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Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Yahoo allows video embedding in Search Results

Written by Timothy Rule and published at 1:19 PM

Thursday, Yahoo announced a new Search Monkey feature that allows Flash video and documents to be embedded right on the search page. What does this do that’s out of the ordinary? It allows searchers to view embedded content without leaving the search results page they found it on.

To illustrate the difference, I’ll use an example similar to that in the Yahoo blog. We’ll compare the difference between Google and Yahoo.

Performing a Google search for hulu simpsons yields the following result:

Notice there is an image in the ad, but when the video is clicked, it opens to the site page for viewing away from the search results page.

The search in Yahoo for hulu simpsons yields these results:

It looks pretty similar except for there being a different video. When the video image in Yahoo is clicked on however, it opens the video right on that search results page. If the user views the video and decides it wasn’t what they were looking for, they can simply continue to scroll down through the remaining search results.

Search Monkey looks to be a very innovative means for site owners and developers to present highly customizable search results to their potential visitors.

Labels: Tim Rule, Yahoo

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This SEO News was posted by Timothy Rule @ 1:19 PM.

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Friday, February 13, 2009

You Tube yanks audio

Written by Timothy Rule and published at 11:17 AM

Last night I was looking through some of my favourite You Tube videos and stumbled across something of which I was completely unaware. You Tube is muting sound from a lot of user’s videos.

I am a huge Lord of the Rings buff and avidly seek related content on You Tube. One of my all-time favourite videos is called Namarie, a recitation of Galadriel’s lament. This is a poem taken from the Fellowship of the Ring book, recited in spoken Quenyan, an Elvish language created by J.R.R Tolkien. The original audio consisted of a reading by the person who posted the video, over a background sample of the Lothlorien track from the Fellowship of the Ring soundtrack.

This was one of the most hauntingly beautiful pieces I have ever seen on You Tube and I have watched it often. I say “was”, because as I found out last night, You Tube has completely ruined it by removing the audio.

According to the person who created and uploaded this, she wasn’t notified of this change and has no way of retrieving this even for her own personal collection.

I did some research to find out what this was all about and it didn’t take long. There were over a million results for a “WMG and You Tube” search, including quite a few of them with some pretty explicit commentary from angry users who have had their own videos or a lot of their favourites ruined.

This started back in December of last year with this official post from You Tube, which seems a little vague on what was to follow. In that post they mention the options available upon receipt of a takedown notification. However, many of the complaints I viewed were from people upset at the fact that they weren’t notified before or after this was done.

Perhaps they aren’t getting takedown notifications because, rather than actually taking the content down, You Tube is just chopping out the audio.

Upon looking into this further, I came upon a more detailed reason for all this…money. Warner Music Group wants more money from You Tube for users viewing videos that contain any portion of music copyrighted under any of their many labels.

One would think they’d like having the free advertising. Do they really think having their music removed from You Tube is going to generate more sales?

I find it difficult to believe that I can’t hear this video anymore because it contains a small part of the movie soundtrack, and yet I can watch the Lord of the Rings movies in their entirety on You Tube for free.

Ironically, it was this video that encouraged me to go out and buy a copy of the movie soundtrack, which is in fact owned by Reprise Records, a Warner owned label.

I checked out a lot of videos of many artists under WMG labels on You Tube and there are large numbers still unaffected by this. I suppose it’s a lengthy process to effectively neuter so much content.

In the long run, I think this will hurt both You Tube and WMG. You Tube for the poor treatment to their users and the end result of having a ton of useless content when this is all done. And now, rather than receiving “too little” WMG will now receive zero revenue from this media.

Personally, I tend to agree with the headline of this post. This whole thing is ludicrous and it’s too bad for WMG if the advent of technology is making them obsolete. Perhaps they should just accept the inevitable and fade away.

“Two thumbs down” to both Google-owned You Tube and the Warner Music Group on this one.

Labels: Google, Rants, Tim Rule, Video, YouTube

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This SEO News was posted by Timothy Rule @ 11:17 AM.

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Friday, November 21, 2008

Floogle

Written by Timothy Rule and published at 3:14 PM

A lot of people are unaware of Google.org, the philanthropic wing of Google. Since its inception, Google.org has been involved in a variety of initiatives covering such global issues as health and disease, climate change, education, poverty and alternative energy.

Their involvement includes grants for a wide variety of projects, encouraging employee involvement and use of their own innovative technologies to help make the world a better place.

While this program has its detractors, there are those who claim Google does this only to toot its own horn or to make money. While this may be true, Google does seem to do quite a bit more than most, if not any other corporation, to help improve the world we live in.

Last week I was reading about Google.org’s latest venture, Flu Trends, which I found to be a very interesting use of their search technology.

Basically, through coordination with experts in the field at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and using search data on specific “flu related terms” they have started to track overall patterns of flu infections throughout the US.

While there is some question as to how accurate using search terms is to determine how many people are actually sick in a given area, the results are surprisingly close to the data collected by the CDC. Also of interest is that this data was obtained up to 2 weeks more quickly.

The use of search trends is hardly new; Google has this incorporated into its keyword research tool to help track trends for marketing and keyword visibility purposes.

It also has Google Trends for viewing and comparing specific keyword search patterns graphically.

Google Insights for Search can also be used to obtain this sort of data categorically, by date range and across specified regions worldwide.

This provides a nice map interface that can be viewed from a world level right down to a state/regional view.

So, essentially, all Google has done with Flu Trends, is to take data anyone can get using their tools and focused it on one specific set of search terms and made it available for view on a site for everyone to see. There are some differences though.

In Flu Trends, you can click from state to state to compare and also you can see results from previous years charted in advance of the current year's
display progress.

The thing I find odd, is the geographical limitations they've imposed on the Flu Trends site. They could easily display the same type of information for countries other than just the US. Nor do I really understand why it's limited to state level. They could just as easily show flu trends by city.

Google can track these trends by geographical region because each search query is tagged with the searcher’s unique IP Address. Anyone can track the rough location using software or even web based applications. As an experiment I used the latitude and longitude values for our office IP address that I obtained here, pasted them in the decimal value fields on this site and a map location within about 9 blocks showed up.

Certainly not exact, but close enough to be able to track search queries at least by city, if not down to individual municipalities. Personally, if I was after this information, I would rather know if there was a big surge in my immediate area, rather than the whole state.

Maybe they don’t want to make users nervous about privacy issues, as seems to be implied in this interview with Elizabeth Landau, from CNN.com.

As Google has IP’s for all search queries, I can’t see the fuss about them knowing who searched for flu related terms, but that’s just me.

While this seems like a great idea, there are shortcomings with this sort of tool, for example:

1) People who are sick with the flu but don’t search.
2) Searchers not actually sick with the flu, just doing research for whatever reason.
3) Searchers looking up info out of concern for a friend or relative who is sick but in an entirely different area.

I’m sure this is just a first step as there’s much, much more that this could be used for, as we can see on the Global Health Watch site (incidentally powered by the Google Maps engine), the incidence of influenza in the US is not the only going health concern.

What else could they do?

Google is uniquely placed for these types of services; not only because they have the resources and the apparent desire, but because of exposure. A lot of people go to Google, not just for search, but for their mail service and a host of other integrated free services.

Given that, I starting wondering what else they could do to improve the accuracy and utility of this sort of thing.

