I’ll also point out that there is no connection between the algorithms for Google Ads and organic Search. Nevertheless, it does not hurt to infer a connection for the purpose of tightening up our organic keywords. After all, many permanent web pages also serve as ad landing pages. Keywords are part of the Quality Score, so why not look for synergies.
At my day job I have been updating our master keyword list and will look for such potentially conflicting keywords. The concept of exact match does not apply directly to SEO, other than the rare searcher who does searches using quote marks, but tightening up our keywords can only be beneficial.
To pick an example, a Google search for “credit card app” triggers organic results about:
Phone apps (probably the search intent)
Card readers by several suppliers
Card processing by Square
Apply for a credit card – ANZ
But the searcher might be thinking of something not related to any of the above. Is it a Google Pay or Apple Pay (no Apple results showed)? Is it an app that keeps track of your card spend across several banks? And so on.
Incidentally, three ads appeared only at the bottom of the SERP and were ANZ/Woolies/Commbank bank credit cards.
Brad’s article mentions the use of the search term “Yosemite camping“, which Google used as an example when rolling this out. A searcher could type:
Yosemite national park ca camping
Yosemite campground
Campsites in Yosemite
From Australia, the only two ads I see relate to:
Yosemite’s official website page about camping and campgrounds.
Save the Woods web page with a map of the area (leaving me wondering what to make of this info)
Granted, “Yosemite camping” is a vague search term, but one has to allow for such searches. So what’s the challenge here for the SEO?
A content writer should consider the possible use cases for someone who is interested in camping in Yosemite. For example:
Wild animal hazards and preventive steps
Time of year considerations
Campgrounds
Rules for lighting fires for a barbecue or campfire
Do they mean living in a tent, RV, cabins or even a motel?
Environmental care
One clue about the algorithm comes from the “Searches Related to Yosemite camping”, which are:
yosemite camping prices
yosemite camping cabins
yosemite camping map
yosemite camping permits
best yosemite campgrounds
yosemite valley camping
rv camping near yosemite
best rv camping in yosemite
The actual organic results in the SERP seem to be focused on accommodation rather than the other aspects of camping. So do the ads.
The (closely related) keyword suggestions in Google Keyword Planner are also accommodation-centric, so the writer can safely assume that Google has made this close association at the moment.
So what are the writer’s options? “Yosemite camping” is, therefore, not a good keyword if you don’t want to be accommodation-centric. If you searched Keyword Planner for the other terms, such as Yosemite bears , you will get a good set of related keywords. Then let the usual SEO guidance for content kick in. Headings, title, images, videos, captions and so on.
I haven’t seen much discussion of this test, which was reported by TheSearchAgents back in June.
A search for "private bank" shows other ads "related to" it. (click to enlarge)
Google has been placing ads that are “related” to the query, I suspect, when there isn’t enough ad inventory for the search term. I was looking for “private bank” and got ads related to “wealth management”, “term deposit” and “investment account”.
It doesn’t always happen. I searched for “trucks” and got just four ads. “Bulldogs” got me none. The example used by Alec Green “facial at home” did bring up a “related to” ad for “facial mask”.
I think it is a win-win situation for advertisers where there isn’t enough ad inventory. I’m curious to see if this pops up where there is enough inventory but many ads with a low quality score.
This is a longish response to Jill Whalen’s High Rankings Advisor: SEO Q&A Out the Wazoo – Issue No. 273. The question was “… what the differences are between SEM and SEO”. See Jill’s reply in the link above (and subscribe to her excellent newsletter).
Great reply Jill, about this annoyance we hear so often in user land. Yahoo can take some of the blame for perpetrating this “SEM=PPC” mindset, as they use that expression a lot, particularly when they deliver local seminars. Example.
I work in the corporate SEO space where big-name ad agencies just love to use the “SEM” expression, so, naturally, a lot of corporate people also use it.
I wonder how many of such people will go to the SMX West 2010 In-House SEM Exchange session expecting to hear about paid search. They will be sorely disappointed.
I like to explain that SEM = SEO + SEA + SMO (this elicits a blank stare). They usually get SEO. I say that Search Engine Advertising (SEA) includes PPC, CPM, etc (every type of ad a search engine accepts). SMO includes all social media optimisation tactics you can use to send signals to search engines, e.g. citations, nofollows, ratings & reviews etc.
I am still met with scepticism and some people continue to use the SEM expression after I have explained the difference. I have tried to illustrate with a Google.com site: operator search (filtering out Groups, Books, etc) to show that there are about *two* Google-employee-authored documents on the web where the writer treats SEM as synonymous with PPC. More tellingly, the Google AdWords glossary only mentions PPC but not SEM.
