Search Sense

In support of Groundswell, a new book written by Forrester analysts on the phenomenon of social media, Forrester launched the Groundswell awards inviting entries that demonstrated ‘excellent and effective use of social technologies to advance an organizational or corporate goal’. As a search and social media-led agency, we of course didn’t miss the opportunity to highlight the exciting pilot project the team here have been working on for Channel 4.

Chosen by Channel 4 Eductaion to understand how their users were engaging with their education content online, outside of Channel 4’s online properties, we developed a unique way of measuring online behaviours and assessing the impact of different types of content. The insights gained were used to inform Channel 4 Educations’ new online game, Bow Street Runner, as well as future content strategies.

We’ve entered our Measuring Engagement project to the ‘Listening’ category which looks at campaigns that aim to find out what customers are really saying in order to understand them better.  You can read our campaign entry and add your comments on the awards site. We are always interested in feedback and would really welcome support if you are interested in what we have done for Channel 4 Education and would like to comment. You can also read the full case study on our site.  

In addition to Adam’s post…

Today Google will officially launch Google Chrome, their first foray into the world of browsers.  In a hugely competitive market that is dominated by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox browsers, it will be exciting to see what the advent of a browser by a second Fortune 100 company will do to the market.

Google is clearly hoping to make a dent in Microsoft’s lead, having long enjoyed a friendly relationship with Mozilla.  Google have actively promoted Firefox on their homepage, and it’s estimated that up to 80% of Mozilla’s revenue comes from search tie-ins with Google: the I’m Feeling Lucky search from the address bar, the Google search box in the top right of the browser, and the default Google homepage.

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HTML Links, Google Web Spider, Google Toolbar, Google Analytics, iGoogle and now Chrome.

I would like to be wrong but I can’t help it but think that Google Chrome, a brand new web browser from Google, is just another way for Google to collect data for their index and feed more information into their organic and paid search algorithms. I am not saying it’s a bad idea, in fact I am a big fan of other (not hyperlink based) factors impacting the search results.

If an ugly, unfriendly and slow-to-load site ranks number one primarily due to a heavy link building campaign, then I would like to see that site go down in rankings based on metrics like high bounce rates or too little time spent on site. If people do not like the website, do not find it relevant and it is hard to use, then Google needs other factors to improve the ranking algorithm.

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Just coming back from holiday and catching up on some reading, I caught a Google agency update summarising the search Gorilla’s changes to Paid Search bidding -  “Quality Based Bidding” as Google call it. The changes have been known about for a while now, but when reading this particular summary it occurred to me that all the emphasis Google has put on advertisers who build a great customer experience will get low bid prices and high positions has to be taken with a very large box of “Malvern Rock Salt”.

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For many months Google has analysed search queries and carried forward or customised one set of search results in Paid Search with information from the previous search.

For example, a search for “Brighton Car Parks” followed by a search for “Cheap Hotels” results in the top paid listing being a Brighton Hotel listing, rather than a generic cheap hotel business, like the example below.

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Back in May, I reported Google was testing green backgrounds above and below the search results. This test happened on a weekday. As far as I can remember most of the tests have always been noticed on a weekday. I guess Google do not really need too much attention to their SERP tests so they decided to trial a new design at the weekend.

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I have just noticed Google.co.uk is testing green backgrounds above and below the search results. This test seems to be happening only on a very limited number of datacentres. I managed to reproduce this on 66.249.93.99 (+2).

It looks like Google is trying out something new again and is testing it only locally. They have always been tweaking the layout and colours to make the Search Engine Landing Pages (SERPs) clearer and easier to use. In the past few years they have tested and implemented different ideas. I have always been under the impression the main 2 reasons were to improve the user experience and generate more visibility for the paid ads.

At first sight I thought the green backgrounds looked ugly and even tacky. However on a second look with my Search Engine Marketing head on, the premium placement ads stand out significantly more. Also my eyes are constantly dragged towards the top green bar which means I’m focusing on the premium listings and not lower listed organic results. As a result I feel more likely to click on the top results - paid and natural as well. If there are no premium ads (screen shot 1) I am tempted to click either on the first natural listing or the first AdWords ad on the right.

(click the images twice to view)

A SERP with three premium listings has a similar effect. My eyes are constantly coming back to the green bar and therefore all the top ads attract more attention.

Even though I personally do not like the green backgrounds I believe Google have come up with a design which will improve the click through rate for the premium and top organic listings.

I have also noticed that Google have added green backgrounds for premium ads on Google Directory SERPs but since I never use this I can’t tell how long this has been in place. This directory design seems to be rolled out to all datacentres. Unlike the SERP design mentioned previously I seem to be somewhat blind to the premium paid results. I think this is because the green backgrounds seem to blend with one another unlike the green/yellow combination which is much more compelling.

Google.com has recently been reported to be testing nearly white background for the premium placement AdWords ads. Rustybrick comments on Google Blending Ads More Into Organic Results.

As mentioned in Joe’s previous blog post, Google last week announced changes to its pay-per-click trademark policy which for the first time will allow any company to buy keywords associated with a rival’s brand name.

We’ve had a great deal of interest from our clients and industry journalists, who are keen to understand the implications and effect of Google’s plans to allow any company to bid on competitor brand names.

So we asked Paul Doleman, our CTO and Head of Paid Search, to give his advice and opinion on:

• What has happened and why
• Google’s motivation behind the policy change
• How it might affect the market and businesses
• The likely impact to brand owners

Find out what Paul has to say…(advise using your headphones)

The policy comes into effect in May, ahead of which the debate will no doubt continue. For example, Travolution discussed the impact to travel brands in an article posted yesterday.

Google have just announced changes to their trademark policy in UK & Ireland that will bring it in line with US & Canada. This basically means that from 5th May, Google will no longer stop advertisers bidding on the registered trademarks of their competitors. All keywords suspended in your account due to trademark violation will be activated on that day. Any trademark complaints received by today will be processed in the usual way but any received after today will only be processed for ad copy and not keywords. As far as I am aware, Google will still stop people using your trademarks in Ads, provided you have registered the trademark properly. The official Google blurb can be found here

http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=92877&hl=en_US

Personally, I think this has been on the cards for a long time and have sensed a big shift in Adwords account managers attitude towards trademarks throughout last year. Although this change it makes the job of the Paid Search agency harder, I think it’s fair enough and I am quite pleased that Google are recognising that it’s not necessarily their job to enforce trademark policy. In the travel sector, I think this could work to an advertiser’s advantage quite well, as there are many hotel chains with high search volume featured travel operators’ sites that one simply couldn’t bid on before. In finance, I think it will be less advantageous, as cheap, good-converting brand traffic will suddenly be open to competition by aggregators who will push bid prices up. In retail, I think both scenarios will be relevant, as retailers tend to promote their own brand as well as sell other high-profile brands. However, a lot of retailers will already have had permission to bid on their best selling products’ brand terms so it may lean towards the less advantageous end.

’speling games online’ >200 searches per month