It still seems like most people are unfamiliar with Google’s Search Query Report. It is a useful report used to see what your users are actually typing into the search box. Often times with so many match types from Broad to Phrase to Advance (yahoo) you will find that there are numerous keywords people are using to find your ad or site that you may not have on your keyword list. This tool is useful discovering new keywords, creating a negative keyword list, and gauging the performance of specific search queries.

Though it has been around for a while, this report is still novel to most people. However there has been a lot more talk about the fact that a search query report is available for Yahoo. This is huge news because Yahoo’s “advanced” match has been quite a mystery for some time. How does it advanced match work in Yahoo? How specific do they target other keywords? What algorithm do they use to match your keyword to other similar keyword types? By obtaining a Yahoo Search Query report, you can find out pretty quickly.

Where is the Report? I don’t see it.

Where is the Yahoo Search Query report? The thing is, you won’t be able find it in your UI. You have to go through your account rep. Not only that your account has to have enough spend so that it will be qualified for the higher service.

Here is one account of their experience in obtaining the Search Query Report.

“I was bidding on a very long tail term – a four phrase term (Note: which included the term “online” in the query) and according to my Yahoo Search Query report I was being Advanced Matched to the term: “Online”.

Yes, you read that correctly, my ads were actually showing for the term online – a long tail term nonetheless was triggering my ad to appear when someone searched for the term “online”. Just writing this brings back the heart palpitations.To pour salt on this wound, the client the report was pulled for was in a very competitive PPC landscape where each click had the potential to spend up to $10. ” - “thinkseer.com”

This is quite alarming but not surprising by all means. Search Engines have always been very “generous” in their matching. It makes sense as a little tweak could mean millions in profits.

What should I do then?

I highly suggest that those who have a large amount of spend in their accounts (over 20K/mon) and have premium reps start asking your reps about these reports and take a look. Find those keyterms that do not do well and add negative keywords as you see fit. This will help dramatically help your conversion rates as well as your click thru rate which will also directly help with your quality score.

Paul LeeSr. Manager of Web MarketingLeadQual

How to Get on the AdCenter Editor Beta (ACE) Program?

As some know, but seemingly many do not, Microsoft has been inviting small groups of adCenter users to try out their adCenter editor beta (ACE). When I first heard about this rumored tool I could not for the life of me figure out how in the world I can get on this special “beta list”. I searched for information online but found very little information. No links, no blog entries, no articles. I had to resort to asking colleagues and even then many of them were not aware of this beta program. Perhaps Microsoft wanted to announce this tool with a bang and keep in under wraps during the beta period? Who knows?

Signing up for Beta

So how did I do it? Someone must say something!

Perhaps this is not the news some of you were looking for, but I had to go through our dedicated account rep. We made sure they had a clear understanding of how large our collection of accounts were as a whole and asked if we could sign up for this rumored beta program. Our rep had previously not brought up this beta test, but was more than willing to help us out once we brought up the issue. We were sent a signup form and that was that. Now we had to wait.

Invitation:

Several weeks later we were invited into the AdCenter Editor Beta (ACE) Program. Considering MSN AdCenter incredibly difficult web UI we’ve always limited our exposure in MSN. Though MSN’s traffic great, there is so little of it thus the time needed to run a MSN account is not worth the benefits. Needless to say this tool was met with great excitement.

Installation:

Of course in Microsoft style the signup process took up 50 steps. I was hoping for a big “Download Now” button, but then I remembered this is Microsoft. I had to sign up for a hotmail/live.com account. Then register for their Microsoft Connect service. Several steps along the way it asked me to go to a particular pages but there were no links so I had to navigate around to find it. Perhaps this is an ingenious way of weeding out the less tech savvy adCenter users? After clicking around endlessly I found myself finally in the middle of text heavy page staring at a download link. Finally! I downloaded the editor then hit setup. An error popped up saying I was missing some key files. No instructions on how to get them. Great. I went back to the download page, read through the page and discovered if you are using firefox you need some plugin. So I hit the link and I am promptly redirected to the Mozilla site. I happen to think ahead and copied the URL of the download page since I realized once you install the plugin it’s going to ask to restart firefox. So I install it, install the plugin, restart firefox, repaste the URL in the browser. Download the file again. This time it finally installed! After it finished installing, it disappears leaving me to wonder if I am supposed to wait for something pop up. I guess not. I had to go find the program in my computer and run it. Great! The first account I download had no information. Not a great start. The second one I downloaded came in successfully. Great! Then the stats don’t download. So I downloaded a third one and this one everything seems to be fine…

Pros & Cons

Here are some quick hits.

PROS:

1) Interface: MSN web interface is incredibly difficult to use, so any alternative is a huge boon!

2) Basic Features: Many features found on Google’s Adwords editor is also found here

a. Uploading & Downloading of Campaigns/Adgroups/Bids

b. Download Statistics

c. Download into Excel

3) Advanced Features

d. Additional Keyword List Builder Tools

e. Geo-Targetting! No more targeting one Adgroup at a time!

CONS:

1) Switching Accounts (no easy way. Must reenter login information every time)

2) Stats don’t always download properly

3) One of my accounts won’t even download.

4) Lots of Crashes

Looks like the beta is still buggy, but since it is a beta I give MSN plenty of leeway. Hopefully MSN will work hard on this editor, improve the UI because I sure have a lot of money to spend if this thing works right! Will keep you posted.

