In February 2006, I stipulated that Google was on the verge of becoming the next Yahoo. I did not mean it as a complement. This analysis came about as I was (again) watching Yahoo’s product line fracture.
Yahoo had a strange history of creating competing products. It was either a case of one part of a large company not aware of what another part of a large company was doing, or there was no cohesive strategy from leadership. (Maybe both?) At one point Yahoo had it’s own image sharing service, only later to acquire Flickr. The services were never merged into one, single useful product. Yahoo Images (which is now a image searching engine) limped along for awhile, then was eventually shut down. Similarly, Yahoo had MyWeb which was different than Yahoo Bookmarks, despite the fact they apparently did the same thing. Both of which were identical to Delicious, which Yahoo purchased and… you get the idea.
Along the way, Yahoo experienced lots of product drift and were usurped by Google. That we all know. We also know that Google is a very, very smart company. So why are they repeating Yahoo’s mistakes?
Farhad Manjoo has a fantastic article on Slate.com (link: Déjà Google) pointing out that Google seems to be repeating the same folly of Yahoo. Google is spinning out products that directly compete with other products they have already created. A few highlights:
- Newly launched Google Buzz will tell your friends where you are… duplicating Google Latitude which was launched last year
- Orkut already offered social media online profiles, but that didn’t stop Google from launching Google Profiles
- Google offers to save your bookmarks so they are available on any computer, but it is not-compatible with Chrome’s bookmarking feature that allows you to save your bookmarks so they are available on any computer.
Which brings me back to my original post from February 2006, Google is the Next Yahoo!, that points out that Microsoft could beat Google if Google accidentally becomes too much like Yahoo.
Looks like that is happening. OK, Microsoft it’s your move.
You have to hand it to marketers for their ability to jump on a trend. In fact, it’s one of the core strengths of SEM — the ability to very quickly show ads for hot searches that may relate to your product line. It is interesting to me how companies attempt to capitalize on pop culture trends.
Example: the recent scuttlebutt over Tiger Woods and speculation over what the heck actually happened. All my years of search experience tell me that search traffic around his name has skyrocketed. I don’t need to check the hard data (though I did, and searches for Woods are volcanic), I just know that human nature plays itself out on a search engine. We may all say we don’t like gossip, but search data says otherwise. We are addicted to gossip.
We could argue that Tiger Woods is entitled to his privacy. Without a doubt, I agree. What I’m watching is the search traffic and what effects its causing. All of those golf companies that bid on “Tiger Woods” as a keyword to help sell golf equipment have probably seen impressions increase many times over. In fact, right now may not be the best time to advertise with “Tiger Woods” related terms since most of the searches are no longer golf related.
Which is why I find it interesting who is still advertising on Tiger Woods’ name. Namely eBay.
eBay ad for Tiger Woods. Screenshot taken on Dec 1, at 10:30AM.
What exactly is eBay selling? Clearly they, or whomever runs their SEM campaign, is not paying attention. It appears to me, Tiger Woods is for sale on eBay. eBay is not in the gossip business. The ROI on that ad has to be zero.
Poor word choice, poor execution, poor timing, poor marketing.
Yahoo! and Microsoft… Microsoft and Yahoo!. Together at last. Despite what they may say about increasing innovation and the operating income of each company, this deal is about one thing: Google.
The basic terms of the deal include Microsoft running the search engine portion, in essence, making Yahoo! search an extension of Bing. Yahoo will run the ad platform. This makes perfect sense, as Yahoo! has not considered search to be a core business product for years, and didn’t really want to get its hands dirty fighting Google.
Microsoft, on the other hand, doesn’t mind getting its hands dirty. More than that, they hate being second at anything and has show a willingness to tap their deep pockets to fund a fight. Microsoft sank nearly $500 million dollars into the Xbox before seeing a profit. That’s how bad they wanted to beat the PlayStation.
This sort of agreement is not new to Yahoo!. Around 2000, Yahoo’s search platform was powered by Google. Then someone at Yahoo! woke up and realized Google was actually a competitor, so the rushed a search platform into development.
The only thing that surprised me was the length of the agreement. Ten years! That’s five complete product life cycles on the internet. It seems improbably that these two companies could get along that long to make that time line a smart move. A deal of that length says one thing to me.
Yahoo! and Microsoft are heading for a merger. This lengthy arraignment is the equivalent of dating before they get married.
