Paid Search: Are Search Refinement Tools Friend or Foe to PPC Advertisers?
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Written By Vicky Fudali | May 27, 2009 | Share This
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As evidenced by innovations like Google’s Wonder Wheel, and Kosmix the search engines have recently been focusing a majority of their efforts on enhancing their user experience.
The logic is sound - Instead of just returning the traditional list of ten text links, search engines have begun to add related suggestions that the user might not otherwise have thought of, or a list of local vendors that can provide what they’re looking for. These type of innovations clearly benefit users, by helping them to refine their search and get closer to the info they’re looking for.
For advertisers, however, these types of UI changes can be a bit of a double edged sword. On one hand, more relevant results lead to better qualified clicks. However, these refinements can have an unintended negative impact on your paid search campaigns.
Let’s look at two notable examples I’ve come across recently: Google’s local search results box and Yahoo’s spelling suggestions.
Google Local Search Results
When a zip is entered, the page refreshes and Voila! Local business results appear:
Yahoo’s Spelling Suggestions
Yahoo, like many other engines, helps the spelling-deficient among us by providing suggested corrections to the user’s query. However, rather than showing just the most likely match, Yahoo often combines these refinements into its related search suggestions, under the heading “Also Try”
Each time I clicked on the suggestion, another suggestion would appear. This gives the opportunity for the user to see multiple spelling versions for that terms. Again, each time the page refreshed, so did the ads.
How does this benefit users?: This type of refinement provides the user with a deep dive into specific information (local search results, related searches) that helps them get closer to the information they’re looking for without having to search a second time.
OK, but what’s the catch? : Paid search ads on the SERP are refreshed after both the zip code input and the spelling correction. This increases ad impressions and lowers CTR (which can impact Quality Score and CPC).
Because Google’s tool seems to be primarily focused on generic/head terms these page refreshes could represent a large portion of overall traffic for advertisers. Additionally, many advertisers account for misspellings in their paid search campaigns, meaning that their ads will show up on both the initial page and the resulting, corrected page.
There is one silver lining, specifically on Google’s side: Google usually cookies the user. Once the zip is typed in, Google remembers the location for future queries, serving the appropriate local results automatically. For those users that have cookies turned off? Sorry, you’re out of luck.
Overall these refinement tools are a positive – as users drill down into the reply pages, the targeting for the ads should (in theory) be getting better which, in turn, should be better for the advertisers – more relevant targeting means users that are more likely to click. So the theoretical decrease in CTR can potentially be made up for in more relevant clicks. Regardless, it’s worth considering how these UI changes may impact your campaign, and take steps to adjust your strategy accordingly.
Topics: Advertising: Online, SEM: Paid Search, Search: Innovations |
Excellent post Vicky. I would love to see a follow up post giving real life examples of how these search refinements impacted your campaigns. I would assume the more relevant ads would lead to higher conversions, which would offset the lower CTR and likely higher CPC? Perhaps you could provide a white labeled example?
Thanks so much for your comment, Ryan. The idea for this post was sparked by a real advertising situation where CTR was impacted by an increase in impressions tied back to a search refinement tool. I ended up using various optimization tactics to offset the slight increase in CPC due to lower CTR and leverage Quality Score. I ran search query reports to identify more negatives, assessed rank and CPC relative to conversions in bid optimization, tested ad copy to increase relevancy and CTR, and allowed similar terms to get more SERP visibility that weren’t affected by the tool. This allowed me to manage the effects and try to maintain conversions seen before the tool. Search refinement tools are great because they are one more step in fine-tuning the search experience. The more relevant the ads, the more relevant the clicks, which will in the end benefit the advertiser theoretically. I’m hoping this insight though, will help advertisers look at all angles, think outside the box, and optimize every way they can. Hope that helps!