Social Media: Is Google Buzz More Than Just Hype?
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Written By Noah Mallin | February 11, 2010 | Share This
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Google has been known to launch products (hello Wave) that get a lot of initial hype but end up being curiosities at best in the hands of users. This is not to diminish the areas in which Google still holds strong - search and e-mail. So the unveiling of their new Buzz tool for Gmail users is being met with skepticism in some quarters even as it seems to hold out several promising features. Here’s the YouTube video from Google that discusses the product’s features.
Buzz is designed to allow Gmail users to tap into social media activity and updates from their existing social contacts, without leaving the popular e-mail platform.
Google Product Extensions: Providing More Information and Relevancy
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Written By Yvonne Wong | January 25, 2010 | Share This
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In November, Google released a new AdWords product called Product Extensions that allows advertisers to enrich their Google AdWords ads with more specific and relevant information. With Product Extensions, an advertiser’s search ad will display with a plus box appended below, which can expand to show product images, titles, and prices that are relevant to the user’s search term. Below is an example of a Product Extensions ad run by Sephora on the keyword “sephora cosmetics”:
Product Extensions can be associated with specific keywords within your campaign, and you can specify which specific products are associated with each keyword/search query. Advertisers also have the option to allow Google to decide which product images show if “auto-targeting” is selected. Up to six images can display if your ad is in the top position; up to four can be displayed on the right side of the SERP.
Personalized Results and Paid Search Are Not A Match
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Written By Emil Panzarino | January 19, 2010 | Share This
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Recently, I was doing some routine campaign QA for one of our clients when I ran into something that stopped me dead in my tracks. I was searching on Google for one of our automotive clients’ model names when, much to my dismay, I was shown a listing from a completely different ad group within the client’s account. The listing that should have shown had language that was specific to that car model’s name, but the one that did show was tailored for the more broader automotive brand name. I soon realized that the ad that was shown was from an ad group that historically had the most traffic volume of the account.
Now, I have been in the paid search industry for some time, and have seen this type of thing before. I’m well aware that there are vague explanations from engines about what “broad match” really means, and that the keyword could well have been matched against another in the account. But here’s the kicker: this keyword was on “exact match”. I quickly hit “F5″ to ensure it wasn’t just a glitch, but sure enough the same ad showed. I searched 4, 5, 6 more times, and each time the wrong ad came up. Finally, on my 7th search (We like to be thorough here at Reprise Media) the correct ad showed. My heartbeat slowed from a frenzy as the issue seemed to be fixed. Deciding this whole situation was probably just an anomaly, I closed the browser.
China v Google Not About Free Speech
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Written By Mark Pilatowski | January 15, 2010 | Share This
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Google v China Free Speech was originally posted on SEO Manager Mark Pilatowski’s piloSEO blog. Mark agreed to allow us to post it on SearchViews and share it with our audience.
“Don’t be Evil”. It is fairly well known that Don’t be evil is Google’s informal corporate motto. It looks great and gives everyone that sees it a warm and fuzzy feeling that this huge corporation that essentially tracks everything you do online is like a friendly neighbor. Google still has a pretty good reputation as far as corporations go. Unlike Microsoft, the general public still seems to trust Google and truly believe that they are a force for good in the world. Those who have had direct experience with the Google borg, like online marketers, SEOs, AdSense, publishers, etc. have a much different view of Google than do most people. In my experience Google is no different than every other for profit corporation. They are neither good nor evil but they are solely focused on increasing their revenue and profits. That’s why they went to China and agreed to censor search results. They saw the opportunity that was available in China and felt that the free speech wasn’t as important as that extra money that the China market could add to their bottom line. (more…)
Mobile: What Marketers Need to Know About Google’s AdMob Deal
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Written By Noah Mallin | November 11, 2009 | Share This
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The rapid growth of mobile platforms this year has put to rest any doubt that digital marketers may have had about jumping in. The recent successful launch of Android coupled with the continued growth of iPhone sales (even as the recession continues) point clearly to a continuing transformation in the portability of the online experience for most Americans. Google’s deal to buy AdMob serves to reinforce this wisdom.
