report that they are particularly satisfied with the limits placed upon paid advertising within search results.
This study is in its fourth year and looks at overall consumer behavior, experience and satisfaction within a number of search functions.
While Dogpile has a long way to go in the major search engine race, it is nice to see an underdog (no pun intended) holding its own against the major search engines.
Last week I discussed the best tactics for achieving rankings in Yahoo, the web’s number 2 most popular search engine. Now it is time to pick on the third most used search property – MSN, which has 6.6% of the search market (src: Hitwise) and is currently found at www.live.com. MSN’s ranking algorithm has its own nuances which will be noted in this article but in many cases the rules of optimization may be the same as Yahoo’s in which case I will occasionally duplicate information from my “How to Optimize for Yahoo” article or source it for more information.
WEB SITE OPTIMIZATION Except for the following elements, optimizing for MSN is identical to optimizing for Yahoo.
Fresh Content is King: I suppose technically this is not an element of ‘optimization’, however, this article would not be worth its salt if I didn’t express how highly MSN regards fresh content. If your site is in a competitive marketplace and you are finding it difficult to get a leg up on your competitors in MSN then write original content in order to build up your site and reputation. MSN appears to elevate websites that regularly update their content and a blog is a great way to post this content for others to read and favour you with links. If you would like some information on how to get a blog up and running from start to finish then I suggest reading Blogs 101.
Themed structure: this topic is identical to that of my Yahoo article, however, it is vital enough to mention it again. Construct your website using a themed structure where core site topics (themes) have their own unique section of the website to themselves. When the search engine spiders index the content within this section they will be given absolute clarity as to what the section is about. For more information see the example within the Yahoo Optimization article.
Basic optimization principles hold true: take out your SEO basics handbook and follow the rules when optimizing for MSN and you have done the best you can. Specifically focus on inline links (links to pages within sentences) and the use of heading tags to fortify rankings at MSN.
Navigation: pages with text navigation which lends itself to simpler and more relevant indexing are performing well.
WEB SITE SUBMISSION Unlike Google and Yahoo, MSN does not yet have a fully operational Webmaster Central for webmasters to submit sitemaps and to acquire insight into their website profile on MSN; it is currently in private beta so it is not available yet. That said I feel that submitting a website sitemap is extremely important. Fortunately there are two known ways to get your sitemap submitted to MSN:
Option 1) The best method for submitting your sitemap is by adding a sitemap reference in your Robots.txt file using the following format:
Option 2) A back-door strategy can be used to submit your sitemap to MSN through the news aggregation service called Moreover. To submit your sitemap substitute the bolded text with your own information in the following URL: http://api.moreover.com/ping?u=http://www.xyzname.com/sitemap.xml
LINK BUILDING MSN places a great deal of weight on incoming links and does not appear to apply as many filters to the links that Google or Yahoo do. As a result, ethical or not, many link building strategies such as reciprocal link building and paid links appear to pay dividends.
It is also noteworthy that MSN’s spider is very active so any incoming links that you receive will often be spidered within a week. Furthermore, MSN’s link filtering systems are not as bogged down as the other search engines (less traffic perhaps?) so incoming links appear to affect rankings faster which tends to help when tweaking a campaign and measuring the value of links.
CONCLUSION As you can see there is little to report on the intricacies of optimizing for MSN because, quite frankly, MSN is fairly predictable and by the book; write good original content, optimize it well using the techniques outlined in the Yahoo optimization tutorial and ensure to submit your sitemap to MSN. If you combine those elements with a solid link building campaign then you are sure to move into a ranking where you can continue to tweak your optimization until you reach the top.
According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index Yahoo has edged out Google by 1% for customer satisfaction this year: Yahoo 79%, Google 78%.
The rating system the ACSI uses is complex and listed here and their source for data is noted here. Essentially their scoring focuses on: customer expectations, perceived quality, perceived value, customer complaints and customer loyalty.
