Sunday, September 17, 2006

Google Removing Top Adsense Ads Based on Searchers Behavior

"A WebmasterWorld thread reports that the top blue AdWords ads have been removed from the Google search results page. But in fact, it seems to be a user by user setting. Some users will see the top blue ads and some users will not. What does it depend on? It seems it is based on your ad clicking behavior."

Bill: Refresh a search a few times and Google will stop displaying ads at the top of the results.

This is good news for SEOs, providing more search results above the fold to researchers in the early buying cycle who don't usually click on ads.
Supplemental Results at Goggle just got way fresher!

Results are now much fresher, and thanks to Rusty Brick I found a cool way to check results.

Supplemental results are stored in a separate index than main results, and different spiders are used to index them. I expect they aren't spidered as regularly and are considered less unique/valuable pages to the searchers than the main index results from the same site. If your key message content is on supplemental pages, non-supplemental pages will dominate in the search results. Basically if your page is in the supplemental index, Google has decided it's content is not unique and there is better information out there. A view Supplemental information link is displayed after all search results and I'm assuming is rarely (.0001%) ever used.

To see all site supplemental results do a search in Google for www.url.com/ *** (include space).

Example:
Search "site:industry.siemens.com/ ***, envirex" and you'll see all the pages/files in the supplemental index with the word "envirex" on it. You can even add a negative or positive variable example "+.swf".

To see the number of supplemental results rolling out in google data centers, use the main URL (The tool adds the space and ***, Note it doesn't work for sites having more than 1000 pages) automatically using this tool http://oy-oy.eu/google/supplemental/ unfortunately It doesn't work with variables.

Friday, September 15, 2006

Industry Benchmark Reveals Site Search Impacts One Third of All Online Sales for Leading Retailers

Coremetrics LIVEmark Index Indicates Site Search Users Purchase 86% More Often and Spend 11% More

"San Mateo, California - April 20, 2005 - On-site search engines are used by consumers in more than one third of all visits that result in a purchase, according to LIVEmark Index data released today by Coremetrics, the leading provider of hosted Web analytics and precision marketing solutions. Coremetrics LIVEmark Index data collected during the second week of April also showed that site search users purchase 86% more often and have an 11% higher average order size than the typical site visitor."

Note: The LIVEmark Index includes over 110 leading web leading web retailers in seven sub-categories: Apparel & Accessories, Specialty Retail, Sports and Outdoor, Home, Garden, General Merchandisers, and Books/Music/Video.

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Time of Day Impacts PPC Clickthroughs
September 06, 2006
By The Marketing Experiments Journal

Marketing Experiments examines significant differences in clickthrough rates depending on the time of day.

When one sets the parameters for a particular Google AdWords campaign, it is all too easy to ignore the impact of the time of day at which your ads are shown.

Recently we decided to go through a very large amount of AdWords data to try to determine at which time of day we would get the highest clickthrough rate.

First, here is how we broke down the different times of day. We segmented the day into six segments, or "zones," of four hours each.


We then went through our data to determine, across four different research partners, whether the conversion rates achieved varied significantly according to the time of day.

As you look at this data, keep in mind that we are measuring only clickthrough rates across six different periods of time.
There are other factors to consider before making changes to your campaigns:

  • While conversion rates for one particular campaign may be high early in the day, the volume of traffic may be considerably higher later in the day.
  • Your clickthough rate may also impact your average cost per click, as Google adjusts your costs according to clickthrough rates at different times of day.

In other words, be sure to take all factors into consideration as you refine your campaign.

With regard to clickthrough rates at different times of day, here is what we found out:

There are significant differences in clickthrough rates depending on the time of day.

As mentioned, this is just one element to consider when fine-tuning your campaign. But when you see a change as high as 61.15 percent between different "zones," it is a strong indicator that the time of day at which you show you ads is a factor you need to take seriously.


Friday, September 01, 2006

Buying For Others Changes Key Word Search Criteria
Research Brief

"According to the Q1 Search Trend Report recently released by Performics, a division of DoubleClick, sales growth between Q1 2005 and Q1 2006 markedly outpaced campaign growth, While campaign size and cost each grew nearly 40 percent, year-over-year sales surged more that 70 percent. In fact, the return on investment realized by search advertisers in March was stronger than it had been at any time in the previous 15 months."

"The report found that consumers in Q1 2006 versus Q4 2005 tended to click on more specific keywords rather than generic category terms, which garner higher costs per click. The percentage of keywords priced above $1.00 fell from seven to five percent from the end of Q4 to the end of Q1, while the percentage of total clicks on these keywords dropped more during the same time period.

"Shoppers in the fourth quarter were buying for others... (but) weren't necessarily sure what," said Frankel. "However, in the first quarter, when shoppers were buying for themselves, they had likely already narrowed down the options, and therefore were searching with more specific terms."

Bill - This has a lot of implications for 4th quarter consumer search terms like "present for dad" etc and be a great cheap buy.
Shoppers Check It Out Online, Then Go To The Store

"According to BIGresearch's June Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey, when asked how often they research products online before buying them in person or in a store, 87% of nearly 7,500 respondents said they did so occasionally to regularly.

Of those who said they researched products online before buying them in the store:

* 58% made less than $50K per year
* 51% were female
* 59% were between the ages of 25 and 54

In both income groups, the top search engine used for product research was Google.com by a large margin, but WalMart.com made a surprising appearance in the top 5 websites used first among those who did their comparative shopping online before buying in the store."