For anyone out there who is still unclear, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) covers any concept about marketing through search engines, not simply paid search. Ad agencies, please stop fooling your clients. You can still milk them by using the correct terminology.
The keynote address was delivered by Satya Nadella of Microsoft Live Search.
E-Commerce and Shopping Cart Optimisation
Rob Snell, Ethan Giffin, Jimmy Duvall
moderator: Joe Laratro
Contextual Ad Program Vendor Roundtable
Microsoft Representative, Shuman Ghosemajumder, Derek Brinkman, Tony Wills
moderator: Heather Lloyd-Martin
Getting Rid of Duplicate Content Issues Once and For All
Rahul Lahiri (no show), Derrick Wheeler, Ben D’Angelo, Priyank Garg
moderator: Rand Fishkin
Ben D’Angelo from Google cited how they handle duplicate issues. They have many systems for de-duping URLs at various stages in the crawl/index pipeline. They cluster pages, then choose the best representative cluster. There are different filters for different types of duplication. Your site is not “penalised” – simply, a duplicate page will not rank high.
How can you avoid dupes?
For exact dupes – use a 301, such as in tracking URLs, www vs non-www situations.
Near duplicates – use noindex / robots.txt, such as in printable pages, PDFs, clones of other sites.
Country domains – a new language is not a dupe. Add unique country content. Use ccTLDs.
URL parameters – if data does not affect the substance of the displayed page, put it in a cookie.
How can you avoid duplication by another site?
If distributing articles, show the original, absolute URL in the content.
Syndicate content that is different to the version on your site
If you use others’ articles, manage your expectations
Scrapers and proxies won’t affect you too much, but if you are concerned
Deborah Wilcox, from Baker and Hostetler, gave a sobering account of the “Million Dollar Domain Case”. In this incident, the plaintiff was punchclock.com. They made software to record worker hours and to calculate payroll deductions.
The defendant was punch-clock.com, a Canadian company that sold into the US and made a similar product. It ranked higher in a search and the company ignored a C&D in 2001.
There was a Florida lawsuit in 2007. The defendant defaulted, so the judge ruled in favour of the plaintiff. In brief, the defendant had to transfer the domain name and pay over $1,000,000 in damages and corrective AdWords advertising for seven years!
CSS and HTML Coding Today
Ted Ulle, Marc Juneau, Bryan Gmyrek, Lachlan Hunt
moderator: Lawrence Coburn
Bryan Gmyrek gave examples of how you can work with datafeeds with the help of PHP, Perl and databases.
Interactive Site Reviews : Focus on Organic
Byron White, Scott Hendison, Bruce Clay, Jessie Stricchiola
moderator: Dixon Jones
Podcasting and Podcast Optimisation
Glenn Gaudet, Jay Berkowitz, Cindy Turrietta, Tim Bourquin
moderator: Joe Laratro
Learning To Love Your Quality Score
Michael Stebbins, Jason Cooper, Mary Berk, Dan Sundgren
moderator: Brad Geddes
Linkfluence : How To Buy Links With Maximum Juice and Minimum Risk
Rand Fishkin, John Lessnau, Aaron Wall
moderator: Todd Malicoat
Mostly Viral Top Traffic Alternatives, or SEO on a Shoestring Budget
Brett Tabke, Marty Weintraub, Jessie Stricchiola, Gary Kirk
moderator: Carolyn Shelby
What Every Webmaster Should Know About Code Installation
Marc Juneau, Bryan Gmyrek, Ralf Schwoebel, Todd Keup
moderator: Jake Baillie
Interactive Site Reviews : Focus on E-Commerce
Rob Snell, Ethan Giffin, Bob Rains
moderator: Rob Snell
Top Secret Tools of The Trade
Todd Malicoat, Rand Fishkin, Jessie Stricchiola
moderator: Joe Laratro
Optimising Your Site for Contextual Ads
Matt Daimler, Jaan Janes, Aaron Wall
moderator: Jon Kelly
Optimising Your Site for Contextual Ads
Matt Daimler, Jaan Janes, Aaron Wall
moderator: Jon Kelly
Real-World Low-Risk, High-Reward Link Building Strategies
Eric Enge, Rebecca Kelley, Roger Montti, Greg Hartnett
moderator: Chris Tolles
Effective Domaining Strategies
Jeremy Wright, Jeff Libert, Jay Berkowitz, Victor Pitts
moderator: Michael Bonfils
Information Architecture : Design Mistakes You Can’t Afford to Make
Scott Fegette, Ted Ulle, Daniel Schulman
moderator: Heather Lloyd-Martin
Organic Site Reviews
Greg Boser, Todd Friesen, Jill Whalen
moderator: Tim Mayer
In-House SEO, PPC, and Campaigns
Jessica L Bowman, Allison Fabella, Ana Schultz, Jill Sampey, Dan Perry
moderator: Melanie Mitchell
Taking Your Analytics Data Beyond the Page View
Shuman Ghosemajumder, Geoff Mack, John Marshall
moderator: Joe Laratro
Geoff Mack from Alexa Internet introduced Alexa Research, a new competitive analysis tool in beta release. It shows your web competitors, their success and where they get traffic. You can see their visitor demographics, the upstream and downstream sites, the shared audience, the top URLs, and so on.