One way I could imagine, would be to have some sort of direct user input - something like a Google suggest tool for self diagnosis. I can see how doctors and lawyers both would be horrified at what I just suggested, but I’m talking about a way to not only track patterns of health issues but also to better prepare the consumer who is ill for the next stage(s) of dealing with their issues. Obviously, this is not to provide a substitute for consulting a physician.

I know I tend to drag my heels about going to see a physician unless I’m bleeding to death, but by the time I get there I forget a lot of possibly important details that my GP might not be able to dredge up in our brief appointment.

I would love to have something like a logical, online questionnaire/checklist with some sort of flowchart type progression of questions based on my answers that I could fill in at my leisure. Even better, if I could then print off the results and hand it to my doctor when I got to my appointment. This would save their time and reduce the number of irrelevant questions that need to be asked.

Even if the tool only gathered symptomatic data, rather than conclusive diagnostics, it would still be valuable. For example: if in a short period of time an specific area shows a higher than normal set of specific symptoms, it could tip off health authorities or even people browsing the data that something out of the ordinary is taking place and they could track down that contaminated water supply, or previously unknown environment hazard or whatever. Likely this could enable problem identification and resolution much quicker than by normal means.

Another public service field that Google could provide is a plug for the huge gap in emergency notification.

Currently, disaster notification is kind of all over the place. There are all manner of solutions ranging from those that require people to have their TV or radio on right through to commercially available corporate notification and disaster recovery services, and anything and everything in between. One great model for updated alerts and information is GDACS, but that is geared towards keeping the international emergency response community notified and not designed to handle specific area notification to the average Joe.

Some sort of system that provides rapid, mass notification to subscribed users in affected areas could be right up Google’s alley. Imagine if this sort of system was in place a few years ago.

Picture this scenario:

You’re going to Phuket, Thailand for Christmas holidays in 2004. You do all the standard trip planning for medical insurance, booking, itinerary, etc. You go to Google Emergency Alerts and update your subscription to receive SMS text (mobile texting) and gmail emergency notifications for Thailand for the duration of your trip. Your vacation is wonderful and the beach is a dream. Suddenly, you receive a text message on your cell, warning of a possible Tsunami. You snatch up the kids and head for high ground immediately, warning everyone you pass by. Those critical moments, could mean the difference between life and death.

This could be used for more than just disaster notifications; subscription channels could be used for prescription drug alerts, food allergy alerts, all sorts of things beneficial to the safety and wellbeing of users.

I think Google is capable of great things and kudos to them for instituting Google.org in the first place. I could name a lot of other big corps that could sure use that kind of PR, but they never seem inclined to go that extra distance.

Labels: Google, Tim Rule

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This SEO News was posted by Timothy Rule @ 3:14 PM.

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Thursday, November 06, 2008

This Week at Google

Written by Timothy Rule and published at 4:31 PM

Well, this has certainly been a busy week at Google. One thing I can say for Google, they are very energetic and we’re never wanting for good writing material.

Yahoogle Deal Abandoned
Yahoo - Google

Right on the heels of revising the scope of the agreement between the two search giants, Google announced this Wednesday that the deal will not go forward. This came to pass after the US Department of Justice decided it would file an anti-trust suit if the agreement was implemented.

Many thought this would be a disastrous alliance and the effects it would have on the industry were very difficult to predict. We’ll never know, but I for one am glad we won’t have to find out.

Adsense Publishers Blocking Ad Display
Adsense

While searching around for article content, I came across this forum thread and it’s a real eye opener. Some advertisers are jamming in last minute political ad displays that are getting placement on completely irrelevant sites. While this isn’t exactly new, what most incenses site owners is the controversial, issue based advertisements that are not relevant and could offend large numbers of visitors to their sites. More information can be found in this article.

Google is aware of this and has posted on their blog the means to block unwanted ads, but apparently, the ads get displayed well before the AdSense publishers can review them to block.
This delay in the system has caused many site owners to turn off AdSense altogether as it is the only means of getting unsuitable ad display off immediately.

I am not really surprised by this, as I’ve always been pretty skeptical about how effective an automated system is at determining relevancy. The wide variety of sites that are complaining of this reinforces my opinion of general content display.

Regardless, the time lag involved is something Google really needs to take a look at.

Quality Score Change is a Go

Google has been doing a lot of work on overhauling how their ad ranking system works and last week they announced upcoming changes to QS. This has been made live as of Monday.

There were two major changes made:

1. They have adjusted their algorithm to take into account the effects of ad position on click through rate. Presumably this means if your ad is not always in a high position or on the first page, you will not be penalized for a low CTR (Click through rate).

2. They have also made an algorithm that allows promotion of lower bidding ads to the top slots on the basis of meeting a certain (unspecified) Quality Score threshold. The use of the term “threshold” implies that it may be a fixed score point i.e. 8/10 QS, but they haven’t made this clear.

I’ll be interested to see what effects these changes will have on existing campaigns.

Google says, “Keep in mind that these enhancements may cause changes to your ad position, spend, and performance.” “While we don't believe that any immediate changes are needed on your part, we encourage you, as always, to watch your key metrics and to make adjustments as appropriate.”

You betcha! I’m going to have to plow through all my accounts over the next little while and make sure to compensate for this.

Labels: Google, PPC, Tim Rule, Yahoo

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This SEO News was posted by Timothy Rule @ 4:31 PM.

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Friday, October 24, 2008

Google Separates Search Stats

Written by Timothy Rule and published at 3:24 PM

Good news for users of Google Adwords. Last week Google added the option to allow AdWords users to view separate statistics for Google search and the Google Search Partner Network (such as Aol.com and Ask.com). Prior to this, performance data was only listed for both networks combined.

I spent some time reading through various forum threads on this topic and I got the impression that I would be turning off the display for the search partner network; a lot of folks seem to be skeptical about the relative value of advertising on the partner network.

The first account I viewed using this feature showed zero conversions on the search partner’s network, while the conversion rate was pretty decent on the Google network. However, other accounts showed the search partner network actually out performing the Google network. From what I’ve seen so far, it can be worth advertising on both networks.

One thing that would be nice to see, now that we can view this information separately is the ability to turn off the display on either network. Currently, the only options are to have either both search networks turned off or to display the Google network only. It we were allowed to manage these in separate campaigns, we could optimize to make the most of this additional data.

After looking these stats on a number of older client accounts, I came to the conclusion that Google shows historical statistics data for the search partner network dating back to Dec 2006, so we can view nearly 2 years of accumulated data.

All things considered, this is a very nice addition to the already robust feature of the AdWords system. Kudos once again Google, for making my job easier.

Labels: Google, PPC, Tim Rule

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This SEO News was posted by Timothy Rule @ 3:24 PM.

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Friday, October 10, 2008

Major Player updates; Search Engine Turmoil

Written by Timothy Rule and published at 10:00 AM

Pause Button Pressed on Yahoogle

As the time for implementation of the Google/Yahoo agreement drew near, there was little doubt that some sort of action by the US Dept. of Justice would surface. It remains to be seen what direction the DOJ will go, but there is obviously something happening behind the scenes.

On Friday, both search engine giants announced a delay in moving this initiative forward. This move seems contrary to the previous position of Google's CEO Eric Schmidt, which indicated that the deal would proceed as planned.

What this delay portends is still anyone's guess. For now, the waiting game that kicked off in June will continue.

