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.

FACT: Google Instant saves you time. Google Instant saves between 2 and 5 seconds per search. That saves something on the order of 33,000,000 user minutes per month. Talk about productivity boosters!

Now, for the myths:

MYTH: Google Instant means the end of search engine optimization. This makes a terrific headline, but is very far from true. The Google algorithm hasn’t changed. The basics of search haven’t changed. Only the presentation has changed. The search world is all atwitter about Google Instant, but the fundamentals of search and search engine optimization are 100% in tact.

MYTH: Search rankings don’t matter any more. Well, search has become so complex, so distributed across so many presentation layers that there hasn’t been a static presentation in years. (For instance, the same Google search for “black shoes” done from your office, from your laptop in an airport, and from your mobile device when you are visiting your cousin in Toledo is going to be different.) So there hasn’t been anything truly solid about being #1 in Google for a particular keyword. It has been and continues to be a very fluid experience. Search rankings haven’t mattered all that much for at least two years. Google Instant does nothing to change that. Google is trying to provide the right result to the right searcher. Google Instant does that in a visually intriguing way, but it does nothing to diminish or enhance your traffic generation capabilities for a well-optimized site.

And, finally, on to the opportunities:

OPPORTUNITY: Google Instant has added a bit of serendipity to search. As you type in your query, results start dancing on the screen. And you are bound to see something interesting along the way. As Google refines your results, as they narrow in on your search, they are showing you an array of content opportunities with which to engage. I may be seeking information about men’s shoes, but I also get exposed to an editorial about men’s fashion (this is something that happened to me). I did eventually get to my men’s shoe query, but was enthralled when I found a men’s fashion blog that I had never heard of before. This kind of serendipity has always existed in search, but I think the opportunity for this to happen is more pronounced with the changed presentation layer. The opportunity for marketers here is content. Not just products and offers, but editorial content, thought content, and content that is engaging to read. Content begets search visibility, and search visibility will lead to serendipitous engagement. Your content becomes your ambassador.

OPPORTUNITY: Google Instant changes the way users engage with search. It is more interactive and exploratory. And Instant almost forces you to engage in longer tail search queries. (The more you type, the better results you get! The more eye candy you get!) This is a shift for marketers. There has been consistent emphasis on big volume words in search, “Shoes”, “Men’s Shirts”, “Tax Returns”, etc. The miraculous thing about Instant is that where you might have previously searched for shoes, with Instant you see the results and immediately know if there is an appropriate result for you. And big, broad words often provide big, broad results, and that isn’t why we use search. Over time, you might find yourself starting to type “shoes” (368,000 monthly queries)…only to change to “shoes for men” (4400 monthly queries) because the result set is more targeted. And then you might type in “shoes for men brown” (low search query volume) because the result set is even better. Instant rewards the searcher because the searcher suddenly understands that the granular query gets them more targeted information. Instant pushes the long tail. (And Google’s MayDay update which significantly rejiggered the long-tail algorithm, was clearly a precursor to Instant.) Long tail searches become more important. The opportunity for marketers is again in the creation of content that speaks specifically about the products or services they offer. Rather than focusing on shoes, your men’s shoe pages should focus on men’s shoes, along with their attributes (color, type, sole material, etc.). Google is rewarding the searcher for making specific queries, and rewarding the marketer for creating a site that is accessible, content rich, and well constructed.

Google Instant changes search. It doesn’t change the way Google works. It changes the way the user interacts with search. So contrary to popular opinion, SEO is not dead. It is alive and well and will help marketers create better opportunities to offer searchers exactly what they want, exactly when they are looking for it. Instant is powerful.

PM Digital’s latest Rewind report has been released with a look at paid search performance for apparel retailers during the 2010 Spring fashion season.  And the news was very good.  Consumers shopping online for apparel increased their total paid search demand by an impressive 33 percent over the same months in 2009.  Even better, apparel marketers achieved this swell in demand from February through April with a modest increase of 2 percent in year-over-year spend, revealing that search ad dollars went further this year than they did at the same time last year, with CPCs falling by -1 percent.   

