ClickBrain

This study and others from AOL and Cornell, prove that once again, Google is changing the way we function on the net. Most users now only use the top 5 results from any search. In addition and something I believe needs to be studied more is the fact that users are often ignoring ads.

Why Google Results are Crucial

It’s not clear that Google has gotten any better, but certainly our use of it has become habitualised. Google’s popularity and dedicated following mean that a large majority of users have grown extremely familiar with the search giant and refine searches to display exactly what they need within the top 5 results. We now expect to find our required answer in the top 5 results.

The use of Google has become habit and users have optimized their behaviour accordingly; they now act in order to eliminate the need to scroll below the fold or sift through additional pages of results. Nowadays to compete competently, you must know your customer’s search words, and land in the top 5, if not top 3 results.

Brad Adwords, Google, SEM, SEO, heat mapping, search

Event Registration (EVENT: 115323)

This event will be live on August 13, 2008 at 1:00PM EDT.

In this webinar, marketers will learn how to increase their spend on SEM to dramatically boost sales and branding, while maintaining – or even increasing – overall ROI. Wister Walcott, VP of products at Marin Software, will outline five simple and practical strategies to help you “spend more and spend better” on your paid search marketing campaigns.He’ll explain why SEM consistently delivers the highest bang for your buck – some studies show that SEM converts at twice the rate of email and banners – and show marketers how to obtain the highest ROI on paid search, even while increasing spend. In these unpredictable economic times, it pays to invest in the marketing methods that deliver the best sales results. So sign up now for this informative and insightful webcast, and learn how to get more out of your search marketing spend today.

Brad Adwords, CPC, Google, PPC, SEM, adversiting

The terms listed below are ranked by volume of searches that successfully drove traffic to websites in the Hitwise All Categories category for the 4 weeks ending May 26, 2007, based on US Internet usage.

Rank	Search Term	Volume
1.	myspace	1.20%
2.	myspace.com	0.62%
3.	ebay	0.38%
4.	www.myspace.com	0.33%
5.	youtube	0.24%
6.	mapquest	0.22%
7.	yahoo	0.19%
8.	craigslist	0.18%
9.	myspace layouts	0.17%
10.	my space	0.14%

Source – Hitwise – May, 2007 – based on volume of searches.

 

Hitwise US – Top 20 Websites – May, 2007

This list features the most popular websites based on US Internet usage for May, 2007, ranked by market share of visits across all Hitwise industries.

Rank	Website	Market Share
1.	www.myspace.com	6.22%
2.	www.google.com	4.77%
3.	mail.yahoo.com	4.45%
4.	www.yahoo.com	3.97%
5.	mail.myspace.com	3.9%
6.	www.hotmail.com	1.85%
7.	www.ebay.com	1.59%
8.	www.msn.com	1.54%
9.	search.yahoo.com	1.48%
10.	www.facebook.com	0.92%
11.	www.youtube.com	0.75%
12.	search.msn.com	0.73%
13.	images.google.com	0.54%
14.	blog.myspace.com	0.43%
15.	www.wikipedia.org	0.42%
16.	music.myspace.com	0.4%
17.	www.gmail.com	0.37%
18.	mail.aol.com	0.35%
19.	my.yahoo.com	0.33%
20.	mail.live.com	0.33%

Source – Hitwise – May, 2007 – based on market share of visits.

Top 10 Search Terms in 10 Categories, May 2007

Brad Google, content

This is a fantastic piece over on Small Business Hub, by Mike Volpe. Great insight on a free resource,

Many small businesses do not know that you can get some FREE advertising on Google, using Google Local or Google Maps. Google is looking to increase the value of their local search and their mapping application, so they have a simple way for you to tell them some information about your business, and now they are infusing those results into their main search engine. This will help you show up in searches and get more traffic, leads and customers. For example, a nonprofit volunteer organization I work with called the Boston Scholars Program is now listed at the TOP of the Google search results for searches like “volunteer in boston“, “volunteer boston ma“, and “volunteer boston, ma“. See the image below.

