Search Lately: Issue 15

Search Lately Issue 15 21

th

October

2011

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Search Lately: Issue 15 Weekly Search Round Up The main news this week is the launch of Google’s new Bid Per Call feature. We have also seen a surprising lack of Mobile Optimised sites as well as a couple of great studies looking at the falling CTR in SEO and the importance of your ads occupying premium positions.

Seen On Twitter: 80% of Travel Advertisers Without Mobile-Optimised Sites 26 OCTOBER 2011 – According to Google, 79% of major advertisers don’t have mobile optimised sites, and in the travel industry this is at 80%.

With the number of searches through mobile ever increasing this is a huge loss for those yet to optimise their sites, especially when 61% of users are unlikely to return to a mobile site that they had trouble accessing from their phone, and 40% go to a competitor’s http://www.ppchero.com/create-mobile-landing-pages-with-no-programmingknowledge-for-free/ POV: Fear not, Google offer a free and easy way to quickly create mobile optimised sites via Google Sites. It looks really easy to create a very simple mobile site. Obviously not perfect for everyone, particularly those with strict branding guidelines, but still a viable option for some whose budgets do not stretch that far. More... http://bit.ly/lu0Cik

Search Lately: Issue 15 Google AdWords Bid Per Call 26 OCTOBER 2011 – Announced this week, Google are rolling out bid per call (CPP) in UK and US. This enables advertisers to set separate bids for calls from clicks on desktop and tablets (i.e. when a user manually dials the phone number displayed). Advertisers need to have Google forwarding numbers enabled so that Google can track and provide metrics such as duration for the calls.

The CPP bid will additionally factor into Ad Rank alongside a phone call quality score (the major contributing factor of which is the historical phone through rate). http://adwords.blogspot.com/2011/10/introducing-bid-per-call-in-adwords.html http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/google-s-ad-rank-consider-phonecalls-not-just-clicks-136053 POV: This could work great for advertisers whose conversion action is a phone call although there is a minimum CPP bid of USD$1 (or local equivalent). The drawback is where there is a clickthrough to the landing page for more info in addition to a call, I guess you would be charged for both. Additionally, some advertisers may not want the call without the clickthrough especially where they have crucial product information they want to get across beforehand.

Falling Click Through Rates in SEO 26 OCTOBER 2011 - According to a recent study, only 52% of Google users click on an organic search result found on page one, and only 26% of Bing users do the same. http://searchengineland.com/organic-click-thru-rates-tumbling-study-97338

Most People Ignore Paid Ads On Right 26 OCTOBER 2011 – Another interesting study, this time looking at Eye Tracking studies to see how people looked at on screen Search Engine results. Whether using Google or Bing, all participants looked at the organic search results for their queries, but between 70% and 80% ignored the paid ads on the right side of the page. http://searchengineland.com/organic-click-thru-rates-tumbling-study-97338 POV: As with all studies it is best to take them with a pinch of salt; data can be represented in many ways. However the above is particularly interesting as it supports the long held stance of aiming for the top positions in PPC, particularly the premium spaces at the very top. If people are beginning to ignore those ads appearing on the right, these premium positions will become ever more competitive (and therefore expensive).

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Sources searchenginewatch.com adwords.blogspot.com ppchero.com

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