You can drill down quite deep and get down to a specific category, whether the site accepts ads, where the company is based, and more. Want to find sites that target a certain demographic, such as a Midddle Eastern female aged 55-64 and living in a certain country, who went to graduate school, and browses from work! If you are fussy, you only want to find a site that has a certain minimum pageviews, minimum monthly growth, etc. Alexa Research can do it.
Community Hacking – 96 Baiting Strategies You Can Employ
Todd Malicoat, Ian Ring, Bill Hartzer, Jane Copland
moderator: Andy Beal
Ian Ring had an intriguing title for his presentation, “Optimising Conversion using Genetics”
Equally as challenging was his assertion that your stylesheet can affect optimal user behaviour. CSS can determine how you display links. Ian introduced “Genetic Algorithms” where user behaviour, namely, clicks could be used to weed out poor CSS values and strengthen favourable ones.
In this ecosystem, survival of the fittest requires a measurement of fitness. This can be any measurable action, such as a click, a transaction, subscriptions, and so on.
Reading Time: 4minutesGeorge Wright blends a rake in a BlendTec domestic blender
Day Two of the Webmasterworld was keynoted by George Wright of Blendtec, better known for the viral video series Will It Blend?. George gave an entertaining presentation about how BlendTec achieved millions of visits (therefore, brand awareness) with a budget of only $50.
When George was new at the company, he noticed piles of sawdust in their demo room and was told that the founder, Tom Dickson, liked to test new components by blending wood and that this was normal. George immediately saw the viral marketing potential and asked Tom for a marketing budget. Tom generously suggested $50, which turned out to be just right.
George bought a lab coat, some marbles, a McDonald’s Happy Meal, a rotisserie chicken, and so on. Each of them was blended by Tom and the video of each experiment was placed on YouTube with some Digg publicity. Some 75 such videos have been released, including some resulting from viewer suggestions.
This fantastic viral marketing campaign has resulted in:
65 million views on YouTube (34th most subscribed channel)
120 million views on the willitblend.com site
200,000 subscribers
700% increase in retail product sales and a pull-through effect on B2B product lines
Great brand awareness, including a mention in US Congress
BlendTec has no need to spend money on traditional advertising. In fact, a radio station in New Mexico pays them to make blend videos, then shows them on local TV as commercials for their blend of music – this must be the only marketing department that generates revenue!
Analytics Vendors and Package Implementation
Brett Crosby, Richard Zwicky, Jamie Smith
moderator: Melanie Mitchell
Local and Mobile Search
Shailesh Bhat, Alex Porter, Chris Zaharias, Gregory Markel
moderator: Andy Beal
Danny Dover of SEOmoz at their booth
Brand Management
Brian Combs, Lauren Vaccarello, Tony Wright, Jessica L Bowman
moderator: Joe Laratro
Brian Combs is an SVP and Chief Futurist at Apogee Search. His message was that reputation is best protected before a problem occurs. It gets harder once the mud starts flying. Precautions you can take include:
Monitoring online conversations
Using consistent language
Create and propagate several websites for your company.
If the problem has arisen, then you should engage with the aggrieved person in a professional, non-defensive manner. Learn to recognise trolls and avoid them.
Set up multiple sites for products, perhaps a microsite for a problem that has gained widespread attention and encourage traffic to it (rather than your main site). Encourage positive articles on third-party sites. This does not mean pay-to-blog posts, editing Wikipedia, Googlebombing or other deceptive tactics!