Click here for a full copy of the PM Digital 2010 Spring Apparel Rewind Study.

iPad is rapidly gaining share in terms of site visits.  With just a few weeks of availability, the iPad has shown rapid growth and in some cases, has overtaken more established mobile devices in terms of visits.  While iPad visits make up a small proportion of total site visits (typically less than 0.5%), this fast growth shows promise.  Whether this rapid growth rate can be sustained in the longer term remains to be seen.

iPad browsing behavior is more similar to desktop than mobile. Average pageviews per visit, bounce rate, and conversion rate from iPad visits tend to be more like desktop browser averages than mobile.  The table below compares site metrics among the most popular mobile devices to the site average – iPad usage is clearly not like the others.  The most likely explanation is the screen size which makes the user experience more like a desktop than a mobile device.  Based on site usage stats, the iPad web browser would be more appropriately classified as a desktop browser in tools like Google Analytics and Omniture SiteCatalyst.  The inability to view Flash content on the iPad is the primary difference, but most savvy online marketers are delivering Flash-free alternatives to the iPad and mobile device visitors.

iPad visits skew toward being email- and search-initiated. We were curious to know what was driving iPad visits to sites and if it differed from desktop usage.  It appears that iPad visits tend to skew more towards being email and search engine driven.  Traffic from email makes sense — the iPad is great for checking email and the ability to click on a promotion to visit a website is obvious.

Search was a little surprising at first although upon closer consideration it makes sense too.  The Safari web browser on the iPad provides an integrated search box.  When launching a new web browser window, text focus goes to the search box instead of the URL field, thereby encouraging individuals to use search as the default method of navigation.  Search results, both natural and paid, will remain an important factor for iPad users. It’s important to note that traffic sources vary greatly from site to site based on factors like industry vertical, marketing programs and brand recognition.

These initial stats seem very promising for the iPad and it will be interesting to see if these patterns hold up beyond the early adopters.  Marketers should examine iPad usage stats for their own websites and work towards making their site iPad-friendly.

Anthony Avolio is Director of Web Analytics at PM Digital.

Paid search is fundamentally about presenting a relevant ad to someone who enters a keyword in a search engine. Every month, 60% of the searches on Google are brand new. With the keyword list being the pillar of the paid search campaign, keyword selection is essential. Technology now exists to scrape a page and cull a list, but the fundamental strategies for effective keyword selection remain the same now as they have been for years. Here are some of the basic keyword selection tactics that apply to the retail vertical.

Top Sellers: Site analytics can determine the top selling products through direct load and natural search. These words should be part of the paid search campaign.

Top Searched Products on the Site: Site analytics can inform what people are searching for on the site, and these words should be included in the paid search campaign. Products being searched for but not sold by the merchant should be given to the merchandising team to potentially expand the product line.

Research Tools: Hitwise, comScore Marketer, Compete and Keyword Spy are all great sources to identify not only the top keywords driving traffic to a competitor’s site, but also to identify the top keywords driving natural traffic to the company for whom the paid search keyword list is being developed. Keyword coverage in both paid and natural search ultimately adds up to more revenue for the advertiser as it creates additional real estate for the advertiser on the search engine.

Website: It’s a laborious process, but making sure all products on the website have relevant keywords is essential as is ensuring that category terms make the list, as well. It is the category terms that will drive the most volume and the product-specific terms that will yield the best conversion rate.

Catalog:  If the paid search advertiser also has a catalog, ensure that there is maximum keyword coverage on products featured in the catalog as well as ensuring that best sellers have maximum exposure.

Datafeed:  Most merchants have a datafeed that’s used for various purposes. Identifying new items in the feed is a great way to ensure that new products don’t slip through the cracks. Additionally, active keywords for products that are no longer in the feed should be paused.

Search Engine Tools: The search engines make lots of free resources available for recommending like keywords to the base word that was input.

Plurals:  For the life of me, I don’t know why a singular (or plural) version of a keyword that is at the top of the best performers list is also at the bottom for the opposite version of the word (singular or plural).  Anyone who has seen lots of paid search results will recognize this curious dynamic.  For this reason, every keyword needs both plural and singular versions of the word to be covered.

Search Query Reports:  Refer to the search query reports provided by the search engines to identify the actual words someone entered into the search engine in order for an ad to be displayed.  Refine the keyword list and match type strategy based on these findings.

Google Insights for Search: This free tool shows rising searches related to a particular keyword enabling a campaign to yield scale quickly.

Synonyms:  If you sell women’s clothing, ensure that you have all variations of women’s (ladies, girls, etc) and add these variations to the base of every keyword.

Once the keyword list is developed, give it a reality check.  Many merchants name their products with language that is not common to the public.  Cosmetics companies may refer to “fragrances,” whereas the majority of searchers will be looking for “perfume.”  Make sure your product can be found by emulating consumer behavior and by applying common sense.

Suzy Sandberg is President of PM Digital.

From years of tracking promotions, we know that free shipping incentives have risen steadily across all consumer retail sectors.  On the offline side, our MarketTrends studies show that 24% of apparel catalog campaigns included a free shipping incentive in 2009, up from 21% in 2008.  Similar growth was seen in non-apparel catalogs.  

