Google Loses Market Share, Small Biz PPC Spend Up

According to WebVisible, the current break down of search share is:

Google: 60.4 %

Yahoo 26.2%

Bing 10.5%

Ask 2.4%

Continuing from the WebVisible report:

“Small Businesses Increase Spend by 91 Percent Generally, small businesses are buying more keywords and dramatically increasing their paid search budgets when compared to last year, according to WebVisible. First off, the average small business purchased 55 keyword phrases in Q3, which is up 30 percent from Q3 2008’s median number of 43. That statistic represents the high-water mark for the four quarters that WebVisible has been tracking small businesses keyword buys. Meanwhile, businesses dedicated an average of $1,658 to search ads, 91 percent more than Q3 2008. And business-to-consumer professional services appear to be the busiest in terms of collecting local sales leads via SEM. Attorneys and dentists made up the top two advertiser categories, with 7.7 percent and 5 percent of total small advertisers, respectively. Each of the two categories invested far more than average, spending $2,560 and $2,005 respectively in Q3. Air conditioning services and physicians/surgeons were the only other categories that accounted for more than 2 percent of search advertisers. Overall, the research suggests that the small business search advertisers are a varied bunch. The top 20 categories accounted for only 36 percent of total dollars spent. Thirty-two percent of search clicks resulted in a “lead conversion,” meaning the viewer either clicked through to a landing page on the advertiser’s Web site, printed a landing page, watched a video, printed out directions, entered an e-mail address, inquired via e-mail, or completed an online form. Clicks to the Web site were far and away the biggest lead conversion type, coming in almost twice as high as the next three categories: printed landing pages, submitted e-mail inquiries, and printed driving directions. For small businesses utilizing a call tracking number, 4.5 percent of the clicks resulted in a call, a 3.6 percent lift from 2008. No material differences occurred among advertisers in terms of CTR or proportion of lead conversions. However, WebVisible said that cost-per-clicks and keyword counts tended to increase with rising spend levels.”

 

Quite a shift!  From a merchant’s perpsective this is a double edged sword. When Google had 75-80% of the marketshare, an arguement could be made to neglect MSN and Yahoo and focus on having the best possible Google ppc campaign. Now that is no longer true. That may put a lot of strain on merchant’s paid search team to manage additional campaigns.

But, with the growing market share of Bing and to a lesser extent Yahoo, merchants who can act quickly and more nimbly then larger orginizations may be able to take advantage and grab a disproportionate share of these other engines at reduced costs.

Court Rules Competitor Must Use ‘negative keywords’

 Orion Bancorp of Florida recently won a  court case  in which it received a competitor’s domain (not new) but also that if its competitor, Orion Residential Finance, ever engages in paid search advertising, it must include  negative keyword-Orion in all campaigns (very new).

This might be the first court case that mandated negative keyword parameters in a ruling. It looks like deep pocket, litigious companies now have an additional weapon with which to bludgeon its competition.

From Ars technica:

” Orion Bancorp took its rival to court, arguing that the name was confusingly similar to its own. Orion Residential Finance apparently sent a lawyer to court but never filed a response of its own, and the judge eventually issued a default judgment against it. The judgment contained the usual prohibitions on using the name “Orion” in signs, promotional materials, and slogans, but it also included domain names and online advertising.

The judge prevented Orion Residential from “purchasing or using any form of advertising including keywords or ‘adwords’ in internet advertising containing any mark incorporating Plaintiff’s Mark, or any confusingly similar mark, and shall, when purchasing internet advertising using keywords, adwords or the like, require the activation of the term ‘ORION’ as negative keywords or negative adwords in any internet advertising purchased or used.”

The “negative keyword” ruling means that Orion Residential advertising would be explicitly prevented from showing up after searches for the term “Orion,” but could appear for any other keyword searches.