I surf the web a lot, but I’m still stunned from time-to-time when someone tries to fool a search engine to get better rankings. Sites do this in different ways: spamming, link baiting, cloaking… there are hundreds of “black hat” search techniques.
In almost all cases the webmaster goes to lengths to hide these techniques. In other instances, they don’t. Or more likely, the person doesn’t know they have tipped-toed into questionable SEO waters.
Which leads us today’s installment of “things not to do when optimizing your site.”
A few weekend searches over the nuances of Soccer rules, brought my wife to this page: (found here: http://www.soccerhelp.com/Soccer_Field_Index.shtml)
If it is not good for the user, then it is not good for the engine.
A close look reveals the problem, specifically the section that says “Dear visitor, ignore these links, they are for the search engines.”
All content is equal.
The rule of thumb is that search engines want to experience a site the exact same way a real, human user would. If content not intended for human eyes, then a search engine doesn’t want to “see” it either. Even if you try to section it off in a fun, tongue-in-cheek way on your site.
With the launch of Bing this week, as well as the recent introductions of Wolfram Alpha and Zuula, I thought I’d share my tips for how I kick the tires on a new search engine to see how good it is.
1. Type in your own name.
You know who you are, so see how much the search engine knows about you. Unless you have a very common name, even a mediocre search engine should return your facebook page somewhere on the first page or two.
2. Search for Viagra.
Really. Do a search on Viagra. If a search engine wants to be good it has to know how to handle spam, and there is TONS of spam for Viagra. Everyone hates spammy search results, so this is something new engines must have solved before they open to the public. If you don’t see legit medical and product information for Viagra, then they haven’t figured out how to handle spam.
3. Do a search on Barack Obama.
Next to relevancy, engines must be able to return fresh results. A search on the President should have a decent number of results that are no more than 2 days old.
If a new search engine gets good marks on all three of those tests, then they have spent time and effort developing a worthwhile, sophisticated backbone.
Tagged as:
bing,
facesearch,
microsoft,
Search,
spam,
wolfram alpha
The economy is a mess, and that’s saying it the polite way. My company (EnginePoint Marketing) has not been immune to the effects of the downturn. Some clients have drawn down their SEM campaigns to a lower level due to marketing budget cuts.
How do you adjust an SEM campaign to a smaller budget, yet make sure it’s still able to perform at a high level? Here are a few tips.
1. Have a target budget in mind.
Do you want to lower your monthly SEM budget by 20% or 25%? It’s easier to effectively adjust a campaign into a smaller one if you know what your target budget is.
As my business partner Kirk Phillips said in a recent post on his blog (BrandStoke)
Knowing the availability of resources is critical to achieving the desired outcome.
2. Don’t cut based on keyword price.
It’s seems logical to run a keyword performance report, look at what keywords are costing the most money, then cut them. The downside of that is you’ll end up cutting the best performing keywords out of your campaign. What you’ll have left is second-tier keywords doing a second-tier job. You may have to cut a few higher cost keywords, but using this as the sole decision-making metric is not a good idea.
3. Revisit negative keyword matching.
Negative keywords are a way of telling search engines what keywords not to match your ads for. This is one of the overlooked gems of paid search. Making sure you have a real tight, well-defined negative keyword list can reduce a budget by 15%.
For example, one of our clients sells casters, the wheels on the bottom of everything from office chairs to surgical carts. What they don’t sell is caster oil. Negative keywords ensure that bidding on the term “caster” does not match ad on searches for caster oil. It’s a simple concept, but so very often overlooked.
4. Pause specific categories, leaving others untouched.
Take a look at what part of your product lines you are supporting with paid search. Instead of taking a bit from each area, look at pausing ad groups that are not part of your core product line. Leave your core product area running at full steam.
5. Pair SEM exposure with SEO.
We prefer the blending method of search, using both SEO and SEM to drive traffic. But sometimes people get really focused on SEM. Review your SEO implementations. Some SEO changes might help you increase in rankings for keywords that you would no longer have to bid on.
Times are tight and sometimes budgets get cut. But hastily cutting an SEM budget can cause the remains of the campaign to falter. Any decent search agency can help you effectively reduce a campaign in a very effective way in a matter of a few days. But if you are running your own campaign, hopefully these tips will help you draw down a campaign until the economy gets a little better.
Tagged as:
budgets,
economy
