As most people already know, Google+ is Google’s answer to Facebook.  At its core, Google+ is a social network however it’s basically an amalgamation of several existing Google services.  It integrates social services such as Google Profiles and Google Buzz and introduces new services, such as Circles, Hangouts, Sparks and Huddles.

The key point about Google+ is that all these social services collect information from users.  So what does this mean for search marketing?  Google has the potential to deliver results more in line with what you’d like to see when you are searching.  Also, Google can use this information to deliver more relevant and targeted ads, which may lead to more profits for Google and advertisers.  Google+ has the potential to shake up the industry.

Let’s take a look at the different features of Google+ that could help Google with its search algorithm:

Circles

Google+ Circles gives you the ability to group and label your contacts.  For example, you can designate certain people as co-workers, friends, family, etc.  You also can create new circles and name it whatever you want.  So for example, you belong to a running club and create a circle named “running club”.  You just indirectly indicated to Google that anyone in this circle is interested in running.  Circles is essentially a vote for a person, just as links are votes for a website and could help Google identify “influencers” within networks.

+1 Button

Just like Facebook, Google has a “Like” button called +1.   Essentially, when a website, status update, image, etc. receives a lot of +1’s, it is safe to assume the source is trusted and authoritative in some way or another.  However, there are many ways to “game” this metric and should be interpreted with caution.

Sparks

Google+ Sparks is probably the one feature that may affect Google’s algorithm the most.  Sparks is just Google’s creative name for interests.  Sparks allows you to add interests and then Google fetches links related to those interests; very similar to Google News.  You also can share links within in your circle and chat about them.  Sparks potentially can give Google another layer of targeting.  If Google can understand your interests, then they can interpret the weight of your voting.  For example (using the running theme aforementioned), Google will know how much a +1 from you means when you give it to a running site and it probably means more than if you give a +1 to a cooking site.

Profile Data

Probably one the most obvious places Google can pull data from.  Your Google+ Profile contains your basic demographic information such as gender, occupation, education, birthday, location, etc.  You also can add links to websites that you are associated with.

Hangouts

Google+ Hangouts are simply group video chats.  Some video chat companies transcribe conversations however while highly unlikely due to privacy issues, Google could “listen in” on conversations and acquire insightful data for ad targeting.  However, there is one interesting possibility.  One of Google’s old April Fool’s Day jokes, Google Romance, proposes an unlikely, but interesting idea: contextual ads during chat sessions.

Localization Data

Google+ is heavily integraded with Mobile.  The GPS location setting is a key focus here.  This data will allow Google to better target users based on their location and determine relevance for geographic queries.

Photos

Currently, Google has an image search where you can drag and drop images into the search bar and Google returns related results.  Theoretically, Google could use these robot spiders with facial recognition technology (which Facebook has already implemented) to recognize social bonds between people.  This would be a very easy way for Google to identify who your real life connections are.

So how would all these factors play together?

A user – let’s call him John – has a Google+ account and is doing some research.  While John is searching the internet, all the data from his Google+ account is helping the Google algorithms understand that John has affinities toward cooking, organic food, gardening, health & fitness and the outdoors.

When John searches for “How to Cook”, he would be served with results that are skewed with articles that discuss organic & healthy cooking and outdoor organic gardening.  Google would be able to deliver these results based off the data from John’s Google+ account.  Websites that may have not been ranked in the top 10 are now ranking due to Google+’s interpretation as a most relevant site.

So what does this mean for sites that usually don’t get exposure?  For example, let’s take a small organic gardening site.  This site isn’t heavily linked to but has a solid fan base on social networks.  This site now can engage in discussions and updates and stand a better chance to see increases in potential, qualified traffic.  Bottom line: Google+ may be bridging the gap between search marketing and social media.

What does this mean for the future of Search Marketing?

If you are advertising with Google, you may be able to get even more targeted traffic.  However, over time you may have to re-think what “top ranking” really means.  Two important questions you may have to ask yourself: “for what keyword?” and “for which user?”  It will be interesting to see what Google actually does with Google+ (pending its success), but search strategies and tactics are definitely going to change in the near future.

