-
Recent Posts
-
Categories
-
Links
Yahoo to Ban Certain Trademarks from becoming PPC Keywords
Yahoo announced that they are going to ban the ability to bid on certain trademarked terms for their PPC product, Yahoo Search Marketing.
Here’s a snipped from some emails I’ve received:
On March 1, 2006, Yahoo! Search Marketing will modify its editorial guidelines regarding the use of keywords containing trademarks. Previously, we allowed competitive advertising by allowing advertisers to bid on third-party trademarks if those advertisers offered detailed comparative information about the trademark owner’s products or services in comparison to the competitive products and services that were offered or promoted on the advertiser’s site.
In order to more easily deliver quality user experiences when users search on terms that are trademarks, Yahoo!Search Marketing has determined that we will no longer allow bidding on keywords containing competitor trademarks.
Here’s Yahoo’s current trademark policy in regards to comparison:
- Competitive Comparison Site: The advertiser’s site offers detailed comparative information about the trademark owner’s products or services in comparison to the competitive products and services offered or promoted on the advertiser’s site, it clearly identifies on the landing page the competitive products offered on the site, AND ALL of the following are true:
- The comparative information is detailed, spanning multiple dimensions (for example, price, features, ingredients, third-party rankings, ratings or awards, etc.) and clearly helps consumers to make an informed decision about the product or service, AND
- The listing title includes the word "Compare" and makes clear to the consumer that the listing comes from the advertiser, not the trademark owner, for example, by saying "Compare Us to [Trademark Term " or "Compare Our Prices To [Trademark Owner]’s", AND
- The advertiser’s listing title and description identify the advertiser and disclose the nature of the qualifying comparative content the consumer will find on the advertiser’s site.
Source: Yahoo Trademark Policy.
At first, it may seem to be a safety response to a few lawsuits Google has recently faced in regards to trademarked bidding.
Google’s policy is pretty straightforward:
- If the advertiser has requested the trademarked term not to be shown in
ads:- You can bid on a trademarked term.
- You can’t use the term in your ad.
- If the advertiser has not requested it:
- You can bid on the trademarked term.
- You can use the term in your ad.
It is important to see Google’s policy (which has been shaped by both lawsuits and Google’s approach to creating the best user experience possible), as many brands want to let advertisers sell and promote their trademarked terms. Often electronics and clothing manufacturers don’t sell their items directly, and they need the merchant to handle the retail portion of the sales process.
However, there seem to be a few other theories about Yahoo’s decision that may not be related to Google’s lawsuits, and more to do with recruiting new advertisers.
If one wants to recruit an advertiser from display ads into search marketing, the easiest concession to make is that one will reserve their brand name for their advertising effort only.
There was a recent incident where Pontiac ran a series of offline ads that told people to search for them on Google. By partnering with the trusted brand, Google, Pontiac hoped to capitalize on the brand association and that they are tops in Google. However, they didn’t expect Mazda to be running comparison ads triggered off the same searches.
What the campaign did essentially was:
- Have Pontiac pay for offline ads.
- Drive users to Google search.
- See Pontiac in the top search result and with paid advertisements
- Have Mazda capitalize on the search result by running ads alongside the
Pontiac ones. - Essentially, Mazda received a lot of publicity without having to pay for
the offline ads - And, Mazda received search traffic based on a Pontiac initiative
- Very smart of Mazda.
In order to prevent a similar action from happening on Yahoo, all Yahoo has to do is reserve a brand name for use by one particular advertiser. This helps protect a brand, but also helps Yahoo recruit those advertisers by offering such an additional incentive.
The question will become, over time, in the above example, would a move like this hurt the small auto dealers who may no longer be able to advertise their dealerships without jumping through hoops to be able to bid on these trademarked names (which they carry in stock)?
Will it hurt Yahoo’s profits in the long run as brand keywords are often highly searched, and without a bidding environment to push the price upwards, only the brand name will be responsible for footing any bill necessary.
Every move has both positive and negative actions - and there are still unanswered questions to see how this one will act in the long run.
While many will applaud this move by Yahoo as being one of protecting brand names, there may be many other circumstances and reasons which only present themselves as more and more brand based bidding scenarios emerge.
MSN adCenter Increasing Traffic another 70%
adCenter is again increasing the percentage of MSN search results which display MSN ads as opposed to Yahoo Search Marketing ads.
Snippet of one of the emails I received via MSN about this announcement:
I want to share some good news regarding the adCenter pilot - we’re now ready to increase traffic to adCenter campaigns. We’ll be increasing traffic by approximately 70% from our current levels.
If you’re a pilot user, this means that your budget may be impacted due to the increase. Also, as more traffic is directed to adCenter, you should expect a decrease in traffic from your Yahoo! Search campaigns. You will be notified about the size and timing of additional traffic increases as we move towards launch.
The traffic increase is scheduled to begin on Monday February 27th. Pilot users should begin to see an impact on Tuesday February 28th, however, it may take several days to perform the increase.
