Archived Search Marketing Blog for KoMarketing Associates

Keyword - Competitor Link Building Example

We apologize for the inconvenience but have removed this link building tactic from the archive.  Make sure to check out our search engine marketing blog for more strategies and information on SEO, PPC and social media.

Yahoo No Directory Tag Due in January 2007

Search Engine Roundtable reported this morning that Yahoo will be implementing a "No Yahoo Directory" Tag in their directory listings, hopefully in January.  This means that the traditional Yahoo Directory title that appears in directory submissions will not appear in standard search results and your traditional HTML browser title information should appear.  This comes on the heels of an announcement in October regarding a "NoODP" tag, which supported the removal the ODP Titles from Yahoo search results.

The core benefit to this is in the fact that webmasters and marketers will have more control of the messaging that appears in Yahoo search results, by way of the HTML title.  Proper messaging in the HTML title tag can help in a variety of ways, including:

• Better brand awareness and website association - having your brand/company name at the end or beginning of the HTML title helps enforce your name with the associated keyword
• Better click thru - research suggests that users searching specific keywords are more applicable to click results that have the keyword directly in the search title.  In addition, when the keyword is found in the search result, the keyword is presented in bold, adding additional relevance and support for clicking the result(s).

Up till now, variables in the Yahoo search algorithm enabled Yahoo Directory titles to appear in search results in place of the strategic HTML Title. If the title did not contain the proper messaging as related to the keyword search (Yahoo Directory submissions frequently only contain the company names), then searches may be less likely to click the given result.

Here is the current forum discussion at WebmasterWorld. 

Update on Yahoo!'s Panama Upgrade

Following up Bob's review of Yahoo Panama, the Yahoo Search Marketing Blog posted a nice Panama FAQ that talks in detail about the Panama upgrade.  Good first steps for advertisers with questions.  Best of all, they are taking additional questions on the upgrade in the comments section of the post.

Review of Yahoo! Search Marketing’s New “Panama” Release

As a Google AdWords professional I’ve been involved in Paid Search Marketing for over 5 years. I even had to the opportunity to provide feedback to Yahoo! (which they didn’t disclose their real name) about the type of service features and advertiser would be looking for. Using these tools on a daily basis I’m always looking forward to new features or techniques they provide to speed along my day.

Yahoo Search Marketing Background
Yahoo’s purchase of Overture in 2003 signaled a serious intent to provide full service Internet Marketing using paid search, but what they didn’t do was address the advertiser’s basic needs for managing their ads. Yes, their “bid to position” is a simple model for many, but both Google and MSN’s bidding position by relevancy means a smart advertiser can obtain better ROI by top positions at lower costs. Yahoo’s search marketing platform suffered from outdated features and lacked new functionality such as:

• Regional ad targeting to display ads in defined countries or regions
• Dayparting where you can increase bid limits for peak buying times
• Ad rotation testing
• Advance reporting to allow studying which hours of the day peak sales occur or customized fields

Even MSN's new search marketing platform, released this year is beating Yahoo! in terms of features and functionality. An overhaul was long due, so for search advertisers the release of the Yahoo! Panama interface is a very welcomed development.

New Yahoo! Panama Features and Functionality
As a paid search advertiser your day can be very busy managing thousands of search terms and hundreds of ads or campaigns. Sometimes you need to react quickly to loss-revenue issues if spending spirals out of control as a result of click fraud or competitive pressures. The one thing you can’t afford is wasting time “digging” thru a website to find data about the state of your campaigns.  Ease of use and easy-to navigate functionality is key.

The first view when you log into your Yahoo! Search Marketing account is the dashboard that begins to address this. "I’m a big fan of web analytics, so even though I prefer web tracking outside of the tools Google or Yahoo provide, this doesn’t mean I don’t discount their conversion reporting." Quite the opposite, I live in their interfaces and view them as instruments for the driving the car, so having a customizable dashboard views is one of the “cool features”. Yahoo!’s new views means I can make faster turns when necessary. 

