SEO Blog

“I don’t want the whole world, I just want your half.” - Ana Ng, They Might be Giants, 1989

Yahoo! might have wriggled free of Microsoft for the time being but it is now getting closer to Google than many PPC experts are comfortable with. Yahoo!’s overt flirtations with Google proved to be the ultimate poison pill that turned away Microsoft’s uninvited attentions.

Most in the search marketing community were rooting for a deal between Microsoft and Yahoo!, not because we love Microsoft or dislike Yahoo!, but because we felt that the combined forces of the two mega-firms would provide a truly capable competitor to Google. That didn’t happen. As it stands today, we’ve transited from a potential to create greater competition to the very real potential of seeing far less competition in the lucrative PPC marketplace.

On yesterday’s Webcology show on WebmasterRadio.fm, we explored the Post MicroHoo environment with Search Engine Watch Executive Editor Kevin Heisler and WorldBenefactor.com co-founder Greg Meyers. (Greg also publishes the blog SEMGeek.com).

It was an interesting conversation. Kevin covered the business ends of the equation and Greg passed out several tips on PPC bidding strategies his non-profit WorldBenefactors.com site is adopting in the post MicroHoo world.

Get ready to read some disturbing news in the next few weeks. Though not a fortune-teller or psychic, my gut-sense tells me that the search and mainstream media is going to get all apocalyptic over a perceived downturn in ad-spends in the major PPC networks. I am almost certain it is going to happen and just as certain the reports, though numerically correct, will be factually wrong.

Next week marks the end of Google’s first quarter in 2008. As with the comScore report issued in late February that showed a .3% decline in click-throughs on the AdWords network in January 08, we are bound to read about lowering numbers of clicks and subsequent worries about Google meeting the often over-hyped and unusually under-informed expectations of Wall St. analysts.

Google has seen a minor decline in clicks but that is mainly due to Google’s own diligence. Google is moving to clean-up its click-stream by making it more difficult for searchers to make mistaken clicks. It has limited the clickable area in AdWords and is better filtering bad clicks. Both actions serve to lower the overall number of clicks recorded and billed for, thus slightly lowering Google’s perceived ad-audience and very real revenues.

Vancouver BC, Canada’s emerald jewel of a city will play host to one of the most rapidly emerging search marketing conferences, PPC Summit at the end of this month. Nestled between mountains and ocean, Vancouver is one of the most beautiful and cosmopolitan cities in the world. The conference location at the Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre will place attendees between the world-renown shopping and dining on Robson St. and the trendy downtown residential canyons of Yaletown.

The PPC Summit is expected to live up to the extraordinary setting it takes place in. According to Clix Marketing CEO (and fellow webmasterradio.fm show-host) David Szetela, the PPC Summit is by far the best place to learn strategies in the paid-search world and to meet many of the primary players who create and foster those strategies.

Scheduled over two days, the PPC Summit follows three unique learning tracks; Fundamentals, Advanced and Advertiser-Specific (day 1) or Clinics (day 2).

The Fundamentals track appears geared to newer search marketers with workshop sessions outlining topics such as Keyword Research and Targeting, Writing & Testing Ad Copy, Contextual Targeting, Setting Bids, and Landing Page Testing and Tuning.

Google is rumored to be ending the monetization of controversial but lucrative practice known as domain tasting by ceasing to provide AdWords inventory to domains that are less than five days old. The move would place severe restrictions on the ability of a growing number of publishers to take advantage of the five-day grace period registrars grant domain buyers before registration fees are billed. Publishers use this time test the traffic-drawing potential of new domain names. Google cutting the flow of funds to the millions of burn and churn “made-for-AdSense” sites will ripple through the search marketing sector producing (mostly) positive change.  Change always comes at a price.

Here’s how the practice works. A domainer is a person who acquires a portfolio of domain names. The value of properties in the portfolio is determined by the traffic each draws. Domain registrars give a five-day grace period during registration domain name so buyers can test the marketability of the domains before purchase. Most use the grace period to determine traffic numbers but an increasing number of publishers use those five-days to post throw-away pages laden with AdWords advertising. This way, they monetize their research, keep the domains that convert and delete those that don’t.