Search Sense

Google News is one of the most important aggregators on the web. Philipp Lenssen’s kindly provided a useful summary of what’s known (and not) about it… (more…)

Good to see some debate around the idea of the moment: the long tail… (more…)

When Google updated the algorithm for its AdWords on July 10th it raised a lot of eyebrows around the search engine marketing (SEM) industry - mine among them.

Effectively it means that as well as paying more money to achieve a higher ranking in the sponsored links section, advertisers will benefit from having landing pages that are more relevant to the search term.

Of course it is all good news for the person searching as it means they are more likely to end up somewhere they intended to be and useful to them.

For the search engine marketing industry though it is a catalyst for taking a holistic approach to campaigns, i.e. looking at natural search techniques, usability, creative, site design etc. as all having more or less equal importance to the success of an SEM campaign as price. This makes sense anyway, as Google’s statistics show that high rankings in paid and natural search rankings can result in more click-throughs for advertisers than just being top-ranked in one or the other.

It’s also a boost to SEM companies - yes ourselves amongst them - who really understand how Google’s natural search works as they will be able to help advertisers get the best value for position in the paid search market. The flip-side of that of course is it’s a threat to pure paid search marketers who will have to pay more to maintain the same positions for their campaigns, because they don’t get natural search.

The new algorithm may also be a nail in the coffin of the practice of arbitrage. In case that’s just jargon to you, I should explain: arbitrage is a business model where someone buys cheap AdWords and directs people who click on them to a page where there are more expensive AdWords displayed. When people click on the premium ads on their site they pocket the difference.

Search - it’s funny business sometimes.

: :There’s a really useful article by Jennifer Slegg on Search Engine Watch about all of this, but you will need a subscription to see it.

Our unscientifc experiment - using a Google trick from Philipp Lenssen - reveals Comment is Free readers “love” more than they “hate”. (more…)

Yahoo’s CEO, Terry Semel got stuck into the search industry’s current favourite hot topic yesterday. On a call with analysts he outlined the company’s approach to tackling the issue on its Sponsor Results text-based search results ads. (more…)