Webhosting Industry Overview
Aaron Phillips, Ben Fisher, Amy Armitage, (Curtis) R. Curtis
moderator: Aaron Shear
Real-World Winning Tactics for Content Creation
Rupali Shah, Robin Liss, Ted Ulle
moderator: Derrick Wheeler
Interactive Site Reviews: Focus – Social Media
Brent Csutoras, Tamar Weinberg, Bill Hartzer, Michael Gray
moderator: Todd Malicoat
SEO Design and Organic Site Structure
Mark Jackson, Lyndsay Walker Blahut, Aaron Wall, Alan K’necht
moderator: Todd Friesen
How SMBs Can Use PR Campaigns To Grow Traffic
Lisa Buyer, Robin Liss, Greg Jarboe, Jiyan Wei
moderator: Michael McDonald
Competitive Intelligence : Know Thy Competitor Well
Jake Baillie, Andy Beal, Larry Mersman, William Atchison
moderator: Bruce Clay
Andy Beal described a lot of useful websites that you can leverage to spy on your competitors:
Ground-Up SEO Content Development as Pure Business Strategy
Heather Lloyd-Martin, Matt Tuens
moderator: Gillian Muessig
Interactive Site Reviews: Focus on Brand and Social Reputation Management
Brian Combs, Tony Wright, Geoff Livingston, Bill Hartzer
moderator: Alex Bennert
SEO and Big Search
Melanie Mitchell, Dave Roth, Maile Ohye, Derrick Wheeler
moderator: Joseph Morin
Alternative Discovery and SEO – Feeds, PDFs, and Blog SEO
Rick Klau, Stephan Spencer, George Aspland, Greg Jarboe
moderator: Joe Laratro
George Aspland talked about optimising PDFs to facilitate alternative discovery. For example, some PDFs consist of scanned documents and we know that search engines can’t read images. Their representation in a SERP can also get screwy. In the US government site shown, each page in the document showed up in the snippet as Page 1, Page 2, etc.
The first heading in the document may get picked up as the “title tag” of the search result, so pay attention to it. Better still, use the Document Title of the PDF to advantage. If you use Microsoft Word to create the PDF, you need to select File/Properties to find the dialog box. If you left it blank, the document title might read “Microsoft Word”, which isn’t very click-worthy.
Hyperlinks in the PDF should be enabled and have good anchor text. The PDF itself should be linked from an already indexed page.
You should invest in a copy of the full Adobe Acrobat so that you can edit the PDF that was created by some simple program or Office 2007.
(Curtis) R. Curtis, Jake Baillie, Jordan Kasteler, Scott Hendison
moderator: Jake Baillie
Scott Hendison from SearchCommander gave some practical checklists to use before buying hosting. By asking such questions, you can save yourself a lot of bother later on.
What Apache software is in use?
What control panel is offered?
What, if any, mods are installed?
How are mods used and used, e.g. via .htaccess? php.ini? http:conf?
Is shell access available?
Speed and performance?
Effective Action-Based Copywriting
Brian Clark (regrettably unable to attend), Heather Lloyd-Martin, Jill Whalen
moderator: Carolyn Shelby
Interactive Site Reviews: Focus on Organic
Andy Langton, Stoney deGeyter, Robert Charlton, Brant Bukowsky
moderator: Michael Bonfils
International and European Site Optimisation
Michael Bonfils, Andy Atkins-Krueger, Ralf Schwoebel, Frank Watson
moderator: Dixon Jones
Local Search Optimisation
David Klein, Joe Laratro, William Leake, Justin Sanger
moderator: Larry Mersman
Conversation and Word-of-Mouth Marketing
Todd Parsons, Louise Rijk, Ben Fisher
moderator: Mark Jackson
How To Move Your Website Without Chaos
Jake Baillie, Andy Langton, Guillaume Bouchard, Ralf Schwoebel
moderator: Jake Baillie
Interactive Site Reviews: Focus on Links
Rae Hoffman, Roger Montti, Rebecca Kelley
moderator: Rae Hoffman
Increase Your Post-Click Conversion Performance
Glenn Alsup, Philippe Lang, Alex Porter
moderator: Alex Bennert
The Secret Life of On-Site Search Exposed!
Laura Dansbury, Marc Cull, William Leake
moderator: Jessica L Bowman
Five Bloggers and a Microphone – What’s The Worst That Can Happen?
Andy Beal, Lee Odden, Michael McDonald, Barry Schwartz, Jane Copland
moderator: Ken Jurina
Web Services and Cloud Computing
Mike Culver, Microsoft Representative, Jeff Hardy, Kevin Gough
moderator: Jake Baillie
26 Steps Revisited – 2008
Brett Tabke
moderator: Brett Tabke
Interactive Site Reviews: Focus on Organic
Brian Clark, Heather Lloyd-Martin, Jill Whalen, Jeremiah Andrick
This is my fourth Webmasterworld conference and the second one (for me) in Las Vegas. I went to Orlando 2004 and New Orleans 2005. The 2007 event feels as though it was almost yesterday, so here I am once again. Note: I will update this post with more details and images when I get home. (If someone has a better photograph of me, please send it to me) Photographs at Flickr.
