Bing Offers Rewards Just For Searching

In my last post, I was just writing how Google+ Is Showing Up In Paid Search, in a major way. Today, when performing my Daily Checks, I noticed a major change on Bing too. I noticed a little number in the upper right hand of my screen that kept going up with each search. Then, I clicked the little number and went to a page about Bing Rewards. You can see a screenshot of the Bing Rewards page below.

So, what is this Bing Rewards? Basically, Bing is allowing you to earn points just for searching. As you get more points, you can redeem your points for rewards such as gift cards, Xbox LIVE points, and more.

I think this is a really neat idea. I’m sure that Bing Rewards will draw some more attention to Bing and increase loyalty. People love freebies and rewards. That said, Bing Rewards could also potentially lower click quality. Some people may search just to get more points. Some may go as far as creating automated bots to search on Bing. With those increased searches, it is possible that some of them click paid search ads with a lower propensity to convert. It will all come down to Bing’s click quality monitoring, which in my experience is quite good. My end conclusion: This is a really neat concept, hopefully it will increase volume over time, and (especially in the short run) it will be important to keep an eye on click quality just in case Bing Rewards affects click quality.

Image in this post © Bing

Editors’ Picks Affect Organic Results On Bing

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Mar 25 4

Today, I was doing some searches on Bing and noticed something really unique. The first result in the organic results for the keyword auto insurance is something called Editors’ Picks (first screenshot below). When I click the title, it goes to this page on Bing that highlights some of the sites their editors found (second screenshot below).

I wanted to point this out for a few reasons. First and foremost, it’s cool and unique. Microsoft adCenter powers the paid and organic results for both Yahoo! and Bing. That said, both Yahoo! and Bing are adding on neat, unique features on top of the standard results. While Yahoo is Pushing The Limits of Organic Search with custom widgets and Rich Ads, Bing is pushing the limits with their Editors’ Picks.

Second, it’s quite likely that the Editors’ Picks will affect your organic program on Bing. The Editors’ Picks are ranking quite well. If you’re in the Editors’ Picks, that’s really great news. Not only do they rank high, but it’s also a way to get a second listing if your website already ranks on its own. If you’re not in the Editors’ Picks, it’s likely your organic listing is being pushed down. You’ll want to work really hard and think about creative ways to get into the Editors’ Picks.

Third, as online marketers we need to be careful not to assume that Bing and Yahoo! will have the same organic results. Fundamentally, they are powered by the same engine, but now we are starting to see some really unique customization on top of the fundamentals.

Way to go, Bing! I’m looking forward to seeing more custom features within organic search on both Bing and Yahoo!

Images in this post © Bing.com

Monitoring Your Google AdWords Quality Score

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Mar 14 7

If you’ve been advertising on Google AdWords for a while, you know that it’s all about quality score. The better your quality score, the better you rank, the lower your CPCs, and the more revenue and margin you can squeeze out of your Google AdWords campaigns.

On a keyword level, it’s super easy to measure quality score. After all, quality score is exposed on a keyword level. (Side note: If quality score is low for any particular keyword, I always recommend breaking it out and optimizing ad copy.)

Now, let’s say you’re managing millions of keywords like me. How do you get a sense of your overall account level quality score? Here’s how… Each month, I recommend exporting your entire Google AdWords account with all columns. Then, I recommend creating a new column called quality score * cost that equals the product of quality score and cost. Next, sum the new quality score * cost column and also the cost column. Divide the quality score * cost sum by cost sum and you have your weighted average quality score for your entire Google AdWords account!

Make sure to to do this exact same exercise each and every month. On Google’s back end, quality scores are not on the simple 1 to 10 scale that they export to the end user. However, the 1 to 10 scale is the best we have. These days, a high-spending AdWords account with a lot of history and a great quality score should have an average quality score in the 7 range. When you start measuring on a month to month basis, you’ll see some fluctuations (usually within a 1 point range). Make sure your weighted average has at least two decimal points.

Why do you want to measure this number? There are a few main reasons. First and foremost, you want to see if all your ad copy and reorg projects are working. If your quality score improves, it indicates your work is paying off. Second, you want to keep an eye out of major issues with your account. If your quality score drops, there’s likely a new competitor in your category who is adversely affecting your click through rate (and therefore quality score) or something is wrong with your account. A drop is something to spend time investigating. Third, quality score is a great metric to manage upwards. It’s a way to benchmark your team’s performance. It’s not as important as revenue and margin, but is one other indicator of progress.

Image of check mark © alexsl

Important Google AdWords Campaign-Level Checks

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Mar 11 2

A while back I wrote about Six Essential Campaign Checks. These Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter checks are just a few of my favorite daily checks. Today, I wanted to highlight some important Google AdWords campaign-level checks that I like to perform every few months (typically every quarter). These checks will often yield some great quick wins in optimizing your PPC account, especially if you have a large team, big budget, and complex program.