Will Yahoo Acquire AOL?

This has certainly been a busy and yet, unproductive year for Yahoo. Beginning with the failed takeover bid by Microsoft, followed by the looming uncertainty over the Google deal, one can only wonder what's next.

While talk of a partial acquisition by Yahoo of AOL services has been ongoing for some time, nothing concrete has come about. The consensus seemed to be that this was a move designed to increase Microsoft's offer for Yahoo, if not to thwart the takeover altogether. If that was the case, then it stopped making sense months ago.

Likely, Yahoo looks upon this potential acquisition as a way to expand both their content services and advertising revenue.

Despite indications of progress, details of these discussions seem as vague and uncertain as anything else involving Yahoo of late.

So far this year, we've seen Microhoo, Yahoogle and YAhOoL. I wonder if we'll see YAskhoo! next.

Perhaps we should start a betting pool, winner take all if guessing the correct date when (if) Yahoo will actually successfully conclude one of their negotiations this year.

Microsoft Search Incentives

While Google innovates and Yahoo spins around in circles, Microsoft adds an unusual approach to gaining additional search market share.

Beginning last spring with the launch of the Cash Back program, Microsoft introduced the notion of search advertising rebate incentives. This allows advertisers a means of paying for advertising on a Cost per Acquisition (CPA) basis and buyers some savings on purchases. If you are unfamiliar with this, Techcrunch did a great analysis of this feature. While many had doubts about this approach, it appears to be working.

search perks logo

Last week, Microsoft added to this type of service by releasing >SearchPerks!, another means of attracting traffic through a points-based reward system. While this is not a new concept, it certainly is unique in the search engine world.

Participating users can expect to receive rewards for redeeming saved up "tickets". There are many types of rewards, such as air miles, music downloads and more. This is a limited time offer and sign up for participation expires on Dec 31, 2008.

While it's too early to tell, some believe this idea does have potential.

No surprise to anyone, this feature is only available to Internet Explorer users. That leaves me out of this program. Like many people, not only do I find that browser (regardless which version) extremely annoying and frustrating to use, I resent Microsoft's constant efforts to restrict compatibility for so many services and 3rd party applications to their browser alone.

Labels: Google, Microsoft, Tim Rule, Yahoo

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This SEO News was posted by Timothy Rule @ 10:00 AM.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
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Thursday, September 11, 2008

Protecting Your Google AdWords Account from Fraud

Written by Timothy Rule and published at 12:04 PM

At some point, most people have had some sort of encounter with internet scams, viruses, spyware or other security problems. Hackers and scam artists are a

pervasive reality in today's world and making assumptions about security is unwise. A pay per click account makes an attractive target to a technically savvy criminal and gaining access to someone's account allows them to promote their schemes at someone else's expense.

Originally trained in Network Security, I have always taken such precautions very seriously and now even more so, since a recent fraudulent act affected one of our client's accounts.

Early this summer I arrived at the office on a Monday morning and proceeded to check my weekend mail. Two emails caught my attention right away. The first from AdWords, informing us that the client's credit card was declined and the second, from the client asking " What is the campaign "Qwasde" - Campaign #1"?

Upon reading that came the realization that this account had been hacked. This was further confirmed by a review of the account's recent activity. I discovered that on the previous Friday someone had created this new, innocuously named Campaign #1 with a daily budget of $7000. It contained only the single "Qwasde" ad group, with a single ad:

No doubt this was intended to phish for bank account details of anyone unwisely clicking on this ad.

This hacker was pretty slick. The whole scam was set up late in the day on Friday, when it was less likely to be detected. The domain the ad was directed at was registered in Australia to a "resident" of New Jersey. The website was put up on Friday and gone by Monday morning and in 2 days the ad generated $13,000 in click charges.

I immediately called Google and an investigation was initiated. They agreed this looked like fraudulent activity and promised to contact us with their investigation results within a few days.

Concerned about the means by which this person gained access, I checked my security for any indications of a breach. Finding nothing unusual in my own logs, I then contacted the client with instructions for locking down and cleaning his computer system, advising him to change any sensitive passwords in case his system was infected.

Google got back to us a couple of days later confirming the results and promising to refund the client's money. This was good news, as it appeared the fallout from this would be limited to a loss of only a week or so in the client's Google marketing initiative. In reality though, this had a far greater impact.

According to Google, the account needs to remain inactive until the refund process reaches completion. This took place nearly 2 months ago and still there is no sign of the refund. The account is still frozen. Google has no ETA on completion of this process; apparently their refund department has a huge backlog, due to the numerous email phishing scams that keep cropping up.

We still haven't figured out how the breach occurred. For my part, I think it's possible the client inadvertently became a victim of the phishing scam.

This scam is similar in some respects to the Paypal phishing scam of 2 years ago. It's pretty slick and can easily fool the uninformed. In fact, another of our clients with an AdWords account received an email some months ago asking me what to do with it and I had them forward a copy of the email to me. Thankfully, they hadn't clicked on the link, as it was indeed one of these scams.

Here is the email they had received:

-----Original Message-----

From: Google AdWords [mailto:adwords-noreply@google.com]
Sent: Sunday, May 25, 2008 4:49 PM

To: xxxxxxxxxxx

Subject: Google AdWords Account Verification Email

Dear Google AdWords customer!

In order to confirm your contact details, please click the link below:

Google AdWords Form

This should take you directly to the Google AdWords Form.

Thank you for choosing AdWords. We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available.

Sincerely,
The Google AdWords Team
------------------------

This particular scam differs from most emails of its kind because it looks like a legitimate AdWords support email. Also it lacks the spelling and grammatical errors common to spam n' scam emails.

There is a tell tale flaw though:

In the original email if you mouse over the link, you would see it is not actually pointing to google.com but rather to google.com.adwdl.org.uk, a completely different domain and unrelated to Google.

Other email variations report imminent account closure unless account details are verified. Even if you don't provide account details, just following the link can expose your system to malicious software.

Tips to Protect your account

Here are some guidelines to help keep your account secure. Bear in mind this is best practice for security of any sensitive financial, business or personal information, not just AdWords.

1. Google will NEVER ask for your account information by email; they won't even ask for your password on the phone. All they ever ask for whenever I phone them is the 10 digit account number. They don't need any other information to open up the account for viewing. Most legitimate enterprises don't need your login details, so if someone requests them, be very cautious.
If you receive notification about something you didn't initiate, likely this is about something not to your benefit. i.e.: receiving a confirmation of a password change when you didn't change your password, etc.
Always use security solutions and keep them up to date. Virus protection, firewall and spyware protection are vital for any system that connects to the internet.
Use strong passwords. Weak passwords, while easy to remember, are also very easy for password cracking programs. A strong password contains both alphabetical and numeric characters and utilizes capitalization, length and special characters. As well, stronger passwords don't use recognizable or easy to guess words.

Examples: lame password = your name, password (the actual word) or 123456; weak password = date of birth, newgirl22, ItsaSecret, p@$$word; strong password = tP%m34!pX
Use different passwords. If you use the same password because it's easier to remember, then everything you do becomes compromised if any forums or sites you use become breached. I have hundreds of logins and passwords, so I use RoboForm to securely store them. This type of program can also reduce vulnerability to keylogger type spyware.
Keep the number of account users with administrative access to the minimum necessary. The more people who have access, the greater the chance of an information leak.
Turning your computer off or disconnecting from the internet when you are done using it greatly reduces the chance of bad things happening unnoticed.
Don't send login or password information by insecure means such as email or instant messaging. Generally if I have to pass on that sort of info, I always do it by phone.
Monitor your account regularly; particularly at the end of the week and take random peeks on the weekends. It only takes a minute to log on and check for abnormal account activity.