Agenda
Brett Tabke opened proceedings and made the observation that only one third of the sessions could be described as pure SEO. The rest covered affiliate marketing, PPC, social media, and so on.
Shawn Rorick from Cirque du Soleil delivered the keynote address, which covered the changing nature of the Internet, particularly how the Internet was better exploited by Barack Obama than John McCain. He introduced a new phrase, “Halo Media”, which means that users decide when/how/where they will consume media.
Top-Shelf Organic SEO
Bruce Clay, Bill Hunt, Ash Nallawalla, Jill Whalen
moderator: Mark Jackson
Bill Hunt from Global Strategies International spoke about Keyword Relevance via Prominence. Keywords should be placed in prominent parts of each page, such as the Title, Heading and so on.
After making pages relevant, you need quality backlinks from equally relevant sites and the anchor text needs to be keyword-rich.
Ash Nallawalla from Sensis focussed on Content, using the experience of the Yellow Pages® (Australia) site as an example. As with all advertising-based sites, Sensis needs people to look at advertiser content, namely their Yellow Pages listings. A business profile page has relatively little content compared to a regular website, so getting it to rank is not easy. Adding text to each advertiser’s page can’t be accomplished quickly.
Ash outlined several content-based strategies that deliver value to the reader and they can choose to proceed to the listings or not. One trial that has worked well is a home improvement magazine that gets over 700 visits a day, just six weeks since its launch.
Jessica L Bowman, Scott Polk, Aaron Shear, Tony Adam, Alex Schultz
moderator: Lou Ragg
Tony Adam from Yahoo spoke about the practical aspects of being an in-house SEO. He gave practical tips such as:
Knowing who are the stakeholders in your company.
Getting to know your colleagues, their personality types and who can help your agenda.
Knowing what projects are under way and whether you can add SEO value to them.
Ideally, the SEO should be plugged into the company’s strategy map and have several opportunities to contribute. SEO training should be arranged for the entire organisation – obviously tailored to the audience. SEO knowledge can also be imparted through the internal communication channels.
Most important, show your passion for SEO and get colleagues enthused!
Navigating The Complex World of PPC Engines
Christine Churchill, Microsoft Representative, Andrew Beckman
moderator: Melanie Mitchell
The main takeaway for me from Alexander Barbara was that social media sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Hugg, Twitter, etc is that their traffic quality varies and they do not convert as well as targeted traffic would. If your business appeals to this audience then it might suit you.
Earning Big Bucks With Social Media Traffic
Vanessa Fox, Michael Gray, Alexander Barbara
moderator: Rand Fishkin
Balancing Income Channels Between Affiliates and Ads
Jim Banks, Jon Kelly, Adam Jewell
moderator: Joe Laratro
Video Search Engine Optimisation
Mark Robertson, Edward Kim, Gregory Markel, Grant Crowell
moderator: Robin Liss
Interactive Site Reviews: Open Call
Kate Morris, Wil Reynolds, Craig Paddock, Guillaume Bouchard
moderator: Gord Hotchkiss
Universal and Personal Search – This Changes Everything
Brian Combs, Greg Boser, Amanda Watlington
moderator: Jake Baillie
Keyword Research, Selection and Optimisation
Ken Jurina, Larry Mersman, Wil Reynolds, Stoney deGeyter
moderator: Christine Churchill
Social Media : The Big Sexy Buzz
Guillaume Bouchard, Kent Schoen, Brian Carter, Warren Whitlock
moderator: Roger B. Dooley
Affiliate Based PPC Issues and Options
Adam Jewell, David Naffziger
moderator: Jon Kelly
Video Engines – New Kids Rocking The Web
Cuong Do, Chase Norlin, Henry Hall, Stephen Baker
moderator: Brett Tabke
Interactive Site Reviews: Focus on Video
Grant Crowell, Gregory Markel, Michael McDonald, Mark Robertson
moderator: Chris Winfield
Organic Keyword Research and Selection
Eric Papczun, Seth Wilde, Craig Paddock, Carolyn Shelby
moderator: Mark Jackson
Landing Page Optimisation
Brad Geddes, Lily Chiu, Kate Morris
moderator: Christine Churchill
Is Social Media & Search a Love Story or a War Story?