Tip 1: Check For Missing Sitelinks

I’m a huge fan of sitelinks. Now, Google is displaying up to Six Sitelinks in paid search. However, if your campaign is missing sitelinks, they won’t deliver! Make sure to regularly go through your AdWords campaigns to verify that they all have at least six sitelinks.

Tip 2: Check Your Ad Rotation Settings

These days, Google offers several ad rotation options: rotate evenly, optimize for clicks, and optimize for conversions. Rotate evenly is rarely the right setting, unless you are testing ad copy. Sometimes, after tests have concluded, we all forget to return the settings to optimize for clicks or optimize for conversions. This optimization is super easy: Check your campaign settings and make sure the ad rotation settings are consistent and correct.

Tip 3: Check Your Delivery Method

When I’m testing a new campaign, I like to leverage a low budget (maybe a few hundred dollars/day). Once a campaign is proven, however, I like to raise budgets and change my delivery method to accelerated. Make sure to audit your campaign settings: Did you forget to move over from standard to accelerated? You never want to cap the delivery of a highly profitable, proven campaign (that is, unless you truly have a limited budget to work within). Also, while you’re at it: Make sure your budgets are set correctly. Great performing campaigns can easily outgrow old, small budgets.

Tip 4: Check Your Negative Words

Google seems to get more and more aggressive with its (expanded) broad match over time. As a result, I’m spending more time and getting amazing results deploying new negative keywords. Sometimes when I generate new negatives, I may add them to the campaign which helped generate them. However, if you block a bad query in one campaign, it could always pop up in another. From time to time, make sure you have parity in your campaign level negatives across all your campaigns. Of course, there always will be a few exceptions (and it’s important to keep track of those so you don’t mistakenly deploy them to other campaigns).

Tip 5: Check Your Networks, Devices, and Geo-Targeting Settings

Settings can make such a difference in your campaign’s performance. As just one example, I like to separate out tablets and smartphones (rather than blend them into my desktop campaigns). Sometimes, however, settings can get mixed up (especially with a rapidly growing/changing account). Make sure your targeting settings are correct and you can instantly improve your bottom line.

Image of Bullseye © CGinspiration

Yahoo! Pushing The Limits of Organic Search

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Mar 9 9

I’m a huge fan of Yahoo! Back in December, I posted about how Yahoo! Rich Ads Are Back. Recently, I have noticed Yahoo! pushing the limits of organic search as well. Go to Yahoo! and type in the word “refinance”. A screenshot of the results is below. Check out the Quicken Loans result. I’m totally thrilled with the integration of the mortgage refinance rate table right into the organic result.

This was the vision of the Search Alliance all along. Yahoo! and Microsoft partnered so adCenter could power the paid and organic results on both search engines. However, Yahoo! always had the plan that they would focus on user experience and advanced add-on functionality on top of the standard results. It’s awesome to see this vision turning into reality. Great work Yahoo! Want to customize your organic search results on Yahoo? Reach out to your account management team and see what beta tests may be available.

Image in this post © Yahoo!

Sitelinks Now Have Arrows Pointing To Them

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Feb 9 0

I’m a huge fan of Google sitelinks. Sitelinks are showing up more and more, with some ads now displaying Six Sitelinks. (Make sure your campaigns have six sitelinks or else there’s no way you will get the full benefit when Google wants to serve up six sitelinks.) Now, Google is improving sitelinks even more. Check out the screenshot below, the search results for the query “life insurance”. There’s a little arrow next to the sitelinks pointing right at them! Starting today, I’m seeing this little arrow with both paid and organic ads.

So far, I have not experienced a ton of clicks on sitelinks themselves. Rather, sitelinks are amazing because they allow you to get additional real estate for ad copy, raising your overall CTR. Personally, I wish more people clicked on sitelinks because they allow you to segment your traffic and theoretically improve the overall user experience. Now, with the little arrow, this may become reality! I know when I include arrows on landing pages they definitely draw the user’s attention. The arrow next to sitelinks should definitely increase clicks on sitelinks which will be fun to measure.

Google Local Maps Pushing Down Paid Ads

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Feb 3 6

Check out the screenshot below of the Google search results for the ever competitive query, “auto insurance”. At the top of the right rail, you’ll see a map. If you click the title of the map (“Map for auto insurance”), you get taken to a local results page that includes local brokers. If you’re a local broker, this could be a great way to get more business. However, if you’re a paid search advertiser and show up on the right rail, this means lower CTRs.