For online, the story has been much the same, but the data is more telling. In addition to retail competitive activity, search data also helps us gauge consumer interest and intent with regard to free shipping.  And today’s shoppers are very interested in free delivery, and more so every year.  

General Searches for Free Shipping     

Below is the five-year trend for searches on the term “free shipping”. While the year-end holidays are the peak season, it’s clear that such searches have grown steadily year-over-year, accelerating significantly in recession-plagued 2008 and 2009.    

Google searches for “free shipping”    

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Smarter Searches:  Actionable Information    

Searches strictly on the term “free shipping” are by far the most common, but two popular variations are “free shipping coupon” and “free shipping code.” While the search volume for the simpler “free shipping” is much higher, the “coupon” and “code” variations have seen their own dramatic rise. What’s most significant about these terms is that they show how more searchers are seeking actionable information regarding free shipping, specifically the code needed for checkout.  This type of growing search sophistication is even more pronounced in the next section.  

Google searches for “free shipping coupons” and “free shipping codes”    

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Even Smarter Searches:  Bypassing Offer Restrictions    

It’s not uncommon these days to hear how years of retail doorbusters and price wars have made consumers savvier and conditioned to expect phenomenal deals.  There’s truth in that to be sure, but the relentless compile/share nature of the Internet itself has played the biggest role in creating consumer fluency in all things marketing.  It isn’t just that today’s consumer is smart; they keep getting smarter.   

As an example, two of the most common free shipping stipulations used by retailers require spending a specific amount of money or buying a specific type of merchandise in order to qualify for free shipping.  Correspondingly, over the past two years there has been a new (admittedly tiny) surge in folks seeking out non-restrictive free delivery offers with searches like “free shipping no minimum” and “free shipping everything”.  

Google searches for “free shipping no minimum” and “free shipping everything”    

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Holiday-Specific Searches for Free Shipping   

Free shipping has become an important enough part of the online shopping experience that it increasingly shows up tied to significant gift events — sometimes general occasions (“free shipping birthday”) but mostly for specific holidays.  “Christmas free shipping” (not charted here) is by far the biggest and has increased year-over-year.  But growth can be found for other gift-oriented holidays as well.  The next chart shows the steady growth of free shipping searches tied to Spring holidays.    

Google Searches for “easter free shipping”, “mothers day free shipping” and “fathers day free shipping”    

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Free Shipping and Brands    

Free delivery tied to brands also continues to rise.  Below are examples for Macy*s, Sears and Wal-Mart.   

Google searches for “free shipping” plus brand name    

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Brand-related searches speak to more than just general consumer research.  The searcher may have enjoyed past deals with a given merchant or be comparison shopping.  But brand-specific free shipping searches can also be influenced by other marketing vehicles and channels, like email and direct mail.  Whatever the case, we know from our own experience that “free shipping + brand” can perform well for online retail.  Any marketer that has a free shipping offer planned for the future should investigate leveraging a brand plus incentive combo for paid search.  

A note about this post:  All of the charts above are drawn from Google’s suite of trending tools (Insights for Search, Trends for Websites etc.) This is a highly recommended resource for anyone interested in online consumer trends.  Google doesn’t offer the depth and breadth of tools like comScore or Hitwise (both of which are used regularly by PM Digital), but it’s a wonderful, easy-to-access option for getting a quick test read on new ideas and pet theories.  Best of all, it’s free!    

Glenn Lalich is Vice President of Research & Analysis at PM Digital.    

     

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

The organic and the paid sides of search are best described as church and state.  I’m not sure which is which, but on the organic side, innovations in the way search listings are displayed have been happening more quickly and steadily.  In the past, organic search results primarily contained a list of websites relevant to the search term.  Now keyword searches return a much more varied list of results that include content from blogs, YouTube, Flickr, news sources, Facebook, websites, image ads on product search and, now, tweets in real time. 

The merging of all these different content sources on Google’s natural search results is called Universal Search, and it definitely keeps evolving, reacting to, and incorporating new types of online content.  While the way paid ads are displayed has remained static, organic display has enjoyed a considerable amount of experimentation and subsequent rollouts over the past few years. 

So now enhancements to the way paid search ads display are starting to accelerate.  Ad Sitelinks, product extensions, product ads, and video ads are a pretty big change to what we’re used to seeing for paid search.  Some of these new paid search changes are yielding real increases in traffic.  For others, it’s too soon to tell what the impact will be.   Ultimately, though, it’s great to see the paid search side of the business catching up to the innovations enjoyed on the organic side.  We hope there are many more enhancements to come.

