Google striving to improve search

“It is not enough to have the information, the information should be right,” Merrill went on to say. “Sometimes the problem is figuring out what the users mean, not what the user said."

This is picked up from www.seomix.com. Douglas Merrill is an internal engineer at Google

If you want to reduce CPC

Do not ignore CTR.

I am of course talking specifically for Adwords right now. The relationship between CPC and CTR is very strong and I have personally experienced this on a campaign a few months ago.

Google states that for Quality Score purpose they only look at CTR's on Google search. Therefore it is important to keep CTR's high but also to try and figure whether CTR's showing in the account are high on the basis of Google or its Search Partners.

One of the easiest ways to test this for a short period of time is to disable Search Partners in your Network Settings in your Edit Campaign Settings page. Of course this could lead to a drop in traffic and would not be advisable if you need a steady flow of traffic to your website. This may also increase CPC's and show lower positions for your ads because you would be running only on Google where competition might be slightly higher (therefore lower positions - and since you are not getting cheaper clicks from search partners, average CPC might actually seem higher).

This also is one of the reasons you might see that you have high CTR's on your keywords but they are still inactive for search - your ads might be doing very well on search partner websites but might be performing poorly on google search (information from the adwords learning center).

One other important thing to keep in mind is that when keywords go inactive they neither show ads on Google on search partner sites. This is important because search partners do not have quality score for minimum bid. So if you find that a lot of your keywords are inactive in google, you should go and open an account with Ask to directly show ads on ask.com.

Domain Names

Domain names are the real estate of the Internet.

Steven Snell lists 7 Characteristics in his article on DailyBlogTips. Full article here - http://www.dailyblogtips.com/the-7-characteristics-of-good-domain-names/

One very interesting input Steven Snell puts down is -

Many Internet users do not use bookmarks. They just memorize the domains of their favorite websites and type them whenever they wan to visit one.

Some of the characteristics for good domain names -

They are short
They are easy to remember
They are easy to spell
They have a .com extension
They don’t contain hyphens or numbers

The article also has examples which is why it helps drive the point better.

Personally I have seen the impact that a domain can have. While many might think a domain name is not important, it actually is. The internet is about credibility and your domain name helps build that.

Of course if your domain is your brand name, people are not going to have a problem. The only thing is, your extension HAS TO be a .com.

For a very long time, airline websites in India has the strangest names. Even today Kingfisher Airlines has the domain - flykingfisher.com. This is very silly if you ask me because most of the time, users who know a brand would first try the brandname.com in the address bar.
(kingfisher.com is taken by the brand kingfisher which is a home improvement retail group in Europe and Asia - I bet very few people in India knew this till the airlines came along).

Anyway since Kingfisher Airlines cannot have the domain (or will not buy the domain) kingfisher.com, instead of flykingfisher.com, they should have had something like kingfisherairlines.com. I assume it would be easier for people to remember.

Well like Steven Snell said in the article - Domain names are the real estate of the Internet.

'Contact Us' Page

On a website no one can deny the importance of an 'About Us' page. After all on the net, proving credibility is even more important.

Another important page is the 'Contact Us' page. This not only proves to people that someone is 'behind this website' but also helps people get their queries answered and problems solved.

Came across an interesting post on MarketingSherpa 'how to build an astounding contact us page' - which had some 7 tips to create a better contact us page (inputs were from Linnea Johnson, Director Consumer Services, Unilever) . A few interesting points. (Unfortunately I don't remember the whole article).

1) They mention that instead of just an email address, there should be an email submission form. Meaning you ask few basic (needed) details and then you let someone put in their comment/query.

2) It is important to have both the phone number and mail address on the contact us page.

3) This one is really interesting - There should be an FAQ page created by seeing what sort of queries come in. This would help reduce the number of calls / emails coming into the customer service center as the most frequently asked questions will be answered.

4) What sort of emails come in should be tracked - what % were queries, how many people were unhappy with the product and have a complaint etc.

Makes a lot of sense. Small changes can make big difference.

Some points I picked up from the learning center

These are points I had either forgotten or didn't know or thought were worth keeping in mind.

1) Search box on content is search

2) Partner sites do not consider keyword matching options – only broad match

3) Phrase negative keyword –“free drug” for broad match keyword drug free

4) Phrase match – plurals are included – meaning “used book” keyword could show and ad for ‘used books’.

5) Negative keywords are exact negatives – so remember to use synonyms, plurals, etc of your negative keyword as negatives too.

6) Keywords with 4 or more terms get little traffic – picked up exactly as in the learning center.

7) Quality is the most important factor.

8) $5 activation account not charged right away but charged at the completion of first billing cycle

9) Some partner sites only accept only ads that are top ranked on google

10) Keywords having good CTR but still being inactive – The justification of this in the learning center is that CTR shown is an average click through rate for the keyword across the ad network, where as QS is determined on Google.com (or relevant domain), therefore if CTR is not good on google but very good on partner sites, the keywords would still go inactive.

11) Relevance of keyword-ad-landing page should be maintained even when going broad.

12) Report must be less than 2 MB to be sent by email.

13) Reports will be zipped and sent.

14) A poor performing keyword can affect the Quality Score of an entire ad group or campaign.

15) Google calculate ROI differently from how we calculate it.

16) Stopping conversion tracking will only stop data from showing in your adwords console. Statistics will still be available in the report center.

17) If in doubt whether a thank you page is http or https use the https conv tracking code' since it will have no negative effects on your website.

18) Conversion updated in your account may take upto 24 hours

19) Conversion updated in your account may take upto 24 hours

20) Google suggests load time of under 4 seconds.

21) Each campaign can have upto 6 scheduled segments per calendar day (Ad Scheduling)

22) Segments can be as short as 15 mins.

23) Bid multiplier may be as low as 10% and as high as 1000%

24) Ad scheduling can run for both keyword and placement targeting campaigns

25) Ad scheduling will not work with adwords budget optimizer

26) Position preference can be set for all keywords in a campaign

27) Position preference may greatly reduce the number of impressions and clicks a keyword may receive.

28) PP does not work with budget optimizer

29) PP doesn’t work with placement targeted ads because ads take the entire space.

30) PP does not work with preferred bidding.

GAP

Gave it again as my first certification had expired.

Got a 91.5%.

:)

I think it's a good score.

Google Analytics Update

While this isn't 'latest news', for those who may not know, Google Analytics allows a user to create 50 profiles currently.

The finer details

Just noticed the trademarked tag line of Google Adwords - 'It's All About Results'.



I must have noticed it before but it somehow feels like I saw it for the first time. Which if nothing else, means that Adwords doesn't stress on the line too much.