Archives for posts with tag: search
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Is it time Miva gave up the ghost?

September 12, 2008 //
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Having been in search for quite a while, I remember when Miva, or e-spotting as it was at the time.  Was actually a valid addition to a paid search campaign.  Taking up 20-40% of click budget for some campaigns and a viable traffic stream so long as you could filter out the fraudulent clicks.

Right now, approximately 0% of click budget in general would go through a PPC campaign managed by me and it would take something pretty special to convince me to do otherwise.  They tried to rescue it as the slide began, with offerings such as pay per call and their precision network of verticalised search, but to no avail.

Today they have announced they are launching a new online advertising platform but I am starting to think they should just give up the ghost and shut up shop.  They surely cant be profitable in the UK, although I hear they don’t have many staff left!  And there is no way they have the funds, the standing or the money to realistically compete with the likes of Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.  Their only hope is that they come up with something so innovative and mind blowing, that no-one else can copy, that it completely revolutionises the market.  Pretty unlikely if you ask me.  Is it time for Miva to give up the ghost and shut up shop?

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Categories Search Engine Marketing

Is the UK too small for Google?

September 12, 2008 //
0

The announcement of Google’s geographic reporting for your campaign is good news for international search advertisers, the ability to accurately (?) measure where your paid search clicks are coming from by city and region should make for a far more efficient and accurate pay per click campaign.  Not to mention the ramifications for businesses in knowing where their products work best online allowing them to focus their whole model on a particular region if necessary.

But the problem with this sort of technology had always been that although it works well in the large open spaces of the US, it is simply not accurate enough in the relatively confined spaces of the UK.  Case in point below, I tested this theory using the Google gears demo application that tells you where Google thinks you are.  I ran the application whilst at work in Warrington and low and behold, Google was out, picking me up as being in Lambeth, Greater London, a full 204 miles away!

Which brings me to my question, is geographic targeting ever going to be accurate enough to make it useful in the UK?  I am yet to see an example where it works effectively and consistently in this country, or are we just too small fry for it?

is google location targeting ever going to work in the UK?

is google location targeting ever going to work in the UK?

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Categories Google

How dare you suggest such a thing!

September 4, 2008 //
1

Google’s latest search tool Google Suggest is to be launched to the main search on Google.com after graduating from the labs section with honours.  The functionality will dynamically attempt to complete your search query by listing out the most popular searches (alongside their search volumes) beneath the search box as you type.  Clever hey?  But not necessarily too useful unless you are particularly lazy.  But what does this mean for search marketers?

Increased accuracy of searches – This potentially opens up more search volume for the “long tail” of search.  By showing people further options for what they could be searching on to narrow their results we may start to see more and more people performing more targeted searches and thus reducing the volumes on generic keywords and increasing them on specific keywords.

Transparency of the long tail – The long tail, and targetted keywords have long been the selling point for PPC specialists.  The long hours of work needed to generate focussed keyword lists and monitoring the performance of thousands of hours are a strong selling point against somebody managing their own campaign.  But by exposing the keywords available in such an explicit way Google is making things easy for lazy search engine marketers.  Now all they need to do to find long tail keywords is start searching on something generic and note down the variations Google suggests.

More money for Google – there appears to be a trend in these posts on Google doesnt there!  All roads lead to cash!  Basically by allowing advertisers to see the keywords they “could” be bidding on Google is making it easy for them to do so and thus increase the competition and therefore CPC on these keywords.

Removal of mispells? – this is unlikely to happen completely but by showing people what they were trying to search for in this way less people are likely to search on a mispelling.  This has already partially been eradicated through the “did you mean to search for?” message which you get when your fat fingers get the better of you.  But this could mean the final straw for true mispellings.  Oh and guess what, this will lead to higher overall CPC’s as there will be less cheap clicks around.

I will aim to post more when I spot the changes have taken place but thats the long and short of it in my opinion.

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Categories Google

If you can’t beat them, join them

April 18, 2008 //
2

It seems like Yahoo! may have finally given up trying to beat Google with the announcement that they are running a two week trial displaying Google AdSense listings alongside their search results in the US (more detail).  The initial trial will include the results displaying on no more than 3% of search queries submitted and will only be seen by Yahoo! US users.  Yahoo! claim the move is is part of an “exploration of strategic alternatives to maximise stockholder value”, i.e. make them more money.  Microsoft have already expressed their own concerns that should a future deal be struck this would take Google past the 90% market share mark and raise further competition concerns.

It concerns me what a future deal could mean for the search market as the it effectively means a consolidation of the market as opposed to the fragmentation we had seen coming over the past 2 years.  This simplifies the process and doesn’t necessarily bode too well for search marketing agencies.  From Yahoo’s perspective it may come down to purely monetary figures.  If they have decided that they are not going to get very far with challenging Google in the paid search market then displaying AdSense results would allow them to significantly reduce their staffing levels and technology costs.  Although it wont be nice for those people that end up getting the boot, the boardroom wont be concerned if the figures stack up.

It does make you wonder what sort of deal has been brokered for the trial and the possibilities beyond though.  A typical AdSense partner might be earning 40% of the click revenue generated but Yahoo! aren’t you standard partner! Could Google be willing to let Yahoo! keep all of the revenue for the sake of market share?

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Categories PPC, Search Engine Marketing

A Search Within a Search

March 20, 2008 //
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I spotted something on Google today which I hadn’t seen before and is a new development in universal search.  On a search for “times” I was presented with the standard search results you get for a brand term but then in addition to this there was a search box contained with the results! On entering a search phrase into this box I was presented with the site search results but still with the Google SERP.  This functionality is well known and nothing new but the inclusion of the search box in the results is not something I have seen before. 

It is obviously just another element of Universal Search in action but is alos a good tool for Google to make their results as accurate as possible and keep people within their pages.  By allowing them to search within Google for keywords contained within a site you are not only enhancing the user experience but promoting loyalty and boosting query numbers at the same time, win all round.  On top of this they are also able to produce additional Adwords results on the secondary search and potentially boosting revenues as well.

google, universal search, search within a search

 

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Categories Google, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, SEO
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