Knowledge is the Foundation To Success  

On June 12, 2012 JumpFly was invited to participate in Chicago’s first Yahoo! Search & Bing Advertiser Forum and I was lucky enough to be able to venture downtown to participate.
This was an amazing event that allowed attendees to not only get a sneak peek into planned enhancements, but to also provide valuable feedback to the development teams about how the products are used daily in our paid search centered lives.

Since the Search Alliance was formed between Yahoo! and Microsoft in early 2010, we have seen tremendous growth and success for our clients advertising on these platforms.  However, when the systems and support staff of two major companies merge, there are bound to be some hiccups and growing pains.  Thankfully both Yahoo! and Microsoft are fully committed to providing the best experience for agencies, direct advertisers and people doing the searching.  This commitment was solidified by the extremely in-depth, Yahoo and Microsoft moderated, roundtable discussion period.  During this time, three of the eight people at our table were representatives of the Search Alliance, with one being a dedicated note-taker for the group.

Within the roundtable discussion, we were encouraged to provide as much positive and negative feedback as possible.  It was extremely refreshing to have the captive ear of people who could actually do something with our gripes and suggestions.  Our table definitely gave our moderators what they were looking for, and then some.  There was some great feedback provided to the Search Alliance that I am confident will be taken back to their Product Managers, Engineers and Directors.

Not only did we provide valuable product input, we were also informed about enhancements that will be coming with future updates to the AdCenter platform and the programming that takes place behind the scenes.  These enhancements will help JumpFly manage paid search accounts in Yahoo! and Bing more efficiently and effectively. **Spoiler Alert:  There will be an MCC-type management platform coming soon and they are diligently working on increased data transparency and improved API functionality.  We also learned about the MAI (Microsoft Advertising Intelligence) Tool.  This is a powerful Excel extension for effective keyword research using Yahoo! and Bing data as opposed to Google’s Keyword Tool.  If you are advertising on the Search Alliance network and haven’t used this little gem, I strongly suggest giving it a whirl.  I know you will be happy with the quality of keywords it provides.

Another new feature we were given a sneak peek of is Yahoo Axis – the new search-oriented browser add-on and iOS app. With the browser version of Axis, when a user types in a search query they aren’t taken to a traditional SERP page, but rather a social portal that shows them whether their Twitter followers and/or Facebook friends are talking about what they need to know about.  If you have an iOS device, the experience is even cooler.  You can browse on your desktop, save your results and pick up right where you left off on your iPhone and/or iPad.  Very cool social search smashup that doesn’t have ads yet, but has the potential to be a great enhancement for paid search opportunities in the not so distant future.  Take a look at Axis, give it a whirl and see if your friends are talking about what interests you.

In conclusion, the Yahoo! and Bing Search Alliance is bringing us some pretty amazing innovations in the next few quarters.  I am truly excited to see how they implement the changes that were suggested at the Advertiser Forum.

According to a recent Official Google Blog post, your Google Places account for your local business will soon be obsolete.  If your business has yet to embrace the awesomeness that is Google+, now would be a great time to start learning how Google+ can help you interact with both current and potential new customers.  All good things come to those who wait and this exciting Google improvement is no different.  Google+ Local will be rolling out and replacing Google Places accounts in the next few months.  What does this mean for your local business?

If you are a local business that has a Google Places for Business page – great news:  Your Places page will be automatically transitioning into a Google+ Local page with little to no effort on your part.  According to Google, you will still be able to log in to and manage your local business information through Google Places for Business.  From there you will be able to verify and update basic listing data and respond to reviews.

If you have already created a Google+ Page for your business – great job:  You are ahead of the curve and should be receiving information from Google on how to link your Google+ Page to your local listing.  Once the transition is complete, your Google+ Local page will be a fully functional social media machine capable of all sorts of complex customer interaction and fun stuff like status updates, hangouts, circles and more.

Either way, the announcement of Google+ Local is super exciting for local businesses.  Why not take advantage of all the cool social features being offered by Google+ Local?  Don’t forget to thank the Google for another free and extremely robust way to keep your business in front of customers.

Did you know that over 20% of searches on Google are related to location, and that 88% of people who search for local information on their smartphones take action within the same day?  Local advertising on Google is HUGE, and if you are using Google AdWords to advertise your business locally, we have some very exciting news.  Google recently introduced three new features that will allow local advertisers to create ads more relevant to potential local customers.

The first local advertising enhancement is the ability to target customers by zip code.  Prior to this, advertisers were only able to target their accounts by cities and/or metro areas.  Google AdWords campaigns will now have the ability to target over 30,000 US zip codes with performance statistics available at the postal code level.  This means that you will be able to literally SEE exactly where your clicks are coming from and the quality of leads you receive from each specific postal code.  Advertisers will then be able to optimize their campaigns based on which area produces the highest ROI for their business.

The next update to Google AdWords local advertising is the ability to have “more clarity and control” through advanced location targeting.  Basically, Google is making the location targeting options easier to understand and implement by allowing them to easily ensure that people who should be seeing their ads do, and those who shouldn’t don’t.   This update should improve the click-through-rates (CTR) for locally targeted campaigns.

The final, and in my humble opinion, most exciting update to Google Adwords local advertising is the ability to create Location Insertion ads.  Similar to Keyword Insertion ads, location insertion allows ad text to by dynamically updated to include city, postal code or phone number that matches a searcher’s geographic location.  This update will allow advertisers to have extremely relevant and customized ad copy shown to potential local customers.  In order to start using location insertion, location extensions must be enabled in the campaign.  Next a parameter tag will need to be added to the ad text.  Google will then replace the parameter in the ad with information that most closely matches the location extension of the local searcher.  These location specific parameters can be inserted into the ad title, description lines and both the display and destination URL fields making for extremely relevant local ads.