aimClear Search Marketing Blog

As a result of Universal & Blended Vertical Search it’s not just about web pages anymore. Google’s Universal Search aggregates local, news, video, book content, blog search, and a number of other verticals from content “repositories” and displays them in various positions on SERPs. This is especially true for some commercial keywords and can include top results. Google Universal Search Changes Everything.

Not Your Mother’s SERP
It’s a a brave new world and we can expect to see less and less website results on page one. The good news is that the evolution of search always presents opportunities of great proportions for those who research and understand proper methods to get content into the SERPs of the day. Also, classic SEO values remain inalienable and the best content rises to the top. The major difference now is in the quantity and segmentation of focused channels. Read the rest of this entry »

There has been chatter about it for months. Now, fellow SEM Google adWords-watchers are trafficking blog posts highlighting fascinating examples of Google PPC results which are based dynamically, in part, on previous searches. This algorithmic shift, which ostensibly makes commercial search results more relevant to the user, foreshadows upcoming generations of smart-SERPs which take users’ search behavior into account more when targeting paid ads. It’s not hard to imagine scene by scene self-configuring video ads contextually related to a user’s current session and historic inclinations.

Whereas personalized organic search affects only users who are logged in to a Google service like Gmail, the adWords algorithm modification seems to impact sponsored results whether or not the searcher is logged into a Google account.

It’s easy to test for yourself. For instance search for airfare and you’ll see generic airfare sponsored results:


Now search for Minneapolis Hotel. Note that a sponsored airfare ad shows up-NOT a hotel ad:


A new search for airfare returns ads for Minneapolis airfare.

This has far reaching implications over the long haul. Read the rest of this entry »

In early June, Google updated their webmaster guidelines and included specific intent to kill WebPosition as the poster child for Google’s disdain for automated queries. Since WebPosition has been best friend to many (including me) for years, it was a disappointing development.

However before we really get going here, it should be noted that organic prominence reporting, WebPosition’s forte, is dead anyway. The inevitable progression of personalized search, which returns customized SERPs based on individuals’ web history, codifies the deal. Bulletproof conversion and ROI metrics calculated by modern analytics are the only uncontested measures of SEM success.

Clients Understand the Web 1.0 Way.
Many of our search marketing clients still perceive organic keyword rankings as the singular measure. To an extent they are correct in their assessment of value: top rank for a keyword is still a great asset. However, true search marketing experts teach prospective clients the new reality during the sales process and lead existing clients through the adaptive process. Also, WebPosition has other features which remain useful like Link Defender and Page Critic AKA “Beat the Algorithm.”

WebPosition’s Organic Prominence Reporter: The Pathology of Demise
The announcement from Google was cryptic: “As of December 5, 2006, we are no longer issuing new API keys for the SOAP Search API. Developers with existing SOAP Search API keys will not be affected.” SOAP was the Google API feature which allowed access to keyword rankings directly from the Google database infrastructure. On December 6th the SOAP API ceased to function in WebPostion, even for those of us in possession of API keys.

WebPosition blamed it on Google and advised users to turn off SOAP access in WP and switch back to the illegal screen-scraping mode. You see, in the past Google has officially discouraged screen-scraping the SERPs. Read the rest of this entry »

Inside AdWords, Google’s official source for information about AdWords, has been trumpeting the arrival of Click-to-play video ads for AdWords. Yippy Skippy I woke up this morning to find the new video ad serving features in our AdWords client manager account interface!

Video (and image) ads now appear on a high number of Google content match affiliate sites and for goods in the Google Network. Google video ads do not appear in organic SERPS (at least for now). Content provider affiliate websites must opt-in to the image ads program and only then are site’s eligible for video ads. Affiliate content providers are provided with tools to choose preset display formats for ad sizes and shapes to display. It’s only a question of time before these ads are served to cable networks, hotel rooms, satellite TV, and other broadcast streams.

What are Video Ads?
Video ads are first displayed as a static display picture. When a customer clicks the play button (or the placeholder image), the video starts to play by one of two methods: Read the rest of this entry »

Google is deploying the most significant changes to its results pages in history, unveiling “Universal Search,” which aggregates listings from Google news, video, images, local, and book searches with traditional website searches. Vertical searches (specialty search engines) which index images, video, local, news, blogs, etc… will soon be fully interspersed with Google search results.

This Will Have a Tremendous Effect on SEM.
Much will be written about these earth shaking changes in the coming hours, days and months. If your SEM firm is good you’ll be discussing the ramifications in the short-term. Suffice to say that this ranks as one of the major industry shifts destined to have a huge effect on SEO tactics and techniques. The links in this post are required reading for any website operators who earn a portion of their income from Google organic SERPs.

Here is what the authority blogs in the SEM space are saying about Google Universal Search:
Universal search: The best answer is still the best answer
Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience Google

Google’s Universal Search, New interface & More
Danny Sullivan’s Daily SearchCast, May 17, 2007 Read the rest of this entry »

For years prescient industry pundits and sages have been forecasting this happy day of convergence. Google audio radio ads are here and guess what-SEM firms are the new radio media buyers. Yippy Skippy! Tonight I stumbled upon Google Audio’s mass launch of Google Audio Ads in the dashboard of a Minneapolis client’s account.