The most important thing to remember is that there are people out there who will rob you blind if you leave yourself open, so a modicum of paranoia along with a bit of common sense will go a long way to saving yourself some real hassle.

by Tim Rule, PPC Specialist, StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

Labels: Google, PPC, Tim Rule

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This SEO News was posted by Timothy Rule @ 12:04 PM.

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View this Article Only: Protecting Your Google AdWords Account from Fraud

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Tuesday, July 15, 2008

To trust or not to trust...

Written by Timothy Rule and published at 1:38 PM

I've had people ask me why I dislike using Internet Explorer so much.

I suppose part of the reason for my distaste is the behaviour Microsoft has displayed in the past and present. Forcing the use of their software has never sat well with me, particularly when the software in question is always so full of holes. Internet Explorer is infamous for bugs, ranging from major security flaws to simple annoyances and everything in between.

I just don't trust software that has always had so many obvious as well as not so obvious problems.

The example below pretty much sums up my lack of faith and explains why I use an alternate browser whenever possible.

I like to install windows updates manually so I can see what I'm installing and only install what I think is absolutely necessary. Every time I do this, I get this same window popping up.

I can’t see a point to having a trusted sites list if I have to confirm this one every single time. It comes pre-installed on the Start Menu for Pete's sake!

Presumably the warning of the potential security risk here is that you are about to expose your system to more Microsoft software. :-D

Labels: Microsoft, Tim Rule

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This SEO News was posted by Timothy Rule @ 1:38 PM.

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Monday, July 14, 2008

Microsoft adCenter picks up the pace

Written by Timothy Rule and published at 7:33 AM

Last year, Microsoft adCenter introduced changes to their Ad ranking system for advertising in the US. This represented a shift towards a more Quality Based Ranking system, along the lines of what Google AdWords and Yahoo’s Panama already have in place.

It appears that this change is now expanding into more widespread coverage. On the adCenter blog on Wednesday, Microsoft announced the introduction of this system to the Canadian and UK markets.

While it may seem Microsoft is only playing “catch up” with this initiative, they have been busy making other improvements to their system as well.

Though still low on the totem pole for market share, Microsoft is forging ahead with a level of energy that would seem alien over in the Yahoo trenches. With projects such as the Excel addon, Desktop Editor and Analytics, Microsoft may give Google some real competition in the not too distant future.

A scan of the Yahoo blog yields a host of “how to” and “tips and tricks” posts, but nothing particularly significant in the way of badly needed innovation.

In fact the last significant improvement Yahoo has implemented was the change to minimum bids. While that has been handy for getting alerts when minimum bids are about to become too low, it’s not been the sort of improvement that painfully awkward interface really needs.

There is speculation that Microsoft is overtaking Yahoo’s position for paid traffic as well.

While I don’t know if this is indicative of anything, I have noticed a recent decrease in the number of impressions in our own Yahoo accounts. Unfortunately, the bid prices have not decreased as yet.

Labels: MSN, PPC, Tim Rule

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This SEO News was posted by Timothy Rule @ 7:33 AM.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
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Tuesday, July 01, 2008

Increasing Conversions with AdWords Demographics

Written by Timothy Rule and published at 4:42 PM

Users running a PPC Campaign in the Google AdWords platform are given the choice of displaying ads on the Google Search Network and/or on the Content Network. I have never been a big fan of advertising on Content Networks, as I find the automated matching process to be less than ideal. I can generally browse the net and quickly find ads that are irrelevant to the sites they are displayed on. This can give one a healthy dose of skepticism.

While advertising on Content doesn’t generally cost a great deal, we have never seen much in the way of results. By and large we do Search Network only, however recently I have had to re-assess that view.

Back in March of this year, Google AdWords released a tool for Demographic bidding from beta into mainstream use. This allows advertisers to specify demographics for age and gender, to filter out unwanted sites. This tool is for use with the Content Network only. I was skeptical as to the value and accuracy of this tool and had not tried it out until just last week.

One of the AdWords campaigns we manage was having some difficulties in an extremely competitive market. Costs were remarkably high, paying $10+ per click on Search Network keywords in order to achieve decent ad positioning. While making some headway towards improving the conversion rate, it was taking too long to get results.

This campaign was a slow starter and had difficulty getting impressions from the beginning. I had tried displaying on Content earlier on in the campaign in a bid to generate more traffic, with predictably poor results. Last week we decided to try this again, this time using the demographic bidding tool to narrow the focus on a more specific audience.

The results were astonishing.

In the first 2 days, we had more conversions from Content than from Search, at a fraction of the cost. I thought this might be a fluke, but we continue to see conversions from that source.

I decided to try this on a campaign for a new client. The first conversion was from Content within a few hours of campaign launch. Needless to say I am testing this out on any existing client accounts that can be targeted in this manner.

For anyone interested in trying this, it can be found on the lower right of the campaign settings page within AdWords.

Here’s a peek at what it looks like:

You can also specify age groups, as this sample shot shows

In this particular case, we have set a higher bid percentage offering for display on sites that would be viewed by women in the 25-34 age range, which is the primary demographic target for this campaign.

Oddly enough, the table shows only impressions. There’s a considerable amount of data from this particular campaign that’s not showing here. There are quite a number of clicks and conversions for the time period this purports to display yet the numbers don’t show. Hopefully it’s just a glitch.

On this page a third image is displayed showing overlapping bid totals for gender and age. (See example on left.)

The difference in stats between the two networks is quite significant. As you can see in this ad group example, the Content cost per click is significantly lower than that of Search.

When the demographic bidding feature is implemented, reports can also be generated in the AdWords reporting tool.

Overall, I like how this is shaping up. It’s nice to find inexpensive new ways to drive more customers to clients.

One thing Google excels at is constant innovation. With the announcement of a beta utility called Ad Planner, more features are in the works for assisting advertisers with Content Marketing. Hopefully we’ll all get to see more of this great stuff in the near future.

Labels: Google, PPC, Tim Rule

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Monday, June 30, 2008

Google AdWords PPA?

Written by Timothy Rule and published at 11:48 AM

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.

Labels: Google, PPC, Tim Rule

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Monday, June 23, 2008

Yahoogle?

Written by Timothy Rule and published at 8:32 AM

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.

Labels: Google, PPC, Tim Rule, Yahoo

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Thursday, May 22, 2008

PPC Management - A User's Review of Google AdWords

Written by Timothy Rule and published at 11:15 PM

This is the third in a series of articles intended to convey my personal impressions of managing PPC through Google AdWords, Yahoo Panama and MSN Adcenter. If you missed the earlier posts, you can find them here: Part 1 - A User's Review of MSN adCenter; Part 2 - A User's Review of Yahoo Search Marketing

Google is still by far the most popular of the 3 engines and therefore the AdWords Pay-Per-Click management system is the most utilized. As a result, AdWords is the most developed of the 3 systems.

