This is how a completely Adobe Flash based website appears to the Google’s search engine spider (your second most important audience segment). The snapshot below is from a real website and I’ve hidden the full URL to protect the innocent.

This means the search engine spider has no way of reading the content to determine what the site is about. The guys at Google are smart, but they can’t read your mind. Additionally, the spider has no way of navigating through the website to index the pages properly based on content. So, all the amazing content about your products, your service, your history, your people, your customers etc. is meaningless to the search spider.

In other words a site that looks amazingly awesome in Flash is rendered as a big old black hole to the search engine. That might be okay for some people but for most it is not and search remains king.

The Tags feature on Google Places inserted a yellow tag next to your Places listing on search results (see image). It cost $25 for this feature and when I tried it under a free trial I found it to be pretty useless.  For the $25 your paid for this feature you really didn’t get anything in return. Tags didn’t improve your ranking in local listings nor did it improve your visibility any other way. Other than hoping for more clicks, there was no other tangible benefit that I could see.

To be fair there was reason to hope for more clicks, but the clutter that Googles search results pages are turning into – that’s a pretty distant hope.  When I compared the stats from the month prior to using this feature against the month when I did use it, I found no difference. So, after a one month trail I stopped using Google Tags. I’m assuming enough people felt this way because I just received this in my inbox:

Google Tags to be retired on 4/29

Dear Google Places user,

At Google, we’re always working to innovate and improve ways for small businesses to get online and reach more customers. At times, though, we have to decide where to focus our efforts and which technologies we expect will yield the most benefit to users and businesses like you in the long run.

In that spirit, we are retiring Google Tags for all users on April 29, 2011. No action is required on your part, and your Places account and listing will continue to work as usual. Effective today, no new tags can be created, but all active tags will keep running to the end of April for free.

In your Places account, you’ll be able to see billing history until July 31st. If your tag is active, performance data will be available from now until May 31st. Historical performance data of inactive tags will be available in your dashboard starting May 2nd until May 31st.

You can visit our blog post and our Help Center for more information. There are still a number of options for you to reach more customers online, including our latest product for local businesses, Google Boost. Through the month of May, we are offering Tags customers like you $100 to try out Google Boost. Call 877-503-0841 Monday to Friday 8am-6pm to redeem your credit.

Thank you for trying Google Tags.

Sincerely,

The Google Places Team

Is anyone complaining about this? Your thoughts?

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Image via Wikipedia

The position preference in AdWords allowed you to target a specific range of ad positions for your keywords. This means you could set a bid price and target positions 3 to 5 for instance for a particular keyword. I have found this feature to be somewhat useful because experimenting with ad position is a fundamental part of optimizing your search campaign.  Also, targeting a range allowed me to categorize words and better understand performance based on position. And being able to position preference helped set a particular goal and optimize accordingly.

However, Google economists (who study this stuff for a living) feel that this feature is not that very helpful in optimizing a campaign. So, this feature is getting a boot.  Here is the announcement:

More specifically, you can expect to see the following changes in your account:

As of today, April 5th, position preference can no longer be enabled for campaigns through either the AdWords web interface or the API. Campaigns already using position preference will still have it enabled, but if you turn position preference off in one of your campaigns, you won’t be able to turn it back on.

Starting in early May, we’ll begin disabling position preference for any campaigns still using it.

After you disable position preference (either manually or when the feature is retired starting in early May), the manual maximum CPC bids for those campaigns will be the bids position preference used most recently. Position preference tries to raise or lower your bids to target the positions you specify. So using the most recent position preference bid as your manual maximum CPC should minimize disruption to your traffic.

So, bye bye position preference.  You were nice but apparently did not deliver the goods!

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I only saw this today, so it’s new to me, but this provides some very relevant facts about online search behavior. Worth watching:

If you’re getting started on understanding Google AdWords then you’re probably wondering how it ranks the ads. It’s a great question and needs a detailed explanation. For starters bidding high enough on a keyword does not guarantee a high placement on search results. The bid price is one of many elements that are factored when determining the display order. This means simply having the budget to spend isn’t going to guarantee the traffic and/or visibility you’re seeking. When it comes to paid search engine ranking, it’s all about ad relevancy.