   -   The historical click-through rate (CTR) of the keyword and the matched ad on the site
   -   Your account history, which is measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account
   -   The historical CTR of the display URLs in the ad group
   -   The relevance of the keyword to the ads in its ad group
   -   The relevance of the keyword and the matched ad to the search query
   -   Your account’s performance in the geographical region where the ad will be shown
   -   The quality of your landing page

In contrast, Microsoft’s Quality Score is determined from three measure of performance:

   -   Keyword relevance score
   -   Landing page relevance score
   -   Landing page user experience score

While sharing Google’s emphasis on Keyword relevance and Keyword usage in ad copy and landing pages, Microsoft seeks to differentiate their Quality Score in a few ways:

   -   Keyword Quality Score will impact account hierarchy at the adgroup and campaign levels.  The greater the number of impressions, the higher the influence.
   -   Landing pages will be assigned a quality score, available to the user, of either ‘No Problem’ or ‘Poor’
   -   adCenter ads will not be positioned based on quality score.  The highest bidders will always have the top spots.  Quality scores are purely a determinant of whether ads are eligible to participate in the auction.  In our opinion, this is the most significant departure from Google’s Quality Score where Ad rank is defined as:
         -   Ad Rank = CPC bid × Quality Score

Continued improvement of the user experience via ad relevancy, landing pages improvements, and text relevancy should be the goal of every advertiser.  We question the inherent value of a quality score that simply determines whether Keywords are eligible for an auction. Where is the incentive for advertisers to improve Keyword scores, and thus theoretically the user experience, beyond the level necessary to participate?  With Google’s Quality Score, incentives are clearly aligned with the objective of achieving lowered advertising costs via the Ad Rank formula. 

The emphasis on impression volume in determining the impact on account hierarchy is also troublesome.  With Google’s quality score, relevancy, as demonstrated by click through rates (CTR), is the over-riding factor in determining higher scores.  Microsoft’s Quality Score stops short of the goal of improved user experience through higher relevancy by focusing solely on the number of impressions.

Finally, we have identified some reporting issues within the adCenter user interface.  When running a Quality Score distribution on the ‘Traffic’ tab, Total CPA is calculated incorrectly.  Essentially, Total CPA only includes the costs for the Quality Scores that had conversions associated with them, significantly understating the actual CPA: 

In summary, while we applaud Microsoft’s attempt to provide a metric to add insight for advertisers and provide greater functionality to adCenter, we find the current Quality Score disappointing.  The coherence between advertiser and user objectives present in Google’s Quality Score is missing.  Reporting calculation errors are inexcusable and suggest a hasty roll-out.  The Microsoft Quality Score leaves a lot to be desired both in concept and execution.

More information can be found at MSN’s Quality Score webinar or adCenter help.

Many other companies (including Microsoft) have gone through litigation with the FTC for issues with market domination, but Google is being targeted for its possible abuse of advertising space in search engine results. While this topic may seem nebulous, it becomes quite evident when performing routine searches on Google that they are quickly overpowering the ad space with their own services. For instance, when searching for “mortgage rates”, this is what Google provides:

With the many new additions to Google’s empire, they are able to overtake competitors on a wide variety of sectors in their paid search advertising. While we may not know (or even be able to figure out) the implications and effects of these ads, to many it seems unfair that Google is giving itself a boost.

The Federal Trade Commission investigation will certainly call attention to Google’s practices, but how may things change in the future if the FTC brings charges against them? Some believe that Google may be required to break off parts of the company that it has accumulated over the years, but it seems with the issue at hand that Google may be forced into changing its approach to providing search engine results.

The advertising that Google provides is supposedly based on an auction system, where the highest bidder gets the highest placement in the available ad space that Google places at the top of all Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). It seems that Google is currently trumping all of these auctions by placing their ads at the top of the list (the place most likely to be clicked on by users). If the investigation forces Google to change its methods, we may see changes to the current auctioning system.

