Yesterday Google announced it’s latest development…Google Instant Search.

What Is Google Instant Search?

Google Instant Search is a new feature that predicts what people are searching for and shows results as users type. It uses Google’s autocomplete technology to predict and show terms in a drop down box…

Why has Google done this?

Google thinks that there are three main benefits to Instant Search:
1. Faster Searches (saving between 2-5 seconds per search according to their research)
2. Smarter predictions that will help users find what they are looking for.
3. Instant results that let users see results without having to click ‘enter’ when typing

Where can you find Google Instant Search?

Google Instant search is available in the US on Google.com, or for those users who are using Google.com outside of the US. It also works for users outside of the US who are logged into their Google account in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Russia.

It is only available for users using the following browsers:

o Google Chrome v5 and v6

o Firefox v3

o Safari v5

o Internet Explorer v 8

It does not work for people using Google Toolbar, your browsers search box, iGoogle and if you have disabled Google Instant.

You can disable Google Instant Search (which is nice of Google to give users the option) by selecting the option next to the search bar…

Or by changing your preferences in Google’s search preferences options…

You will additionally know whether you are using Google Instant Search by the length of the search bar, which is approximately 30% longer when using Google Instant Search than when users are not…

How does Google Instant work?

Google will predict what users are searching for based on where they are located. For example users in the US when you start typing in to Google the letter ‘B’ shows results for Bestbuy.com and Bank of America…

Users based in the UK who type in the letter ‘B’ will see results for the BBC…

Based on the location of users Google will aim to serve the most relevant searches dependent on user location.

What is the impact of Google Instant for advertisers?

There is much speculation at the moment as to the impact of Google Instant on PPC. I am currently predicting three areas which will be affected:

1. Increase in number of impressions on ad’s
2. Decrease in the volume of traffic for long tail keywords
3. Decrease in the volume for misspellings of keywords

1. Increase in Impressions:

It is predicted that there will be an increase in impressions on PPC ad’s and Google has deemed an impression will only count in the following three cases:

o the user clicks anywhere on the page after beginning to type a search query
o the user chooses one of the predicted queries from Google Instant
o the user stops typing and search results are shown for at least three seconds

In the last of these cases, you will see as you start typing into Google the title tab will change if you pause for 3 seconds mid search, which indicates that the impression has been logged.

This could have the effect of lowering click thru rate (CTR) for PPC advertisers which is something that I and the team at Net Media Planet are currently monitoring.

2. Decrease in the volume of traffic for long tail keywords

Google Instant Search will display ad’s sooner to users as they are typing. As a result users who see the ad they are looking for, before they finish typing will click on the ad they are seeing rather than continue to type. This will mean that instead of users typing in long tail keywords such as ‘net media planet ppc agency’ they will have the net media planet ad shown as soon as they have typed in ‘net media pla’ as can be seen in the screenshot above.

Some people are calling this the ‘death of the long tail’ which will cause concern for PPC advertisers who know that long tail keywords convert well and at a cheaper cost than short tail keywords which are more costly (due to more competition on these keywords.)

Again this is something that I and the team at Net Media Planet are monitoring currently.

3. Decrease in the volume of misspellings of keywords

Google Instant Search is now highlighting misspelt search terms in the search box by underlining them with a red line, showing the users that they have spelt the word incorrectly. As a result Google Instant Search is delivering ad’s that it believes to be correct for the misspelt term. This means that ad’s that are specifically targeted to misspelt keywords are likely not to be clicked on as Google Instant Search is showing the correctly spelt ad whilst the user is typing.

An example of this can be seen for the brand term ‘McAfee’ which is commonly misspelt as ‘Macafee.’ With Google Instant Search users will now see the correctly spelt ad delivered whilst they are typing, as can be seen below…

Prior to Google Instant Search (or if you are not using it) and you typed in the term ‘Macafee’ you would see ad’s where the headline of the ad is targeted to the misspelt keyword…

PPC advertiser have been able to take advantage of misspelt keywords in Google and deliver ad’s at a cheaper cost than the correctly spelt keyword which is usually more costly. But with Google Instant Search, there is less of a chance that users will type in misspells as Google’s autocomplete function corrects this as users are typing.

Other points of note:

1. Users will spend less time on the Google homepage now. As users start to type their query into www.google.com they are automatically shown the Google SERP’s which is delivering ad’s and results to them straight away.