AdWords is based on an auction pricing system. So, the advertiser bids on a price point for a range of rankings for a particular keyword. For example, for the keyword “Arizona Vacation” the price range could be $0.45-$0.55 for placement on slots 1-2, $0.25-$0.45 for placement within 3-7, etc. Hence to be considered for the first two rankings you would have to bid at least $0.45 for that particular keyword. The story doesn’t end there, however.

In order to deliver the search user a better experience, Google has implemented a quality score. The quality score guards against irrelevant search results on keywords by evaluating the relevancy of the ad under consideration for a given keyword. The final ranking on a paid search is then the quality score times the bid price. (Ranking = Quality Score x Bid Price.)

Google does not disclose all that is involved in the calculation of the quality score, but it does state that consideration is given to the relevancy of the text in the advertisement and the click-through rate of the advertisement, as well as the relevancy of the landing page, etc. As you can see, the goal is to drive relevant ads for keywords for the best possible user experience. After all, a poor user experience will result in loss of credibility in the search engine. It is also beneficial for the advertiser, since this system helps to create relevant traffic.

So really in order to boost your ranking on paid search you need to make sure you have an adequate budget but you also need to make sure your ad copy and your destination website is relevant to the words you are bidding on. At the end of the day it’s all about relevancy and the user experience. Google wouldn’t be Google if it didn’t deliver a relevant search result for each query.  So, if you want to boost your position focus on improving your quality score and then up your bid a bid. If you do it right you’ll be surprised at the results.

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Looking back at the year 2010 I see that this blog started off with great intentions but the pace slowed as the year went on. This is partly because a lot happened this year, and I wish I had devoted more time to sharing my thoughts on the major developments as they occurred. Nevertheless, I wanted to share my thoughts on some of the major developments in the world of Internet marketing (from social media and search marketing to branding and technology).

Here are the top five developments, events, news items (whatever you want to call them) that caught my attention this year.

Google Instant Search solves a non-problem

Sure it sounds like a great idea, but its a non-innovative innovation in my opinion. Plus Yahoo already had this back in 2006 and didn’t think much of it. My main problem with instant search is it improve to the search experience. The main issue with search has always been relevancy not speed. Getting irrelevant search results fast isn’t better than getting high relevancy search results a little slower (0.1s slower). Serving highly relevant search results is what made Google, not speed of search. It seems like Google is forgetting this as the years go by and very few of their recent innovation is focused on improving the search experience.

Online ad spending exceeds newspaper ad spending

This just happened in December so it’s fresh news and very significant. While it is not new news, it does confirm what everyone has been saying over the past few years. On the flip side this shift in advertising dollars means the advertising industry will be under greater pressure to deliver a directly measurable ROI. Marketing agencies will need to improve their tracking and reporting mechanisms to build confidence with clients. Furthermore, a premium will be on data analysis to continuously optimize and increase performance. In many ways marketers will need to start moving towards a mindset that CFO’s can appreciate.

Groupon puts social commerce on the map

The recent failed Google move to acquire Groupon signals the rise of social commerce and the role it will play in the coming years. However, I’m not sold on the Groupon business model because too many retailers who have used its service have indicated that they will not be using it again. This is a big problem in my estimation and indicates that once the novelty of the idea fades it will become more difficult to sustain. Groupon should have taken the Google offer, because in a year their valuation will be significantly lower.

Facebook becomes ubiquitous

It’s hard to ignore a company that is becoming increasingly ubiquitous to the web experience. From sharing data with third party sites like TripAdvisor to churning out new features, the company is always in the news. While I think marketers are spot on to try to engage customers on this social networking site, I question outsourcing company web functions to Facebook. Its akin to moving from a house you own to a rented apartment. Using precious marketing dollars to advertise your Facebook page is counter productive and very short term thinking. Marketers need to think more long term and need to figure out a way to develop their brands through social networks but still retain domain equity in the process.