David Wallace, Chris Winfield, Liana Evans, Bill Hartzer
moderator: Lawrence Coburn
Your Relationship With The Affiliate Manager
Bob Rains, Shawn Collins, Brook Schaaf, Beth Kirsch
moderator: Lisa Riolo
Video and Multimedia Advertising – Show Me The Money!
Mort Greenberg, Angela Lauria, Bob Bahramipour
moderator: Joseph Morin
Interactive Site Reviews: Focus on Affiliates
Adam Jewell, David Rivero, Elisabeth Archambault
moderator: Jill Whalen
Discover Techniques Used by Enterprise-Level SEOs/SEMs
Marshall D. Simmonds, Bill Hunt, Ash Nallawalla, Scott Polk
moderator: Joe Laratro
Ash Nallawalla from Sensis gave an insight into the corporate SEO’s challenges. Essentially, things happen at a slower pace as corporations become larger.
The website can have millions of pages, so keyword selection is limited to a handful of key terms
There is greater emphasis on site architecture and strategy
Changes can be slow to implement and costly
Many stakeholders have to be consulted
As a bonus, it is easier to get unsolicited links
Web platforms are chosen for many reasons, but seldom SEO.
Web design and site architecture practices might not have taken SEO into account.
The web pages might not contain a lot of text.
Others might not link if you require them to link only in certain ways.
Duplicate content can occur when multinational companies copy the same pages from the parent site, or when content is licensed from a third-party specialist provider.
Ash then presented a case study of the Australian Yellow Pages website where IT resources were limited owing to other competing projects and how good SEO value was extracted. Sometimes the corporate SEO must make do.
Google is testing new fonts for some publishers in its AdSense ads. The image at right shows Microsoft’s Comic Sans font, which accompanies Microsoft Office (or Windows). I didn’t alter the JavaScript for the ad, but I came to the ad from a Google Search, so I suspect that was where Google noted in my environment variables that I have Office and Windows loaded.
I checked Webmasterworld and found that I was not alone. Others have noted fonts such as Times New Roman and Georgia, but I was not able to replicate such fonts by reloading the page. I don’t use the Comic Sans font anywhere and I agree that it makes a professional page look amateurish – I belong to a nonprofit organisation where another volunteer keeps using it in conference flyers.
Nevertheless, many AdSense publishers have blended these ads into their pages so well that a visitor might accidentally click an ad that looks like a menu selection. By changing the font at random, Google can reduce this possibility. While it may seem that Google is reducing its income from such accidental clicks, the advertiser will appreciate getting a higher conversion rate because the clicks will come from people who intended to click the ad.
“AdSense Advisor” in another Webmasterworld thread confirmed that this is a test and they are monitoring the results. I hope that Google retains the random fonts but omits Comic Sans from the repertoire.
When you are trying to optimise your Google AdWords campaign so that your ads rank high for less money, you usually are sharpening your ad copy, improving your landing page, playing with the bid and so on. If you worked at Google Maps, you wouldn’t need to work so hard.
At least in Australia if you search for <placename> <word>, e.g. Toorak dentist, Werribee cafe, Narre Warren restaurant, the first (almost always) AdWords result is an ad for Google Maps.
You can see this in the image on the right. Another interesting discovery are the two Menulog ads – one is the gTLD .com and the other is the ccTLD .com.au. Nice technique to remember if you need to display more than one ad. Just buy a few ccTLDs, since the algo won’t know if the various domain names in different “countries” are the same entity.
My next search was for a cafe in my old stomping ground, San Mateo, CA. Both Google and MenuLog were confused (click image on the left). I wasn’t logged in, but both remembered my previous search. Google Search showed the right results, but AdWords didn’t want me to leave these shores, choosing to show me an ad for Toorak cafes, and Menulog.com.au hedged its bets by showing me an ad for Armadale cafes, and Menulog.com showed me Toorak cafes. OK, these are broad match ads for the word “cafe”, but why show an irrelevant city in the wrong country? Since Google isn’t paying for its top-ranking ads, I think it could have shown a PSA or none at all.
Yes, cafes are in a tough category for AdWords. Either you phrase match <placename> <cafe> for thousands of placenames (not practical) or load a whole bunch of negative keywords (not practical) — I’d rather not see this prime position taken up by Google Maps ads at all. You can see these ads for many location searches, such as dentists, restaurants, etc.
eBay can’t handle the place name Narre Warren, a Melbourne suburb. Search for Narre -Warren (that’s a negative Warren) and eBay will exhort you to buy a Barre, whatever that is. MyLocal gets too familiar — look for Narre Warren cafe and it will tell you to go to Narre Restaurant. Local search doesn’t seem easy for some companies. TrueLocal still wants me to go to the solitary cafe in Redfern. Menulog wants me to go to Barre, WA – apparently there is a cafe/restaurant of this name in Perth.