In the end, Google has the largest market share of the paid search market and is obviously influencing how paid advertising on their results pages is functioning. I know that if I were competing directly with Google for advertising space, I would not be happy about it. We’ll have to wait and see how far down the rabbit hole the FTC will go, and what they decide to do about Google’s questionable practices.

At first glance, I don’t know how successful this will initially be; not only because of the strict approval process, but because of the World Wide Web norm. From an SEO standpoint, I typically advise the use of www before your domain name due to that being the norm. For a while, I think that will be the case here as well.  URL’s ending in .com will still hold their value, especially since the new naming ability will be even more customized. With a price tag in the hundreds of thousands, this is meant for large businesses so it narrows the scope of who can actually obtain a unique extension domain.

How will this .com overhaul impact SEO?  We will anxiously be waiting for 2012 when the new naming system is set to launch. Will anything after the “dot” be treated as part of your root domain and the “dot” as a separator? Will the extension be treated as a category for the Search Engine’s Index? Will the extension be treated as a brand?

We are anxious to hear what Search Engines have to say about the new domain extensions.

1.   Quantity versus quality:  The number of links to one’s website is only one factor.  More importantly is the source of the link (the number of qualified links to that source, and the relevance of that page to your keyword) and the anchor text of the link. 

2.  Link Spam: Recently, a number of notable brands such as J.C. Penney were on the receiving end of negative press for “black hat” SEO practices.  While guaranteeing a quantity of links does not automatically imply spam links or other black hat practices, these package deals should be carefully scrutinized to ensure that the methodology is sounds.

3.   Resource Intensive:  To properly manage a back link program, the following steps should be followed:

 -  Analyze Current Links: Are the current links leveraging the right keywords/anchor text?  Are my links coming from sites that are adding value? 

-  Research New Link Sources: What are the link sources that my competitors are leveraging?  Which customers or partners can I leverage for back links?  What industry hub sites can we contact?

-  Outreach:  Once the questions above can be answered, actually acquiring the links becomes more or less a sales and marketing effort to contact these strategic partners.  This effort is conducted by email and phone, and may even require a CRM system to manage this massive amount of data.

-  Management: Lastly, once linking relationships have been established, it is important to continue to monitor your link portfolio.

With consideration to these factors, how is it possible for a company to provide this strategic value at the level of quantity promised?   Even if these firms point out their cheap labor costs (offshore) or technology solutions, our experience is that in most cases even if the quantity is delivered, the quality is not there and in fact can be detrimental to your SEO efforts.

It’s hard to ignore the chorus of voices that are taking a fairly negative view of +1, especially when they claim that +1 is a gold mine for black hat search marketers.  Setting aside this notion that +1 is easy to exploit, writers in the industry don’t really envision Google taking over social media as they have with organic and paid search.  They claim that when rolled out to actual websites rather than search results, +1 would be lost in the din of competing recommendations from Facebook and Twitter or that, even worse, +1 relies on chance to have a shot at becoming successful (i.e. your friend via a Google profile searches for a similar query to you and then gets served the same organic or paid search result).

Perhaps the negativity stems from the fact that the vast majority of Google users don’t have Google profiles.  Of that small subset of users that do have Google profiles, how many of them are logged in every time they run a Google search?  Basic Facebook functionality (viewing complete profiles and connecting to people or businesses) requires a user to set up an account, whereas basic Google functionality (i.e. running a search) does not.  So, Google +1 is already limiting its scope to Internet users that frequently use Google for more than just search.

That’s not to say that there are no advantages to Google +1.  Though +1 does not affect a paid ad’s quality score, it is easy to envision an ad with a high number of +1’s getting a boost in click-through rates (that is, if Google figures out a way to keep black-hatters from gaming the system).  Furthermore, because the subset of people that are likely to use +1 are more likely to be high-powered Internet users (since they’ve bothered to amass friends via their Google profile), there must be an air of credibility attached to a site or ad that gets a good number of +1’s.

