 Google Experiments With Display Ads In SERPs
Searchviews
They've been hinting at it for quite some time now, but Noah Mallin reports that he's actually seen display ads in Google SERPs. The banners were running alongside image search results for the "Partridge Family," as well as "John McCain." Both examples highlight the difficulty that stems from precisely targeting banner ads, as neither ad was relevant to the initial query. They also muck up the clean, simple search interface that has been Google's hallmark.
But Mallin thinks that it may have been done on purpose. "On the initial evidence it would appear that Google is testing placement more than anything else--certainly not targeting," he says. "They may also be examining the quality and nature of data that can be retrieved from an ad like this on a SERP."
Whatever the case, Big G is clearly moving forward with its display ad aspirations. After all, search may be the giant's cash cow, "but as their share of the search market edges around the 70% mark they may be looking at places to wring more bucks out and continue their stellar growth," Mallin says. "There's an awful lot of room on those SERPs--filling some of it with delicious money... er... advertising must be very tempting even as it puts one of their strengths in jeopardy." - Read the whole story... Why Mainstream Media Doesn't 'Get' Search
NVI Blog
Simon Abramovitch takes a rant and turns it into a lesson in perception, arguing that mainstream media writers don't really "get" search. The article that sparked his diatribe was from Newsweek, and the topic was marriage -- or rather infidelity -- and the author cited Google search results in the first sentence. Google the words "marriage and affair" and you get more than 17 million variations on how to heal. That's because "fidelity in marriage"-which only gets about 3½ million hits-is a hard thing to come by these days." "Reading those opening lines, I cringed, took a sip of sweet, creamy chai, and fired up Wordpress," Abramovitch says. His main issue is that the author took the search results at face value, without understanding the system behind how results get ranked. The author used quotes, for example, which Abramovitch says skews results to only the exact phrase. In another example, a sports writer, compiled a list of the most popular athletes -- simply by choosing the top six that showed up during a Google search. "Athletes who popped up for relationships with celebrities, crimes committed, and other unrelated results would have been caught under this interpretive umbrella," he says. Ultimately, Abramovitch says that examples like these illustrate a real lack of understanding of the nuts and bolts of search by mainstream media. And while every writer need not "get" the nuances of algorithms, it's important for editors and publishers to not make correlations between search result popularity and everyday life. "Publications whose authors and editors submit these errors would be wise to shape up before the majority of the populace catches on," he says. "Large results totals on searches not in quotations do not serve as an indicator of anything quantitatively relevant about human beings."
- Read the whole story... Get SearchPerks With Live Search
Live Search Blog
Details about Microsoft's newest Live Search "sweetener" program were sketchy, but now they've come to light. It's called Search Perks, and it's sort of like the rewards programs that come with most banking cards. Users download an Internet Explorer app called a Perk Counter that tracks the number of Live Searches they run. They incur "tickets" for each search query (up to 25 per day) and get a bonus of 500 tickets just for installing the app.
Tickets are redeemable for prizes like music downloads, frequent flier miles and even cookbooks, and the Search Perks program runs through April 2009. "From cashback to Live Search club we've been building programs to help increase engagement, usage, and loyalty," says Keith Jeffery.
The comments stream exposes some immediate detractors (arguing that Microsoft should improve Live Search's technology instead of "bribing" people to use the engine). But other readers pose valid questions, such as why the Search Perks program is only for U.S. users, and why it must run in IE. "When are you going to realize that people outside the US want to be able to play things like this too?" says one commenter. "Pity only available in the US, only in IE and only on Windows. . ." says another. - Read the whole story... A Caution When Using 'Position Preference' With AdWords
PPC Hero
Amber Benedict explains why tinkering with the various AdWords campaign settings is fun (and necessary), but also why you have to be careful with the levers you push. For example, the "position preference" setting lets you choose to only have your ad shown in a specific spot or range of spots. "I have used the position preference tool in Google before but I didn't notice that it can be a tricky tool to use and the results can be disappointing," she says. "Not because my ads may not display in the position I expect to be in, but because my ads [were] literally turned off because of my position preference settings!"
The problem is that the tool lets you select which positions you'd like to be in, but doesn't alert you when changes to Quality Score or bids that are too low will prevent your ad from running in that chosen position (thus at all). And the only way to find out that your ads are suspended is to click on the ads diagnostics tool next to each particular keyword, or to do an actual search and see if you're showing up. - Read the whole story... Whole Travel: The Travel Search Engine For Greenies
Alt Search Engines
In search of a vacation that's "easy" on the environment? Then head to Whole Travel, the search engine and portal for sustainable travel. Users can search by destination or by experience type (fly-fishing, or camping, for example), and then get to the hotel or locale's Web site through one click.
Whole Travel ranks destinations in terms of their sustainability using a Whole Ranking score, a metric determined by how the hotel/property's answers to questions about their environmental practices, economic management, social and cultural support, and customer service.
"Based on their answers, we give them a Whole Ranking score between 0 and 5 fleather - and we share it with you," the team says. "We know you care about how hotels treat their employees and the environment. So does Whole Travel." - Read the whole story... |
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