inhousesem.com

If you’re marketing to pretty much the entire world (or even just a few countries), Google’s new geographic report is so interesting on many levels. Depending on your level of conversion reporting, it can be a powerful new optimization tool. Just last week I deselected all the countries that haven’t generated sales and have significant costs, an easy win. Another fun exercise was to compare click-through rates and traffic percentages for some of our major markets. I wish the report showed a summary versus a daily total for a time period, but for the moment I am living with it.

There was only one major gaffe I sent along to Google, apparently my ads were showing in places that I had assumed could not be targeted (meaning they aren’t listed as countries on Google’s targeting list). The report detailed traffic from ads appearing and receiving clicks from places like Cuba and Sudan, which for several legal reasons is not good. When I sent along the report, it was universally acknowledged as not good, so I am sure the problem is being fixed.

In the meantime its easy to fix in Google’s campaign targeting. Instead of selecting all, just select the whole list of countries (or whichever ones you want). I think its the all option that is causing the issues, since I ceased targeting to all the problem has vanished.

Some weeks ago I attended an ok webinar from Search Marketing Now, and to register I forked over some personal information, like my email and phone number. I can understand getting an email or two as a result, fair enough for a free webinar. But the sponsor of the webinar (not Search Marketing Now, but a paid advertiser of theirs) is calling me and leaving messages (yes, that means more than one message). I am not interested in their search marketing services, and evidenced both by me not checking that I was when I registered, noting that I manage the program in house when I registered, and the fact that I never return their phone calls. Isn’t this just over the line a bit?

To be fair, I have attended Search Marketing Now webinars in the past with no aggressive phone stalking after, it just seems like they got a lame sponsor for the most recent webinar. I am a little peeved they gave away my personal information to an advertiser without my permission, but probably never attending one of their seminars again is a fair response.

Tell me if I am being unreasonable here.

I could say I’ve been too busy, or that I’m in that post-conference lull, but really, there’s no good excuse, sorry I haven’t posted in awhile.

Also I know someone looking for an agency that specializes in ideas for social media traffic driving (facebook, myspace, etc) and optimally structuring (for seo) user generated content on sites. They’re looking for a small firm or independent contractor, so if you know of someone let me know.

I am spending my days right now organizing a print media campaign, which I just wish was as easy to track as search!

I am strolling along the SMX West Exhibit Hall, minding my own business and Yulia of MSN AdCenter (bless her heart she had no idea what she was getting into) asked if I’d mind spending five minutes making a video about what I liked and disliked about AdCenter. After trying to persuade her that she really didn’t want me doing this, and that only egging her on more that she really did want me doing this, I relented. I also said, “this is going to take more than five minutes”, and lo, it did.

Basically they asked the same things they always ask, and I answered with my same feedback about the interface and their editorial process. I won’t rehash all that, but I will say that I also got to comment on how they survey me over and over with no appreciable results. They also asked the very interesting question of what did I think about the proposed MSN and Yahoo merger (but the guy flubbed it and said MSN and Google, to which I replied, “you wish it was Google”). And my answer to the merger? I really hope MSN doesn’t fuck up (yeah I said the f word on tape) Yahoo’s interface.

Yulia and the taping guy seemed thoroughly entertained by me, or at least they appreciated the effort. They said they might send me the video so if they do, I’ll post it. Fun!

Another note from MSN came yesterday, hopefully entreating that I would again provide feedback on their ad services. As though any of my answers will have changed. Or any of their questions will have changed. I think their client satisfaction surveys are just to create an illusion that they care about customer feedback. They ask the same questions every time and make none of the changes anyone gives them feedback about. I can’t even name a significant enhancement they’ve made to AdCenter since the last time I was surveyed six months ago. They’re not going to learn anything new, ergo, this survey is more to make me feel like I am being heard than about them actually making client driven changes. Search marketing pop psychology. Maybe I will provide my feedback in person at SMX West…

This kind of thing drives me insane:

TripAdvisor link on Granada Public Transportation

The above link is the #1 search for “granada public transit” on Google, but the page has got zero useful content, it just has a highly search engine optimized shell. I see this all the time in search results, a page that could be helpful, but isn’t. Why doesn’t Google penalize for this? If you don’t have content, don’t have a live page. I find it a horrible user experience to click over on what looks like a quality result to find nothing there. I don’t have a problem with getting thrifty in your site architecture and having shells, just make sure there’s some meat in there!

