A recent study performed by TechCrunch compared search usability on Bing versus Google. To sum up the study, most people prefer the design of Bing, but will stick with Google due to familiarity, the fact that they already use many other Google applications, and Bing’s new features are not large enough to make them want to switch.
The focus group consisted of 12 people and before the test all of them said Google was their main search engine. After the test, 4 out of 12 people said they prefer Bing.
With the continued buzz of Bing, Google is taking precautionary measures to make sure they maintain their position as being the #1 search engine. Google hasn’t had to do much to hold this spot in the past. They have now added to their homepage a link saying: Discovering the web: Explore the world of Google search. When you click this link you are taken to a page that outlines Google’s features. This page seems to be very useful for beginner internet users. Google has had help pages before, but the help pages have never been featured on the Google.com homepage. Many of the features that Google offers are also available on Yahoo and Bing.
Google is improving its Google Suggest Tool so that it can better aid the efforts of search engine marketing. The Google Suggest Tool was introduced as a way to speed up the process of finding particular information that web users are looking for.
In an official blog post product managers, Matt Kulick, Jonathan Effrat and David Kadouch said that a number of new features will be added to Google Suggest.
The first new feature will be that while suggestions were previously only offered while making queries from the Google homepage, now suggestions will also be provided to users when making further search queries from the result pages.
Google Suggest will also show relevant past searches when users have web history enabled, thereby allowing them to repeat some of the searches that they carry out most often.
Finally, sponsored links will appear in the list of suggestions. This could be beneficial for companies looking to reach those most interested in their products and services with search engine marketing and pay per click ads.
On May 18th a new search engine is scheduled to launch called Wolfram|Alpha. This search engine differentiates itself from Google and the other top search engines by being a “computational knowledge engine.” In a nutshell, you can ask factual questions and the search engine will compute the answer for you. This is very different then the results you get from Google and even Wikipedia.
This new search engine is the buzz online, and I can’t wait to try it out in a few days. Wolfram|Alpha might change the way we search!
Forbes CEO Jim Spanfeller claims (without proof) that Google makes $60 million off the Forbes brand and boosting “quality publishers” like Forbes would help Eric Schmidt’s web sewage problem. This is from the publication that sells paid links that helps the sewage rise in Google?
Danny Sullivan has written an insightful piece about this over at Search Engine Land.
Danny Says Google sends Forbes and other publishers millions of visits for free. Usually smaller publishers complain if for some reason they lose that traffic due to a ranking change. Newspapers and magazine publishers seem unique in being upset that getting all those free visitors simply isn’t enough. Perhaps Google itself isn’t being properly compensated?
Danny goes on to say “If they’re going to attack Google, then I want an attack that’s organized, that can’t be so easily shot full of holes and which warrants serious attention. Or I want them to stop attacking Google so it can be attacked, when it deserves it, on far more serious issues without such distraction.”
If you regularly Google your name, instead of having to manually go search for your name on Google you can create a Google Alert. A Google Alert is an email update that is sent to you when there are new Google results for your keywords. So, for example, you can setup a Google Alert to automatically email you either once a week, once a day, or every time there are new results for your name. This takes less than a minute to setup, and will save you time during your day. You also have the option to select which type of alerts you wish to receive. The options are News, Blogs, Web, Video, Groups or Comprehensive. I always opt for Comprehensive so I am sure not to miss out on anything!
Click here to setup Google Alerts: http://www.google.com/alerts
According to the recent Microsoft’s survey results, many small businesses failed to invest in search marketing. It appears that many small businesses are willing to make an investment in creating a website for their business, but neglect to enhance their online presence once the website is complete. Their results showed more than 50% of small business with a website do not use paid search marketing and 90% of them have never even tried it.
The majority of the participants have said that they would rather do their taxes than create a search marketing plan for their company’s website. It is definitely a dangerous thought. The following are the concerns small business owners have:
- Almost 90% of the respondents worry the keywords may get to be too expensive
- Approximately 80% of the participants are questioning if paid search marketing is truly the best way to spend their marketing budget
- 25% of the participants believe paid search marketing is too complicated
- Nearly 21% of the respondents felt starting a search marketing campaign may be too time-consuming
- 35% of the participants felt it would be necessary for them to hire a search marketing agency to help set up a successful campaign
Based on the data Microsoft has revealed, it does appear fear is the #1 concern for small business owners. After all, search marketing is still considered the unconventional way to market your products or services. Since not too many people are familiar with search marketing, fear will consume you. Fear of the unknown. Fear of using the marketing budget ineffectively. Fear of the new technology. Fear of spending too much time, money, and energy on search marketing campaigns that may not be profitable. Mainly, the fear of taking a risk. Due to the recent economic downfall, it’s understandable many small business owners want to use their marketing budget effectively by not taking too much risk (especially by stepping into an ‘unknown territory’ such as search marketing). Therefore, many small business owners may prefer using the conventional marketing strategy by reaching their target audiences through radio advertising, direct marketing (via flyers, postcards, brochures, and etc), newspapers, and televisions.
Whether you are choosing the conventional or unconventional way to market your products/services, no one can predict the outcome of your marketing campaign(s). The purpose of marketing is to gain exposure, in hope the increase in exposure may turn into a profit. Marketing is a necessary investment so you must look into different marketing strategies before you can determine which marketing method truly works for you. Most importantly, knowing your target audiences should be your main focus because they are your potential clients so you need to think like they do. Before you plan out your 2009 marketing campaigns, why not look into different search marketing campaigns and see which may be more suitable for your business. It can be Pay-Per-Click advertising, search engine optimization, or even banner advertising. Your options are unlimited. Give it a try before your competitors do!
Search marketing, like all online marketing, is very measurable. One of the great things about paid search, in particular, is how easy it is to launch a campaign and how quickly you can start measuring the results (often within 24 hours). We’ve put together a handful of top-line learnings that anyone can glean from their search marketing campaign. This helpful information ranges from learning what your customers want (in the language they’re familiar with), to testing and measuring the effectiveness of your messaging.
Your search marketing campaign can help you learn:
- How to speak your customer’s language. One thing search has taught us over the years is that our clients’ and their customers can often speak very different languages. For example, you may call your product “financial planning”, but your site metrics and search campaign results may show (via conversion tracking) that your clients are looking for “investment help.”
- That your web site needs improvement. Search ads are targeted – if they are effectively written and relevant to the keyword you are targeting, you can practically predict high clickthrough rates. However, this does not necessarily mean you are going to get high conversion rates. When you have a large amount of visitors, which are not translating to sales, the next step is to look at your web site itself. Are your landing pages relevant? Is your navigation intuitive? Are you targeting the right terms?
- How to measure ROI. Analyzing the impact of your marketing initiatives is no small task, and can be overwhelming for a lot of marketers and business owners. Search is a great way to get your feet wet with marketing accountability. Both Google and Yahoo offer built-in conversion tracking so you can see the effectiveness of your media dollars in near real-time, down to the keyword level.
- What your competitors are doing. It is almost impossible not to analyze some competitor activity when maintaining any type of search campaign. Organic SEO, in particular, is a great way to root out websites in your space and see what they’ve got that you haven’t got (and why they may be ranking better than you in the search results). It’s easy to monitor competitive activity with paid search too – all the ads are right there lined up neatly in a row, and services such as AdGooROO and KeyCompete are popping up all over the place to help you monitor your competitor’s search activity.
- What messaging works. Paid search ads are a great way to test your messaging. Google and MSN, in particular, make it very easy to swap out ad copy and monitor ad effectiveness. Paid search ads are also a great way to test a new message before rolling it out to other (more expensive and less maneuverable) media channels.
