Highlights brought to you by Search Lately @SMGSearchUK this week include:
New Status Insights Icon in Google AdWords AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo Make Display Deal Too much SEO? Google Changes May Cost New Negative Keyword Behavior Is Now Live in Microsoft Advertising adCenter
Browse last week’s Search Lately for more details and initial reaction from industry experts on recent hot topics.
Status Insights Icon in Google AdWords – 20th Mar 2012 Google has introduced a status insights icon in the Ads tab. The new icon complements the existing ad diagnosis tools by providing visibility into the approval status and potential policy limitations for each individual ad creative. To use the new status icon, simply hover over the speech bubble in the Status column of the Ads tab next to the ad of interest. It will tell you if the individual ad is showing for the default keyword and location displayed in the hover. If you would like to re-diagnose the ad with a different targeted location or keyword, you can edit the parameters within the hover. The new feature will be particularly valuable if you’re advertising products or services that are restricted by Google’s advertising policies to show only in specific countries or with certain keywords. – Blair Liu
More details: adwords.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/diagnose-ads-faster-with-new-status.html
AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo Make Display Deal – 18th Mar 2012 The top 3 search engine giants if you remove Google from the equation have teamed up in a display ad deal that will see them share unsold inventory across platforms. This will give advertisers a much greater reach and volume across these engines that have not previously been so easily accessible. This partnership, although announced in November 2011, has only just come into effect and will give each search engine access to the search engines involved, as well corresponding network partners. Although this may not make any considerable dents in the armour of Google, it will offer yet another reason for advertisers to see Microsoft/Yahoo as a viable option with the Search Alliance on the horizon. This agreement along with the Search Alliance, will give users more volume and reach through one single portal than ever before, meaning it will more feasible and profitable to invest time with Google’s closest rivals. Whether this will in turn help drive more advertisers onto Yahoo/Microsoft may only materialise if consumer behaviour shifts away from Google. – Kevin Ting More details: searchenginewatch.com/article/2161594/AOL-Microsoft-Yahoo-Kick-Off-DisplayAd-Deal
Too much SEO? – 17th Mar 2012 Google is working on another algorithm update which will be rolled out within the next few weeks. Over optimised websites will be punished in the future whereas sites with great content will benefit from the update and achieve better rankings. If a website is optimised for SEO best practice, this should already include having great content on that site. Meaning this content should be relevant, fresh and not overflowing with keywords. As long as these policies are followed, a website will be less likely to be affected by the upcoming Google update.
– Christina Zoellmann More Details: searchengineland.com/too-much-seo-google%E2%80%99s-working-on-an%E2%80%9Cover-optimization%E2%80%9D-penalty-for-that-115627
Google Changes May Cost – 16th Mar 2012 The Wall Street Journal’s coverage of changes to Google to get people to stay on site longer to compete against Facebook, focuses on understanding users' searches semantically, and providing direct answers to their queries. The article implies Google is slowly moving to an answer engine to compete against Apple's Siri, and becoming more semantic in nature. While for the end user this may be a great idea, it may affect Google financially, as it focuses more on providing answers and less on driving clicks. So how might this impact Google’s wallet? In the simplest terms Google’s revenue comes from clicks. The way the WSJ talks about these changes to the user experience, Google will provide more content that requires less clicking. Surfacing content to searches, if clicks decrease revenue decreases. –
Robert Ashby
More Details: online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304459804577281842851136290.html
New Negative Keyword Behavior Is Now Live in Microsoft Advertising adCenter – 15th Mar 2012 In early February, Microsoft Adverting adCenter announced that they are working on an update to the way negative keywords are applied. The new negative Keyword behavior is live now. In the past, negative keywords at the ad group level ,would override those at the campaign level. But now negative keywords uploaded at the campaign and ad group level will be combined to filter traffic, just as the way Google AdWords treat negative keywords. This update will make it easier to transfer negative keywords from Google AdWords to Mircrosoft adCenter. It is recommended that you closely review your campaign-level negatives if you have negative keywords uploaded at both the campaign and ad group levels to make sure you aren’t blocking wanted traffic at the ad group level. – Blair Liu
More details: community.microsoftadvertising.com/blogs/advertiser/archive/2012/03/15/microsof t-advertising-adcenter-new-negative-keyword-behavior-.aspx