Sorry for not posting more, really I am, but I was in Vegas for work and had lots of catch up this week. In thought about a half-assed post, but then I decided it would be better to link to the fully baked post I wrote this week for Viator about our top travel searches in 2007. Viator had over 1.2 million searches on its website in ‘07! Search data is fascinating, I love to look at it, you get to see some tiny slice of life, and some really bad spelling errors. Anyway, enjoy this post, along with my sincerest apologies for being so lazy.

I’ll warn you now, this is a rant. It should be concise, but be prepared for some vitriol.

I’ve been running search query reports, and am getting really irritated by some of the broad matching on Google. For a group of keywords about Paris (and only Paris) a lot of queries about France that don’t contain the term Paris at all are matching, which is irritating, especially since I purchase these France keywords to go to a France ad and a France landing page separately. I bid higher for Paris terms, which convert better, and Google is trying to squeeze out a higher CPC by applying the France queries to Paris instead of the lower bid France adgroup. If I have specified a bid for a keyword outright, don’t you think I’d rather have the search query match there than to a more broadly extrapolated match? And isn’t that a better experience for users? The quality of my ad and landing page are more specific to the France keywords, and at a higher quality score, for the appropriate adgroup (France) as opposed to the less related one (Paris). I’m irritated that my quality score is potentially harmed by this broad matching, when I am actively breaking out dissimilar keywords to enhance my quality score, and frankly, provide a better experience for search engine users. Way to undo my work Google!

There is a solution to this problem, add negative matching to the Paris adgroup so the France keywords don’t match there (I’m using negative exact matching). Then they are compelled (fingers crossed) to match to the France adgroup. Le sigh.

I’d like to see the average position by location when I run a keywords report. That should be pretty easy to do.

Most of my campaigns target worldwide, or nearly so, for English language search queries. If I run a report to see how I am ranking, I get a worldwide rank for that keyword. But say I want to check up on how we are doing in the US or the UK, then I appear to be out of luck. I’ve come to realize that the overall rank is very deceptive. For example, say I have a keyword ranking 1.4, with great ROI, I am probably not going to bother increasing the bid since the position is nearly being maxed out, there’s probably no upside to gain. But that keyword in just the US could be ranking 5th, so there would be upside to raising the bid, I just can’t see it. Also, how efficient are we in the UK vs. US vs. Australia for paid search? Not sure. Is there a location we should just stop targeting for lack of sales? Not sure, though I bet if I dug around in Omniture I could figure this one out.

For an important keyword in an important market I use the ad diagnostic tool in AdWords to check on its rank. But that is hella not scalable. I could duplicate my campaigns and target them specifically to certain markets, but with twenty campaigns already, that is going to get unwieldy, as well as a maintenance hassle (Need to change a URL? Do it in six places now instead of one).

Ideally I’d like a filter so I can filter my report data by location, nothing fancy. According to my AdWords account manager, I am not the only person asking for something like that, so hope springs eternal.

In one word: uninspired.

Who doesn’t already have some USB memory? Like maybe, the one Google sent me a year or two ago. And while the DonorsChoose.org gift certificate is sweet, it was the present Yahoo! sent last year. Whoever is working on Google’s holiday gifts seems to have phoned it in. The card was pretty, but I am pretty sure the supposed to look like recycled cardboard packaging wasn’t post consumer.

Anyway all of this is just a reminder that ’tis better to give than to receive, so check out Viator’s Charity page. Yours truly picked the charities, with some input from the Viator staff.