See the chart below for more detail on the other search engines reviewed.
The following video is an excerpt from the 2007 Search Engine Strategies Keynote discussion between Danny Sullivan and Windows Live Chief, Steve Berkowitz. In this excerpt Steve Berkowitz explains that "it is not ever satisfactory not to be number one" in the search engine industry. He further explains that Microsoft's first goal is to reach critical mass from an advertising standpoint and how Microsoft's search platform will continue to evolve.
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 8:54 AM
A recent post at ZDNet shows a screen shot from a Google Maps search for “Microsoft” displaying an unexpected image. The image depicted the windows logo with a slash through it.
How did this happen? Apparently Google automatically associated this image with Microsoft's name using geographically targeted image processing. In this case a “Sara B” from Yelp.com had uploaded the image along with a review of the company. While likely unintentional, this could be a new form of “Google bombing” that could cause some serious problems.
The image has since been removed from the search, but one is left wondering where this may lead. If it is possible for Microsoft, what is stopping something like this from happening to other companies out there?
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 10:50 AM
There have been reports at search engine land and Search Engine Roundtable that MSN UK has been pre-filling their search box with "The Apprentice BBC". I went to uk.msn.com to see for myself and sure enough, there it was:
I am not sure how I feel about this form of advertising, or how large of an impact it would have on searches. And what happens if the BBC Apprentice site slips from the number one ranking spot? Is their top ranking also being influenced by this?
I do not see this technique catching on as it would likely just irritate searchers forcing MSN to pull the idea. I for one do not want search engines telling me what to search for, but I am curious to know what the BBC has paid for this.
The Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild is none too happy with Google's plan to indiscriminately scan, index, and allow the searching of millions of books from libraries the world over and Microsoft is capitalizing on this rare chink in Google's armor.
Copyrighters are claiming infringement because Google is making advertising revenue from the results of book searches in the Google Book Search system. Here are all of Google's arguments that I found:
Google is doing nothing wrong because they only offer snippets of books within the results; not the entire book.
Google's Senior Vice President of Corporate Development, David Drummond, says being in Book Search provides additional "exposure and in many cases more revenue for authors, publishers, and producers of content."
Google sees no difference between indexing books and indexing websites because they are both copyrighted and Google allows authors to opt-out of their search engine at any time.
Microsoft Capitalizes Microsoft's Associate General Counsel Thomas Rubin is publicly blasting Google for their flagrant abuse of copyright law in prepared remarks to be delivered to the Association of American Publishers. He claims that Google cannot be trusted and the only evidence that publishers need to look to is the current issues of copyright at Google Video and YouTube.
Microsoft is undoubtedly trying to benefit from publicly blasting Google as Microsoft is also making overtures to publishers while scanning and indexing books for their Live Search Books Publisher Program. In contrast to Google's opt-out approach, however, Microsoft is only adding older books that are no longer protected by copyright law or newer books that have been exclusively approved (opted-in) for indexing by their legal representatives. From what I can gather this has placed the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers more in favour of Microsoft. That said I am sure Google looks far more appealing if an agreement can be reached; after all, Microsoft Live's search traffic is insignificant in comparison to Google's. For now, however, both representative associations are in the long process of suing Google for copyright infringement. Ross's Take: Google Needs to Re-Examine Its Values I think the concept of indexing the world's libraries is phenomenal but it should be done respectfully using an opt-in process. It is pretentious and unlawful for Google to require the rightful owners of copyrighted books to take the time to opt-out of a process that clearly violates the rights they already went to great lengths to secure. To draw a parallel... would Google argue that anyone can mass email without the permission of the recipients under the argument that they were provided with a functional opt-out mechanism? I think not.
Furthermore, Google's argument that indexing content found on the web is same as indexing books is completely ridiculous. After all, many of the books that Google will index are not already online in scanned format so in essence they are now integrating content not originally intended for online use. That authors/publishers have not placed this content online must be respected and Google should require the approval of the authors or publishers before placing any of the scanned information live. I know this will slow down the whole process of indexing the world's knowledge but that will always be more appealing than sacrificing rights.
