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.

Most businesses begin advertising online with Google AdWords because it provides a straightforward way to use  pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to attract more potential customers to their website. According to a new report by ZenithOptimedia, 44% of global online advertisers choose to advertise on Google as opposed to only 4% on MSN and  8.3% on Yahoo!  However, I have a feeling that this dynamic might be changing in the not-so-distant future.

On December 4, 2011, Microsoft hit the tech community with an exciting announcement that Xbox Live will now support voice searches on the MSN/Yahoo search engine www.Bing.com.  Consumers who own an Xbox 360 have recently seen a software update for their gaming console.  Additionally, those who also enjoy the Microsoft Kinect accessory will now be able to take advantage of the Kinect voice recognition capabilities to perform spoken searches on Bing through their Xbox 360 console.  According to Microsoft, this new feature is the next step in the evolution of television and entertainment.  They are hoping to be the frontrunners of this new era of entertainment by bringing games, movies, television shows, music, sports and the internet together in one place.

So what does this mean for the 87.7% of global online advertisers who are NOT advertising on Bing?  It means that they might want to think about allocating some of their PPC budget to Bing.  Migrating Google AdWords accounts to the MSN/Yahoo! platform can be a tricky task because the platforms tend to not play nicely together.  There are many nuances that make straight Google to Bing migration difficult for people who don’t do it regularly.  So, if this is something you are interested in doing with your AdWords campaigns, please consult a professional before you attempt it yourself.

It will be interesting to see how this Bing voice search functionality will evolve.  I am excited to see whether Bing will allow advertisers to build voice search PPC campaigns or whether voice search data can be analyzed separate for traditional type and click data.  There are so many possibilities and so much potential for this new functionality.  I can’t wait to see what the future brings.  Only time will tell – so stay tuned!

Google has been the dominant search engine in the US for many years, but is the mighty giant in danger of losing its leadership status?  Though it may sound far-fetched today, technology develops rapidly and Google has been losing market share over the past 6 months.

A recent Mashable article by Christina Warren points out that, “Google might still be the leading search engine in the U.S. by a large margin, but over the last six months, searches powered by Microsoft Bing are increasing at an impressive rate.”

The latest data from Experian Hitwise indicates that Google supplied 64% of searches in the U.S. in March, 2011 while Bing-powered search, which includes both Yahoo and Bing.com, accounted for 30% of U.S. searches.  Just 6 months ago, Experian Hitwise reported that Google controlled 72% of the U.S. search market while Bing powered search accounted for 23%. In the past six months, Bing’s market share in the U.S. increased fairly significantly to 30%.  Additionally, Hitwise reported that Bing and Yahoo achieved the highest success rates during the month, meaning that for both search engines, more than 80% of searches executed resulted in a visit to a website while Google’s rate was about 66%.  I am not suggesting that Bing powered searches will overtake Google anytime soon, or ever, but it does appear to be evolving as a potentially serious threat to Google’s search empire.

Perhaps Google has taken its eye off the ball by getting distracted with so many other initiatives?  For example, just last week Google invested $168 million into BrightSource Solar Project.  This sounds like a great cause, which I applaud, but does co-founder and new-CEO again Larry Page have the experience, time & knowledge to guide a company that has branched out into so many things?  There has to be consequences.  Perhaps Google search is getting somewhat neglected, which would not be a wise move since just about all of Google’s revenue is generated by their search ads.

In Google’s defense, they have been launching many new search related initiatives and they have greatly improved Google search and the Google AdWords advertising platform.  The AdWords platform has evolved quite a bit over the past year and now provides a suite of valuable new tools for advertisers.  Additionally, Bing recently launched an $80 million ad campaign that seems to be working.

Google faces threats from multiple fronts as social media continues to emerge as a popular and potentially valuable platform for advertising.  According to Nielsen Web Traffic, Facebook has about 135 million U.S. users compared to 152 million that use Google.  However Facebook’s users stay on Facebook 3 times longer than users stay on Google.  What happens when Facebook develops their own search that integrates all of their valuable social info?  Hmmm???  Google is certainly aware of the threat and has even tried to combat it with social media efforts of its own, but so far with little success.  Google’s recent launch of the +1 feature is an example of a social media initiative.  As Google gets increasingly larger, can they remain nimble enough to successfully evolve with the rapidly changing search environment?  Only time will tell.