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As other search engines have adopted a model of paying to be included in their search index, Google has kept their organic listings free and worked hard to differentiate their advertising from their free listings. Clients however continue to look for quick ways to get into Google’s free listings. How does 24 hours sound for free? When playing around with the Adsense product, I noticed that the ads showing up on my site were for non-profit agencies. When I asked Google about this, they said that if the page was not in their main search index that they would show these ads until their spider could come and index the site to know what type of ads to run. So I put 1+1 together, and got Free Google Inclusion within 24 hours. Simply add the Google Adsense code to your site for about 24 hours and once it stats showing relevant ads you are in their index and will appear in their listings at their next update. Enjoy! Comments (6) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Organic Search Engine Marketing & Optimization (SEO) IAB Roadshow - Branding of Search Engine Marketing
About a month ago, I attended the Internet Advertising Bureau's Search 2004 Road Show in New York. Their major topic was the branding effect of being high up in the organic and PPC rankings on the search engines. The research was very interesting and definitely showed that being in the top position on either the paid or the free side of listings had good overall effects for brand recognition for the company. If you are interested in seeing some of their presentations, here is a url to download them: Enjoy! Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: SEM Company & Industry News Adding a goyami Feed to your Site
As we launch goyami, we would of course appreciate any help you can give us by linking to our site with standard text links and also by adding a goyami news feed to your site where appropriate. Here are some easy directions for adding a feed to your site. Visit the following ling, and you can easily modify a few options and grab a quick snippit of javascript code for your site that will add our news feed: Click here to add goyami to your site Thanks in advance for your help! Adam & Todd Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: ! Hot Topics August 29, 2004More Conjectures on Google Acquisitions
Recently Steve Harmon made some conjectures on Google buying Monster.com or DoubleClick: --- In short, he thinks Google needs to acquire some service-based companies, especially in hot sectors. And topping that list is Monster.com (NASDAQ:MNST). Barrons agrees with Harmon. At about $2 billion market cap and 40x P/E the company seems relatively cheap vs. Google's rich valuation. Google has to mitigate its advertising risk. At the same time, Google just launched banner-type ads, where before it served only text ads. Which makes Harmon think that banner ad leader Doubleclick (NASDAQ:DCLK) could also be a good match for Google to acquire to consolidate its position. I still think AOL is a safer bet, they can diversify their revenue stream while shoring up their largest partner that is known to be "on the block". I think they need to act fast before Yahoo! does. I also think DoubleClick might not be a bad move for them, it just doesn't have the strategic benefits of an AOL or the massive customer base. There are a slot of brands under the AOL umbrella that Google could spread advertising to and enhance with their search technologies. Any other great targets out there? How about Disney? Love to see the Googleworld. If the Google Dance was any indication, they might just do a great job in the theme park business. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: SEM Company & Industry News August 28, 200450% of Daily Google Searches are NEW!
I saw this quote in a press release this morning and found it very interesting: "According to Amit Singhal, principal scientist at Google, over 50 percent of the 200 million searches performed a day have never been searched before." One of the primary tools for keyword research, Wordtracker, looks at past searches. Even the free keyword tools look at previous searches. So this leads to two thoughts: 1. You need to research keywords on an onging basis, because people are always find new ways to search for your products. 2. You need to take the existing research and apply variations. Word combinations, word order, misspellings, typos, etc... Any other ideas? 50% is a bid number! Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: SEM Company & Industry News August 27, 2004Hot Keywords for Fall
According to FindWhat, here are the hot Keywords for fall:
Looks like it may be time to dust off those old Halloween ads and look for a good company selling George Bush Bobbleheads. Do you think there is any correlation between the scary costumes and the homecoming dresses? Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: PPC Search Engine Marketing Look out Yellow Pages - Local Search is more Cost Effective
A recent report by eMarketer and Piper Jaffray & Co indicate that search is the most cost effective way to promote your business. With the current push into local search advertising, local companies should take note. Companies can now find customers for about 1/3 the cost of a lead from the yellow pages. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: PPC Search Engine Marketing Google Goo & the GoogleStore
This must have been the first thing they did with their IPO Money. But I have to say, I love the Goo... and it’s only $14.95. Be careful about the LavaLamps though, I hear have problems… Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: ! Hot Topics Sell Side Advertising is Problematic, what we need is PremiumSpots