2. Google has moved the left hand side bar in slightly meaning less ‘white space’ on the SERP’s page.

3. Google’s natural listings are being pushed even further down the page as a result of Google Instant Search. An example of this can be seen on the term ‘credit card’ where there is only one natural listing above the fold and the rest of the page is taken up by PPC advertising, Google’s own credit card comparison ad and Google news.

Conclusion:

I think that users will actually quite like Google Instant Search, as it will save time trying to search for sites and will provide the most popular / relevant results for users. However, for PPC advertisers I can see this will be more of an issue due to the reasons stated above regarding increases in impressions, less volume on long tail keywords and misspells being less effective. This will result in short tail generic keywords being at a premium, resulting in an increase in competition and increased CPC’s, which is good news for Google in the long run.

In the blogs this week

Here is our weekly update on the latest developments in Search Marketing that we have found of interest this week. If you’ve got any tips – suggestions of stories that we’ve missed but you think are interesting, do let us know.

1. 1. Google Maps ‘ Sponsored Maps Icons’ test in the US…

www.searchengineland.com

1. 2. Google TV coming soon. Video explaining how it will work…

www.youtube.com

1. 3. Apple set to launch their own social network ‘Ping’ – to compete with Facebook & Twitter

www.brandrepublic.com

1. 4. Latest version of Google AdWords Editor released…

www.adwords.blogspot.com

1. 5. Watchdog group takes Google to task with Times Square advertising…

www.marketingpilgrim.com

1. 6. Adding new negative keywords and placements through Google AdWords interface…

www.ppcblog.com

1. 7. Google real time updating of search results video…

www.youtube.com/

1. 8. Google the movie, coming soon…

www.deadline.com

We are really excited to have been selected and shortlisted for our work with The Perfume Shop as a finalist for the DADI 2010 Awards for Best Use of Paid Search. There was really tough competition to get to the final round, so we are absolutely thrilled.

Well done to The Perfume Shop!

The results will be out in November. Fingers crossed.

Exploring the Net Media Planet Brand

Last Wednesday we held our first ever Brand Day. For all of us this was something new, bringing the entire company together for a spell of team building and exploration of our values.

The day was productive and good fun. We produced Net Media Planet videos, podcasts, posters and – among other things – a fully operational 3D installation. For a team of people used to tapping away at their keyboards day after day, it was not just something different but something worthwhile. New business and operation strategies were generated and people from opposite sides of the office were thrown together into unfamiliar teams.

We all left with a better understanding of what the Net Media Planet brand is all about, and with a fistful of new ideas for the next few months.

Our weekly update on the latest developments in Search Marketing that we have found of interest this week…

1. Post of the week: Google SERP’s dominated by one domain

www.searchengineland.com/google-search-results-dominated-by-one-domain

2. Google CEO Believes That in the Future, We May Be Automatically Allowed to Change Our Names to Escape Online Past.

www.blogoscoped.com

3. AdWords is down from 6-10pm on Saturday (UK time)

www.adwordsapi.blogspot.com

4. Facebook launches ‘Places’ to compete with Google Locations and Foursquare www.blog.hubspot.com/Facebook-Places-Launches-Allows-Businesses-To-Check-In

What it all means…

www.searchengineland.com/making-sense-of-facebook-places

5. Kooday. Another new search engine. Let’s you buy keywords for your website rather than the traditional biding auction model

www.kooday.com

6. Bingle. Let’s you search Google and Bing at the same time

www.bingle.nu

7. Yahoo Search Engine Gains Market Share, Google Drops

www.bloomberg.com/yahoo-search-engine-gains-market-share-google-drops.html

]]> http://www.netmediaplanet.com/net-media-planet-blog-watch-20th-august/feed/ 0 http://www.netmediaplanet.com/effect-of-the-google-trademark-policy-change/ http://www.netmediaplanet.com/effect-of-the-google-trademark-policy-change/#comments Tue, 10 Aug 2010 16:45:11 +0000 Sri Sharma http://www.netmediaplanet.com/?p=69453

In a recent blog post, Matt Holland our Head of Search, wrote about the Google Trademark Policy Update: Big Change for PPC Advertisers that takes effect on 14 September. He wrote about how resellers in the UK, Ireland and Canada will be able to use branded keywords within their ad-copy for products that they are reselling. Previously this was not allowed.