A more tangible benefit to +1 is that it appears to be a more accurate measure of actual user recommendations and social media trends.  Facebook’s Like button is an aggregate of instances where users actually clicked the “Like” button, shared a site or wrote a comment, negative or otherwise.  A recent but not-quite-scientific study pegged the accuracy of Facebook’s Like at 39%. Thus, given Google’s knack for producing high quality data about the Internet, one would hope that their +1 measure is as robust as their Keyword Tool results or Trends analysis.

In short, Google’s +1’s main benefits are its accuracy relative to Facebook’s Like and its potential for nudging people towards certain paid or organic search results.  But few people in the SEM industry think those benefits are enough to overcome the limited subset of potential +1 users, the potential for black hat shenanigans, and the fact that it’s a newcomer to the game with respect to Facebook, Twitter, and the rest of the social media juggernauts.

Paid Search (PPC) Budget Allocation

Many companies, especially those without an ROI-focused strategy, tend to run PPC programs that barely tread water (in terms of profitability).  Are you using a portfolio approach to your program?  Simply, you should make sure the most profitable areas are maximized before providing budget to less efficient areas of the program.  By using this approach, you can rest assured that you’re running the most profitable program possible.

Paid Search (PPC) Bid Strategy

In terms of bid strategy, it may be time to take another look at your program.  Specifically, are you overspending for branded keywords?  Many companies want to ensure dominance for their branded keywords, and maximizing the position of branded keywords is a priority for such marketers.  However, if you consider that individuals seeking your brand are already likely to convert, you may want to test a lower target position.  Many clients achieve incredible savings by dropping their average positions by 0.5-1 places.  This is simple to test, and one all marketers should test at some point.

Match Types and Negative Keywords (PPC)

If your company sells Britney Spears posters, you want to make sure the traffic you are driving to you site is interested in purchasing said posters.  However, if you investigate your potential keywords (and better yet, your existing program), you might find some surprises.  For example, you may find the search query ‘roman spears’ is generating a lot of impressions and even clicks.  However, this traffic is highly unqualified.  Likewise, one of the most popular search queries you’ll find is for ‘britney spears topless’.  Unless your company sells this variety of poster, you’ll want to prevent this unqualified traffic as well.  In the former case, you could consider using phrase or exact match to prevent the unqualified traffic. In both cases, negative keywords can be used to prevent this wasteful spend.

Display/Banner Media Planning

If you’ve been running a display program for some time with the same cost targets (whether CPM, CPC or CPA-based), this may be a good time to renegotiate.  Take the time to review your program and look for areas where you might be able to negotiate better rates.  For example, has one of your networks achieved your target goals with little innovation or change?  If so, it might be time to challenge them a little.  Work with your networks to explore opportunities to improve volume and/or reduce cost in your display program.

Reconsider your Analytics

Many companies, large and small, are paying for analytics platforms that are unnecessary (and often quite expensive).  If you haven’t done so recently, take a close look at your analytics platform and determine if you’re using its unique capabilities or if you’re paying for a platform you simply don’t need.  If your reporting needs are fairly simple and can be achieved via Google Analytics (free) or another inexpensive platform, should you really be spending substantially more on another platform?  This may be a simple line item to remove from your marketing.

Final Thoughts

There are many ways you can look to save money in your Internet marketing program.  Make sure you take the time to review your program.  What steps are you taking to control cost?

1. Who should be using dayparting (and why)?

2. How do I determine my peak periods?

Who Should be Dayparting?

The all-encompassing answer to this question is, “anyone who has variability in conversions by hour of day.”  The example I often use in training sessions is that of a hypothetical sports equipment client who heavily uses infomercials in the early afternoon (1-3pm) and late evening (12am-5am).  If someone just saw an infomercial and is seeking the product through a search engine, they are more likely to convert than general search traffic.  We need to make sure there’s advertising budget during these infomercial periods to ensure we have adequate coverage during the high-traffic periods.

