jatiN mahindrA doT coM

Facebook adds “view through” conversion tracking

Facebook is probably the webs most fascinating advertising platform and they are investing heavily in making it easier for advertisers to measure ROI. The latest change is a new conversion tracking system similar to Google AdWords as well as a feature that allows you to track customers who see your ad on Facebook (but don’t click on it) and then buy a product from you later. This...

Critical: Improve Your Mobile Search and Advertising Strategy

A Google exec recently said, "In three years’ time, desktops will be irrelevant." That’s debatable, but there’s no question that mobile use will have grown much more than it already has. Based on comments in a recent keynote, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer doesn’t seem to think PC use is going to drop too much, but he did say, "Mobile queries are just going to keep...

Google Turns to Your Past Emails to Make Ads More Relevant

Google has made some changes to the way ads shown to Gmail users are selected. If you use the service, you have probably noticed that Google often shows ads that are somehow related to the content of whatever piece of email you are currently reading. If you have noticed this, you have probably also noticed that sometimes the ads don’t seem to have anything to do with your conversation whatsoever....

Report Suggests More Revenue, but Less Advertisers for Google

AdGooroo, a competitive intelligence agency, has released a new report, which indicates that there as has been a decrease in active advertisers for Google, despite projected Q4 gains. "Google experienced a quality purge this quarter and banned what we believe to be more than 30,000 advertisers, accounting for about 5.3 percent of its active advertiser base," said AdGooroo Founder and CEO...

Google PPC Click Fraud Getting Harder to Detect

Perpetrators of click fraud are getting sneakier and sneakier. Harvard Business School professor Ben Edelman has uncovered one of the more diabolical click fraud schemes known to be hatched. As he summarizes it: Here, spyware on a user’s PC monitors the user’s browsing to determine the user’s likely purchase intent. Then the spyware fakes a click on a Google PPC ad promoting the exact...

Google Now Rejecting AdWords Ads Without Proper Display

Google has made an adjustment to the way it handles display URLs for AdWords ads. This is the URL that appears within the ad itself, that users see before they click on it. The adjustment is for sites that sit on shared or hosted domains. The idea is to make it more clear to users exactly what they will be clicking on. On the Inside AdWords blog, Google’s Miles Johnson explains, "Let’s...

Spyware & Click Fraud

Depending on whether you believe Google or the fake click detection companies click fraud is big business. Detecting it is impossible for small advertisiers and it’s now being made even harder for even larger companies thanks to a new scam involving spyware. Traditionally fake clicks were very costly to the merchant because the traffic wasn’t real and therefore didn’t convert. The...

Are Google’s Ads So Relevant That People Won’t Block Them?

A while back, Google launched an extensions gallery for its Chrome web browser. Ad-blocking add-ons are among the most popular for Mozilla’s Firefox, so it stands to reason that they will be for Chrome as well. With Google’s primary source of revenue being its ads, a lot of talk has surfaced about Google letting people block its own ads with its own product. Is Google was smart to allow...

Is PPC More Important to a New Site Than SEO?

In a recent article, we looked at a debate over what is better between search engine optimization and pay-per-click. Of course both should be used typically, but on a recent panel at SES Chicago, participants were asked to pick a side to highlight the benefits of each compared to the other. It made for some pretty interesting conversation. Both SEO and PPC are important, but do you think...

What’s Better: PPC or SEO?

At SES Chicago, there was an interesting session in which a group of search marketing professionals debated the issue of which is better between PPC and SEO. Participants included Dave Naylor, Chirstine Churchill, Michael Gray, and Karen Weber, and Rand Fishkin. Does PPC have more benefits than SEO? Comment here. Churchill pointed to a study from Engine Ready on conversion rates by source of...

What Google’s Real-Time Search Means to SEO, PPC & Reputation Management

It seems that over the course of the entire year, we’ve been waiting for Google to get real-time search. Now it’s here. If you have ever had a hard time finding a direct relationship between social media and search engine marketing, it doesn’t get any more direct than this. Real-time search results (from Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and other sources) right in regular SERPs. Do you...

Does an Organic Search Presence Help Paid Result Performance?

A study from a couple of NYU Stern professors has found that organic search engine results can play a direct role in whether or not a paid listing is clicked. Basically, if this research is any indication, if your business has both a paid result and an organic result appear at the same time, you have a better chance of your paid result getting clicked than if the organic result had not appeared. Seen...

10 Search Topics That Require Further Discussion

The search industry has changed a lot since it was conceived years ago. The rate of change shows no signs of slowing down either. That’s one reason why it pays to keep up with the current trends and discussions surrounding the industry. One way to do this is through attending conferences. WebProNews attended and covered Search Engine Strategies in Chicago this week, and we’ve put together...

Google Begins “Next Chapter” in Search Advertising

Update: Google says its new ad formats are "the next chapter in search advertising", and its "AdWords New Ad Formats Initiative" will focus on two themes: Ad extensions offer you the ability to enhance your existing text ads with additional relevant information. Some examples of ad extensions include Ad Sitelinks which allow you to provide additional links pointing to specific...

Natural search vs paid search spend & traffic share for big brand retailers

Internet marketing firm Conductor has carried out some research (using Spyfu) to see what proportion of traffic to the top 10 big-box US retailers is coming from paid search compared to natural search. In summary, they are spending a lot on paid search and natural search is still performing better in a number of cases. Of course the natural search traffic will include a lot of brand search (more...