Tag Archives: Search Market

What’s New for October 17, 2013 – PPC Analysis, Good News & Bad News for Yahoo!

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PPC Can Make You Smarter

PPC (Pay Per Click) campaigns are a great way to gather data on your web marketing campaigns and consumer use of keyword streams while also testing different website conversion strategies.

1. PPC Analysis can be a great way to test sales strategies. You could gain insight on things like:

  • Deciding to focus on one product or service over another based on sales cycle, margin, and customer satisfaction.
  • Testing pricing strategies to determine the online “sweet spot” for pricing your services.
  • Testing different specials and coupons to determine which convert more often and bring you repeat customers.

2. PPC will give you quick and accurate answers to the marketing questions that you have. Your ideas will get quick exposure to an audience already looking for the goods and services that you provide.
3. A PPC campaign will allow you to analyze not only CTR (Click Through Rate), Quality Scores, impression shares, ad position, cost per conversion, conversion rate, and more, but will also give you meaningful statistics that can be utilized to evaluate your marketing campaigns.

Pay Per Click Spend

Where is your dollar best spent for PPC?

Photo Credit: photosteve101 via Compfight cc

Good News: Yahoo CEO Announces Yahoo Traffic Increases

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer revealed that Yahoo properties hit a two-year high in September, saying that Yahoo’s “product sprint and increased engagement effectively erased two years of traffic declines.” Mayer also announced that Yahoo now has 800 million global monthly unique users and that Yahoo has more than 390 million monthly mobile users, up 15 percent from the second quarter of 2013.

Yahoo Global Daily Page Views
Yahoo US Daily Page Views

Bad News: Mayer Announces that Yahoo Search Volume is Down

Mayer also announced that the US share of the search market was just 11.3% in September, according to comScore, an all-time low equal to the numbers posted this past July. Mayer stated that:

“It is true that, over the past several years, our search share has declined. In terms of the search alliance, we’re trading share with Microsoft.”

Mayer also stated that the future for Yahoo is bright, in part because of the following initiatives:

Mayer said the company will try to reverse its continuing declines in search by creating more relevant results for users.

Bottom Line: Yahoo is living the good news/bad news scenario, but stockholders think that Marisa Mayer can help to revive this sleeping giant. Online marketers have always known that PPC advertising is a consistent, measurable proving ground for good marketing ideas. With the new “not provided” from Google, Google Adwords becomes a strong proving ground for keyword stream testing as well as offering an online sales analysis.

Eric Van Cleave is a Partner in Zenergy Works, a Santa Rosa, California based SEO, Online Marketing and Website Development Firm.

What’s New for September 19, 2013 – Search Volume, Google +1, Bing Search

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Status Quo on Search Volume in August 2013

No significant change in search volume, despite Bing’s marketing efforts and purported consumer concerns about privacy on Google. Over the past year, Google is up slightly from 66.4% to 66.9%. Bing/Yahoo combined have grown the same 0.5% in search share in the same period.

comScore Search Volume

Google+1s Have No Direct Effect on Rankings

Eric Enge has conducted a study entitled “Direct Measurement of Google Plus Impact on Search Rankings.” The study had debunked the theory held by many SEO experts that Google+ is the key to improved search rankings on Google. The study has concluded that Google+ has no direct impact on Google search rankings. There are indirect benefits like social sharing and potential link growth, but Google+ has no direct impact on Google search rankings, according to the study.

Changes for Bing Search

Microsoft has announced changes to the Bing Search Engine, and the changes can be viewed at bing.com. The changes, ranging from a new logo and modern design to better compatibility with mobile and HDMI viewing environments are designed to improve the utility of the search engine. The search results have also been modified to be more useful, including a feature called “page zero” which allows users to view the search results without actually going to the search results page.

Bing New Search

Bottom Line: Google is still the leader, and the Google+ study has verified what Matt Cutts has been telling SEOs for months. Bing continues to make changes to be more relevant in a Google-dominated search environment, but so far has not been able to leverage that into anything other than maintaining their share of search volume. The quest for the SEO community continues to be how to continue to work within the progressively restrictive search algorithms of Google. It looks like we will all be writing unique and useful content for the foreseeable future.

Eric Van Cleave is a Partner in Zenergy Works, a Santa Rosa, California based SEO, Website Design and Social Media Optimization Firm.

Google and Bing – Desktop Search Surge in October

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According to comScore’s October 2012 Explicit Core Search Share Report , Google and Bing both hit record highs in search market share in the United States in October of this year.

 Google vs Bing

Google’s search market share rose two-tenths of a point, from 66.7 percent in September to 66.9 percent in October. Bing gained a tenth of a point and reached 16 percent in October. Both of those numbers represent all-time highs using comScore’s estimates. Yahoo was static for the month at 12.2% and Ask Network’s share was down from 3.5% in September of 2012 to 3.2% in October of 2012 and AOL was static at 1.8% over the same time period.  These are measures of “Explicit Core Search, “which excludes contextually driven searches that do not necessarily reflect use intent to review the search results.

Desktop search activity was up to 17.6 billion in October, an increase of 8% from the previous month. Desktop search activity had been declining since March, reflecting a move to mobile search. Mobile search is estimated to comprise between 10 and 30 percent of all searches currently, depending on the category being searched.

Bottom Line: The previous high for desktop searches was 18.4 billion in March of this year. Desktop search will typically increase during the winter months, as internet searchers move indoors and use readily available desktop devices to search online. This tells me that while Mobile search is growing, desktop is still preferred for many searches when it is readily available. This gap will close as the mobile devices become more user friendly (like Apple’s Siri).

Eric Van Cleave is a Partner in Zenergy Works, A Santa Rosa, California based Website Development and Online Marketing Firm.

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