Google Adwords Logo

If there is one thing I can say about Google it is that they are constantly coming out with new features. As there are a great many tools to cover, I have decided to leave off any sort of in depth look at them in this post. I will however, be writing a follow up looking exclusively at some additional features, particularly my personal favourite, which is AdWords Editor.

One important thing to note when first setting up a Google AdWords account, is the account type you select. The Starter Edition is very simple to use, but at a cost of being very limited in utility. If you select the Starter Edition, you can upgrade at any time to the much more robust Standard Edition. If however, you initially select or upgrade to the Standard Edition, you cannot revert to the Starter version. This generally should not be an issue unless you find the Standard issue too involved.

MCC

When I log in to AdWords, it’s generally into the MCC (My Client Center). This is a master account management shell that allows individual client accounts to be easily linked and navigated through from a single login. This isn't for an advertiser that simply wants to promote their products or services through a single account. For management of multiple accounts, using this provides a number of advantages:

You can jump from account to account using the top client list drop down or via the more detailed dashboard list.

It allows for a wide variety of customizable reports for any or all client accounts, including scheduling, creation of templates and emailing.

You can easily view alerts from any linked accounts.

You can create customizable templates for keyword or site targeted campaigns that can be used from any linked account. I find this extremely useful, as my initial setup for a lot of new campaigns is very similar and this saves time getting a basic structure up.

If you are AdWords Certified, the Pro Center tab allows access to your status page, access to various marketing tools as well as a link to your Promotional credits, which can be applied to any linked accounts, within the first 2 weeks of account creation.

Using the MCC is pretty straightforward and it allows for individual login information. This makes it simple for the client as well. They can log in and view their account details separately and even unlink their account from the MCC if they decide to move on their own or with another PPC management company.

Interface

Logging into a single account brings you to the account snapshot tab under the Campaign Management Section. In addition, there are 3 more top level tabs; these being Reports, Analytics and My Account. I’ll describe the features contained within these briefly.

A picture of a mouse being clicked on a desktop of money

A picture of a mouse being clicked on a desktop of money

Campaign Management

This section contains most of the “meat and potatoes” of what you’ll use to set up and run the account.

Account Snapshot – This provides an overview of basic information at a glance. It includes alerts, account status, announcements and a quick reference chart showing campaign performance. There is also an option at the bottom to make the Campaign Summary tab your start up page.

Campaign Summary – This is where most of the work is done. All of your campaigns are displayed with basic campaign level performance data. This page is where you can create new campaigns and is the entry point into the ad groups and the details of existing campaigns. I won’t go into detail as the process and the interface are pretty intuitive. I would like to say however, that the overall usability in this section of the interface is first rate. The ability to view data by date range up to and including the current day is something only Google provides easily.

Tools – This section contains a variety of tools to assist in optimization, analysis and a link to download the AdWords Editor software.

Template Library – This section only shows up in accounts linked to an MCC account. Campaign templates from the MCC will only be available here for use if they have been created and published from the MCC Template.

Conversion Tracking – In this section you can set up conversion tracking for the account. Multiple types can be set up for tracking leads, sign ups, views of a particular page or ecommerce purchases. When setting up tracking, Google will install a small bit of text with a feedback submission text snippet. The background colour for this is customizable, so it is a good idea to know what the page (where this code will be placed) looks like, to avoid a contrasting display.

Once the tracking type is set up and saved, you will have access to your conversion tracking code snippet, along with instructions on placement.

Website Optimizer – This is one of the features included in the Tools section. I guess by adding it prominently here as well means Google really, really wants this to be used. I will go into more detail on this feature in my next post.

Reports

In this section, you can create, view or export fully customizable reports. These can be set up for automatic scheduling and configured to email to multiple addresses.

Reports can be created for a variety of information, such as: Keyword, AD, URL, Ad Group, Campaign, Account, Search Query and Placement Performance.

They can be downloaded in either CSV, CSV (Excel), TSV formats. Alternatively, they can be exported as a Google spreadsheet, although I have yet to find any advantage to using a Google spreadsheet.

This interface will save your 15 most recent reports, although oddly enough there is a drop down to allow viewing of the last 100 reports, which still only shows the last 15 when selected. You can also create templates to save time with creation of similar types. There appears to be no restriction on the number of templates that can be created and saved.

Analytics

This section allows you to link your AdWords account to a Google Analytics account. Essentially, Google Analytics is the free, web-based version of the server-side Google Urchin program.
This service can provide very useful metrics for determining traffic patterns, user behaviour and site or campaign performance. I plan on going into more detail on this service in a future post.

There are a few things to remember when linking these:

Only one AdWords account can be linked to a specific Analytics account. If you are working from within the MCC shell account, log out and login into the client account you wish to link. If you have 2 separate AdWords accounts, for best results, make a separate Google Analytics account for each, not just 2 different site profiles in one Analytics account.

Ensure you enable auto-tagging for the most accurate results.

For ease of disseminating PPC data, create a separate profile within your Analytics account specifically for AdWords information only.

Remember to correctly install the tracking code snippet on all pages of your site for the best possible coverage.

If this is set up incorrectly, you will need to make a request to Google support to have the account unlinked.

Note: When you set up the Analytics account, you are provided with a Javascript tracking code snippet. When you get to this stage, you’ll notice the code section has 2 tabs, one for legacy code (which you must use if you have Google Urchin installed on your web server) and the second is the newer code. Both codes work for Analytics, but if you have Urchin you must specifically use that code.

My Account

This section includes tabs containing information on editing for account settings, user access management and billing preferences.

Noteworthy is the one for viewing and downloading a billing summary. This summary is quite detailed, showing click charges day by day, credit adjustments applied for invalid clicks and invoicing/payment information.

Learning resources

Of the 3 engines, AdWords has by far the best materials available for learning how to use their system. The AdWords Learning Center provides detailed learning modules in both video and text format and has links for quizzes on most modules to test your retention.

If you are planning on taking the Google certification exam, prepare to spend a fair amount of time at the learning center. You will likely need it if you do not want to waste the $50 exam fee.

The help section within AdWords itself is also fairly useful and easier to navigate than most.

Support

Like the majority of other client support systems, you seem to get good and not so good support depending on how busy they are; it is the luck of the draw. Overall I would say that the response time to emails is generally pretty slow. I realize they are likely pretty busy all the time, but replies can often take days.

One tip I recommend to save time, and this is actually for any customer support resolution not just Google, is to make sure you define the exact nature of your request concisely and in the very first sentence of your email.

Every support system has its share of reps that skim the first line or 2 and fire off a cut and paste standard response to what they think your issue is and Google is no exception. Unfortunately, this quite often turns out to be completely irrelevant to your request and if you have waited 4 days to get a reply, that is a fair chunk of wasted time.

Google does not display their phone number anywhere. However, it is possible to get the support number if you request it from them, but even then their automated phone system is a bit of a maze to navigate through.

They do have one unique feature that I heartily approve of and that is the live chat system. You can access this through a link found in the Help section or through a somewhat more convoluted path via the “Contact Us” tab. Look for one of the images as displayed below and click on it to start an IM session with a support specialist.

While the live chat is certainly better than email, it is not very user friendly. A word wrap feature would go a long way, as it displays each message on one line. The window cannot be resized and you have to horizontally scroll through the entire length of each message.

Annoyances and Oddities

These are some of the gripes I have with AdWords.

