Tag Archives: Google

Google Instant: Facts, Myths and Opportunities

Last week, Google launched Google Instant which updates search engine results as you type. It is a dynamic, engaging search presentation, and it changes the Google user experience dramatically. It is the biggest change in search in years.

So, onto the facts:

FACT: Google Instant is cool. It is the best eye candy that search has ever had. Never before has search been so interesting to look at and engage.

FACT: Because of the dynamic nature of the results presentation, Google Instant makes you pay attention to what is happening on the result pages. Chances are, you will see a compelling search result even before you have finished typing your query.

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Back to School with Google’s Free Research Tool

Just in time for Back to School campaigns, a practical demonstration of how online marketers can get the most leverage from Google Insights for Search  – for free

With retailers and parents alike getting ready for back-to-school shopping, it’s a good time to remind ourselves of the need to do our own homework as marketers. We’ve written before about third-party keyword research tools, which are irreplaceable for competitive research but also a considerable financial investment, especially for small to mid-size companies.  Happily, anyone can use one of the best, deepest data resources available for search trends completely for free.

Cram Session:  How to Use Google Insights for Search

Google Insights for Search is essentially a souped-up version of Google Trends, the search engine’s simple report on “Hot Topics” and “Hot Searches.”  Beyond merely finding out what’s hot right now, the Insights tool offers the ability to analyze historical search patterns.  You can track searches as far back as 2004 (further even than most paid tools) and quickly grasp the seasonality of particular keywords as well as entire market segments.  Note that you’ll need to log into any Google account (you probably already have one via Gmail) to access certain features, like indexes.

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Creative Must Play a Critical Role in Marketing Strategy

The iPad.  Google this, Google that.  Yahoo/Bing.  Rue La La.

Finally, amid the fierce competition in direct marketing, those who create and tell the stories — the imaginative creative voices — are gaining back their seat at the solution table.  And, they should.  Media, marketing, technology.  None of it will spark interest if consumers are not first engaged, then captivated.  It’s the work of the designers, the writers, the artists, that capture that moment.

Strategy and creative are twins and need to live side-by-side, breathing life into ideas. With communication as complicated as it is today, the message must be seamless and integrated.  That can’t happen without intimacy, and intimacy happens best when there is a shared sense of purpose and priority.

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Online Marketing Meets the Presentation Layer

Forget about controlling your customers and dive deep into the essentials of messaging and brand.

Marketers love control. We crave it. We want to own the discussion. Setting the parameters of the interactions that our brands have with our consumers is our professional mission.

Many marketers have “grown up” in one-way media, be it television or print or catalog. In these experiences, the terms of the discussion were at the control of the marketer. By and large, we decided what our customers saw and heard.

But with the advent of the internet, our control has started to slip away. We control the presentation on our own websites (mostly), and in the early days of the internet, that was sufficient. As the dynamic nature of the internet and social media and search has evolved, it has become harder and harder to get the consumer to our little corner of the world, where their experience is shaped by our vision. Now we must attract them to that experience through multiple presentation layers that are the discovery mechanisms from which consumers self-select their interaction with us.

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Google Remarketing: CPC Pricing Model Has Edge over Competitors

Google has launched a remarketing product with similar functionality to what the other big remarketing providers offer (Acerno, Dotomi, Advertising.com, etc).  The technical implementation is about the same.  A Google pixel needs to be installed on the advertiser’s website which facilitates the remarketing.  When a visitor comes to the website and leaves without taking the desired action (buying, inquiring, etc), the person will be subsequently shown display (or text) ads in an effort to lure the person back to the site. These ads will follow the person around the internet provided that the sites they visit are within Google’s network.  The size of Google’s network is on par with that of the other big ad networks, so from an audience perspective, the reach is competitive.

The way Google has chosen to price this product, however, sets it apart from the other remarketing providers.  Google’s structure is CPC, whereas the other companies charge CPM or CPA.  Cost-wise, the CPC model has a clear advantage.  Comparatively, the cost savings to the advertiser can be huge.

