If you’re a Google shareholder, perhaps (like much of the investment community), you’re concerned that Google reported their average AdWords cost per click declined during the last quarter of last year.
But if you’re a marketer, you probably rejoiced at this news – what an unexpected treat after the seemingly inevitable climb of average CPCs!
So why the dip? Could it be the beginning of the end of Google’s dominance? Well…no. The short version of the story is that Google is offering many more options to both advertisers and searchers, and many of these new techniques come with a lower average CPC. So as the volume of cheap clicks goes up, the overall average CPC for all clicks goes down.
These more affordable options include:
- PPC Sitelinks
- Location extensions
- Product extensions
- Increased use of mobile search
Kevin Lee goes into more detail in Solving the Mystery of Google’s Q4 CPC Drop on ClickZ.
Not always seeing your title tags in Google SERPs? Last week there was a post on the Google Webmaster Central blog entitled Better page titles in search results where the blogger, Pierre Farr, explained how Google chooses the title tags to show in their search results. He says Google may choose to display an alternate title for your page using algorithms that generate alternative titles to make it easier for users to recognize relevant pages in the search results.
As with most things related to Google’s search results, it all comes back to relevancy. Read more…
Google recently announced a new feature called Search plus Your World, a significant change to the Google Search experience. The new feature, now available to all Google users searching in English, integrates personalized results into Web search results using Google+.
Over the last several months, we’ve seen Google make minor changes in an effort to create a social search experience, but nothing quite this drastic. In Google’s announcement yesterday, they explained that Search plus Your World is effort to try to understand people and relationships, and provide people with the content they care about. But how can a search engine do that?
Read more…
In what was reportedly the biggest search marketing story last year, the launch of Google+ had much written about it: Will it overtake Facebook? Will Google use the data in their algorithm? What’s the deal with the Google+ button? The jury may still be out on its true impact, but one thing is for sure, Google is working hard to make sure Google+ doesn’t end up being just another 2011 trivia question. Read more…
According to Google, “… rich snippets provide you with the ability to help Google highlight aspects of your page. Whether your site contains information about products, recipes, events or apps, a few simple additions to your markup can result in more engagement with your content — and potentially more traffic to your site.” Most of us are familiar with rich snippets and know they can increase click through rates for search results.
We know rich snippets are important, but implementation can be daunting and confusing. I’m not going to attempt to discuss the technical aspects of rich snippets or go into a how-to lesson — I’ll leave that to the experts. Google Webmaster Tools recently published a series of instructional videos about rich snippets. Video topics include a general introduction, types of rich snippets, product searches and troubleshooting, among others.
Not sure if you have rich snippets? Google also has a rich snippet testing tool that allows you to see if a web page contains a rich snippet markup, and, if so, preview the search result for that page.
Does your site contain rich snippets? Use the tool and find out (it’s painless, I promise). Yes? Good for you! No? Try them out and see whether rich snippets have an impact on your click-through-rates.
We recently wrote a post about Google’s new Verbatim Search, a substitute for Google’s phased out “+” operator. In the past, the “+” operator was utilized in Google Search to apply a mandated inclusion of specific word, in a specific form. Many speculated that these changes would allow the plus sign to perform a function related to Google+.
It was only a matter of time. Google has started testing a feature called Google+ Direct Connect which helps users access their favorite brands’ Google+ pages from within Google Search. With this new feature, users will be able to type “+,” followed by a brand name into Google Search in order to be taken directly to that brand’s Google+ Page.
Read more…
After performing a search, Google offers a new option to narrow down search results. Under “More search tools”, you can now select “Verbatim” to limit traffic to just what you literally searched. Google has a short explanation here which suggests that the tool eliminates spelling corrections, personalized search based on your search history, synonyms, similar terms, and words with the same stem. Basically, you just get what you’re looking for without Google’s search suggestions.
The buzz is that Verbatim search is Google’s substitute for the phased out “+”operator. Previously, this could be utilized to make sure that a specific word in a specific form appeared in the search results. Google’s intentions might be to now utilize “+” to perform some function related to Google+. Only time will tell! Read more…
In an earlier post, I discussed how to use Google Website Optimizer for A/B testing, and now I’m going to briefly touch on conducting multivariate tests with Google Website Optimizer. As with A/B testing, Google’s tool takes away much of the grunt work. Before you get started, consider these tips to help your test run smoothly – choose a page with high traffic, start off small by testing only a few elements, and pick a high volume type of conversion. Also, as I mentioned in my last post, the more variations you have, the longer it’ll take to declare a winner.
To begin, you’ll need the following:
- The URL of the page you’d like to test
- Identify the sections of that page you’d like to test
- The URL of the conversion/success page
Read more…
Earlier this week, Google launched Google+ Pages for businesses and brands worldwide. While some people were disappointed by the lack of exciting new features and customization options of the Google+ Pages, the impact of +1s in AdWords gives businesses a good reason to get their Google+ Page up and running.
Google announced: “This week we introduced Google+ Pages, a new way to get closer to your customers online. At that time we announced that you’d be able to link your Page to your AdWords campaigns, so that all your +1s — from your Page, your website, ads and search results get tallied together and appear as a single total. We’re happy to announce that starting today, and rolling out to all advertisers globally over the rest of the week, we’re making this functionality available with a new AdWords feature called Social Extensions.
Read more…
Google is nothing if not experimental. This can be a rather large and particularly uncomfortable pill to swallow – especially for search marketers. Normally those of us at SEM agencies love testing. User testing, A/B testing…you name it, we test it. And many of the brightest minds in the field write endless articles on the benefits of testing and experimenting.
But when Google begins rolling out new changes, we tend to collectively hold our breath.
Earlier last week Google announced a new way forward to improve user relevancy and transparency. Read more…