The map pushes all ads on the right rail down. At the end of the day, this means it’s more important than ever to show up in the top yellow bar. Otherwise, your ad will get a significantly lower CTRs. Google is supposed to normalize CTRs for position for purposes of quality score, but I wonder if they are factoring in this new map feature. The lower CTRs of right rail advertisers could be a vicious cycle if Google is not taking this new map feature into account.

My advice: Work on your CTRs, landing pages, and overall account structure/efficiency to make sure you show up in that top yellow bar! It’s becoming more important than ever to avoid the right rail, if possible, and show up in the yellow bar.

Uncover Hidden Tricks With Google Instant

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Jan 21 11

It’s the weekend so it’s time to relax. It’s time to have a little fun and stop taking things so seriously. In that light, I wanted to share some really cool “hidden tricks” today with Google Instant. Some of my team members actually shared these with me on Friday and I was so excited about it. I absolutely can’t get enough of Google’s humor. For SEM geeks, like myself, this stuff is too funny.

Below, you will see two screenshots. The first is the search engine results on Google when I type in “askew”. As you can see, Google Instant technology actually makes the page go askew for the word askew, how cool is that!

The second screenshot shows the search results for the search term “do a barrel roll”. This one is so crazy, you just have to see it for yourself. Type in “do a barrel roll” on Google Instant and the entire page does a barrel roll. Obviously, my screenshot is just a moment in time during the barrel roll process.

Bring these into work on Monday and you’ll be the hero of your SEM team. Do you know any hidden tricks with Google Instant? There just have to be more. I have not yet taken the time to search for other Google tricks, but definitely looking forward to uncovering more of them!

Capture Email Addresses With Google AdWords

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Dec 27 7

I’m a huge fan of Google AdWords ad extensions. What are ad extensions? They are new ways of customizing your AdWords ads to greatly improve your overall CTR and interaction with searchers. Basically, Google is challenging the traditional paid search ad format with new, special extensions that make your ads more interesting and interactive than ever before. Different ad extensions make sense in different verticals. Some of my favorite examples from the finance vertical include Call Extensions and Sitelinks. In the retail vertical, you may quite familiar with seller review extensions.

Recently, I noticed another cool ad extension that’s still in beta testing, email lead capture extensions (check out the screenshot below). For many verticals, the money truly is in the email list. This is never more true than in the “daily deals” vertical. When I search for “sf deals”, I found a neat ad by Pinchit that allows me to sign up for their email deals without ever leaving Google AdWords! If you make a lot of money from your email list, I highly recommend asking your AdWords rep about this extension. If you’re in a vertical that is not as reliant on your email list, I highly recommend testing the other extensions, you will not be disappointed. Great work Google, please keep the cool ad extensions coming.

Yahoo! Rich Ads Are Back

By PPC Ian Leave a Comment Dec 20 1

If you were a big advertiser on Yahoo! back in the Panama days (before the Yahoo!/Microsoft Search Alliance), you may remember rich ads in search. What are rich ads? They are basically an awesome way to make your brand/trademark ads stand out. I’m talking about adding an image (or even video) to your brand keywords. I’m talking about including sitelinks in your ad. I’m talking about adding a zip code box to your ad so your users can start filling out your form right from the ad itself! When it comes to rich ads, it’s all about customization.

Rich Ads Are Now Powered By adCenter

When the Yahoo!/Microsoft Search Alliance came around, Yahoo! rich ads disappeared. It made sense. adCenter became the platform of choice and adCenter did not support rich ads at the time. Yahoo! Panama was the only platform in our industry offering this capability. However, both Yahoo! and Microsoft promised that rich ads would be back, and they now are!

Capitalize On Your Brand Name Traffic

Check out the screenshot below. You can see Rosetta Stone’s rich ad (screenshot taken today). In this particular rich ad, Rosetta Stone is leveraging an image and also sitelinks. There’s no doubt that they are enjoying a higher click through rate and increased brand awareness. Also, they are preventing other advertisers from showing up in the top yellow bar. Rich ads take up a lot of space so when rich ads deliver they will occupy the entire top bar.

Enjoy Rich Ads On Both Yahoo! and Bing

I’m super excited about rich ads (more so than ever before) because they now display on both Yahoo! and Bing thanks to the Search Alliance. Moreover, the process for uploading rich ads (and the overall bidding framework) is more simplistic and scalable than ever before. If you’re a large advertiser on adCenter, you just have to reach out to your Yahoo! reps about rich ads. You won’t be disappointed and it could turn out to be one of your big successes of 2012!

Want to learn more about the Yahoo!/Microsoft Search Alliance and my perspective on the transition from Panama? You’ll want to check out my Search Alliance Case Study which is now live on Yahoo!’s advertising portal.