This isn’t new, but new to me. I got my first phishing email that purported to be from Google AdWords. It came to one of my accounts at a US non-profit I am involved with, so I didn’t even need to think if it was genuine.
Subject: Submit your payment information
———————————————————————————
Dear Google Adwords Customer,
Your ads have stopped running because we were unable to process your billing information. To activate your account and start running your ads, enter your billing information.
In order to activate your account and start running your ads, enter your billing information. Please sign into your account at http://adwords.google.com/select/login, and update your billing information.
Once your account is reactivated and your billing information has been processed, any your ads and campaigns can begin running immediately on Google.
———————————————————————————-
This message was sent from a notification-only email address that does not accept incoming email. Please do not reply to this message.
———————————————————————————-
Google Adwords Team
The real URL beneath the one in the email points to www.adwords.google.com.3ppi3o.cn/select/Login – even when you hover on the link, your eyes will notice the left part of the URL (shown in green), but the domain name is further to the right (shown in red). It hosts a realistic copy of the AdWords login page, but Firefox knows it is a phishing site and blocks it. So does Internet Explorer 8.
The email was apparently sent via a Yahoo account from 189.59.233.22, which is allocated to Brazil. I didn’t bother to investigate if it was spoofed, sent via an open proxy or whatever. If you get one of these, don’t get caught out.
I don’t know why this had to be a secret, but the RTM version of SpeedPPC3 adds support for a raft of other PPC ad networks. (For those of you in the advertising industry but who never actually use the damn technology, substitute “SEM” for “PPC” and it will make more sense).
Jay Stockwell’s SpeedPPC 3 now supports 11 known ad networks (I can’t call the additional eight “well-known”.):
ABCSearch
Affiliate Radar
Ask
Enhance
GoClick
Google AdWords
LookSmart
Miva
MSN adCenter
Yahoo! Search Marketing
Search123
ValidClick
Actually, SpeedPPC 3 now handles 12 or more ad networks – It will support any other service that can accept a file upload. Now there is a fourth tab marked “Custom”, which covers the minor 8 players plus any Custom ones you want to process.
For example, I created one for Sensis BidSmart and the settings were saved for future use. Such configuration details are appended at the end of the CustomOutputs.xml file. Get your copy of SpeedPPC here.
by Ash Nallawalla
When I first read the description of SpeedPPC and saw the price of $497, my immediate thought was that this product was too cheap. I had seen an online service that charges a relatively higher, recurring fee to do what SpeedPPC 3 does for a one-time fee. I nearly told SpeedPPC creator Jay Stockwell that he is nuts – actually I met him at Pubcon 2007 and I suggested more diplomatically that he should check out what the competition is charging for less functionality. He gave me a sneak peek at the beta version 3, which is still being polished as we speak. Here is my report.
By now you must be wondering what the hell is SpeedPPC and do you care about it. If you do not use pay-per-click (PPC*) ads to advertise on Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing or Microsoft adCenter, then you won’t care about the rest of this review.
* which Google misleadingly refers to as “SEM” although SEM includes SEO, but that’s another story.
What Is SpeedPPC?
SpeedPPC is both a system and a methodology. It is not a single program but a set of Windows program, website templates and PHP scripts.
Dynamic Creatives
SpeedPPC takes your list of keyphrases (Google calls them keywords) and enables you to multiply them into additional combinations, e.g. “dentist” can be combined with a list of suburbs, e.g. “dentist richmond”, “dentist kew” and so on. This known as the “dual core” method. You can specify different bids for Exact, Phrase and Broad Match. SpeedPPC also creates the creatives, which are the actual ads you see on the ad network and their partner sites.
You can upload the creatives and the keywords with their bids using the Google AdWords Editor. The SpeedPPC campaign builder will also build your Microsoft adCenter campaigns, but you’ll need to use their online interface to add them (via a bulk upload CSV file).
The next important feature is that you can create a unique landing page that uses each keyphrase prominently. This keeps the Google Quality Score as high as possible, which gives you the cheapest cost per click. This feature is not entirely in the SpeedPPC package as such, but in a separately downloadable PHP script and matching templates. You install the script and it gives you a custom page for each keyword.
For example, to create the templated landing page at left, you embed the HTML inside the supplied PHP script, then you call it from the ad network’s Destination URL with a call such as:
Click the above image to see where the above variables end up in the template.