The iPad paves the way for the tablet

I’m not a Mac guy and I don’t have a puppy love crush on everything Apple does. Having said that I tried a Mac laptop earlier this year and it only confirmed my thinking. I know Apple is an innovative company and it bring lots of great products, but for some reason their market share seems to tap out and the mass market always seems to move towards a better performing, lower cost alternative (see the rise of Android). I think the iPad is significant because it has now positioned the tablet as a viable product alternative to laptops. However, in a few years Android based tablets will surpass the iPad in adoption and use and relegate the iPad to secondary status.

So, there you have it. My thoughts on what I perceive as the major events of 2010. It has been a tremendous year but I’m looking forward to 2011 and all that it will bring!

Finally, I’d like to wish all my readers a very Merry Christmas. I hope you have a great celebration this season and are greatly blessed and enriched with family and friends.

Thanks for reading.

Top Photo: Slideshow Judge on Flickr
Side photo: Dan Taylor on Flickr

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• Why is Groupon so Important? (measuringmeasures.com)
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• Groupon Seeks New Funding At Valuation Less Than Google’s $6 Billion (pamil-visions.net)
• The year in search: the experts’ view (econsultancy.com)
• SearchCap: The Day In Search, December 22, 2010 (searchengineland.com)

I just noticed a sponsored link on Google Local Search while searching for a meeting venue in Phoenix, AZ. I noticed that the local map listing had a “sponsored link” section. I had never seen this before. I did some investigation and found that this comes from connecting your Google Places account to your Google AdWords account. In addition to connecting your accounts you then have to activate the connection. I don’t know if this is going to be a permanent feature – but apparently you’re not paying to be listed first (this only shows up on the second listing). So, the advertiser is only paying for a link. At this point its hard to be sure how that plays into the cost and value of using this feature. However, right now this feature can offer you a competitive advantage since not too many advertisers are aware.

I’m really curious to see how Microsoft and Yahoo merge their two independent PPC systems.  Account transitions are slated for October and from what I understand all Yahoo accounts will be converted over to Bing AdCenter accounts. This means your AdCenter account will not be affected but if you have a Yahoo Search Marketing account then you may be in for a bumpy ride.

Joseph Kerschbaum over at Search Engine Watch has a detailed article on the status of the transition as well as how differing features between the two systems will be managed. There is reason to be apprehensive of the transition and Joseph has this suggestion:

Hopefully, all of the account transitions will go smoothly and advertisers won’t feel too much discomfort during the change.

However, I have one tip that is pretty straight forward and should save you a lot of headaches. To avoid all of these account merger issues, you should just open an adCenter account now and build it exactly how you want it. If you already have an adCenter account, then you’re already covered and you won’t need to do anything.

Take a look at Joseph’s article to see why he makes this recommendation.

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Tip O’Neil said “all politics is local”. Well, all search is going local as well. Being visible on Google local map searches is very important. The first step is of course to submit your local business listing to Google’s Local Business Center (LBC) . But what if you have multiple locations? It can be very time consuming having to submit each location one by one and also having to individually verify ownership.

Don’t despair, Google local allows you to upload multiple business locations to LBC via a feed. The instructions are fairly straight forward. All you need to do is create a csv file with all your location information (according to Google specs) and upload that file. Full instructions are here. Be advised you need to have at least 10 locations to utilize this feature. Otherwise you’re going to have to submit the locations one by one.

Submitting the location is only the first step. Once the locations have been submitted you will need to verify ownership via phone or mail. Again, this can be very time consuming if you have many locations. So, you’ll need to white list your feed.  The instructions are fairly straight forward and can be found here.

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Bid management is not as critical as it used to be and I’ve made this point many times with clients. But you don’t have to take my word for it anymore. Jason Tabeling over at Search Engine Watch recently wrote an excellent article on why bid management is not as important as it used to be:

In today’s world of relevancy and quality score, many more factors impact your CPC. There’s CTR, landing page quality, relevance of the keyword to the ads in its ad group, and many more. So when you change bids, you’re only moving one lever of many to impact performance.

This isn’t to say that bid management isn’t important. We spend a lot of well spent hours building, designing, maintain custom algorithms to meet our clients bid management needs according to various goals and metrics, and this is time well spent. The idea here is that bid management isn’t a silver bullet.

Read the whole thing.

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