I was thinking about how we could project the effects of this change, so that brands could consider the challenges that they are likely to face. Then our Senior Analyst, Anthony Pearce, came across the screenshot below.

(Click on the image above to see in a full screen)

This screen grab shows a keyword search on Google UK for ‘Musto Clothing’.  Currently Musto are not trademarked so with the paid search results their resellers can use the brand’s terms within their ad copy and also bid on these brand terms.

The paid search results are populated with Musto.com at the top and then all their resellers below.  Regardless of whether you trademark or not, from 14 of September this is how paid search results could look. With the addition of competitors’ paid search adverts for good measure.

What then does this mean for brands? First of all it signals a more dynamic paid search landscape, increasing costs and accompanying traffic leakage. It means an increased reliance on your agency to provide ongoing reports into what’s happening in your search space, as well as protection against revenue decline on your high conversion terms.

If you’re like to chat to me about this further, do give me a call or drop me an email.

Google announced today a change in its trademark policy that will be coming into effect on 14^th September 2010. Google is changing its current trademark policy in the UK, Ireland and Canada so that Google will no longer uphold trademark protection and use of trademarks within ad copies unless an investigation is requested by the trademark owner. It is also opening up the branded keyword bidding policy in the rest of Europe that has been in place in the UK and USA for 2 years now.

What does this mean?

This means in the UK, Ireland and Canada resellers will be able to use a brand’s terms within their ad copy for products they are reselling. In Europe competitor bidding on a brands term will now be accepted.

The losers…

The biggest losers will be the brands themselves who will surely see their own CPCs increase on their brand terms as new competition comes in on these keywords. They will also see cannibalisation on their brand terms from resellers promoting their products.

For example, if you take brands of the likes of Apple, who trademark the terms ‘iPod’ and ‘Mac’ these keywords will be opened up to all resellers of Apple products which will surely have an effect on the cost of their current AdWords budget. Louis Vuitton famously took Google to court over the previous change in Google trademark policy back in 2008 which allowed competitors to bid on brands keywords, as Louis Vuitton protested that counterfeit products of Louis Vuitton were being sold and promoted through Google AdWords. They lost the resulting court case and Google’s previous trademark policy of bidding on brands keywords remains.

The winners…

Competitors and resellers of products stand to gain from these changes in policy. Resellers in the UK, Ireland and Canada will now be free to use brands’ terms in ad copy, which will give them better relevancy, click thru rates and quality score resulting in cheaper CPCs for brand terms they are bidding on. Competitors in Europe will now be able to bid on brand keywords which will increase their own brand awareness and mean incremental sales for them. As a result affiliates could be used as part of a brand protection strategy, to take up more of the PPC space in light of the increase in competitors and resellers on brand terms.

The biggest winners however will be Google themselves. This increase in competition on brand terms will mean more revenue for Google through AdWords campaigns as there will be an increase in competition for these keywords. The introduction of Google Related Ads on brand terms back in July already increased competition on brands terms which were controlled by Google and has already caused murmurings from brands promoting on Google.

What can brands do?

It will be interesting how this plays out in the run up to December and January, the peak times seasonality wise for Retail and Travel industries, where brands could be hit hard due to this change in policy. Brands will need to monitor their brand keywords closely and protect their brand space with automated protection technology (a product and service that Net Media Planet can offer through our Mercury Platform.) Brands need to consider the importance of bidding on their own brand terms in Google, as they can no longer rely on the natural listings to pick up all their brand traffic. Brands may consider inviting affiliates onto their brand terms as part of an overall brand protection strategy and try to ensure they have agreements in place with resellers and affiliates regarding bidding on their brand terms.

In Conclusion

I feel that this is a bold move from Google which will no doubt cause concern for brands spending vast sums on PPC advertising in Google AdWords. Brands will surely be looking hard at the relative ROI they receive from Google in comparison to other marketing channels, but Google can remain confident as the internet reach continues to grow and they are still positioned as the number one search engine globally. If brands decide to move away from Google then the resellers will take over the brand keywords and as PPC comes at the end of the buying cycle (for brand terms) then brands will stand to lose out even more. Brands will have to continue to advertise on their own brand terms and will have to suffer the increase costs and lower CTR as a result of the increase in competition.