Marginally annoying is the use of 2 separate fields for each Ad description line in the Ad creation process. Trying to fit in a useful description into 2 separate fields with a maximum of 35 characters in each can be awkward. In Yahoo and MSN you just plunk in the complete description and it will auto fit, unless you have too many characters of course. Still it is easier to adjust one big description than the 2 separate lines.

I’m not particularly impressed by the information displayed when looking up keyword status and quality score. Some of the explanations range from poorly worded and confusing to absolutely useless:

Although I know the reason why I got this one for that particular key phrase, the explanation seems contradictory.

This one’s a charm:

This is not even remotely about a similar range of issues. Now if the system identifies a problem and disallows the use of a word, surely the specific reason for the problem could be isolated and reported. This seems pretty sloppy Google.

I have had issues at times where very similar keywords in the ad group for the same amount of time, at the same max bid and similar levels of competition have 2 different quality scores. This in and of itself should not be unusual, however the more relevant keyword receives the lower score. In these instances the lower scoring keyword is what I would consider more relevant as it is the exact keyword used in both the ad and on the landing page. While close but not exact, the higher scoring keyword receives an ok score, even though it is not in the ad or on the landing page as such. This makes me question sometimes how relevant relevancy is :)

AdWords seems to have a built in governor, designed to not display ads if keyword bids are high and the daily budget is insufficient to sustain more than a few clicks. I was running a campaign with a particularly competitive keyword set and was getting little to no impressions. My colleague suggested that perhaps the budget was a problem, so I tested this by increasing the daily budget by a factor of 10. Almost immediately the number of impressions increased to the point that there was no doubt this was what had been blocking ad display.

If the budget is too low for more than a few clicks, Google should not arbitrarily decide to not show ads. Instead, the ads should be displayed until the budget is depleted, at which time ad display should cease. I would have thought this an anomaly; except that it happened on two separate accounts we were running for the same client.

Another thing that seems an unnecessary restriction, is limiting the use of the same keywords within the same account. Recently, we queried Google support about using the same keyword set for a client that has the same services, but in different and specific geographic locations. We were told, regardless of the difference in geo targeting we could not use the same keywords in the same account. This seems ridiculous to me. I had a client wanting to advertise a franchise in a number of different cities.

In this case it would make sense to use the same set of keywords, but with a separate campaign for each location, so ad copy could be tailored specifically to the area. I cannot see a disadvantage to searchers for allowing this. I can see, however, additional cost to the client if this is not allowed, both in the relatively minor fees for setting up additional accounts and in the amount of time it takes to set up and monitor these accounts.

This rant is not specific to Google alone, but I thought I would add it anyway. One thing I do a lot of is viewing data by date range; particularly when running forensics on a new client’s pre-existing account. I can view campaign performance from years ago and get lots of historical data on everything… except for the budget and the bids. Regardless of what year, month or day I am looking at, the budget and the assigned max bid reflect the current settings only. I guess it is because of the dynamic nature of the quality score and competition for the keywords that makes this difficult, but it is data I wish I could view.

There is also no ability to filter out newer campaigns, or ad groups, etc. when looking at older campaigns. Recently I was sifting through an account with a large number of campaigns that had been running for years. I wanted to get an overview of everything that had transpired with this over time and it made it that much more time consuming with all the clutter from additional ad groups and campaigns that did not even exist during the date ranges I was viewing.

Summary

Overall, I would have to say that Google AdWords is still the cream of the crop. It is still the provider for the largest share of traffic and they continue to improve its usability. The only big downside to this is there is a lot more competition in Google than in the smaller engines.

AdWords is also the only one to provide offline editing software, which means that they continue to be number one in my book at least until the others can get their act together on that score.

by Tim Rule, PPC Specialist, StepForth Web Marketing Inc.
Celebrating over 10 years of Web Marketing Excellence

Labels: Analytics, Google, PPC, Tim Rule

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Monday, April 21, 2008

PPC Management – Part 2 - A User's Review of Yahoo

Written by Timothy Rule and published at 2:22 PM

This is the second in a series of articles intended to convey my personal impressions of managing PPC through Google Adwords, Yahoo Panama and MSN Adcenter.

If you missed part one, you can view it here. Today I will be covering Yahoo’s Panama. Of the three, this is my least favoured, so I’m wearing my Yahoo Search Marketing ball cap today, to remind myself not to allow too much vitriol to slip into the article.

Interface

Logging into a Yahoo account brings you to the Dashboard. This is an overview page containing basic account information, along with any alerts. Also on this page is a drop down menu allowing you to shift to different accounts under your master account. If you are advertising in multiple countries this is useful for easier access without requiring multiple logins, though these accounts can only be linked by Yahoo support personnel.

The dashboard also contains a table which allows you to view either top performing campaigns, ad groups or keywords at a glance. The nifty thing with this table is it allows you to view at a glance items you have set up on the watch list. This is useful for quickly viewing items of concern and allows you to select from a drop down menu, watched campaigns, ad groups and keywords.

One of the things I like about Panama is the use of colour to highlight various features. Particularly when I’m creating new campaigns or ads, these buttons stand out very well. Also, the capability of different colour fonts and sectional backgrounds eases the look of pages that would otherwise appear cluttered with all sorts of information.

The dashboard is the first of 4 tabs, the others being Campaigns, Reports and Administration.

Campaign

The Campaign tab contains 5 links to navigate back and forth:

Campaign: A table showing all the account campaigns and basic performance information for each.

Ad Groups: Shows basic performance data for all ad groups, listing also which campaign each ad group belongs to.

Keywords: A table showing all the keywords in the account with basic data and lists which campaign and which ad group each belongs to (very handy feature this).

Editorial Status: contains status listing of pending, declined and removed ads and keywords.

Search: Allows search for campaigns, ad groups, keywords and ads. I am not sure why this page exists as essentially the same function is available on each of the other pages.

One thing to note, with exception of the search page, all of the above can be viewed for specific date ranges using a fairly robust date range selection system.

Reports

Reports can be saved in several different formats. Performance reports can be saved in CSV for Excel, CSV, TSV and XML, while financial reports can be saved as either PDF or TXT. Reports can be set up for either the campaign, ad group or keyword level to view overall performance data. There are also optional views for geographic location, daily spending and URL performance. There is an option to use saved templates, but it is limited to 5 saved configurations.

Administration

Under the administration page, you can find the account details and edit billing and budgetary options, set up alerts, change tactics, set up different account users and assign permissions. You can also choose up to 250 domains to block placing content ads on.

The Tactics selection includes the ability to turn on or off either Sponsored Search or Content Match, set match type to advanced or standard and add keyword exclusions. This is kind of an odd spot to put these; one would normally expect to see this in campaign level settings, but it seems Panama is only capable of this at the account level. A definite minus for flexibility.

There is also a link for analytics (where you can set up conversion tracking) and one for tracking URL’s. The first time setting up conversion tracking, I found the interface to be quite confusing, but it was just the choice of labeling that threw me off. You must ensure “Conversion Only Analytics” and “Analytics are enabled” are both activated in order to have the conversion tracking function.

Campaign Setup

Setting up is an 8 step process.

First thing is naming the campaign and setting up geo-targeting. You can select Entire Market or specify by region or specific city/area. There are some pitfalls to watch out for here. If you haven’t read my previous article on this you can find it here.

The second step is creating an initial ad group and defining tactics.