They are also incorporating a previously standalone service called "Search Optimizer" with a feature called the watch list. You can setup alerts at the campaign, ad level and even search term that provides time critical data if you’re Cost per Action is in danger. This helpful tool allows you to be more attentive of your top performing search terms, without having to spend lots of time actually doing it. And while mentioning managing costs, Yahoo! finally is on par with both Google and MSN by allowing ad campaign spending limits. Or to be more accurate they now allow multiple campaigns, which in the past they really only had one. That’s one feature I’ve been waiting on for quite some time.

Getting around the new interface is a big improvement and dare I say, even more intuitive than my long-term favorite Google! But there are still many features that I’d like to see from Yahoo!. One critical feature that is missing is the opportunity to bid on singular or plural variations of search terms. Rather odd limits of 50 negative search terms for the Advanced match (called broad in Google). Customized reports with the ability to do automatic mailings are a “would be nice to have” feature as well. Overall, the daily chore of managing a Yahoo! Search campaign will not be such a chore anymore.

Yahoo! is off to a good start with this new direction and when you combine the changes they will be making in the bidding structure, is a good time to concentrate your marketing efforts on the Yahoo! channel for the time being. Hopefully, since they have completely redesigned the system, waiting for new features will occur with more frequency than once every two years.

Latest Search Market Share Report

According to a report released Monday by Internet metrics company comScore, Google and Yahoo gained slightly in overall search market share (0.3 and 0.1% respectively), while MSN dropped by 0.2%.  As of October, Google now processes 45.4% of all searches on the Internet.  Yahoo ranks second at 28.2% and MSN a distant third at 11.7%.  Holding their own, Ask.com sits at 5.8%.

I personally can't help rooting for Ask.com to overtake MSN by the end of Q1 2007 (of course this statement brings a recent post in SEOMoz to mind).

Big Three Support For A Sitemaps Protocol

Its worth noting that the big three search engines, Google, Yahoo and MSN are joining together to collaborate on a unified sitemaps program.  You can find out more of the program at sitemaps.org, which is offered under the terms of the Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons License.  This post is one the myriad of posts out there on the topic, so to find more information and commentary, here's a link to Google's official announcement on their webmaster blog and Yahoo's post as well..

 

Google Increases Market Share By Providing Better Search

The latest statistics from Hitwise are in for May, and as the title says: "Google Crushes Competition" with almost a 60% hold on the search market.  With MSN Adcenter finally unveiled, and Yahoo looking to significantly revamp it's own search advertising toolsets by the beginning of the 4th quarter, it will be interesting to see if this hold can continue through 2007. 

But the additional significance to this infers one other underlying theme: Google organic search is better.  At least better than MSN and Yahoo for the time being.  More people use it because more people find the results they want when using Google versus the rest of the industry. This is the soft-sell of the industry - organic search results establish the value of where people search.   Better organic search leads to more visitors entering queries, leading to more people ultimately clicking search advertisements.  While providing a more efficient advertising engine will help the bottom line quarter to quarter (and the stock price), it will not help the competition gain market share.  If search engines like Yahoo and MSN really want to attract more visitors, the answer lies in improving organic search.

Consider the following factors:

• Brand Loyalty: Pew Internet & American Life Project's (PIALP) 2005 study of multiple search engine use shows that 48% of users use 2 or 3 search engines, and 44% use only one engine.  But, of that 44%, a study from ICrossing in coordination with Harris Interactive shows that only 13% of total users (or one-third of the single search engine user base) use Google exclusively.  This compares to 10% favoring MSN and 7% using Yahoo.  We may see a shift as one can infer that MSN has a higher share based on being the default search application for Windows-based PC's and Dell's new partnership integrating Google Search Technology into Dell PC's, but the fact of the matter is that you would assume a higher brand loyalty to Google, given a 60% total market share for clicks.
  
• Consumer Confidence:  The same study by PIALP shows that 68% of searches believe that search engines produce "fair and unbiased sources of information" and 92% of users are confident in their ability to "search" for the information they want.  So, users not only trust search results to be effective, for the most part, but also are comfortable in using search tools to find their results.
  
