Ask Jeeves to reduce the number of ads on search results pages

Good news for marketers from the CEO of Ask Jeeves, Steve Berkowitz who, following the acquisition of Ask Jeeves by IAC, has announced that the number of 'sponsored links' appearing at the top of Ask Jeeves results is to reduce. Apparently tests have shown that reducing the number of ads at the top of the page actually increases the frequency with which people visit the site and stay there. They didn't need research for that - they could've phoned!

The IAC acquisition will also lead to the Ask Jeeves search box appearing on Expedia, CitySearch, Ticketmaster and Match.com - a quick win.

Search Engine Watch

Golf for sale on eBay with 'heavenly' history

Couldn't resist this story - the new Pope Benedict 16th no longer needs his old Golf with 75,000 kilometers on the clock. Moving to Rome? Where else would you sell your second-hand Golf - but eBay! Thanks to Austrian TV's web site for letting us know!

Who wants a search history in their search engine - consumers or advertisers?

Both Yahoo and Google have launched a facility to check your search history - something people may remember first from A9.

Why would Google and Yahoo launch such a service within a week of each other - noting that they have both been talking about 'personlisation' for some time.

I don't find huge numbers of search users commenting that they can't remember their searches and yet both Google and Yahoo seem to be finding this very important.

Could it be the development of the advertising service of both search engines? MSN has already announced that it will use the hugh volume of personal information it holds on users to target demographically with its new pay per click system due to launched soon in France. MSN has the benefit of a long history of registrations from Hotmail - as well as from Microsoft Messenger and its many other products and services. It clearly aims to leverage this!

Yahoo has been building personal data too - but Google is relatively far behind on this one with its email system only having been created in the last year.

You should expect lots more 'personalisation' features to come from the engines - especially Google. What about your own personal web site for free? It's just a matter of time.

Reuters Top rank Online marketing blog

Google goes for cost per impression charging for new 'Site Targeting'

Google is moving fast these days - and working hard to protect its business model - by launching new ones. Now, it has announced a new tool which will allow advertisers to target particular external sites with their Google Adwords.

'Site Targeting' goes live to a few select customers today and will be charged on a 'cost per impression' basis. Advertisers will be able to select where they wish their ads to appear by selecting from a lengthy list - or going 'board' but specifying certain sites where the ads should not appear. This does not include Adwords itself - in other words Google search.

Why is google doing this? Why go back to an impression charge?

Possibly to head off criticism over the quality of some 'clicks' which come through the normal Adsense system. First, there was Smart Pricing which meant you paid less if the conversion rate - measured by Google's tracking on your site - was below the norm.

Then there was a lot of concern over what's termed 'click fraud' where competitors or publishers could put up the cost of your advertising by clicking many times. What better way to regulate this than to give the power of the advertising to the advertisers themselves.

Just as importantly is Google's aspiration to win over the Fortune 1000 advertisers who spend disproportionately on advertising - but not, it seems, with Google. Why not? Because they have brand values to protect. Don't we all!

93% growth in turnover for Google in Q1

Google has reported its results for the first quarter of 2005 showing a 93% growth on turnover when compared with the same time last year. Total turnover January-March was $1.256 Billion.

The growth, according to Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, was in part due to the growing use of the internet. "We have been able to take full advantage of the growth in online advertising. In addition, we performed well across all our operations with our engineering and product teams delivering dozens of new products and features for Google users around the world."

The Google Ad Sense programme which generates revenue from ads on publishers sites grew by 75% - whereas Google's own sites - the search engine itself and blogger.com amongst others - generated 116% growth. So it would appear that 'search' continues to outpace other activities.

Google launches Local.google!

It's actually been a long time coming and awaited with some keenness - but it's now live and working well. With no warning and just the addition of a line underneath the search box - the localised UK Google burst into life this week.

It features two search boxes - one for the query and one for the location - but then "hey presto" a list of locally addressed organisations leaps onto the screen accompanied by a 3-D map flagging the precise locations for each list item.

You can click on 'directions' without even saying where you are and you receive an excellent map routing you pretty efectively to where you want to go from the centre of the nearest town.

Across the top of the screen are the expected 'sponsored links' in a fairly familiar format.

To appear at the top of the screen you can simply advertise with Google Adwords - but much more interesting is the option to geo-target your results on a particular town or location. Advertisers now also need to review their advertising with directories - especially Yell. Com which is being used to supply the categories and the natural or organic results.

All of this makes Adwords more complex once more and many advertisers will now need to employ an agency with people who really know what they are doing - even if only to save the immense amount of time needed to make the 'pay per click' method successful.

But well done Google, at last, for an excellent tool which will solve a problem for many businesses. I don't understand why you didn't tell agencies about it earlier so we could plan for it and promote it - but otherwise top job!

59% of UK web users access via dial-up

BT announces its 5 millionth customer for broadband in the UK today - which sounds like a rather large number - but it's not. The UK is somewhat behind the rest of Europe which makes the UK's internet activity growth all the more impressive. In Germany, fast access (broadband and ISDN combined) is already over 60% compared with Britain's miserly 41%.

Despite this slower access rate to the web, the UK continues to outpace the continent in terms of web activity and web spend. Remarkable!

Who causes 'Spam' and poor content?

Stefan Karzauninkat, Director of Quality from German-based search engine seekport demonstrated a wide range of so-called 'Spam' examples for web site owners to avoid. Many of the examples given included Google Adsense ads which brought me to ask myself the question "Who is causing the proliferation of poor quality pages on the web?".