A closely related feature is the Affiliate datafeed landing page creator. This enables you to have a unique keyword and landing page pair per product in the datafeed (see image to the right) – affiliate heaven!
You upload the supplied script and make a MySQL database on your Linux server and follow the simple instructions to upload your datafeed file.
A fine set of narrated videos help you to understand the product very quickly. PDF manuals are also provided.
What’s New?
The first thing you notice about SpeedPPC 3 is the completely changed interface.
The next feature I noticed is that I could load a campaign of over 30,000 keywords, whereas the first release was limited to 1900. The next improvement is the speed! With the old version, processing 1900 keywords took more than 30 minutes and it was not advisable to load large campaigns. This version pumps out the 30,000 keywords in as little as three minutes! You should not normally need to run such large campaigns, but I was trying to test its limits.
Yahoo! Search Marketing support is now included, which will please many advertisers who run campaigns on Yahoo. Microsoft adCenter support is still present, so all the three biggies have been covered.
Advanced Ad Building enables you to mixmaster your headlines, description lines and display URLs. SpeedPPC will build text ads that represent every permutation of these.
We all need to copy ads and modify them. Now you can copy them from one box to another with the click of a button.
The Keyword Library enables you to reuse the same keyword lists for new campaigns. The benefits are obvious.
You can clean up keywords, say, by removing invalid characters or extra spaces. For experienced users, there is an option to remove all spaces between keyphrases, which results in joined words. Why would you want this, you may well ask. Some people accidentally run two words together in a search query and if you target competitive niches such as debt consolidation, this little trick could get you a few cheap clicks.
The My Campaigns panel displays all your SpeedPPC projects in one window even if they are stored in different directories on the PC. This is useful if you need to organise your PC to suit campaigns or different clients, instead of having to place all of them in one directory.
Certain tasks such as Excel export can take a few minutes to complete, but you can open a fresh instance of SpeedPPC and build a new campaign simultaneously. No more coffee breaks for the staff!
You can export your campaign in CSV format and now in Excel too.
The status bar shows the total quantity of seed and expansion keywords
Conclusion
SpeedPPC 3 is a powerful tool for PPC advertisers, particularly those with thousands of keywords and who are targeting multiple locations for each keyword. Although there are many free tools to mix keywords with another variable, they don’t address the tricky issue of building unique landing pages for each unique keyword. Not only will this improve the Google Quality Score, it will be a better user experience and, therefore, it should lead to more conversions. If you are a regular PPC advertiser, you should grab a copy before Jay wakes up and raises the price.
First came the news from ICANN last week that domain tasting will largely disappear. Not totally, because the practice hasn’t been banned, but it won’t be free anymore. The ICANN Board passed a motion to
include fees for all domains added, including domains added during the AGP,
and encourages community discussion involved in developing the ICANN budget,
subject to both Board approval and registrar approval of this fee.
The AGP is the five-day “Add Grace Period” during which a registrar was not charged the $0.20 ICANN transaction fee (originally intended to cover typos and errors). A reseller usually got a shorter period of grace from the registrar. A few registrars and individual domain tasters took advantage of this period to register tens of millions of speculative domains each month to see if there was any type-in traffic that would be shown AdSense or similar ads. If there was no traffic, the domain name would be cancelled within the AGP at no cost to the registrant.
Now the party is over, with all gTLD transactions to cost $0.25. This won’t stop domain tasting, but it will be severely curtailed.
Google Puts Boot In
While domain tasters were drowning their sorrows in some virtual pub, Google is about to change its AdSense policy before the end of February, reports Jay Westerdal in the DomainTools Blog:
A confidential informant says Google will stop monetizing all domains if they are less than five days old. This potential new policy change by Google could stop all Domain Tasting in its tracks.
Most domain tasters used AdSense or Yahoo! PPC ads to monetise their temporary assets and they kept the domain if the type-in traffic kept coming and clicking the ads. This means a domain taster will only be watching a visitor counter and not the cash register for the first four days and pay ICANN 25c for the privilege by cancelling before the fifth day ends. Jay believes that Yahoo! will also implement a similar policy.
This is great news for the rest of us. People will buy domain names more thoughtfully and for long-term reasons. Google will regain some of that lost “Do No Evil” cred.
Google is testing new fonts for some publishers in its AdSense ads. The image at right shows Microsoft’s Comic Sans font, which accompanies Microsoft Office (or Windows). I didn’t alter the JavaScript for the ad, but I came to the ad from a Google Search, so I suspect that was where Google noted in my environment variables that I have Office and Windows loaded.