-- Is it just me or in this case does Google seem to have forgotten their popular mantra... "Don't Be Evil"? I hope Google replies and provides further insight into their position. I wonder where the other major search engines stand in this matter?
Another New Years has come and gone and over the past few weeks search industry professionals have been releasing their search market predictions for 2007. I have steered clear of reading them because it is time for me to write down StepForth’s predictions and the last thing I want to worry about is duplication. Without further adieu, here are the predictions my staff and I put together for 2007.
Section 1: The Movers and Shakers
Windows Live: will continue the uphill battle of branding their relatively new search platform; the confusion over whether Windows Live is a replacement for MSN contributed to their forbidding decline in market share in 2006. My staff and I firmly agree, however, that MSN/Windows Live will rebound and increase its market share slightly over pre-2006 statistics.
Yahoo!: We expect Yahoo to improve in 2007 due to the fresh perspectives of new staff (from the 2006 executive restructuring) and the incredible potential of this massive search network. Unfortunately, I read that Yahoo is comfortable with its current market share and has no illusions about ever being a market leader; hardly the kind of intentional goal setting that leads to results. Their unfortunate vision statement aside, I anticipate Yahoo will increase its global market share from the current 19% to 24%. Frankly, I am still dumbfounded that Yahoo has anything less than a 30% stake. I realize Google is the clear victor in the search engine wars but Yahoo definitely has the necessary weight to grab a better than 19% share.
Ask:2006 was a good year for Ask because they stuck to their guns and focused on what they were good at; answering questions. Ask has gained quite a loyal following over the past couple of years and I expect it will continue to do so as long as it maintains its focus; Ask’s push into local and mobile answers search was particularly well timed. I expect Ask will not lose any market share over 2007; in fact I would be surprised if they didn’t take a few more percentage points over the year.
Google: Google’s insatiable appetite for growth will have it pushing for more market share in Asia and Europe where new Google outposts have recently opened. In addition, I expect that its algorithms will be improved sometime in the 3rd quarter to further devalue the benefit of reciprocal links (see more in Section 2 under "Link Building"). Google will continue to improve its mobile services which will culminate in more aggressive promotion of searching “on the go” wherever you are in the world.
Baidu: I don’t consider this engine to be one of the major 4 search engines (yet) but it has grown so much over the past 2 years that it just felt right to add it. Who is Baidu? Baidu.com is China’s leading search engine and since its conception in 2000 by two young entrepreneurs, this company has experienced massive growth (i.e. their IPO in 2005 started at $27/share and is now sitting at $122/share); sound reminiscent of Google? In my opinion Baidu is not going to be another Google but it has potential to grab a noteworthy piece of the search market when it finally premieres in North America; still no word yet when this premiere might happen but I expect the first steps to begin late this year. Part of Baidu’s success stems from its simple and effective methods of searching for multimedia such as mp3’s and videos online in addition to standard searchable content.
Section 2: Search Engine Marketing Strategies
For added reading on this topic please see Scott Van Achte’s insightful article written in November 2006 titled "Future Evolution of Search."
Link Building: The industry of link building will take quite a hit this year as Google (among other SE’s) continues the process of weeding out unscrupulous linking techniques such as haphazard reciprocal link building and advanced link building directories (previously missed in other weedings). By no means will Google get a handle on all of the less desirable links but an onward push to cleansing rigged results based on false popularity will be noticed throughout the industry.
The future of link building will be more difficult but definitely more effective because one-way links (someone linking to you without need for reciprocation), be it through
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Y! MyWeb
Based on 1,000 points, Dogpile earned a score of 818 this year, up 14 points from 2006. Google fell in second at 794, with Ask filling in the top 3 at 784 points.
Thanks to 
