Archive for February, 2007
For those who seek an enhanced level of control over AdWords campaigns Google will reveal what sites exactly your contextual ads are shown at.
The new column of sites where each ad runs is announced to appear in AdWords PPC campaigns reports within the next few months. And even more – Google advertisers would soon be able not just to bid on keyword to be shown across entire Google network but choose particular websites to run the ad on.
Have you ever wondered what should a Google NOFOLLOW or NOSNIPPET tag mean? Are you sure you clearly know the functions and the differences between Google NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW, NOARCHIVE and NOSNIPPET meta tags?
From now and on you will not let these terms confuse you as Google has given a clear definition with examples to each of them.
This is a really cool concept. Very similar to the million dollar homepage, and Alex’s new venture Pixelotto, but thats where the similarity ends. Bla.st is a genius concept, that allows people to bid for positioning for “cards” measuring 270×165px being displayed on the homepage for various keywords. I.e.: your card ranking #1 on the term “SEO” will be different from it’s ranking for the term “PPC”, you bid in aggregate per image (similar to Google AdGroups). Another unique feature, is you are bidding on the total life of your ad, so if you choose 365 days and add $0.10 cents per day in value it will cost a total of $36.50. So please don’t choose 2000 day ad period, or you will have to pay $25 USD to receive $0.01 cents of daily credit!
The system is awesome, and I really think this company/technology will be acquired by a Big boy publisher soon. The technology and concept makes Flickr and others look monetarily antiquated. This is a revenue generating machine in my opinion, just brilliant!
Go to Bla.st and create your own Card and get seen today!
When planning an online marketing company a good thing to know is what do users mainly look for on the site – product or information. What are the distinguishing behavioral features of 2 types of users (buyers and information seekers)? How can their decision be influenced?
A user behavior research performed by De Vos & Jansen Market Research and Checkit explores the manner of performing a search, the reasons that make a user click the result as well as the difference between of ways of searching.
What main reasons motivate people to click on a search result:
1. The familiarity with and reliability of the website or organization. Keywords which refer to a brand are therefore very important2. A high position in the search results also creates trust and suggests to the respondents that the information is recent
3. A third important reason for clicking is the presence of the keyword in the search results
4. Consumers are also looking for certain website services such as the opportunity to read user experiences or to compare different products
5. (Indirect) price information is important: especially keywords which refer to “low costs”
6. The announcement that there is a large variety of products can also be a reason for respondents to click on the search result
7. Finally, consumers seem to avoid results with aggressive advertising
Now it’s time to determine why did a user click the result – is he going to buy anything or looking for information? The summarized signs of user behavior that could help distinguish his goals are the following:
- Buyers view more search results (10) and take more time to view the results (11,4 seconds).
- Information searchers view less search results (8) and spend less time on a result (9,4 seconds).
- Buyers pay more attention to brand names relative to information seekers.
Only 50 searchers were tested and they were between the age of 17 and 24. But this information seems to be very helpful.
To determine the transaction potential of your site or to find out what are thekeywords that are more likely to convert you could want to use Microsoft Detecting Online Commercial Intention Tool. While it doesn’t give the exact estimations of conversion rates for URLs/queries its estimations can serve a criteria for choosing most effective keywords for you SEO or PPC campaign. The tool reflects “your customers’ intention to purchase products or acquire information”:
The Online Commercial Intent (OCI) demo calculates commercial intent on a scale of 0 to 1. Any site whose core is greater than 0.5 is considered to have commercial intent.
As SEO consultants we know how much time and efforts it might take to achieve high positions for a site sometimes. That is why after receiving desired ranks being excluded from Google index because of the site’s being down during the Google bot crawling it is twice more unpleasant.
A thread from the updated Google Groups points out that
I’ve been having problems with downtime from my hosting company (am moving tomorrow as this is the final straw) and I’ve now practically disappeared from Google. I was in 3rd position for 5 of the more popular searches for my business and now - nothing.
It’s hard to imagine the disappointment of that site owner from his site being removed from Google’s index. But Vanessa Fox from Google confirms that if the site is down and its pages are inaccessible for Google crawler, then it might lead to exclusion from Google index.
If the host is down when Googlebot tries to access your pages, then those pages may disappear from the index until Googlebot can crawl them again. In webmaster tools, do the pages you want indexed appear in the crawl errors section? If so, then Googlebot was unable to access them.
The good thing to know about this is that you shouldn’t request site reinclusion. Google will automatically continue trying to access your pages and as soon it founds them, they will be back in Google index.
You’re right that requesting reinclusion is only for sites that have violated the guidelines. This isn’t the situation in your case, and there’s no need to contact us to let us know that your site has moved and is available again, as Googlebot will keep rechecking for it automatically.
The new Yahoo Suggestion Board announced recently is positioning itself as “a swanky new community-based recipe for collecting feedback that’s making its way across a number of our sites”.
Yahoo Suggestion Board has evolved from Yahoo Autos but includes 14 other properties also.
The Google Quality Score which was first implemented in August 2005 as an ad quality metrics, has been announced to be updated.
Why are Quality Scores important?
According to Google
Low quality keywords receive higher minimum bids, often making them inactive for search because their maximum CPC does not meet the minimum bid. In addition, since we also consider quality when we rank ads, higher quality ads benefit from higher placement on the page and a lower cost-per-click on average. So, high quality ads are not only more relevant for your potential customers, but can also help you improve your ROI by lowering your advertising costs.
What Quality Score indicators should the advertisers expect to appear in their accounts?