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Google Betas: Paid Search Enhancements Are Welcome and Long Overdue

In 2009, Google released a slew of paid search betas mostly to support retail advertisers.  These betas are, where applicable, being rolled out to other verticals too.  Examples include GAN Product Ads, Product Plus Box (renamed Product Extensions) and Ad Sitelinks which we wrote about late last year.

Google is heavily diversifying these days, rolling out a smorgasbord of new initiatives.   Tangentially, most enhancements are related to where search is now and/or where search is going in the future.  These are welcome innovations in that they focus on how paid ads are displayed to searchers.  Up until last year, paid search display had been remarkably stagnant:  one to four shaded sponsored listings at the top of Page 1 and the rest running stacked along the right.   

Google Paid Search Display

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Measuring Organic Sitelink Activity

Sitelinks are the extra internal links that appear with some natural search results.  In addition to drawing more attention to a search result, these links are helpful to visitors that want to jump directly to a particular section of your site.  Organic SitelinksDespite the recognized value of having sitelinks, few organizations measure their popularity or effectiveness.  This post walks through how to use your web analytics solution to measure organic sitelink performance.

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Instant Ads: Targeting Perfection in Real-Time

A few years back, I was experimenting with songwriting and free-form poetry.  Creatively, traditional boundaries were killing the sound my head wanted to hear.  I wrote, “Eyelids blink, but what truth reveals?  That squinch of time between a blink and a-h-aa.  Revelation.” 

Today, with a digital marketing industry that’s grabbing new and existing ad dollars, these words carry a truth that could solve the dominant online advertising challenge, that is how to bring the economics of targeting precision to display media.  With the SEM and SEO industries maturing and their ability to grow sales naturally constrained by the limitation of consumer demand, this could be the old-guard display advertising’s missing ingredient.  

Led by Google, Yahoo and Bing on their respective exchange platforms, advertisers can pinpoint consumer interest as it’s happening.  Instantly, literally, ads are served based on what was just learned about what someone was looking for and doing.  And you can know how many ads they’ve already seen and when. 

Imagine you’re the Martin Guitar Company trying to reach people looking to buy a guitar that’s perfect for Eric Clapton’s style of acoustic blues.  If you could be in front of a prospect at the precise moment they left a Guitar Player Magazine article about Eric Clapton’s 1992 “Unplugged” album and his use of 3 Martin guitars1 and who, 10 minutes earlier had already clicked on The Guitar Center and looked at acoustic guitars, you’d pay a premium for that.  It’s like being part of a Facebook exchange as people are buzzing about exactly what you’re selling and you can show and tell it, right at that moment. 

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New Google Policy for Online Pharmacies Causes Some Google Campaigns to Go Dark

Google has implemented a new policy affecting Internet pharmacies, HMO pharmacies, chain drugstores, and mass retailer pharmacies.  Such companies must now be certified by The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) through its Verified Internet Pharmacy Practice Sites (VIPPS) program in order for Google paid search keyword campaigns to be approved.  This policy extends to keywords associated with any merchandise on a website that sells pharmaceuticals – not just pharmaceutical products.

For those still awaiting VIPPS certification, Google shut down all keywords across all campaigns beginning last weekend.  Many companies were affected by the policy and few were prepared.  The implications of what Google would do and when they would do it were not clear enough.  A week later, many of these companies remain dark on Google paid search.  A great deal of revenue has been and continues to be lost while these pharmaceutical companies scramble to rectify the situation.

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Apple iPad: The Future at Your Fingertips

Welcome to the new world of internet intimacy and the acceleration of image-based search.

I watched the unveiling of the Apple iPad with some genuine excitement the other day. At the end of the presentation, I can honestly say that I was underwhelmed. The iPad is just a big iPhone…so what?!?

And then I thought…wait a minute…the thing is a big iPhone…that changes everything! (Well, not really, but it does have some interesting implications.)  What has really resonated with me is the concept of intimacy. With Steve Jobs demonstrating the iPad from a cushy looking chair, engaging the internet with his finger, it dawned on me what has just happened. The internet became a much less cerebral place. No longer is your interactivity with content tempered by mouse navigation, the internet reacts to your finger. It is instinctual, organic and perhaps even a little impulsive.

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