@EmergingSpaces @SMGSearchUK @SearchLately
Highlights brought to you by Search Lately @SMGSearchUK this week include:
Search Alliance Initiated in UK, Ireland & France
Google Improved Exact & Phrase Match Types
New Online Metrics Being Pushed By Google
Blekko Search Engine On The Rise
Browse last week’s Search Lately for more details and initial reaction from industry experts on recent hot topics
Search Alliance Initiated in UK, Ireland & France – 18th April 2012 MSN & Yahoo have started to merge their search advertising offerings in the widely anticipated Search Alliance, late on 18th April 2012. This will mean that search activity run on Yahoo and MSN search engines will be managed and driven through one source (MSN adCenter) instead of two. This means that MSN traffic will start to increase as Yahoo traffic starts to filter across, so advertisers should be wary of hitting budget caps if they have not already adjusted them as recommended by Yahoo & MSN. – Kevin Ting More details: www.searchalliance.com/europe/en/home
Google Improved Exact & Phrase Match Types - 18th April 2012 Google have just this week announced plans to roll out improved adaptations of Exact and Phrase match types in mid – May. Google have claimed that 7% of all queries contain misspellings and are looking to help advertisers capitalise on human error. Organic search operates in this fashion, and early tests run by Google are said to lead to 3% increases in clicks. The new style of match types mean that ads will be eligible for close variants of the terms such as plurals, misspells and abbreviations. While this still gives users close control with exact and phrase match types, the new features will eliminate the need for multiple variations and misspells of key terms and should ultimately save users a lot of time.
"Based on our research and testing, we believe these changes will be broadly beneficial for users and advertisers, keep in mind that results may vary by advertiser." - Google For these reasons Google have kindly offered an opt-out option for those who still prefer to add their own plurals and variants, maintaining full control of their exact match types.
While this will inevitably help advertisers to capitalise on human error and drive more impressions and clicks, it is likely to come with cost inflation. As misspell ad groups and keywords look to become a thing of the past, more brands will naturally be bidding on these terms, where they may not have picked them up before. It will be interesting to see if these increased costs will actually bring significant clicks to justify the shift in strategy from Google. Will advertisers end up paying more for the same, with increased competition and CPCs? If advertisers do decide not to opt out of this feature then it may also lead to more closely refined negatives and extra work for advertisers, depending on how sophisticated the algorithm is. Abbreviations and misspells in some cases may well not be of great benefit to advertisers, and in fact may reveal unsuitable search queries. What may seem like a good idea may just end up costing advertisers and benefitting Google, as they reap the rewards from increased competition for misspells and abbreviations. – Kevin Ting More Details: support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2537522 www.seroundtable.com/google-match-misspellings-adwords-15029.html www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2012/04/18/rip-phrase-match-exact-match
New Online Metrics Being Pushed By Google – 19th Apr 2012 Google announced on Wednesday at the Ad Age Digital Conference in New York plans to establish new online metrics, in order to adapt to the changing behaviours and demands of the mobile digital age. While traditionally clicks, impressions, click through rates and conversion rates, have been seen as the key metrics for measuring performance, this is no longer the only things brands are concerned with. As we move into a more mobile and socially connected world, brands are becoming increasingly aware of metrics related to brand perception. In order to resolve this disparity between advertiser demand and online reporting metrics, Google are proposing some new online tools to help us. Google are suggesting a “Brand Activate” initiative that will help advertisers establish brand value to PPC activity. This initiative will involve establishing
industry recognised metrics such as Active View, to measure the percentage of the advertisement that was seen, and for what duration. This will differ to the impressions metric that has become increasingly unreliable in an ever cluttered and busy search page that no longer gives an accurate and relevant indicator of exposure levels. The new metric will not include below the fold advertisements, but will only include ads that are at least 50% viewable on screen for at least a second. Another metric known as Active GRP (gross rating point) would be used to measure the size of the target audience reached by an advertisement campaign. These tools will be piloted through DoubleClick for Advertisers clients before being rolled out further afield, to enable a more closely controlled real-time decision making process. In essence these proposed metrics should help search practitioners to more accurately report and optimise in this new era of social/mobile search. As Google look to incentivise and raise the urgency to go digital and online, this initiative will help brands quantify the benefits of investment in an ever evolving social and content led internet age. – Kevin Ting More details: mashable.com/2012/04/18/google-new-online-ad-metrics/ www.pcworld.com/article/254068/google_introduces_new_tv_like_metrics_fo r_measuring_ads.html
Blekko Search Engine On The Rise – 18th April 2012 By the end of April, traffic to Blekko will likely have quadrupled since January 1st. While still nowhere near challenging Google's strangle-hold on the market, Blekko is quickly establishing itself as the go-to alternative search engine, providing interesting additional functionality in searches with its "slash tags". It has attracted a large following of dissatisfied Google searchers, and looks set to expand further following various recent rounds of investment. – Rob Ashby More details: searchengineland.com/blekkos-traffic-spiking-2012-118728