Search Trends - Search Engine Marketing

The search engines have been flip-flopping for years about what to allow with regards to trademarked keyword search terms. According to Clickz, Yahoo! has once again modified its trademark keyword policy, now saying that they won't allow advertisers to bid on competitors competing keywords. Before this decision, they allowed competing bids as long as you had a comparison chart or some other "relevant" content on the landing page. I think it's just coincidence that this comes soon after Mazda had a hey day with Pontiac's Google ad thing.

The writing's been on the wall for quite a while for Jeeves, the famous butler from AskJeeves fame. The time has finally come to say goodbye to the old chap. There's a video on YouTube that's kind of funny. Mostly stupid, but if you're a Teen Wolf fan you might like it.

Lee Odden interview with Andrew Goodman of Traffick and Page Zero Media. I've read Andrew's adwords books and I think he's definitely one of the top experts on the subject.

Steve Strauss wrote an article about SEO in his weekly USA Today column. I think it's a good thing to get exposure for the industry in mainstream media like that, but it seems like they never really include accurate, up-to-date information. This article is no exception. He quotes an SEO "expert" who is really a web designer that gives outdated advice. For example, they talk about meta tags and Yahoo directory links. You're about 6 years late on those recommendations. He also talks about creating a more attractive site to increase search engine compatibility...huh? I agree with the idea of having a nice-looking site, but what does that have to do with search engine optimization? The "popularity contest" thing is very confusing to me. I wonder if he was talking about link popularity and it got lost in translation somehow. Anyway, props to Rafeh for getting mentioned in USA Today. That's some great exposure for his business. Can't fault a guy for that.

A good post by Stuntdubl on how to appraise a website. Offers some good ideas and tips on placing value on a website. Extremely useful for any one buying or selling a website.

I have a hard time believing their numbers as average conversion rates, but hey, I just report the news...anyway according to this press release from WebSideStory, AOL and MSN lead the pack with the highest conversion rates among search engine referrers (both over 6%), Yahoo and Google convert closer to 4% according to the report.

MSN has unleashed the highly anticipated MSN Search and Win game, where you can win fabulous prizes simply by searching on MSN. When I first heard about MSN bribing users to use their search engine, I imagined something like iWon - (the 1999-2000 version), but they've actually got a kind of innovative way to do their search contest. You actually search on keywords and if it's one of their pre-selected keywords, you'll see a sponsored ad at the top of the search results that says "Win a DVD Player with MSN". The actual prize it lists varies depending on the keyword you searched on. If you go to the main search and win page you can see some example keywords and click the "search and win" button and see what I mean. Then to see if you're an instant winner, you click on the sponsored link. You're then taken to another that says, "Sorry you didn't win, try again". Or I assume it says, "Congratulations, you won" or something to that effect if you actual win something.

Some people think this promotion is a bad idea and will only hurt MSN's brand by doing this type of promotion. I disgree. First, MSN has a weak brand as a search engine (compared to Yahoo and Google), and the "build a better search engine" idea was already taken by Google, so maybe it will take some marketing gimmicks like this to get people to give the new MSN search engine a try. You never know, some of those prize hunters might notice that MSN's search isn't half bad and maybe even come back to search for something they're really looking for.

I'm curious what kind of response advertisers will see from this. My hunch is that people who advertise for some of the same popular keyword "suggestions" from the contest homepage might see a big jump in clicks that don't necessarily convert to customers due to accidental or curious clickers who are quickly clicking around trying to win a prize from the contest. It is very likely that could happen because the contest links appear at the bottom of the sponsored text links with the regular paying customers right above them.

Scoble's got a little experiment going where blogger mention the "word" brrreeeport on their blogs to see how quickly the blog search engines pick up on the posts. I have nothing against brrreeeport, so I figured, what the heck. I'm kind of late to the game, but I've been to busy with real work to notice this until now. Besides, I'm not a regular reader of Scoble's blog so I had to wait for it to trickle down the info pipeline to me. It looks like a terribly viral form of linkbait by Scoble if you ask me.

Check it out at:
Technorati Search: brrreeeport

Valentine's Day logos about in the search engine world - can you feel the love?

Happy Valentine's Day!

Hot off the email from a HitWise press release:

Valentine’s Day has long been one of the most lucrative days of the year for merchants of greeting cards, chocolates and flowers, as lovers and friends express their affection by showering each other with gifts. While it’s not surprising that online retailers of flowers and gifts experience increased sales in the weeks leading up to February 14th, what is surprising is that searches for "love poems" surpass searches for flowers and other Valentine's Day gift staples.

According to Hitwise, the world’s leading online competitive intelligence service, the share of Internet searches for “love poems” was up 83 percent for the week ending Feb. 11, 2006 versus the week ending Jan. 28, 2006. With the exception of Mother’s Day flower searching, “love poems” receives a greater share of searches throughout the year than “flowers,” “e-cards,” and another popular Valentine’s Day gift, “lingerie.”

Also, Heather Hopkins from Hitwise UK offers some more insight into valentines searches on her blog.

For anyone familiar with the infamous SEO company, Traffic Power, or whatever they're calling themselves these days, you might find it interesting that Matt Cutts has officially confirmed that Traffic Power and all domains associated with them have been banned from Google.

I was out of town last week on vacation, but I'm back now ans should start posting at a somewhat regular interval. I was totally unconnected most of the past week (yeah, a real vacation--woohoo!), and I'm still out of it but trying to back "into the know" with what's happening with the search engines. I haven't noticed anything to wild and crazy since I last posted, but I don't have time to write until I sift through all this email and voicemail. Stay tuned for more of the good stuff.

I got an email today from Google announcing a new downloadable adwords editor. I downloaded it, but haven't had a chance to try it out. Presumably it's similar to (hopefully better than) other third party software like Adwords Dominator that use the Adwords API to make it easier and quicker to update your Google Adwords campaigns. One obvious plus is the price (Google's software is free). Here's a blurb from their site about the new software:

AdWords Editor is Google's free, downloadable account management application for your computer. Now you can download your AdWords account to your computer, make your changes, then upload your revised campaigns.