Other Links.AdCenter Community

Paul LeeSr. Manager of Web MarketingLeadQual

Yahoo and Microsoft – Why it is Bad for Our Clients

The potential MSN/Yahoo combination puts me at odds with myself – one of those interesting paradoxes. I won’t pontificate on why I think it is good for the Yahoo and MSN Shareholders (the same reason why it is bad for our Clients – increase in cost), but rather lay out how I see its practical impact for our Clients.

First, let’s lay down a few facts. For our Clients that are advertising on all three search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN), we find that MSN’s total volume is about 5% of total. That is less than what some of the industry indicates as MSN’s market share of ~7%. Our lower share is probably due to the fact that for only 5% (or even 7%) of total volume, one can’t justify spending as much time optimizing the MSN accounts. Yahoo is about 25%, so that leaves Google reaping 70% of searches.

Although MSN is 5% of volume, we find significantly higher returns on our MSN spend – and I attribute that to two factors: 1) less competition, so lower costs, and 2) better quality. Our cost/click for similar terms, and in particular “tail” terms, are materially less than these terms on Yahoo and Google. We also find slightly higher conversion rates, thus pointing to higher quality traffic.

So, why is this bad for our Clients? Well, quite simply because there will be more competition. Few unsophisticated buyers are on the MSN platform. I like to use a hypothetical Realtor® for illustration. Real estate agents that are marketing themselves on-line know that they need to be on Google. I’d say most of them also know they need to also be on Yahoo and can figure out how to do it. But, few, if any, are advertising on MSN. These ‘small businesses’ are typically less sophisticated and usually default to the settings given to you by the engines as you start your advertising (i.e. high pricing). So, these small businesses that typically don’t have sophisticated bidding techniques drive up the cost for everyone. To prove this point, I did a quick search for “Oakland Real Estate” on the three engines and found the following results:

Plus, MSN is woefully behind the curve in terms of having an adequate platform for Search Engine Marketing Agencies, so the combination of these two facts keep prices down on MSN. But, if you combine MSN with Yahoo by managing it on the same platform (i.e. roll-back 2 years to when MSN was powered by Yahoo’s Overture platform), then you immediately face the same bidders as are on Yahoo. With the more search volume, that will then attract more ‘sophisticated’ buyers as well.

So, where is the Paradox? Well, the good news for LeadQual would be that we only need to manage two platforms versus three. When MSN broke off a few years back, we did not increase the fees to our clients, although we incurred significantly more work. The inverse would be true under this merger.

One last point for the ‘glass is half full’ crowd. Because MSN and Yahoo combined would be ~30%, MSN as part of Yahoo (I like to think of it that way, versus Yahoo as part of MSN) would get more attention from us and therefore, I would expect volume to increase.

Andrew Coleman

Co-Founder, LeadQual.com

LeadQual Expands

This early part of 2008 will go down as one of the most memorable times in the history of LeadQual. Our client list in all our products from Search Engine Marketing (SEM) to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as well as our Lead Qualification Service has been growing rapidly and as a result both the East Coast & West Coast offices have been knocking down walls (literally) in order to make room to bring in new talent.

Our Search Engine Marketing Team is located in Emeryville right in the heart of the Eastbay coast. We’ve recently moved into a new office located in 6001 Shellmound St. #325 right next to the infamous Public Market known for their great variety of international eateries. No more Subway 5 times a week, thank goodness. Our office is newly furnished with spacious tables arranged in an open atmosphere conducive to promoting teamwork as our guys are always hard at work exchanging creative ideas to improve our client’s accounts. We’ve bought new more powerful computers to crunch those 50 megabyte excel files for analysis and new network gear for faster connectivity. The newer members are already taking it for granted while the older members continue with their “back in my day” horror stories. Good times.

Search Market Grows

Speaking of new members, the Search Engine Marketing industry is very unique in its job market situation. In this time of recession, Search Engine Marketing (at least at LeadQual) continues to grow. The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization has reported the industry has grown nearly 30% from $9.4 billion in 2006 to $12.1 billion in 2007. Year over Year growth has been slower but this is reflective of the maturation of the search industry. It is well recorded that SEO and SEM are rated second and third respectively as the most effective among all online and offline marketing tactics. The first being internal email marketing. For this very reason, despite the slow economy and smaller overall marketing budgets, many of the big SEM spenders who have optimized their campaigns to ROI continue to allocate more of their marketing dollars to SEM. Overall SEM budgets are expected to grow and this is consistent with what we see with our clients. In an economy where Return on Investment is so important, Search Engine Marketing when implemented well and optimized properly becomes an extremely attractive solution.

Grabbing Talent

Despite the growth in SEM, it continues to be difficult for Search Engine Marketing companies to procure good talent. There are plenty of people looking but we pride ourselves in taking whatever time and resources to find someone we know will succeed and have the experience to bring great value to both our team and to our clients. I have noticed that the awareness level of Search Engine Marketing has been growing in the last few months. Some higher institutions are starting to touch upon SEM and SEO in their e-commerce courses. Others have simply become more familiar with online marketing and want to enter into this hot field. I feel extremely blessed to have gotten into this industry early and have been urging my friends to get in while the industry is still young. LeadQual is always growing so be sure to check out open job opportunities in our career section.

Search Marketers! What is your feel for the market? How has your hiring experience been?

Paul LeeSr. Manager of Web MarketingLeadQual