• PPC as a percentage of Clicks: Over 75% of all B2B searchers use organic results over paid results, according to a 2004 study by Enquiro.  And JupiterResearch confirms approximately a 70% share of clicks for organic results versus paid results for the market as a whole.
  
• Awareness of Paid Advertisements and The Users Willingness to Put Up With Them
  Maybe Yahoo should consider this statistic as they continue the integration of search results and paid placement/paid advertisement.  54% of Google users are aware of paid ads (as they are clearly titled and organized), while 42% are aware in Yahoo, and 36% in MSN.  The startling statistic is that, according to PIALP, 45% of users would stop using a search engine, if they weren't clear about which results were paid or organic.

In Summary:

• Brand loyalty between engines is not very high - and users will use multiple search engines to get results they want
• Users are comfortable with search engine technology in general
• Organic search results drive at least 70% of all search traffic by search engines
• There is a distinct statistical argument against merging commercial, paid advertising directly into organic results.  Users want unbiased search results.

If search engines like MSN and Yahoo really want to make a dent in the search market, it's through an investment in better organic search that will lead the way through the long-term.  Optimizing paid advertising helps with the bottom line today, but focusing on this at the exclusion of organic search improvement ignores the opportunity to attract a larger percentage of clicks from an audience that is constantly demanding better organic search and not necessarily better advertisements.

Yahoo Partners with eBay - The Competitive Landscape May Shift

In the news today, Yahoo and eBay, joining forces to provide collaborative services amongst two of the largest, most trafficked sites on the World Wide Web (first and fifth respectively - according to Alexa traffic data).  The search landscape is changing, as market leaders look to partner with other major content providers, integrating search technology, cross-linking ad networks, and offering collaborative services. 

Yahoo Redesigns It's Home Page

Have you seen the latest home page for Yahoo?  I personally like it - but I am more of a fan of the clean, straight-forward look.  I always enjoyed Google and was never much of a fan of the bolder MSN colors.  It just seemed too cluttered.  Yahoo originally started filtered the home page into IE user views and I really had a negative reaction at first.  It was a little too "in your face" when it first came out. Fortunately for them (if Yahoo cares much), my font settings are really strange in IE, so that was half the problem.  Now that they have roled out the beta home page for Firefox, it looks a lot nicer. 

The only problem I had when I viewed the site in IE, which is now addressed with my traditional setting in Firefox, is that I could not identify my specific Yahoo services anymore - such as Finance, Sports and Mail.  I still think they could do a better job highlighting them, or repositioning them based on the template, but it looks much better than before. 

Here's my one question:  Why can't users simply have the ability to modify content that appears - a la My Yahoo - right on the home page?  I would imagine that more people would accept these type of services - customization, personalization etc, if they were right in front of you.  Statistics indicate that less than 1% of all Yahoo traffic actually uses My Yahoo*, which may or may not be because of privacy issues.  Wouldn't it be more user-friendly if I could just get my personalized content right on the home page?  Yahoo already offers the ability to sign in - which gives you your weather, email notification and specific Yahoo services highlighted, so the next logical step - RSS for content, aggregated service highlights etc, should not be too much of a jump (should it?). 

I use Yahoo everyday and use My Yahoo only when I remember, but to have all of my news, services (I'm addicted to fantasy baseball and football, and use Finance regularly) and features right there, plus my Small Business account information, whenever I load up Firefox, I may never have to use another portal service again.

More Conversation on MSN acquiring Yahoo

What started out as a light post to see if I could gather some real commentary has turned into a full-blown media story.  CNN/Money issued an article this morning hinting at a possible acquisition of Yahoo! stock by Microsoft in order to increase market share in the search industry. 

Is it possible?  Perhaps.  But MSN s spending a lot of resources building their own PPC and search platform, so this would appear to be a complete market share play.  The chatter hit Webmaster World this morning as well.  Here's a thread with some thoughts on the subject.