Another Corante contributor, Ross Mayfield of Many2Many, recently wrote an interesting article entitled "Cost per Influence" where he postulates about a model in which companies would pay publishers based on their ability to influence a sale. Recently John Battelle did a great job summarizing and expanding on the idea that Ross put forward in his article "Sell Side Advertising" John speaks of a model where companies would place their ads out on an open market and publishers / bloggers, would come by and pick up these ads and run them as they wish. The tracking tools would be part of the ads, so that advertisers would know where their ads were running and how they were performing. To be honest I am not sure this gives the advertisers any more control over the distribution of their ads, plus it ads a level of payment complexity that would be very hard to overcome. I do agree however that the Adsense model where advertisers have little control over where their ads appear is problematic. I think sell side advertising would make this problem even worse. What we need is PremiumSpots.com (a fictitious company, domain is for sale if you like my idea This PremiumSpots idea would maximize revenues for publishers and enable advertisers to find the best and most influential spaces to place their ads as opposed to the current run of network style of contextual advertising. Once you had a large number of companies offering PremiumSpot advertising, these spots could be bought by categories or site by site by the advertisers. What do you think? Please note, all ideas postulated by the editors of goyami and the corante staff are for sale at a reasonable price. All rights reserved. :-) Comments (2) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: PPC Search Engine Marketing | SEM Company & Industry News Google & Overture Conversion Tracking for Affiliates
I have been running keyword advertising for affiliate programs for over a year now. When both Google and Overture launched their free conversion tracking tools that show you what keywords are converting into leads or sales, as an affiliate marketer I could only drool. In order to use the conversion tracking tools, you have to be able to place a small chunk of code on the sales conversion page of the site. This code enables Google and Overture to track that particular sale back to the keyword that generated the lead. This is fairly simple for some of my consulting clients who have their own site and can easily update the code on their conversion page. It becomes a lot harder for companies that have lots of affiliates and would have to make this code dynamic so it shows the specific affiliate’s tracking codes when the customer purchases. I have recently begun working with a merchant who is using Kowabunga’s MyAP Program and they have been able to quickly add dynamic conversion counters to their conversion pages. I haven’t yet identified if it is the merchant or the MyAP software that made this possible. I wish I had this for all of my merchants. Having this conversion data lets me see exactly how much I should be bidding for each keyword in my account. It really takes a lot of guess work out of the game. Love it! CJ, Linkshare, and the others, take note! Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Affiliate Marketing August 25, 2004Using Brands in PPC Search Engine Advertising
The debate over using Brand names continues to heat up as a hot topic in the search engine world. On one side you have companies trying to protect their valuable brand assets, and on the other you have affiliates trying to promote the company and competitors pushing their own products. Should search engines restrict paid (and possibly) organic results when someone types in a brand name on their engines? What should happen when a company tells their affiliates not to use the brand and then the affiliates start running ads for the company’s products through the Amazon's affiliate program or eBay's? Do a search for Oshkosh on Google for an example. If you take this beyond the search engine world for a second, if I go to BestBuy and ask to see Toshiba Televisions, should the employee be allowed to show me Sharp TVs? I plan to delve a lot deeper into this topic over the coming weeks and would love to hear your opinions. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: ! Hot Topics August 24, 2004Prime Keywords Getting Expensive
A recent press release was highlighted on Yahoo Finance entitled "Internet's Advertising Gold May Be Running Out. The press release highlights that the cost of prime keyword terms are being bid up and goes on to explain that value and profit still lie in the more descriptive and longer search terms. The article is right on. You can't expect to make any money in search engine marketing, if all you are doing is going after the most obvious search terms. Deep keyword research is the key to success, here is how to do it: Anyone who has been in this industry for any length of time knows that Wordtracker is the best keyword research tool out there. Make sure you check your terms against the free keyword research tools of Google and Overture, but don't pass up the deep research you get from Wordtracker. Wordtracker helps you find all the terms that people are searching for including misspellings. It's a great tool. You can try it free online. Don't make the mistake of trying to think up terms on your own, the obvious terms are getting really expensive. I guarantee you will be surprised to find out what people really type into search engines. Are there other tools that you are using? Let us know. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: PPC Search Engine Marketing August 21, 200424/7 Real Media Acquires Decide Interactive for $26 Million in Cash & Stock
24/7 is one of the pioneers in interactive advertising; this purchase indicates a further push into keyword advertising by the established online advertising companies. Decide Interactive’s Decide DNA application enables online marketers to manage thousands of keyword and content-based campaigns across all major international paid search engines, including Yahoo!/Overture, Google, FindWhat.com/Espotting and others. Decide DNS'a optimization algorithms allow advertisers to achieve multiple performance-based goals, such as aggregate ROI and campaign yield management, in an automated, real-time environment. Decide Interactive customers include renowned companies such as Walmart.com, Citysearch Australia, Hotwire and Carat Interactive. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Google having troubles with Adsense Contextual Advertising
There have been a number of signs lately that Google is struggling with their Adsense Contextual Advertising program. Recently Todd and I have received postal mail promoting contextual advertising as well as credit offers via email of up to $1500 for re-enabling contextual ads in our campaigns and our client’s campaigns. ClickZ reports another sign of trouble in their article about Google removing Adsense ads from their Blogger application in exchange for a navbar that includes search instead. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: SEM Company & Industry News August 20, 2004Google's Stock Debut, Will they Buy AOL Next?