 The decision was handed down at the end of last month but recently noted by technology lawyer Thomas O’Toole. O’Toole points out that the judge’s decision goes far beyond what a company would be able to get simply by pursuing a domain name dispute and sees it as a “good example of the sweeping relief possible when the defendant defaults in an online trademark infringement case.”

Law professor Eric Goldman expects to see more such requests in these kinds of cases, saying, “I think it’s a logical addition to any injunctive relief request in a trademark infringement case.”

Companies, judges, and regulators alike have grown increasingly aware of the power of online advertising and the ways that it works, and in large portions of the world, this means that people have become increasingly aware of Google. (In this case, the judge repeatedly refers to “adwords,” for instance.) But as online advertising increases in importance, Google’s ad practices—such as allowing companies to take out keyword ads on competitors’ names—have come under scrutiny.

Australian regulators expressed discomfort with the practice last year and accused Google of “misleading and deceptive conduct” in the way it sold and displayed its ads. Just this month, a US appeals court considered the case of Rescuecom, a company that also sued Google over its keyword searches. And last year, the Utah legislature passed legislation prohibiting search engines from serving ads linked to trademarked search terms to Utah residents. The legislation provoked so much controversy that last month the Utah legislature reversed course and repealed the most controversial portions of the law.

If judges show a willingness to shut down this sort of keyword advertising in particular situations, we might see legal action in this area shift towards cases between the parties involved in disputes, rather than attempts to force change upon Google. Search Engine Watch calls the judge’s decision in the Orion case a “dangerous precedent,” but it could prove a popular one for companies that want to play hardball with rivals. “

Takeaways from Catalyst Conference: by Citi Group

Last week was our annual conference at Pinehurst, NC.  If you are a golfer, you know all about Pinehurst and its infamous turtleback greens…well I didn’t play #2 this year, but I did play the newly renovated #1 and maybe the best course, #4. Just don’t ask me how I shot (the answer is often and poorly).

A number of industry analysts attended (as always) so I thought I would share their takeaways about the state of E-Comm in general:

 Another well attended ChannelAdvisor conference – Trends remain surprisingly positive – Last week we attended the ChannelAdvisor (CA) Catalyst Conference 2008 in Pinehurst, North Carolina. Per the company, attendance was up over 50% to roughly 500 people, with participation from companies like Amazon, eBay, Google, Overstock, Facebook, Buy.com and many large, medium and small retailer clients.

• Takeaway #1: ChannelAdvisor clients not yet seeing macro-economic slowdown — Biggest surprise to us was the general consensus among the retailers we spoke with that they were not seeing much impact from macro-economic headwinds (…yet?). Consumer spending remains strong in many categories and sellers were confident that their multi-channel strategies can continue to fuel growth.
• Takeaway #2: eBay appeared confident that changes are working despite vocal seller pushback — eBay is determined to make the changes necessary to reaccelerate Core Marketplaces. Representatives from the company sounded resolved on eBay’s commitment to improving buyer experience and seller transparency. Per the company, the desired impact from fee changes, “best match”, and detailed seller ratings (DSRs) appears to be working.
• Takeaway #3: Amazon strengthening its 3rd party offering — Upbeat presentation by AMZN focused on 3rd party seller opportunities was well received. AMZN provided an overview and demonstrations of the company’s services, highlighting how the program is 1) driving increased selection, 2) improving customer experience, 3) increasing traffic and 4) lower prices.
• Takeaway #4: Strength of Google position continues to widen lead over competition — While we didn’t hear anything incrementally new from the Google presentation, consensus among sellers we spoke with who had added search marketing was very positive on both traffic and ROI trends.
• Bottom Line – Conference was incrementally more positive on eCommerce/Search trends than expected.
• Link to our full note:  https://www.citigroupgeo.com/pdf/SNA17593.pdf

Yahoo Opens Up Search To Third Parties

From Ars Technica:

 As Yahoo tries to stave off a determined Microsoft takeover, the company has announced one of its most interesting new search innovations in recent memory. By opening up a new search platform for third parties to build upon, Yahoo search results will soon offer a lot more relevant information in the form of images, restaurant reviews, and virtually anything else developers can dream up.