While website owners can’t dictate the specific links to use in their organic listing, Google does provide the ability to disable individual sitelinks from appearing in their organic results.  Rather than disabling questionable or unwanted organic sitelinks blindly, marketers should use web analytics to measure the usage and effectiveness of each link beforehand. Also, Google introduced the option to include sitelinks in paid search listings late last year, which has proven to be very effective for advertisers.  Understanding the performance of organic sitelinks can be helpful in choosing sitelinks to test in your paid search program.

Because sitelinks are organic listings, it’s not possible to add custom tags to these links for direct measurement.  Instead, sitelink activity must be inferred based on the landing page of visits from natural search brand terms.  Entries on your homepage are likely the result of clicks on the main search result link.  Non-homepage entries are most likely the result of clicks on individual sitelinks.

For example, take the screenshot above, which shows how a search for “pm digital” recently appeared on Google.  Clicks on any of these links will be attributed to the natural search term of “pm digital” although the landing page varies depending on the link clicked on.  Measuring the number of visits by landing page is an indication of each sitelink’s popularity.  Also, visitor’s onsite behavior from these various entry points provides a measure of how valuable each of these links are.  Sitelinks with a high bounce rate or low conversion rate could be candidates to be disabled if other, potentially more relevant sitelinks exist.  Keep in mind that some valuable links may naturally have a high bounce rate.  For example, a sitelink for ‘Store Locations’ may provide searchers exactly the information they want in a single pageview.

Because sitelinks often vary by search engine, analyses should be conducted one engine at a time.  Also, search engines adjust sitelinks over time, so it’s best to analyze a recent timeperiod or one where you know which sitelinks were presented to searchers.

Google Analytics makes it very easy to measure sitelink activity using the method outlined above.

1. Start with your Traffic Sources > Search Engines report and drill down into one search engine (e.g., google).
2. Select “non-paid” in the Show list so that data reflects organic search visits only.
3. Drilldown further into your top brand keyword (e.g., “pm digital”).
4. In the resulting Detail report, change the dropdown menu from ‘None’ to ‘Landing Page’ to view data by that dimension (confirm that “non-paid” is still selected in the Show list).

Measuring Organic Sitelinks in Google Analytics (click to enlarge)

The resulting report shows the popularity of each landing page and key traffic metrics associated with those visits.  Ecommerce metrics and goal conversions are also reported for each landing page for assessment and to help determine the potential impact of disabling one of the sitelinks in favor of others.

The same analysis concept outlined above can be applied to other web analytics packages too.  For example, in Coremetrics Analytics, a Key Segment can be created to isolate natural search traffic from a specific engine and keyword.  The Key Segment can then be applied to the Content Categories report to view site entries by landing page.  In Omniture Sitecatalyst, the Data Warehouse tool can be used to create a segment based on natural search traffic for a specific engine and brand keyword(s).  The Data Warehouse report can be constructed to break down visits and other site metrics by Entry Page.

Anthony Avolio is Director of Web Analytics at PM Digital.

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. 

Technology like what AppNexus has built makes it possible to not only target these ad exchanges but, also, to bid manage and optimize in real time.  And, it’s a bidding model that squeezes out cost inefficiency, not a circa-1995 cpm pricing model.  While publishers may hate the thought of further price deterioration of their old model, radically improved performance is already driving higher prices.  Marketers need the scale and audience growth potential of display media.  In fact, they crave it. Performance pays, and that’s where the money is. 

As if the NYT and WSJ pieces didn’t already cinch it, EyeBlaster’s IPO filing lit the match:  the rage is about to begin.  I won’t be a bore over the privacy issues, but they are real and being heavily debated on the Hill.  Could this be more consumer-friendly?

Right in that millisecond between a blink and a-h-aa is the money moment. 

¹ EC played a 1939 Martin 000-42, serial #73234, which sold for $ 791,500 US at the Crossroads Guitar Auction 2004; a 1966 Martin 000-28 (converted to Style 000-45 pearl inlay by Mike Longworth), serial #208511, which sold for $186,700 US at the Crossroads Guitar Auction 2004; and, a Martin D-12-20 12 string guitar which I’m assuming he still has.

Chris Paradysz is CEO of PM Digital.

Search is a big channel. There are die-hard people in the SEO world who never think about paid search as part of search…it’s advertising they say. There are PPC jockeys who have disdain for anything that doesn’t have an easy metric and a quick way to A-B test. Anything else is squishy, they say.

Well, any debate that pits natural search vs. paid search is missing the synergistic whole.