Source: Free Advertising on Google – A How To Guide

Brad Adwords, Google, SEM, web marketing

I am all hot and bothered over video “advertising”, but not so much advertising. I want real world customers and users testifying as to the value of a customer’s services, products, and overall value. Yesterday I met with a major retailer about their online SEM and other marketing needs and I believe very strongly that that firm could get a lot of value by adding customer testimonials as well as real life case studies. I also am pushing clients into community and content with video as well to drive lower cost search engine marketing (SEM) by utilizing indirect terms to content rather “buy this” terms. I call it “Indirect SEM” “Indirect Search Engine Marketing (Maybe I should trademark it).

Great content alone doesn’t cut it. Marketers need to put their online video content to work across a number of different channels. With promotional campaigns, high-quality destination sites and custom channel branding, marketers can increase user interaction and participation while communicating their message to a wider and more engaged audience than ever before.

The real challenge of online video is about what (as in what makes good video content, if you don’t have good content then you’re toast anyways) and it’s about where: figuring out how and where to use online video, while still maintaining the integrity of brand. If done right, there are a variety of ways for companies to distribute and display online video to grab an audience and retain their attention.

<snip>

A great example of a recent successful promotional contest is the collaboration JVC developed with VMIX. VMIX provided a platform and a JVC custom channel for the “Create Our Commercial Contest,” which asked individuals to submit self-produced ads that they filmed with their new JVC Everio camera to the VMIX JVC channel.

The online video contest produced more than 80 quality entries for JVC, garnered national print and web publicity for JVC and the winner, and ultimately provided a major grassroots marketing campaign for JVC, targeting lifestyle, college, retail and events. The winner of the online promotional contest received $2,500 and saw his commercial aired on Spike TV.

Source: iMedia Connection: Veni, Video, Vici: Conquer Online Video

Brad CPC, Google, SEM, adversiting, content, web marketing

This is an excellent way for both to increase revenues. Whether the tools they provide will make it easy enough to manage is another story. In the end many small businesses need help with the strategy required to implement and the free $50 credit will be worthless if they do not know what they are doing from a targeting, landing page, and testing perspective.

Salesforce.com will become the first on-demand reseller of Google’s AdWord platform under a strategic alliance to help both companies win small- to mid-size ad accounts.

The alliance, first reported in the Wall Street Journal last month, will allow Salesforce.com to be a distribution channel for AdWords in 43 countries, the companies said in a statement released today. Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

“This deal changes the competitive landscape,” said Jeff Kaplan, an analyst at Think Strategies. “It gives additional firepower for both companies to expand and target smaller customers who didn’t have access to these kinds of services before.” It also puts pressure on Microsoft in the ad business, he added. “Salesforce’s entire set of business applications is fair game, and this is a powerful attraction to small companies who find their way onto the platform via AdWords.”

Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords is available today in a five-user edition for a 30-day promotional price of $600 a year, including a $50 AdWords credit. The $50 AdWords promotional credit is available to new AdWords advertisers in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico only. (The list price is $1,200 per year.)

Source: Salesforce.com, Google in AdWords Alliance

Brad Adwords, CPC, Google

Advertising age has a good piece on packaged goods manufacturers figuring out that Adwords exists and that it can have value for them. Great examples around the pet food recall category.

When panicked pet owners typed “pet food recall” into search engines during the recent contamination crisis, the paid results included affected and unaffected brands hoping to reassure consumers, plus lawyers, news outlets and even politicians trawling for plaintiffs, readers and votes.

Bounce is among the package-goods brands that are beginning to buy into search advertising.

But there was one even odder interloper — Procter & Gamble Co.’s Bounce dryer sheets. Bounce wasn’t trying to capitalize on the misfortune of sibling brands Iams and Eukanuba. It was simply running a previously scheduled ad around the word “pet” to drive pet owners to BounceEverywhere.com to show how to use dryer sheets to get hair off clothes.

Here’s the money quote though for this industry and in fact everyone marketing online that wants to do search. Its a difficult thing to manage and if you throw the IT department at it as some might suggest, it will fail. You need a strategic mind.

One problem companies have is figuring out who owns search, Mr. Blackshaw said. Agencies aren’t necessarily equipped or required to create search ads, he said, and it’s often unclear internally whether marketing or information-technology staff is best-equipped to manage search.

Source: Advertising Age – Digital – Package-Goods Marketers Finally Find Value in Search

Technorati tags: advertising, sem, search advertising, google, adwords, yahoo, msn, ask.com

Brad Adsense, Adwords, Ask.com, CPC, Google, MSN, PPC, SEM, Yahoo, adversiting, blogging