While this example has the advantage of clarity, many of you probably aren’t running programs with this obvious need for dayparting.  What other situations might lead a marketer down the dayparting path?  Perhaps you get a lot of PPC search traffic evenly through the day, but the traffic only seems to convert during the evening hours.  In that case, you may consider reducing your PPC budget during the day (by 50%, for example) and using that budget during the high-conversion period.

How Do I Determine my Peak Periods (and Use This Data)?

There are various methods to determining the peak periods for your PPC program.  For e-commerce managers, it is likely as simple as using your e-commerce platform to aggregate the specific time of day of conversions from Paid Search.  For those of you that are lead-generation focused, you will often get timestamps for the lead through your CRM or related system.  For the rest of you, we’ve outlined a fairly straightforward method for getting the desired data.  While we use Google Analytics in our example, other analytics platforms should provide similar capabilities.

Step 1: Create a Google Analytics account for your website if you don’t already have one.  Make sure you are tracking the same conversions as the paid search program (and also link the Analytics and AdWords accounts if applicable).

Step 2: Create a custom report with the following parameters:

Metrics: Goal Completions (specific goal or total, depending on conversions of interest)

Dimensions: Hour of the Day

You may also want to go ahead and bring traffic information into this custom report, as other factors may play a role in your program.  For example, you may want to provide additional budget to periods that don’t convert well, but provide branding exposure (i.e. lots of traffic and impressions).  If volume is sufficient, you can also set the Advanced Segments to Paid Search Traffic to get more specific data.

Step 3: Use the data to daypart your program appropriately.  In our example (click here for the sample custom report), you can see that the majority of conversions for this client occur between 11am and 5pm.  Toward the bottom of the second image (click here), you’ll notice that there’s a dramatic drop-off in conversions between 1am and 7am.  In this case, we recommend providing additional budget between 11am and 5pm while significantly reducing budget during the early morning hours.

Final Thoughts

Dayparting is not for everyone.  If your program is fairly consistent throughout the day in terms of sales or leads, then you can disregard this post.  However, if you haven’t looked at the performance of your PPC program, now is a good time to take a look.  Are you missing opportunities to better allocate budget in your paid search program?

I Will Implement Cross-Channel Integration. If “cross-channel” isn’t part of your marketing vocabulary yet, take the time to look into it in 2011. Simply, we’re referring to a portfolio-based approach, where all marketing channels are examined side-by-side. As an agency, we typically aggregate different Internet marketing channels into an aggregate report. This report can be used to make insightful decisions incorporating all aspects of the Internet marketing program. Cross-channel reporting (and subsequently decision-making) will help to ensure you’re allocating budget to the most effective/profitable channels. You can even take this one step further and integrate all your marketing channels into one comprehensive strategy (and report).

I Will Not Be Afraid of Social Media. While social media surpassed the label of “buzzword”, many companies have yet to develop a social media framework for their Internet marketing plan (or for their company in general). Social media is still a growing online branding opportunity as well as opportunity to interact with current and future customers. In 2011, I recommend dedicating some time to social media. Here are some initial questions to ask yourself:

What goals can social media help me achieve?

How will I measure success in social media?

What message do I want to send using social media?

Which social media channels are well-suited to my product/service and goals?

I Will Have a Local Presence. Especially with recent enhancements to local results in Google, it will be more important to include a geographically-based strategy in your Internet marketing program. For example, if someone includes a city or location as part of their query, Google will serve a Places listing with businesses that match the user’s query in the specified area. If you have physical locations and are not taking advantage of Google Places listings, you’re missing the opportunity to be featured in some prime search real estate. In the example below, the Places listing takes up all the space above the fold!

I Will Learn About and Test New Features. The search engines often release new features because they feel the features will enhance the user experience in some way. One example of this is the Google Places drop-down in PPC advertising (see example below), which provides a map of the closest location without having to click through to the website:

Other features recently released by Google include Contact Form Extensions (a contact form that drops down from your PPC ad) and Product Listing Ads (which contain images and prices for items that match the search query). The specific features you test and implement will vary depending on the nature of your business. As a standard rule, keep up to date on emerging search marketing technologies and test them regularly!

