Ever since Google established itself as the Big Dog in online search with 35% of the market share in 2001, whenever there has been a new search engine or search technology brewing there has been an expectation (by someone somewhere) that it will be a “Google Killer”.
Here are a few of the more buzzworthy Google-killers from the last few years:
In 2010, expect to see even more “killers” in the online world. Its no longer about who is going to try to overtake Google in search market share…there have been tons of attempts, but nothing has taken hold up to this point.
Now we are seeing more “killers” in the social media space. But history has taught us not to attack Google where they dominate – search. Social Channels play nice with Google when it comes to search. While many social platforms have developed their own search engine – they still rely on the big 3; make that 2 engines to power the results. However, there is opportunity to attack Google in other places that can be damaging, like email / Gmail. Have you heard about Facebook’s webmail that is in development?
But Google is always ready to pull something from their arsenal - and it is not Microsoft, Facebook, or even Twitter that seems to be on the radar – despite the rollout of Google Buzz, called a Twitter-killer by some. Rather, we are seeing Google penetrate and gain momentum in other areas like mobile with the Nexus phone (iPhone killer) and Chrome OS Tablet (iPad killer). This crossover into retail mobile should help Google continue to dominate in the online world.
Even more interesting to watch will be Google’s foray into broadband with their 1-gigabit-per-second broadband networks.
Posted in Online Marketing
Google’s Ad Sitelinks can help boost your campaign’s performance! Sonya Wood’s blog post last Friday talked about the beta program Google AdWords has rolled out, called Ad Sitelinks. With initial tests running on a handful of our clients’ campaigns, early numbers are showing promising results.
The most significant impact in AdWords stats has been on click through rate and conversion rate. The chart below taken from the Account Snapshot section of AdWords compares November 9 – November 15 when Ad Sitelinks was in place, to the prior date range when additional links were not being used. While the click through rate (CTR) for this client’s entire campaign portfolio dipped slightly, the campaign utilizing Sitelinks in the ad copy showed an increase over 66%.
Figure A. All Online Campaigns
Another notable metric that has been impacted is the conversion rate. Please note the company being featured in this post is an ecommerce website that has historically seen increasing conversion rates throughout the month of November and December. This is evidenced by Figure A above where we see a 68% lift in conversion rate for the portfolio of campaigns under this account. This increase was significantly higher for our test campaign utilizing Ad Sitelinks – a stellar 80% lift!
Figure B. Ad Sitelinks Campaign
Beyond AdWords, we have seen additional positive impact in site usage through Google Analytics. By providing multiple entry points to the website we have been able to drastically decrease the bounce rate for this campaign – by 49%! Based on the strong preliminary results yielded by implementing Sitelinks on a single campaign, we have since implemented the option on a number of campaigns within this client’s account. If your AdWords account has been white listed for this beta opportunity, I strongly encourage you to take advantage of it.
Posted in Google AdWords
eHow has established themselves as a go-to resource for instructional articles. According to quantcast, ehow.com is, “a top 50 site that reaches over 16 million U.S. monthly people.” The library of extensive articles and how to videos is attractive to search engines, and garners top organic positions for eHow.com in the search results. In addition, eHow does a great job of driving traffic to their site via email re-marketing and social media marketing (sharing / bookmarking widgets). There are a handful of options for getting more visibility for your ads on eHow.com.
The screen capture below highlights the sponsorship opportunities available on a typical article page.
Sponsored “text links” provide relevant ads and can use a number of formats including video as shown above. Google AdSense is clearly a valuable stream of revenue, evident by the Google custom search box at the top and bottom of every page, as well as reserved ad space along the left and right columns and bottom of article text. The main content on the page also incorporates strategic text links. When hovered over with a mouse, some links provide organic search results powered by Bing, specific to the linked text. Others give visitors an advertisement, as displayed below in the link for the text “forms of diabetes”.
eHow provides similar sponsorship opportunities on their How to Video pages. Pre-roll and post-roll video sponsorship is available, as well as category-specific content advertising.
eHow also appears to work with advertisers on custom offerings, as evidenced by inclusion of a Gillette link in the secondary navigation, highlighted below.
Gillette Sponsored link on eHow
For advertisers who are not ready to commit substantial minimum budgets, Google AdWords provides a quick and easy entry. Being that you set your daily budget and desired cost per click (or cost per impression), it is very manageable via the AdWords interface. Let’s say you are an ecommerce website selling a niche accessory for cars and trucks. Here is a 3 step process for targeting specific visitors on ehow.com.
- Create a Placement Targeted Campaign in Google AdWords for eHow.com only.
- Add (broad) keywords to help define where your ads will be placed (car repair, truck repair, car stereo installation, etc).
- Edit Audience Settings to exclude specified age and gender demographics, if desired.
To help ensure success for your new campaign, use ad creative that speaks to your target audience. Talk to the (male) consumer who is actively researching how to repair, install, etc. a piece of equipment for their vehicle. eHow accepts all ad formats available via the AdWords interface (text, image, overlay video, flash & rich media), so advertisers can be creative with their ads and even customize color palette and images for a specific placement / website.
Posted in Contextual Advertising
February 15th, 2010 by 
