Posted by Jeremy Scott | 0 Comments
Videos Inside Google Ads
This is a huge development. Huge.
Google is quietly testing some videos inside their Sponsored Listings (commonly referred to as Google Ads). The search advertising system, called Adwords, has long been text-only. However, in a bid to get Hollywood movie studios on board with search ads, Google has created a way for videos to be added.
Try this… Google the word “extract” (or just click here). You should see a Sponsored Listing with the title “Extract Movie Trailer.” It might look like the screenshot below:
Click the “+” below the text portion of the ad, and you’ll see a video player expand and start playing the trailer automatically. Sweet!!
Video is far more engaging to users than text, that’s been fairly well proven, and it can greatly increase your chances of converting that user into a customer.
Currently the program is an invite-only affair, meaning you can’t have videos in your own ads just yet. But there’s no doubt whatsoever that this will eventually roll out to everyone. And I promise you that it’s the wave of the future in search engine advertising. There will soon come a day when nearly every Adwords ad contains a video, and those that do not will be entirely ineffective.
This is a game-changer, and the Adwords world may never be the same.
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Posted by Jeremy Scott | 0 Comments
Twitter’s New Mistake: Don’t Let Them See You Watc...
Twitter, in all its technically un-savvy ways, has just now realized that they should be tracking their users’ clicks.
It may sound a little creepy, but tracking clicks is a great way for a popular sight (like Twitter) to see where most of their traffic is coming from and where they are lacking in successful advertising. Their only mistake was allowing this “click tracking” to be seen. People do not want to know when you’re watching them! It freaks them out!
Twitter was redirecting links to a click tracking service that would allow them to keep stats on all these clicks. The redirection URL looked something like, “http://twitter.com/link_click_count…” Then Twitter had a little break in functionality (surprise, surprise) and when it came back up, the redirects were nowhere to be seen. Tracking clicks would definitely be a smart move on Twitter’s part, but then again shouldn’t they be able to go a week without having a temporary shut down?
Read MorePosted by Jeremy Scott | 0 Comments
Kids Search The Web Like Adults Do
OnlineFamily.Norton is a free service from Symantec that parents can use to track what their kids are doing online.
Over the past several months, they’ve been gathering data on 3.5 Million web searches by kids, and now they’ve released the top 100 search phrases from that data. It’s important to note that this study only tracked the actions of kids whose families were using the OnlineFamily.Norton software. There is no “margin of error” given and they aren’t suggesting this is a scientific representation of the entire country… they’re merely reporting the data gathered on their users.
Turns out kids search the web much the same way adults do–yes, even searching for “sex”. In fact, the words “sex” and “porn” are both in the top ten. That’s obviously not a good thing, but it’s also not terribly surprising.
Kids also search the web for other websites–something adults do as well that continues to baffle me. In the top ten are search phrases such as “youtube,” “myspace,” “google,” and “facebook.” Do we need to have some remedial training for Americans on the difference between the web address field and the search box in a toolbar?
You can see the entire list of the top 100 childrens’ web searches here.
Read MorePosted by Angela | 5 Comments
The Bing-Yahoo! Deal to Take on Google
Microsoft and Yahoo have finally reached an agreement on their long rumored search partnership. The 10 year deal gives Microsoft exclusive access to Yahoo’s search technologies and to the second largest pool of searchers and advertisers.
The deal will allow Microsoft’s Bing to power the joint search engines while Yahoo is the salesmen behind the two, responsible for relationships and sales. Yahoo predicts a $500 million increase in annual operating profit resulting from increase in searchers. Also, they expect a $275 million savings on expenditures every year from no longer investing in their own search technologies.
The money side gives the impression that this will be a great decision for Yahoo, who is trying to earn back losses from recently plumiting stocks. However, stocks have not responded. In fact, some may say that Yahoo’s stock disagrees with the deal between Yahoo and Microsoft. Yahoo’s stock, which you would expect to be up, is down over a dollar and a half this morning after the deal was announced. Another down side that Carol Bartz, Yahoo’s CEO, revealed this morning in a conference call with Microsoft is they will be scaling down their size and so an unspecified number of jobs will be lost.
Microsoft and Yahoo have created a joint website where they have outlined specifics of the deal and given investors a reference page and access to each company’s SEC filings.
Read MorePosted by Angela | 0 Comments
Comparing Your Search Engines
Over the weekend, a website called Blind Search was created to compare top search engines. The site was designed for you to enter a search and pick which list of results is the best without knowing which list is which search engines’. The poll was created by an employee of Microsoft so who knows if the results are bias or not. Initial results were in favor of Bing but eventually turned toward Google, by a large margin. Right before the weekend closed, however, Yahoo surged into first.
The poll results are down for now because someone was manipulating the results. One article questions if the site went down because Yahoo finally took the lead. But I question that the lead could have been due to the person playing the system. So now the results are hidden, until the hacking problem gets sorted out. But you can still go test search results between the three engines.
I did a test on results for Keystone Hendersonville, TN, and personally found that I liked the results of Google the most. Yahoo had too many results for the city of Hendersonville and not enough for Keystone. Bing was a close second, in my opinion, because they gave more results for Keystone than the city of Hendersonville, TN, but not as many as Google. Google gave only one result for the city of Hendersonville, all the rest were Keystone related including some events we have had in the past and some newspaper articles featuring Keystone. So, until the poll results are available again, I encourage you to go and play around with different searches and see if you are in fact a Google person, or if you like Bing most, or if really Yahoo is a better suit for you.
Read MorePosted by Angela | 0 Comments
Bing Comes in at Number 2!
Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing, is a hit in Internet-land. Yesterday, Bing slid past Yahoo Search to take second place for search service in the U.S. and in the world. For years Google has led in search services followed by Yahoo Search and MSN in third. Announced on May 28th, Bing has made a fast move up the search engine totem pole. Only seven days after its debut, StatCounter reported that Bing took 16.28% of searches in the U.S. above Yahoo Search’s 10.22%. However, compared to Google’s 71.17% Bing still has a long way to go.
One survey revealed that 55% of 1000 Google supporters said they would switch to Bing as their main search engine. The sudden peak in popularity does raise a few questions of whether or not Bing will actually last. Like the reportedly ‘huge’ search engine “Cuil” whose status lasted no more than three months tops.
Could it just be lots of talk about the “New Google” that gave it this popularity? It could be due to Internet Explorer 6 using Bing as its new default search engine for its quick-search in the toolbar. Or maybe it is actually possible that Bing will one day beat out Google for the number one position. All-in-all, Bing has made a great initial impression on its competitors. Now we wait to see if it lasts.
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