Viewing PPC Ads by Search Engine
If you only want to see the PPC results for the various engines, here’s the easy way to view them:
Google AdWords: AdWords Sponsored Link Search
Yahoo Search Marketing: Yahoo Bid Tool (shows the ads with current bids)
MSN adCenter: adCenter ad search (shows organic results as well, but the ads are only from MSN (useful to see while MSN is a combination of YSM and adCenter ads).
Hitbox’s Conversion Information Only Tells Half The Story
Hitbox released conversion stats by search engine. However, those statistics only tell part of the story. When determining where and how to advertise, those are not statistics one should rely upon to make financial decisions.
All traffic converts differently by industry, offer, search engine, paid, organic, b2b, b2c, etc. While averages are good to know for benchmarking your own success, it should not be used as a solid figure until you have all the facts associated with any study.
Here are the conversion numbers from the Hitbox Press Release:
| Search Engine | Median Conversion Rate |
| AOL | 6.17% |
| MSN | 6.03% |
| Yahoo! | 4.07% |
| 3.83% |
Hitbox did make note of the following two items:
- Study examines only the conversion rate, not the ROI generated by each major search engine
- E-commerce sample: The select business-to-consumer e-commerce sites used in this study generate more than $3 billion in annual online sales
One other important consideration to note in this study, WebSideStory officials said, is that the conversion rates are likely higher than industry averages because the sample sites are using best-of-class web analytics to improve their search engine marketing and optimization.
Source: Hitbox Press Release
What this table doesn’t show:
- PPC vs Organic Conversions
- Content Match vs Search Conversions
- Rich media & Banner Ad Conversions
If one considers the Organic vs PPC Click Through Rates on any search engine results page from this ClickZ Article:
| Engine | Natural Search Results % | Paid Ads % |
| All Engines | 60.5 | 39.5 |
| 72.3 | 27.7 | |
| Yahoo! | 60.8 | 39.2 |
| AOL | 50 | 50 |
| MSN | 28.8 | 71.2 |
It is possible, the PPC vs Organic Conversion Rates could look like this:
| Search Engine |
% Organic Traffic | Organic Conversion Rate | % PPC Traffic | PPC Conversion Rate | Overall Conversion Rate |
| 72.3 | 3% | 39.5 | 7.27% | 5.04% | |
| Yahoo! | 60.8 | 5.1% | 27.7 | 3.51% | 4.07% |
| AOL | 50 | 3% | 39.2 | 11.91% | 6.17% |
| MSN | 28.8 | 5% | 71.2 | 6.44% | 6.03% |
Note: The above chart is for explaining a point - it is not based on any factual numbers.
In the above chart, we suddenly have a very different picture of what could be the potential highest converting traffic sources for each search engine.
While, with any numbers, we could make assumptions (like on Google, due to the PPC relevancy factors, PPC conversions are higher than organic listings or maybe, due to how Yahoo appears on those with a 800×600 screen resolution, surfers click a lot of ads at the top of the page, but the higher conversion rates come from those looking further into the search results) - they are just that: assumptions.
Test your traffic by source. Not just by engine. Not just by PPC. Test traffic by source (PPC, organic, banners) by engine by keyword.
Only by drilling down into the conversions can one really understand how various traffic streams convert for your particular website.
Google Analytics Now Showing Site Overlay
Site Overlay is one of the most popular aspects of some high scale (and cost) analytic platforms. Site overlay allows one to view their site within the analytics program. The analytics program then overlays certain statistics on the website, so you can view exactly how certain pages and links are preforming.
The most common use of site overlay is to make quick decisions on how the home page is preforming. Do you have a product on the home page that isn’t converting well? Site overlay will let you know that, and then you can make some quick adjustments to hte image, or replace the valuable real estate with a higher preforming link or image.
To access Google Analytics Site Overlay, log into your analytics account. Naviage to analytics, and you should see the navigation screen below:
Click on ‘-Site Overlay’ and you’ll be presented with your website.
Some items to note about the Analytics Frame:
- If you are using a frame busting script, Site Overlay will not work as your site should reload the Google Analytics page onto your website.
- If you are using a frame busting script and it doesn’t break out of the Site Overlay frame - find another script.
Some things to note about my Conversion Tracking:
- G3 = Goal 3 in the user defined analytics.
- G3 = Someone who has filled out the form for my Free AdWords Keyword Book
- I’ve set the form at a dollar rate of $10 (For free items, round numbers are useful to examine dollars and percentages)
In the Site Overlay screen, there are blue and green bars.
- The blue bar represents total number of clicks on any particular link.
- The green bar represents the quality of that click (as it pertains to average score)
Average Score is a new metric for Google Analytics and is defined as:
Many Google Analytics reports include the Average Score metric. Average Score is a way of determining which pages on your site are most valuable. Pages with the highest scores are those which lead to a large proportion of high-value conversions.
Average score for a page is calculated as follows:
(Total Value of Conversions Subsequent to Page Visit) / (Total Number of Page Visits)
From: https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/index.py?fulldump=1#27260
One can click on multiple bars and leave them open for number comparisons:
If this were an ecommerce site, there are some interesting observations we could make based upon the numbers presented.