In April Google announced a multi-year deal delegating them to cut up and sell a guaranteed inventory of 30-second radio spots on more than 675 Clear Channel AM/FM radio stations. Now it’s reality.

SEM Firms are the New Radio Buyers.
The deal makes it possible for Google search marketing platform Internet media buyers (like aimClear) to reach audiences at designated times in geo-targeted areas. Search marketers are now directly in the brick broadcast buying mix with Google radio Ads even here in Duluth, Minnesota.

Since the interface is within the Google online ad platform, creating and deploying radio advertising campaigns is now in the sphere of search engine marketing firms who have been learning to leverage online media buys in this environment for years. For goodness sakes, after the radio ads run Google even offers reports online to provide marketers with real-time recordings of ads as they were originally played.

Why Google Radio?
Radio and Internet together reach 83% of people ages 18-54*. Each day radio and Internet in aggregate reach approximately 83% of folks between the ages of 18-54 which is comparable to the daily reach of television. Also greater than 90% of the population still listens to radio and 21% of people are listening while online. 57% of people listening to the radio while on the Internet actually look up items in their browser after hearing product commercials. *Source: The Radio Ad Effectiveness Lab (RAEL), 2007. Read the rest of this entry »

Pay per click advertising, like most every aspect of search marketing, is about understanding and executing on the basics. When blocking and tackling new PPC accounts there is an ever present cash pit lurking if your aim is too broad. We’ve watched PPC newbies, from the traditional advertising agency world, waste obscene amounts of cash very early when ramping up new accounts (only to generate unfocused traffic with little conversion). Reciprocally we’ve seen in-house marketing folks get discouraged and prematurely discontinue worthy campaigns that might have made their company a lot of money.

I can tell you from experience that it’s disturbing to expend large chunks of budget practically before you get started. However with a little understanding of PPC basics, some patience, and a commitment to responsible early control of your PPC-spend, the potential for falling in the ramp up money pit can be avoided. There are a number of useful tools for injecting sanity early in the process to meter PPC ramp up. In this post I’ll focus on thoughtful usage of keyword matching, an informed fear of content match, geo-targeting, and limiting the early purchase of direct brand searches. All major paid search platforms including Google, Panama, and MSN have similar tools to support these objectives. I’ll focus on Google for the purpose of this discussion. We’ll save optimized ad and landing page rotation testing for another post.

Once You’ve Spent Your Money Then it’s Gone.
First, it’s not that we have an aversion to spending money to make money. In fact we’re happy to handle millions of dollars of our clients’ media buy budgets. It’s wasting cash we hate so we’ve learned to be patient and unleash a campaign’s potential a little at a time. The idea is actually quite simple: start out slowly (highly targeted) and build up to a broader deployment with measured tactics. We’d much rather refine a campaign before the budget is gone rather than launching with a larger spend and trying to figure out what the hell happened to the money. Then we gradually ramp by relaxing restrictions until we hit the conversion sweet spot. Being conservative in the first days of a new campaign has worked for our clients time and time again. Read the rest of this entry »

When Google’s makeover of Google Analytics was unveiled on Tuesday we received quite a bit of traffic from Technorati for our early review. Understandably there is a huge amount of commotion in the blog world regarding the enhancements. Here are the latest buzz posts from “authority” SEM publications in case you need a little light reading before lunch.

Google Analytics Gets a Makeover
PC World
Google Analytics: Should Google be minding YOUR website?
ZDNet
SiteMeter and Google Analytics Rolling Out New Versions of their Stats Tools
Sabahan
Google Analytics to Get a Facelift
liewcf
Google rolling out new version of Analytics Statistics Package
The Blog Herald by blogmedia
Google Analytics Gets a Complete Web Surgery
sizlopedia

Today in a client meeting I logged into a Google Analytics account to discuss their site metrics and I was greeted to an unexpected wow-surprise. (I think I might have actually said “wow” 4 times.) The Google Analytics interface has been completely made over. This is the second time in 24 hours I’ve said yippy skippy about a Google product. Last night got my first taste of iGoogle. Later in this post I will highlight new features, pass along Google’s “help” resources, and share my first impressions of the upgrade. Anyway here is what Google Analytics V2 looks like:

Several hours after the Google Analytics change over occurred I received an email from Google announcing the upgrade. Umm, it would have been nice to receive it before I was forced to navigate the interface in front of a client! Read on for a summary of new Google Analytics features: Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to your shiny new personalized Google homepage. Depending on one’s perspective this is somewhere between interesting and earth shaking.

Last night while logged into Gmail account from an IP address in Duluth, Minnesota, I was greeted by iGoogle (the new and much ballyhooed personalized Gogle homepage) for the first time. Yippy Skippy iGoogle is here! (Well I’m kind of  excited…personalized search promises to improve SERPs and is an interesting kettle of fish for SEO.

Google has officially renamed the personalized homepage “iGoogle” and it is now showing up in in 26 languages and in more than 40 countries. iGoogle custom ”themes”  are deploying internationally and Google has also introduced Gadget Maker on the iGoogle page. Here’s Google’s official post. Read the rest of this entry »