After all, it’s not just about AdMob’s ad-serving platform. So much of Google’s success in the world of search advertising has been built on the back of analytics - how they cull and act on data in-house and what they offer to advertisers and consumers as a benefit of service. There is no doubt that whether or not Google’s own mobile OS dominates, AdMob’s platform agnostic nature gives them directional insight into mobile as a whole.
Here are the basics that every marketer and advertiser should know:
Search and Social Media: Your Guide to Bing and Google on The Road to Social Media
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Written By Noah Mallin | October 29, 2009 | Share This
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This week’s article by yours truly in the Huffington Post asks if Google is turning it’s back on its core values by limiting social search to folks with both Google profiles and social media profiles. Earlier in the week, my colleague Mark Pilatowski wondered whether the engines would be able to deal with the spam factor inherent in real-time search.
Before diving into the implications of real time and social search integration to the biggest search engines (excluding YouTube), it’s important to know the basics and the background to what these new deals mean to marketers and the brands who love them. Presented below is everything marketers need to know about the Bing and Google social search deals.
Search and Social: Will the Twitter Firehose Become a Sewage-Filled Spam Hose?
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Written By Mark Pilatowski | October 22, 2009 | Share This
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As most of you probably know Bing and Google announced that they have finalized agreements with Twitter to begin incorporating Tweets into their search engine results. Everyone seems to be overjoyed and excited about this. Search engines are excited because they get access to the Twitter firehose and they can begin providing real time results in the SERPs. Twitter is happy because they are finally getting paid. Searchers are happy because they can now get real time results for queries that deserve it, like breaking news. Everyone seems to be overjoyed about the possibilities and I myself am very interested to see how this all plays out. I do have one concern and that is how are Bing and Google going to deal with the issue of spam when it comes to real time search via Twitter results?
Search News: Google Spreading Tentacles Wider into Ad Exchanges?
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Written By Shivan Durbal | September 17, 2009 | Share This
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Rumor has it that in the near future, possibly within the next two weeks, we may see Google’s invitation only DoubleClick ad exchange marketplace door swung wide open to all buyers and sellers. This is according to ClickZ, but as such it’s still only rumor. As Mia Wallace said in Pulp Fiction “When you little scamps get together, you’re worse than a sewing circle.”
Still, assuming it’s true; Google could bring the worlds of search and display marketing closer together than ever and finally impose tools and measurement on display that we’ve been using for years in the search marketing field.
For those search marketers out there that are unfamiliar with ad exchanges in the display advertising space, in effect they are a support structure for the sale of undervalued, unused or remnant banner advertising inventory.
Search News: Google’s Move Left Leads to Double-Digit Rise in Clicks
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Written By Alex Staunton | August 27, 2009 | Share This
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Take this and let’s move it over an inch. It doesn’t sound like much of a change, but for Google, it’s huge. Google recently moved their ads over to the left a skosh, snuggling them closer to the organic results like Nick Cannon and Mariah Carey after a long day of shopping. While the average user probably noticed nothing, we in the search marketing industry have obsessed over what this change might mean for campaigns.
Social Media: Is Facebook a Final Destination or Just Another Social Fling?
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Written By Noah Mallin | August 25, 2009 | Share This
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Recently, a client asked me why they should put time and resources into their Facebook fan page when users are only going to migrate to the next platform eventually. The question felt very last year but I had to really stop and examine why that is – what is to stop fickle users from fleeing Facebook? After all Friendster and to a lesser extent MySpace were once the networking sites du jour but each found users siphoned off by the next big thing. Why shouldn’t Facebook be a victim of user burnout too? Or does it even matter?
After all, you go where the people are today. It’s unlikely that users discovering a new social media destination will stampede in such numbers that your fan page will be rendered useless in a matter of months. Also, although they have been eclipsed by Facebook, both Friendster and especially MySpace serve particular subsets of users very well. In the case of MySpace teens and music fans find the eye-wateringly be-spangled site to be more relevant to them in many cases than Facebook.