The search engines themselves, through the 'content' networks they are building, must bear some of the responsibility for this by creating a financial imperative to go and creat such pages. Or am I missing something?
Andy Atkins-Krüger
Managing Director
Web Certain Europe Ltd
t: + 44 1904 425577

Continued decline in email marketing open rates

The opening rate of emails has further declined from an average of 38% at the beginning of 2004 through to 33% at the end of 2004 - according to DoubleClick. This decline is largely put down to the ageing of email lists and the greater use of email 'spam' filtering systems.

Web Certain's advice to clients is to continue to focus on building subscriber lists through you web site as the performance of this email tactic substantially beats more traditional 'blast' techniques of emailing - and we do not recommend buying email lists except in very exceptional circumstances.

That 'Marketing Week' quote...

The UK's Marketing Week magazine quoted me in their recent 'Search marketing' supplement - here's what they said:

It is also important to make sure that the brand message in both natural and paid for search listings is consistent with above-the-line marketing campaigns. The importance of integrating search with other marketing channels is something that search marketers are keen to get across to clients.

Andy Atkins-Krüger, managing director of search specialist Web Certain, says that search marketing fits well with more traditional forms of listings advertising such as business directories. "If you think about it from a traditional marketing perspective, search engines are providing an answer to a question, which is exactly what directories such as Yellow Pages do, " he adds.

A number of businesses spend thousands of pounds a year on directory advertising, but this spend is often seen as part of the offline budget and is completely isolated from other marketing activity.

Andy Atkins-Krüger suggests that listings, whether in print of online, should be looked at together since they are often closely linked. "I'm not saying that people should fundamentally change the way they spend their budget, but rather than think of it being either online or offline, look at directories as part of a bigger thing called search. People could take what they learn from Yellow Pages to Google and vice versa."

Google to buy web analytics firm

Google has announced the purchase of a firm called 'Urchin' which is a well-known web site statistics package used by many companies. What does this mean for Google? Could it be they are expressing their need to control the web sites they feed traffic too?

I, for one, am very relieved that we did not go the Urchin route with our clients because I would feel deeply troubled that all their 'success' information was available directly to one of our clients' major web advertising suppliers.

It's rather like buying advertising from ITV - and not only do they have access to your financial accounts, they produce them. It's a terrifying thought.

Personnally, if my site was monitored by Urchin - I'd move as fast as my mouse could take me.

Froogle close to UK launch

Froogle will soon be a fully-fledged shopping comparison search engine in the UK with a new Froogle link appearing on Google.co.uk.

Froogle offers the ability to shopping sites to list for free - Google then uses an algorithmic method to decide in what order to list products for the searcher. Google aims to make a living from the advertising it can generate from its Adwords product alongside.

The new development means Froogle will be taking on Yahoo's Kelkoo and other products such as Dealtime - but it will also have to contend with Ebay!

AOL launches vertical 'travel' search engine in the US

At Web Certain, we have been predicting, literally for years, that we should expect to see the emergence of vertical - i.e. sector-specific search engines. AOL is already heading in that direction and not surprisingly starting with travel powered by Kayak - a recent AOL aquisition.

The new project has been launched in Beta - and is known as Pinpoint Travel.

There will be more of these for sure. Expect further launches from Yahoo, MSN and Google in the coming months - notwithstanding all the potential market newcomers!

Ask Jeeves sale poses possibility of further pay per click development

IAC/InterActiveCorp is putting forward plans to buy Ask Jeeves for $1.8 Bn which would bring yet more hot investment into the search market - reports Clickz.

The Chief Executive of Ask Jeeves, Steve Berkowitz, is already hinting at a new pay per click advertising tool from 2007.

The deal would extend Ask's reach substantially as IAC owns some of the most popular sites on the web including Citysearch, Ticketmaster, Evite, and Match.com, as well as the Expedia travel sites.

MSN's new pay per click system to be trialed in France

MSN has announced their new pay per click system - but it will not be available in the US until it has been tried and tested in France and Singapore.

This is great for Web Certain because it puts us in right at the front end of the development as an early user of the system as we already buy clicks in France!

Forrester Research predicts 65% growth in European search marketing

We all know search marketing in Europe is growing quickly - but Forrester's predictions are for at least another five years of substantial growth ultimately reaching a spend of 3 billion Euros. The current market in 2005 is estimated to be 1.4 billion Euros.

MSN's new pay per click system to increase targeting

Even before MSN has formally launched it's new pay per click service to replace its current partner Yahoo (formerly known as 'Overture') - information is being released which shows that MSN is planning to upstage both Google and Yahoo in terms of targeting ability.

Using data from Hotmail or from postcodes, MSN is planning to allow pay per click advertisers to target different demographic market segments with the service.

Search Engine Guide explains...

Google loses French trademark appeal

Google has lost its appeal in two trademark cases in France and must now pay 75,000 Euros in fines - over $100,000 or £52,000. This was a vital decision for all trademark owners hoping to protect their trademarks from being used by others within the pay per click activity on Google.

MSN to go solo on pay per click

MSN is rumoured to be announcing tomorrow 16th March that it is testing and launching its own pay per click vehicle. For advertisers this is welcome news as greater competition will help with targeting and performance and the better search marketing companies will capitalise on this opportunity.

Google news goes into beta for the UK and the rest of Europe

Google has had a news facility in beta for the US for some time - but when searching for news in the UK there has been an American bias to the stories presented. Now Google has moved Google News into beta for the UK and most European countries too.

This is interesting for those of us who practice online PR as for some time Yahoo's news facility has really been ahead of the game.