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!

How does this have the potential to affect the PPC advertising efforts you have in place for your business?  Google believes that adding Social Extensions can potentially improve the ad performance for PPC advertisers.  According to Google (via Harris Interactive, June 2010), recommendations from friends and family impact the purchasing decisions of 71% of shoppers.  The AdWords ads for current campaigns that do not have Social Extensions enabled only show the +1 recommendations for the specific landing page of the ad.  Once Social Extensions are enabled in your Google AdWords campaign, potential customers will be able to see all of the +1 recommendations that your brand has received and make their purchasing decisions accordingly.

Now that they are able to show more highly targeted and personalized ads, how will advertisers be able to study the performance data of this new feature and gauge whether or not it is working for them?  Of course Google has an answer for that!  Google has enabled a new +1 annotation AdWords reporting segment for any campaign, ad group, keyword or ad.  This new segment allows advertisers to view performance metrics by three categories.  The first performance segment category is impressions with personal annotations.  A personal annotation means that a personal contact of the searcher has +1’d your brand (your webpage, Google+ Page, organic search result or PPC ad).  The next performance segment is impressions with basic annotations.  Basic annotations are impressions that included an anonymous count of people who have +1’d your brand.  The third, and final, performance segment is for impressions without social annotations.  While both personal and basic annotations make your ad socially relevant, viewers that see people they actually know and trust +1ing something they are interested in purchasing will, in theory, be more likely to purchase said product.

If you are a PPC advertiser interested in making your brand more socially relevant, then you have some homework to do.  First, set up the Google+ Page for your business here.  Setting up your Google+ Page will not only allow you to get closer to your customers, but will allow you to create your business’s identity on Google+.  Next, you will need to use your Google+ Page URL to enable Social Extensions from the Ad Extensions tab in your AdWords campaigns.  Finally, after you have let the data accrue for a bit, use the +1 annotation reporting segment to see how the +1 features are affecting the performance of your advertising efforts.

Here at JumpFly we are very excited to see how these new Google+ enhancements will affect our clients ROI.  We expect nothing less than big things from the ever evolving Google!

JumpFly is proud to launch The PPC PULSE, a free monthly newsletter that focuses on the most relevant pay-per-click (PPC) news and events. Follow what’s going on at Google AdWords, Microsoft adCenter, Yahoo, Facebook and more.

Hundreds of PPC related news articles come out every day, making it challenging to keep up with the rapidly evolving PPC industry.  JumpFly’s qualified team of certified professionals is dedicated entirely to PPC and therefore keeps up with the most recent and relevant industry changes every day.  Now the most relevant information is being shared with all who are interested via The PPC PULSE.

Sign up now and have the latest PPC news emailed to you every month.  It’s a great way to keep up with the industry without spending countless hours sifting through all the most recent news. Follow what the professionals in the PPC industry are paying attention to in The PPC PULSE, where each PPC newsletter provides brief summaries of recent PPC related events along with links to more information.

JumpFly takes newsletter subscribers’ privacy very seriously.  Email addresses will be used only for the purpose of The PPC PULSE.  Subscriber information will not be shared, sold or used for any other purpose. Please review our Privacy Policy for more information.  Users can also unsubscribe at any time.  Enjoy your copy of the inaugural PPC PULSE today.

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JumpFly professionally develops, implements and manages Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter PPC advertising accounts. Proper setup and management of these powerful programs will likely make the difference between an advertiser’s success or failure. JumpFly’s full-service solution enables clients to focus on their core business while attaining the best possible results from their search engine marketing campaigns. JumpFly is a Google AdWords Certified Partner and Microsoft adExcellence Member. JumpFly assists more than 300 clients, offers a money-back-guarantee and has an A+ rating from the BBB.