It’s all SEARCH.

Search is about the traffic that comes from results to specific queries. And while there is a difference between the way paid and natural search works, as a marketer, it may help you to think of them as a single channel, because they work together so well.

Imagine that your best paid keyword is dog bones and you pay $1.00 per click. And you drive some high quality traffic through paid search. And then you start to grow your presence in natural search. Let’s say you get dog bones into the top 10, and you start driving big traffic from that word. You might think about giving up your paid search budget for that word, because your natural search has started driving traffic at volume, and you have become overly efficient in your paid advertising for dog bones. You can no longer amp up the paid search volume by bidding more…so paid search can no longer put the pedal to the metal, as they say.

What has happened here? Has paid search lost it’s magic? NO WAY.

Let’s jump into some math – if you generate 5,000 clicks from dog bones via paid search per month, you are spending $5,000. If you are making a good ROI on that amount then great! But as your natural search visibility creeps up, you may find that it is only possible to spend $4500 at the same efficiency. Does this mean that that dog bones is no longer a good word? Absolutely not.

If you expand your focus and look at paid search and natural search together as a single channel, you might see a different story. Your TOTAL traffic from the word dog bones may have skyrocketed. Think of your 4,500 clicks from paid search in the context of the 5000 clicks that you are also getting from natural search. If you look at this as a whole channel, your average cost per click has just been more than halved (or your ROI has more than doubled). And if I use my fancy MBA calculator, I am pretty sure that either result is pretty great.

If we go back to your original budget of $5,000 for 5,000 clicks, and we look at your current situation of 9,500 clicks for $4,500, you will see that you are in a much better position with regard to the word dog bones. And you have at least $500 of budget that you can apply to testing new words, or amping up the volume on a word like dog bone holders where you don’t have premiere organic search visibility.

Search as a whole is a more powerful tool than looking at the natural and organic sides independently. Search is too big to be contained in silos. Let’s think that paid and natural search are different sales funnels, but they all point to the same cash register….yours.

Tim Kilroy is Vice President of Natural Search at PM Digital.

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.

Prior to the new policy, Google, Yahoo and Bing all used the same company to verify that the pharmacy codes associated with a given marketer were legit: PharmacyChecker.com.  For whatever reason, Google switched to VIPPS, but the transition process has been flawed.  Affected companies received minimal notice (10 or so days), and it was unclear that all campaigns would go dark right away without the new certification.

Also troubling is that the cost of using VIPPS is incremental to what pharmaceutical companies will still have to pay for PharmacyChecker.com to cover Bing and Yahoo.  Plus VIPPS is more expensive.  With a $5,000 application charge applied to the first year plus a $3,000 survey fee, VIPPS costs nearly seven times more than the $1,200 annual for PharmacyChecker.com.

In the past, Google has allowed merchandise that was outside of special policy areas to remain live with only the special policy keywords brought down (this was the case with ammunition and tobacco, for example).  But in the case of pharmaceuticals, all keywords across all campaigns came down — not just the keywords related to pharmaceutical products.

At present, there are many companies who sell pharmaceuticals online who are scrambling to get certified since their Google campaigns went dark.  Most have applications pending with VIPPS, but in the pet pharmaceutical category, for example, only one company has received certification thus far.  While everyone else is in limbo, this approved company is buying up the trademark terms for those companies that are down.  It’s a wide-open playing field for those with early accreditation while companies still awaiting VIPPS certification are losing sales every day.  For small companies, it is hard to sustain this type of hit on revenue and one wonders whether NABP has any sense of moving the smaller guys to the front of the line.

I don’t know why Google opted to replace PharmacyChecker.com with VIPPS as their certification provider of choice, but there’s no question that the idea of requiring online pharmacies to be certified is sound.  It’s important to ensure that medications sold online are safe for those purchasing them.

The online pharmacies we’ve spoken with don’t object to the certification per se, but they would have preferred that the new policy be implemented on a level playing field.  Pharmaceutical companies should have been given the same amount of time to get their paperwork in order (and certainly with more than 10 days).  The implications should have been clearer.  All companies either should have been able to stay live for a period of time while they got everything in order, or everyone should have gone dark for the same period of time on a defined set of keywords.

The current VIPPS process seems to be putting companies back up on a rolling basis as applications are processed.  I’m sure the NAPB is inundated at present.  But processing requests in an unclear order and within an unspecified amount of time is giving a clear advantage to those who have already made it through the VIPPS process.  As many of these still-unapproved pharmaceutical marketers wait in limbo and watch competitors squat on their trademark terms, large amounts of revenue are being lost by some and taken by others.