Now it is time to input your keywords. You can get suggested keywords at this point, have this tool scan a URL for suggestions or input your own list. Excluded (negative) keywords may also be input here.

Next step is to set the ad group default maximum bids for sponsored search and/or content match. One thing I really like about this stage is a side graph that shows estimates for average position, number of impressions and clicks, average CPC (cost per click) and the percentage share of available clicks. This graph updates to changes in the set bid, so is useful for gauging where to set your max.

The next step is writing the ad itself. Two things to watch out for here; one is the long descriptions and the other, the display URL. Yahoo does not allow long descriptions and has not for quite some time, beyond me why they have not taken it out of the set up process. The display URL input box is hidden and you need to click the little bullet arrow to view. It really does not save much space doing that, so I have no idea why it is designed like that.

After this stage is review, which takes you back to the second step and you can edit any errors along the way, or you can just choose to move to stage 7…

Which is the budgeting of the campaign and setting up a display schedule if necessary. There is a display estimates feature that allows you to view monthly clicks and impressions for varying schedules.

The last step is reviewing and activating your campaign.

Learning Resources and Certification

A while back I studied for and passed my certification examination to become a YSM Ambassador for StepForth Web Marketing. Having gone through this process prior to this with Google AdWords, I was somewhat dismayed at the learning resources available for using this interface. Whereas AdWords has a comprehensive learning center with video and text modules complete with relevant quizzes for each, Yahoo only offers a very brief, scant slideshow with no quizzes. Most of my learning had to be done the hard way, meandering through their help sections.

The overall difference in quality and difficulty between AdWords and Panama exams was pretty obvious. But at least Yahoo allows professional accreditation, unlike MSN, whose recently implemented program is only available for US residents.

Annoyances and Oddities

These are some of the gripes I have with Panama I have not covered in previous articles. I will try not to foam at the mouth too much.

As with MSN Adcenter, the timeout seems much too short. While writing this article I was using an existing account to view different sections of the interface. I had to re-log into the account dozens of times. I would write a few sentences, go back to look at something and more often than not I would find myself logged out.

Some of the labels and wording are not ideally descriptive. One example I mentioned earlier has to do with conversion tracking. Another instance regards ad display rate. In AdWords, you can adjust ads so better performing ads get more exposure. There did not seem to be a feature in Panama, until I clicked on the “optimize ads” button. I thought this was some sort of tool to suggest ad changes but after reading the lengthy description I realized it is for displaying the “best” ad.

The campaign “Tune up” tool is of questionable value. I ran a test on this and the recommendations given were pretty doubtful. Basically, the tool recommended I up the daily budget by 350%, jack up the keyword max bids (in some cases quite dramatically) and change some match types. The estimated rewards for providing Yahoo with this additional spend were a 2% percent improvement in CTR (click through rate), a 20% increase in clicks and no estimation on conversion changes. All this with only a 4% increase in monthly cost. Regardless of any of the other estimations, I cannot equate a 350% increase in daily spend equaling a 4% increase in estimated spend.

Setting up campaigns, especially ones with lots of ad copy, is laborious and time consuming. There is no option for uploading work or any tools to make this a smoother process. It is either do it from scratch or a lengthy cut and paste session from a spreadsheet. To give an example, I recently set up account in all 3 engines. It took roughly a half hour to get everything set up with the AdWords Editor tool and uploaded. Then having saved the campaign information in CSV format from the AdWords Editor, I uploaded the file into MSN Adcenter, set up the bidding and activated the campaign. This took all of about 10 minutes. Finally, setting up the same campaign in Yahoo, took over 3 tedious hours of copying and pasting.

I mentioned the “hidden” display URL box when writing ads which is annoying when first setting up. If you are creating new ads however, even in an entirely new campaign in an existing account, by default the original display URL is set in there for every new ad in the account. So if you are using a different domain, you have to ensure you open up the hidden entry box and change it for each ad. There is a way around this, but it is obscurely set in Administration under the account set up page.

Also, if you are modifying ads, your modifications will not show until the changes have been approved, which can take several days. By this I mean you cannot even see the changes you have made until the ads have been approved. (This caused me quite a bit of grief recently, as I was required to do a massive overhaul when a client renamed all the URL’s on their site - it was very annoying to be unable to double check my changes upon completion.)

My last and biggest beef with Yahoo is the quality of their support. I have worked with first tier support in the past and I know the drill. The incidence of skimming the first line or so of a support request and firing back a template response which generally has nothing to do with the context of the support request seems to be higher than most here.

My perception of the quality of first tier staff training diminishes with each successive phone call. When trying to figure out the problem which led to the discovery of certain geo-targeting issues, we went through quite a few emails and phone calls before finding someone with an adequate grasp of their system to understand what was wrong.

In another case, a support saga of epic proportions, I received 5 successively different, nonsensical explanations, none of which addressed my actual question. Sensing the circular pattern of this, I struggled to get direct contact up-tier. Incredibly, one rep actually told me editors aren’t allowed phones, to keep them impartial. When I finally got put through to an editor, I was initially told more of the same, but upon realizing I wasn’t buying it, he simply went ahead and fixed the problem. Quite an ordeal and a completely unnecessary waste of time.

While it is obvious some of the complaints I have about the design of this system are fairly trivial, these little problems can add up to a serious, unnecessary increase in the amount of time required to work with this interface, particularly in large campaigns. It is my hope that Yahoo can expend a little more effort to improve Panama’s usability.

Summary

Over the course of writing this article, I realized there are quite a few things I do like about this interface. If they made it a little easier to work with and especially if they improve their customer support, I would have no qualms about using this interface.

by Tim Rule, PPC Specialist, StepForth Web Marketing Inc.
Celebrating Over 10 Years of Web Marketing Excellence

Labels: PPC, Tim Rule, Yahoo

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Wednesday, April 02, 2008

PPC Management - A User's Review of MSN

Written by Timothy Rule and published at 10:32 PM

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. Microsoft AdCenter logo

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.

Labels: MSN, PPC, Tim Rule

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This SEO News was posted by Timothy Rule @ 10:32 PM.

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Friday, March 14, 2008

What is PPC?

Written by Timothy Rule and published at 1:41 PM

PPC (Pay-per-click advertising) has been around for a while now and many site owners have either experimented with, or have at least heard of the marketing platform but surprisingly, there are still a large number of potential advertisers who have had no exposure to the world of PPC.

After fielding questions from new clients as well as our newest sales representative, I have decided to write an article to explain a few of the basics of what PPC is, some pro's and cons and provide some insight into how it works.

PPC advertising is a means to let businesses advertise their products or services online, within search results or on other websites participating in an advertising network. The advertiser pays only when a potential customer clicks their ad and follows it to their site. The advertiser competes on ad display and positioning by bidding on relevant search terms.

Pro’s

Matches consumer specified search terms for something they are already interested in researching/purchasing, with the advertiser providing what they are looking for.

A well managed campaign allows consumer behavior to be monitored to assist in adjusting the effectiveness of the campaign while it’s running.

In some cases, particularly ecommerce sites, ROI can be tracked very accurately.

Advertiser pays only when potential customers interact with their ad.

Cons

Ad copy is very limited in size which makes it difficult to “shoehorn” in a lot of information to attract customers.

Cost per click is dynamic not fixed; rates can depend on a number of different factors. Potential overspend is offset easily by setting a budgetary cap.