The first screen shot is the main link from the homepage that goes directly to the eBook page:
What we can learn from these statistics:
- Not many people form the homepage click on this link. Only 3.71%, or 21 people during this time frame, clicked on the link.
- Of those who did click on the link, 38.1% of them filled out the form and became a conversion.
If this were an eCommerce site, this is the assumptions that I’d be starting from:
- The conversion rate is excellent, meaning the destination page from that link does not have to be modified.
- The click percentage is relativly low. Since this link has a high conversion rate, it would be time to think about how to increase that link’s click through rate.
- This could take the form of a different from page copy.
- It could mean adding an image to the page (images capture the eye and often lead to higher CTRs).
- The other thing to note, is if the page has such a high conversion rate - is the page accessible from other pages on the website? Adding a navigational item to the download could aid in more total conversions.
The next screenshot is those who clicked on the home page link.
Please note, this is a screenshot of the homepage, so this is the number of people who clicked on the homepage link from the homepage.
It’s no surprise that the conversion rate and average score on this link is fairly low. If someone was already looking at the homepage and didn’t click the more direct product link, then odds are, reloading the same page is not going to do much for their user experience.
However, the fact that 15.37% of people clicked the homepage link from the homepage probably means they didn’t realize where they were in the first place. This is obviously an issue, and in an ecommerce site should be addressed. Possible ways to address this could include:
- Removing the homepage link completely if one is one the homepage.
- Adding a bread crumb navigation so visitors understand exactly where in the website they are browsing.
- Adding more attractive options on the homepage so that visitors don’t feel they need to view the homepage to find what they’re looking for.
The next link leads to the ‘about section’:
The actions on this link surprised me, therefore I included it in the screenshot:
The about page doesn’t have a direct link to the download. One has to navigate away from that page into the projects page, homepage, or blog entry about the eBook for one to arrive at the download page. While the total number of clicks is pretty low on this link, the fact that those who follow that path through the site convert at a stunning 36% could mean a few things:
- The about page does its job of convincing someone they are getting information from an expert in the field (This is not a bragging statement, its what I’d tell a 3rd party if I was doing usability and conversion consulting for them).
- It would be worth testing adding a link on the about page (within the context of the page, so a short bullet point about the eBook) to see if that further increased conversion rates.
- With a click percentage of less than 2%, not many people are looking that deep into the website’s author. So, while spending a little time on the page could be useful, since its not a major traffic stream, it would not be worth spending several hours working on that page compared to the benefits that would be reaped by other suggestions.
Conclusion
The one metric that is missing is the average page views after a particular link is clicked (There are some technical issues with that however, as average page view by navigation should have a filter of all, from initial page view, from current page view, etc - and puts additional strain on the database).
Overall, the use of Site Overlay can give one an excellent insight into how visitors are engaged with various pages. With the web, and the amount of statistics we can bury ourselves in - its important to know when something should be used.
If you have a 100k page site, a tool like this is very useful for the top level pages and special promotion pages. Using a tool like this is wonderful for taking a sampling of interior pages and how visitors are interacting with your website. However, on a site of that size, one should be looking at overall averages as well for various product pages in determining designs and wording that help with conversions.
In a small site, this tool is wonderful as you can start to customize every page by conversion rates and visitor activity. However, overall averages are still useful in seeing your site from a holistic standpoint and not just page by page.
Please note: When I talk about overall averages - they are only so useful. Very good averages start to occur when you filter results. An example of filtering would be looking only at averages from people who came from AdWords, or YSM, or a particular banner ad. Each form of traffic has its own characteristics, and you should embrace those differences, not average them into your overall statistics.
Google Analytics Site Overlay is a great tool. It also has a difficult price to beat: Free. Google continues to make its mark throughout the web by offering very powerful tools at this price point. Offering an analytics program for free that has the ability for one to understand their AdWords conversions and ROI is inherently dangerous. If AdWords doesn’t produce the ROI, conversions, etc that advertisers want, then they could start spending less.
On the flip side, if analytics proves to advertisers how well their advertising dollars are succeeding on Google, it helps them increase their budget and offer more profit for all.
I have a feeling (based on many conversations with Google individuals) that the real answer is they completely believe in their product. Its this belief in the quality of both their traffic and their product that they want to see advertisers succeed, and they are offering the tools to assist them in making these beliefs a reality.
Search Engine Strategies - New York City 06 - Local Search Ads - Brad Geddes
Google AdWords
Seminars for Success
Learn about Google AdWords from experts hand selected by Google.
These seminars will educate advertisers on the creation and management of successful AdWords campaigns.
Upcoming Seminars:
Phoenix AdWords Seminars January 22nd & 23rd
Austin AdWords Seminars January 28th & 29th
Learn More about the Seminars:
Seminar Information
Official Google Seminar Page
Suggest a new city
Brad Geddes
Leslie Clark
Other Memberships