Net Media Planet will be monitoring the effect of these changes in policy once introduced in September and will be updating our blog with any insights related to this change in Google’s Trademark Policy. If you are concerned as to what steps to take in light of this latest Google Trademark Policy change, please contact us.

To read the updated policy change, please go to Google’s Blog and pay particular attention to its amended policy regarding trademarks in ad copy in the UK, Ireland and Canada.

YouTube is the largest video community online and I have been working on ways to engage users on the platform in the campaigns I run for our existing clients. The ad formats are non-intrusive and Google recently released a new tool to effectively target the audience on a wide range of interest levels related to the video content.

How does it work?

Select a region and ad format. There are currently 26 countries that can be targeted specifically and three different formats.

Here is a screenshot of what it looks like:

How does it work?

InVideo overlay ads are probably the most common form. These are either text or image ads overlaid onto the video itself. Users can scroll through these ads or minimise them if they are not interested in them. The targeting for these ads is very granular and specific videos and YouTube channels which relate to the target audience can be focussed on. The other two formats: InStream ads, short video ads at recommended length of 15 seconds and Banner ads, either images or Click-to-Play videos, are also supported but have less granular targeting.

Selecting videos made easy

The Video Targeting tool has made this process very seamless as I am now able to select thousands of videos based on either keywords or audience interest. This is a step up from the current format on the Adwords online interface where you can only select one video at a time. I can create different media plans for different products which can be downloaded to Excel.

Here I can segment the videos by age, ratings, number of views and daily impressions, sanity check them too and break the media plan down to different ad groups to manage my inventory effectively.

For much broader general coverage, channels and categories can also be targeted but you are likely to miss out on the cool granular level of analysis you’ll be able to do once you start generating traffic and results.

Tracking and iteration

Our Mercury technology platform enables us to track performance of our ads for every video placement. Each video is tracked individually and I apply keyword optimisation techniques from PPC based on their return. I am also able to optimise the frequency at which are ads shown based on this analysis and improve performance. I am also able track the click path journey from each video should it result in any search activity.

YouTube content is dynamic and media plans have to be periodically refreshed to keep up to date with the latest videos.

Benefits

Costs are still relatively low and I have been able to deliver results which are comparable to the paid search keyword campaigns. Exposure to the target audience on YouTube is no longer a shot in dark but almost an exact science where I can launch campaigns related to product launches or a set promotional calendar. I can also take advantage of events creating a buzz in other social media which are likely to translate to increase viewership on related YouTube videos. At present, our team here is using this form of video targeting not only for direct response and also in brand awareness exercises.

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Image credit: Informatique

On Tuesday, Google held a special event in San Francisco where they announced their latest innovation: Google Image Search Ads. 

Google have revamped their Google Images product and have now introduced PPC style ads that are shown above the images in Google Images.

This is a nice innovation from Google which advertisers will be sure to capitalise on in the future. Net Media Planet are currently in discussions with our clients to have their ads shown in Google images, as images need to be uploaded into Google accounts via the ‘display ad builder’ tool in Google AdWords. 

While some are already criticising Google for making Google Images a copycat of Bing’s offering. I feel that it is wrong to be critical of Google over this, in my opinion Google and Bing images both look great and are very user friendly. I think it’s a really good new innovation of Google’s and Google Images is currently more popular than Bing images so it stands to reason that they want to use the best format for displaying their images. 

This latest innovation means that those brands that have large product ranges with lots of great images will be able to show ads for generic terms relating to their images. I’m certain these CPC’s (cost per click) will be cheaper than these generic terms are currently in traditional search. 

For more information regarding implementing Google Image Search ads you can contact Net Media Planet via our contact us page.

The World Cup 2010 with its glorious victories and dampening losses has been the
thing at Net Media Planet this summer. We all came together to play a sweepstake
which added much colour to watching the World Cup as everyone was secretly
rooting for their own team.

The England vs. Slovenia match has been the favourite by far in the office as this
was the last game that England came out victorious beating Slovenia 1:0. Everyone
stopped working at 3pm and gathered around the big screen in the office for a
football feast.

The event brought the entire team at Net Media Planet together and made the last
month working at the company a lot of fun! Although England did not win, the person
at Net Media Planet who won the sweepstake for Spain thinks it’s been the best
World Cup ever!