Announced on the official Yahoo Search Blog, the company’s new open search platform will allow third parties to build browser plug-ins that can augment Yahoo search results and insert additional relevant data. As you can see in the example Yahoo provided, crowd-sourcing local review site Yelp has added a restaurant rating, contact information, and links for reviews and photos to a Yahoo search for “Higuma Japanese Rastaurant.”

Mozilla PPC Campaign Results

From Freakonomics:

One of the ways Mozilla acquires new customers is through pay-per-click ads on search engines. The question Mozilla had is the following: if someone types “firefox” into a search engine, usually the first result they will see is the Mozilla site, so does it really do Mozilla any good to pay search engines to do featured links? Do ads actually generate more traffic, or do they just shift customers around — e.g., instead of getting the customers free, Mozilla ends up paying the search engine because of the pay-per-click ads? Without performing an experiment of some kind, this is a hard question to answer.

So over a two-week period, Mozilla experimented with turning their pay-per-click ads on and off more or less at random.

Looking at the data one way, it appears that two-thirds of the customers who normally come to Mozilla through pay-per-click ads would get there anyway. On the other hand, the absolute number of downloads was substantially higher when the paid ads were running. This suggests either that (1) their treatment and control periods were different for an unknown reason; or (2) that the pay-per-click ads lead people to download more often through other channels.

 http://blog.mozilla.com/metrics/2007/11/26/mozilla-online-advertising-%e2%80%93-an-experiment/

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/21/mozilla-gets-freaky/

Viacom Inks Deal with MSN for More Advertising

Andy Beal writes over at Marketing Pilgrim that:

“It appears that Google’s jilted lover, Viacom, is not content with simply suing the search engine and jumping into bed with rival Yahoo. Nope, Viacom has decided that Yahoo is not enough to satisfy all of its needs–“he just doesn’t get me”–so has decided to also hook-up with Microsoft.”

Andy, it’ s like humor…just not funny ( sorry longstanding joke with Andy) If you don’tr read Marketing Pilgrim every day you are really losing out….

Reuters excerpt:

Microsoft will help Viacom place advertising on Viacom’s U.S. Web sites and be the exclusive seller of its remnant display advertising, or ad space Viacom has been unable to sell. As part of the deal, Microsoft will also license on a non-exclusive basis long and short-form television and movies from Viacom for the MSN portal and the Xbox 360 game system’s online network.

Microsoft has also agreed to buy ads on Viacom’s broadcast and online networks over five years …. 

http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2007/12/viacom-signs-advertising-deal-with-microsoft.html

Top Ten PPC Management Companies

You’re The Best 

I always take these lists with a MASSIVE grain of salt but Top SEO’s (http://www.topseos.com/) has released its list of the best pay per click management companies.  I work for one of them and have worked with 2 of them so I can attest to the fine work some of the companies have done.

 Here’s a list of the top 10 Pay Per Click Management firms that have been selected for December 2007:

  1. Ionic Media — California
  2. Intrapromote LLC — Ohio
  3. SEOP Inc. — California
  4. SEO Image, Inc.– New York
  5. SEO Inc. — California
  6. SearchAdNetwork — Colorado
  7. ChannelAdvisor — North Carolina
  8. JumpFly, Inc. — Illinois
  9. Efficient Frontier Inc — California
  10. IMPAQT — Pennsylvania

The top 10 candidates are chosen on the basis of a thorough selection process and the reputation of the list compiled by topseos.com speaks for its quality. The selection of the candidates is based on the following criterions:

  — Competitive advantage
  — Superior services and pricing
  — Customer and technical support
  — Knowledge of business
  — Sound professional analysis of requirements, and competitors
  — Response to client problems
  — Innovations that set it apart from the competition
  — Overall usability, efficiency, and performance

by: Jeff Buechler