Final Thoughts

These ideas are merely the tip of the iceberg – I suspect we could (working together) develop a list of 365 different aspects to examine. Take some time to think about your Internet marketing program and determine how you’re going to invigorate your program this year.

What are you thinking about as we move into 2011?

As Internet users look for information specifically tailored to them, several niche search sites are answering the call. NPR recently highlighted several religious/faith-based search engines that are increasingly popular among Christians, Jews and Muslims around the world. We wanted to take a closer look at these Web sites to determine how viable they are as Internet marketing opportunities.

SeekFind.org: A Christian “Search Engine”

SeekFind.org is a Christian search engine based out of Colorado that returns results only from sites they believe are consistent with the teachings in the Bible. At the time of writing, SeekFind features 33 approved Web sites. All of the Web sites are Christian-focused and gained approval through an application process found on the site. Their policies state, “Its primary focus must be on ministry, not selling products.” Based on this as well as other policies, the desire to sell products (even Christian products) is against their policies.

Based on our analysis, SeekFind.org is of limited use for Internet marketing purposes. If you are a Christian message-based site and primarily educational in nature, you might consider applying to have your site included. However, due to the low level of inclusion, this should be considered a portal as opposed to a search engine.

Jewogle.com: A Jewish “Search Engine”

While SeekFind appears to walk the line between portal and search engine, Jewogle.com, “The Famous Jews Search Engine”, doesn’t attempt to simulate a search engine (except in name). Upon your initial entrance to the website, it’s obvious that the creators are focused on developing a collection of biographies of famous/important Jews. An examination of their FAQ explains, “Jewogle is a site that celebrates the Jewish contribution to civilization and is well on its way to being a Jewish biographical encyclopedia.”

There are graphic ads on Jewogle that appear to be driven through sponsorship. Most of these appear to be affiliate in nature. Those interested in placing an ad on their site should contact the website administrators to determine next steps for inclusion in their advertising program. Compared to the two other sites featured in this blog, Jewogle receives the lowest level of traffic.

I’mHalal.com: A Muslim Search Engine

The creators of I’mHalal.com are truly creating a new search engine focused on Muslim-friendly information (as opposed to a portal). This site definitely impressed us. I spent some time discussing paid search and SEO with their support team (thanks to Faisal Sultan for his assistance!).

Paid Search advertisers might initially disregard this site as an advertising opportunity, as the current beta test of the site has no advertising. However, I’mHalal is currently in a private beta test of an advertising platform created by none other than Ted Huffman, one of the pioneers in search engine marketing (of Goto.com/Overture/Yahoo fame). According to Sultan, the advertising platform is expected to launch in the next few weeks. We hope to provide an update, along with some screenshots, once the platform (including keyword- and content-based advertising) goes live.

The area I’mHalal really differentiates itself in is its indexing. While the other two “engines” featured in this blog include a small amount of information (via selective inclusion), I’mHalal.com uses search technology to automatically crawl the web for Muslim-safe content. While this may increase the risk of undesirable content appearing in search results (since approval is automated), it also dramatically increases the volume of indexed materials, leading to increased inclusion and a more versatile search platform. While it’s too early to project the growth of this engine, the fact that it had over 3 million visitors in the first month shows they have significant consumer base already.

If you’re interested in increasing your reach to the Muslim population, we highly recommend taking a look at I’mHalal.com. In terms of traffic volume, they dominate over the other sites featured in today’s blog. In terms of business strategy, we feel they have the vision and tools in place to continue to grow over time.

Conclusion

When analyzing Web sites for marketing opportunities, it is important to examine the audience (including traffic volume) as well as creators’ intent. Consider traffic potential, the site’s strategy in terms of monetization and content relevance in determining the appropriateness of a website or network as advertising opportunities.