Archive for the ‘Google’ Category
Brands Like Target and Sony Could Suffer From New Google Instant
“T” is for Target, but also for competitor TJ Maxx and “S” is for Sony and Samsung–so who gets the first search impression?
Even though Google Instant was just rolled out this week, we’ve already been inundated with the benefits and potential pitfalls of the new search engine results system. If you haven’t tried it yet, Google now allows users to perform a search query and receive organic and paid results without finishing the remaining keystrokes and hitting enter. 
The benefit to users as Google announced is time and keystrokes saved; some 350 million hours per year or two to five seconds per search. Some see an issue with this time saving measure as cannibalizing Google’s coveted paid search model.
In essence, Google is attempting to predict your query starting with the very first letter. Sounds great—but what about big brands like Target and Sony who spend millions of dollars on Google Adwords campaigns—does Target show up first or TJ Maxx? Sony or Samsung? Could be either one depending on your browser history or geography.
Many predict that impressions will certainly go up, but will click thru’s decline? Not surprisingly, according to Adwords head, Jon Diorio, the answer is no: “It could be a 5% increase or a 5% decrease in average impressions, but it should not change the amount of money advertisers make.”
And what about user experience—humans naturally resist change and is this the best time to introduce this technology in light of Bing and Yahoo’s alliance beginning to take full flight? “It’s like power-steering in a car; once you get used to it, you won’t be able to search without it,” said Google Search VP Marissa Mayer, adding that it’s a fundamental shift in search technology and “a step into the future of search.”
Especially interesting timing since according to Bloomberg, “Yahoo! Inc.’s search engine gained U.S. market share last month (August) as leader Google Inc. lost ground, according to ComScore Inc.”
Google has yet to make a major mistake—at least in the general public’s eye. Those in the know realize they failed miserably with Google Buzz and the ill planned Google Wave, but this change effects their core base of users and potentially their biggest advertisers. As always, time will tell.
Search Engine Marketing and Google Caffeine
Google’s recent introduction of their new search engine indexing platform Caffeine once again proves that Google is, without a doubt the cutting edge leader of online search.
Recognizing previous faults with their old search platform and evolving with the way that information is uploaded and shared throughout the web, Google Caffeine reinforces Google’s status of the “go-to” choice for performing search queries.
Websites and their corresponding web pages are more dynamic than ever with the inclusion of tagged images, videos and blog posts which are all uploaded in real time—making information that was indexed as little as a couple of weeks ago by Google’s crawlers out of date.
According to Google’s blog, the old system had to index the entire web (about a two week process) to produce new content to those performing a search. Caffeine provides the ability to index pages in near real time and include them in their indexing system without the wait—producing the freshest search results throughout multiple categories.
What does this mean from a marketing perspective? It means that our philosophy of “content is king” is more relevant than ever! Websites which produce fresh, relevant content on a continual basis will receive preferential treatment on Google’s search engine results pages.
Pay Per Click Marketing Offers Targeting and Accountability
A properly managed Google AdWords/Pay Per Click campaign serves many benefits to small business owners regardless of size or budget. However, before you engage in any paid search activities you will need to develop individual landing pages to which you will drive your paid traffic and track the visitors.
Development of effective landing pages and having the ability to manipulate on an on-going basis is critical to the overall success of any paid search campaign.
Proper landing page creation provides a means to measure the effectiveness of traffic generation initiatives; be that paid search or through social media, as well as measuring ROI of the overall campaigns.
Proper messaging within the landing page is extremely important as is the testing of the messaging and offer which would induce a visitor to provide contact information.
With AdWords ads, your customers will see your ad next to relevant search results they’ve requested. In addition, your ads could also appear on relevant search and content sites within the Google Network.
With Google’s precise targeting and your ability to control how much you’re willing to pay per click, the end result is a higher return on investment (ROI) for your advertising budget.
You can also use Pay per Click (PPC) to build links. The key to the process is to create some great content and pay for some low costs/long tail terms that will drive traffic to that material. For example, perhaps you wrote a very informative white paper which would be useful for research in your field.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing is an extremely effective medium to use to draw internet traffic to your website. Consider the benefits:
•   Targeted–ads are only shown to those looking for your product or service at the PRECISE MOMENT they are searching for your product or   service.
•   Accountability—you are only charged when someone actually clicks on your ad and visits your landing page
•   Control—you set the budget you are comfortable with, and it never exceeds it
•   Data—numerous reports can be run to judge the efficacy of your ad and allows your campaign manager to make adjustments on the fly
•   Preparedness—internet users are well educated, they have done their research and are ready to be matched up with the company that can best fulfill their needs
•   Level playing field—Google has strict ad guidelines which allows even a modest budget to compete with fortune 500 companies, which means that the biggest budget doesn’t always win.