PPC can be susceptible to abuse, such as click fraud. However, there are methods employed by search engines to detect much of this. Additionally, aftermarket analytics solutions such as ClickTracks, can also be of significant help in narrowing down possible click fraud and generate a report for advertisers to send to the appropriate search engine.

PPC differs from more traditional forms of advertising in that it displays ads to those who are actively looking, rather than merely “display and pray” to a demographic. Also, the ability to gather information and adjust an advertising campaign at any given time makes it a more flexible alternative to broadcast or printed media.

How PPC Works

At its simplest level, PPC works as an auction style "bid for position" system. This system has evolved over the years to take keywords, ad copy and even destination page content into consideration when determining the order of the paid listings.

It is pretty easy to get an ad live in front of searchers with 4 easy steps. 1. Choose your destination page 2. Pick your keywords 3. Write your ads 4. Set your bids. While this will allow you to get your ads live, in order to be successful (unless you are incredibly lucky) more research is required here, but these are the basics.

While there are many important aspects to setting up and maintaining a successful PPC campaign, three very important things to focus on are keywords, ad copy and bidding strategy. Here are a few of the major points to remember on each of these categories.

Keywords

As a rule, using keywords most relevant to the content on your site’s landing page(s) will net the most qualified traffic and result in better positioning within a search engine for reduced cost.

Keywords that are very general will usually result in greatly increased cost by displaying ads to searchers that are unlikely to follow through to purchase.

One technique often overlooked is the use of negative keywords to filter out unwanted traffic. For example, using the word “free” as a negative keyword would block out any searches that include the word “free”. If you are not offering free products or services you would definitely not want ads displayed to searchers using that term. This can also be a very effective optimization technique to enable the use of keywords that are too general otherwise.

Using “long tail” keywords. Keywords that are highly relevant but not often searched for can be a very inexpensive means of boosting niche traffic.

Ad Copy

Ads should first and foremost be designed to get the searchers attention through relevance and a little creative writing.

Testing different ads against each other is the best way to optimize the effectiveness of an ad group.

Whenever possible, employing keywords in the ad text is best practice. It can be difficult to do this while keeping the ads appealing to searchers, but it will increase the quality of the ad to the search provider and will generally result in better positioning at reduced costs.

The ad destination must be a working link to a landing page relevant to the user’s search. Consequences of not following this guideline range from greatly increased cost per click to having ad service declined outright by the search engines.

Bidding Strategy

Rather than arbitrarily setting out bids based on estimations, best practice is to start low and spend a bit of time daily adjusting upwards until reaching optimal bids.

In some cases, particularly when bidding on very competitive keywords, it’s not always the best approach to vie for the number 1 position. Avoid getting locked into a bidding war over the top positions.

PPC is a very direct method of advertising which, when implemented properly, can generate a stream of targeted traffic to your website almost immediately. While PPC may not be cost effective for all target phrases in all industries, proper keyword selection and campaign management can help attract qualified visitors and generate conversions at a reasonable price.

Labels: PPC, Tim Rule

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Monday, January 28, 2008

Geo-Targeting Headaches with Yahoo Search Marketing

Written by Timothy Rule and published at 1:59 PM

As an accredited Yahoo Ambassador, I am accustomed to working with the Yahoo Search Marketing PPC system (YSM). Although YSM can be an effective means of paid advertising, its Panama system still has a ways to go and I want to share with you several of the challenges in setting up a geo-targeted campaign.

Opening an account with an address in the US or Canada, restricts you to advertising only in those markets. If you'd like to geo-target other areas of the globe, you have to use this site: Yahoo International Accounts

Once there, a separate account for each and every additional country you wish to advertise in will need to be created. That's an awful lot of work for someone wanting to geo-target globally. When calling YSM support to find out how to get around this, their answer was that it is impossible to integrate campaigns to be served globally. I found this to be odd, as I'd just completed a globally targeted campaign in Google Adwords for the same client.

Another hitch in geo-targeting in Panama is trying to include Canada as a target region. If you select Canada as the market to be served to, you will only get ad service if the ads are written in French. This is unusual, as roughly 23% of Canada's population is French; in order to get ad service to English speaking Canada, one needs to set up the account in the US and Canada market . Apparently, however, this odd set up can cause problems in US advertising as well, as evidenced in this RKG blog.

Given that targeting Canada allows for only ad service in French, it seems odd that Yahoo would use exactly the same map as the English service US and Canada market as there aren’t a great many French Canadians in the US. By comparison, upon checking Switzerland, which also has more than one official language, no similar restrictions seem to apply. The target area was even restricted to just Switzerland and not the bordering countries, many of which have the same languages.

Overall, Yahoo seems to be very inflexible as to where they will serve ads. It would be nice if they displayed this kind of information more prominently when setting up accounts with them. I imagine a lot of people have wasted a fair amount of time trying to work through this system.
I've mentioned these issues when speaking to Yahoo support staff, suggesting that changes of this nature would make the system more useful for advertisers. Both Google AdWords and Microsoft Adcenter allow flexible geo-targeting options, with MSN going as far as to allow an assortment of criteria to be changed at the ad group level.

Yahoo has thanked me for my input, but I question whether they are really listening. Dating back more than a year, similar complaints litter the YSM Blog and to date no known attempts have been made to improve the system.

While Yahoo has a number of good aspects behind its Panama Platform there is still much room for improvement. Here is a summary of my recommendations to Yahoo:

A revamping of YSM's system should be devised for more user friendly and efficient account creation and management. Yahoo's current system has the effect of putting all the setup and management workload on the advertisers.
Country restrictions should be made clear to the advertiser at the account creation stage.
Any ad copy language restrictions in place for specific geographic areas should be clearly noted by Yahoo. In cases where ads are disallowed due to language, there should be an indication the ads will not be served. In the case we recently experienced, there were no editorial alerts or any other obvious indication the Canada – English campaign was not functioning.

Do you have any tips or suggestions for Yahoo? Email me and I will be thrilled to add it to 'the list' and send it to Yahoo Search Marketing staff.

By Tim Rule, PPC Specialist for StepForth Web Marketing Inc

Labels: PPC, Tim Rule, Yahoo

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Friday, October 26, 2007

Microsoft Jumping on the OLPC Bandwagon

Written by Timothy Rule and published at 3:31 PM

Hello all. My name is Tim Rule and I’m the most recent addition to the StepForth team. I believe my current title is “Gopher”, but I’m preparing to take over PPC management from Scott in the very near future.

I thought I’d take this opportunity to introduce myself to this blog by sharing an interesting thread I read in Slashdot this morning.

Not surprisingly, Microsoft has been fairly quick to recognize the long term threat to their dominant stature and have already taken steps towards addressing this.

With the XO not even released yet, I find it amazing the speed with which they have undertaken to insert themselves into this relatively recent initiative. It makes one wonder why they often seem so sluggish to resolve problems with their own products and yet find the energy to jump into new initiatives.

For those of you not familiar with the upcoming XO laptop you can learn more on this site.

Personally, I applaud this initiative and intend to pick up one of these myself. I can think of no globally worthwhile investment an individual can make to beat this. It is pretty hard to beat getting a warm, fuzzy feeling, a nifty new toy and a tax write off in one fell swoop.

I like the irony of the XO name as well.

Labels: Microsoft, New Tech, Tim Rule

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