Google went public on the NASDAQ today. The initial price was set at $85 but opening trades around noon actually started trading for $100 per share. Some reports had the stock trading as high as $135.91, but actual highs for the day were $104.06 before closing at $100.34. While not a Netscape IPO, Google's debut was nothing to sneeze at. What do you think will happen next? There is some speculation that Google will buy AOL, one of their largest partners and owners of many popular Internet brands like AOL, ICQ and Mapquest. This could be a good use for their IPO money, but they might have to act quickly. It is widely known that Time Warner is shopping AOL around, and rumors have it that Yahoo may be interested. A Yahoo purchase of AOL could deal a large blow to Google by taking over one of Google's largest distribution partners. Comments (1) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: SEM Company & Industry News August 19, 2004Google Prices at $85 per Share.
Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: SEM Company & Industry News Google takes AdWords Submission Automation to Next Level
Will Google completely automate keyword and ad text reviews for AdWords?? Perhaps. I recently noticed new AdWords ad text review features being tested in one AdWords account I manage. On the surface, the changes mirror modifications Google has included before which allow advertisers to select either http or https destination URLs. However, Google has added another layer of rules-based reviews to ad text submissions. If an ad text editorial policy is not followed – like excessive capitalization – an error message is delivered highlighting the potential policy violation. You’re also given a link to request an exception. The new feature is likely to streamline account activation times and minimize human reviews. Here's a screenshot:
Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: SEM Company & Industry News Search Engine Twister
I received this email response from a major PPC engine after seeking support for an error message: Our tech team is currently working on a fix for the error messages you're getting on the campaign summary page, but I wanted to pass on a possible quick fix to you in the interim: For the time being, you should be able to work around the issue Hope this helps a bit. Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: PPC Search Engine Marketing August 18, 2004Google's IPO - Will the stock sink or swim?
As we anxiously await Google’s IPO which, according to Google could happen as soon as this week. It is worth taking a quick look back over some of the blunders made along the way. Google has shown an irreverent attitude throughout the process. They have pushed forward with a dutch auction style offering in hopes to put more money in their pocket, or as their PR team puts it, more shares in the hands of individual investors... Now they have slashed the price range from $108-$135 per share to between $85-$95. I guess the demand they had predicted just wasn't there. To add insult to injury, after the announced that they failed to register 23.2 million shares with the SEC that they sold to current and former employees and consultants, the company offered to buy these shares for $25.9 million. At this price, Google is saying to the world that they think their shares are only really worth $1.12 per share. Throw in an interview with Playboy magazine by the founders during the company's SEC mandated quiet period, and you have a case of a young, irreverant compnay in desparate need of adult supervision. As Google moves into the big leagues, it will be interesting if they will sink or swim. Do you think Google will prosper like Yahoo and eBay or flounder like Netscape? Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: SEM Company & Industry News KowaBunga Launches PPC Track Beta
Earlier this summer, I boarded a Carnival Cruise ship in route to Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and attended a well-organized affiliate marketing conference called Affiliate Summit. During the Conference, I sat in on Rachel Honoway’s presentation on integrated performance marketing. Rachel is VP Sales & Marketing at Kowbunga, a provider of affiliate marketing solutions, and software tools supporting paid search marketing. During Rachel’s presentation, she unveiled the beta launch of a new combined Pay Per Click (PPC) Management and ROI tracking tool specifically designed for Overture and Google with planned support for additional engines. The tool is a PC-based solution. I’m in the process of beta testing the offering for two major publishers personal finance news and information. The suite I’m testing is actually two integrated tools – PPC Track (bid management) and MyAffiliateProgram (ROI tracking). I’ll provide more insight on my beta test experience shortly. Todd Comments (0) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Affiliate Marketing | PPC Search Engine Marketing | Pay Per Click Management Tools | SEM Company & Industry News
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Adam Viener
I came across the 
Google is set to start trading today, Thursday August 19th. The price was set at $85 per share on the lowest side of the speculated price range. 