In order for users to be able to take full advantage of the +1 feature, they must be logged into their Google account and have an active Google Profile.  If they are not sure whether they have a Google Profile, Google will prompt them to create one if they try to +1 something without it.  The new +1 platform is very intuitive and linked to all things Google.   Users’ Gmail and Google Talk contacts will all be added to their social connections, as well as people they follow on Google Reader and Google Buzz.  Google users should be aware that if they +1 a site or an ad, their social connections will be able to see that if they stumble upon the same site or advertisement.  This may lead people to re-think +1ing anything unsavory that grandma or grandpa may not approve of.

While the idea is very similar to Facebook’s “Like” buttons, Google+ and the +1 button have a far greater potential reach than Facebook, with both searchers and advertisers.  The +1 button will be viewable when users are searching on Google.com, but it is currently unavailable on search partners, mobile search or the Google Display Network.  Google has assured us that advertisers will not be charged when users +1 their ads or sites, only actual clicks will be charged, so no change there.

Overall, I expect that Google’s new +1 could be extremely beneficial for paid search marketers.  Consumers have been looking to their peers for recommendations since the beginning of time and +1 allows word of mouth marketing to flourish without speaking an actual word.  These personal recommendations from trusted sources should result in better CTR’s and ROI for advertisers.  Once again, only time will tell if the Google+ Project and the new +1’s will take away part of Facebook’s social media empire.  Stay tuned!

Google made this update to description line 1 placement after performing tests and coming to the conclusion that it not only improves the user experience by providing searchers with more, relevant information easily and rapidly, but also improves the performance of the ad for the advertiser.  After doing some A/B ad testing with and without the punctuation at the end of description line 1, JumpFly’s account managers have seen the clickthrough rates (CTR) of the new ads with punctuation at the end of description line 1 skyrocket over the old ones without punctuation.  So much so that the JumpFly pay-per-click management teams now make sure that description line 1 ends in punctuation as often as possible.

Another change that Google recently announced is that top position ads will now be showing the display URL domain in the headline.  This update to how ads are displayed will allow Google searchers to be able to see and identify what site they will be taken to after they click on the ad and will help them decide whether or not they want to go to that site.  For AdWords advertisers, this is another huge change that is going to be great for them, especially for branding.  With the display URL being more prominent in the headline and still being shown in the display URL, your company name and web address exposure is doubled.  Sounds good to us!

Now, the question is:  How will Google AdWords decide whether to show the display URL or description line 1 after the headline?  Well, according to Google, BOTH can be displayed as long as the resulting headline is sixty-eight characters or less.  Imagine having a sixty-eight character, attention grabbing headline.  The amount of information you can get to potential customers in bold, blue text is unheard of and something all advertisers should try to capitalize on.

These changes to how Google AdWords ads are displayed are hugely important for advertisers.  In order to capitalize on them, you might want to call a professional PPC Management company like JumpFly.  We know the ins and outs of Google AdWords and we love implementing new, innovative ideas for our clients.

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.

Recently, the FTC has been urging the Web industry to come up with tracking protection from online advertisers.  Similar to the “Do Not Call” list that the public can put themselves on to avoid telemarketing, people will soon be able to opt out from having advertisers track their web surfing with a “Do Not Track” function in their browser.

My question is:  Do internet users really want to opt out?  According to the Los Angeles Times, 67% of internet users are opposed to targeted advertising – in my opinion this is a shocking statistic!  I would much rather see advertisements that are of direct interest to me as opposed to random ads that have little or no relevance to my life.

Of course, there are those annoying advertisers who do not restrict the amount of times that you see their ads and appear to be web stalkers.  Instead of promoting a “Do Not Track” browser, does it make more sense to just promote an easy one-click way to clear your cookies and cache?

So what effect would a “Do Not Track” browser have on the pay-per-click (PPC) advertising industry?  It is possible that it would be detrimental to many aspects.  Google AdWords Remarketing, conversion tracking as well as analytics to name a few will no longer be completely reliable tools for advertisers to accurately measure the success of their campaigns.

However, I believe it will have less of an impact than people are speculating.  The “Do Not Track” browser option seems similar to the launch of Google Instant which caused quite the uproar in the PPC industry at first, but seems to have fizzled out with little damage.  For the average, every day user, I believe it will go unnoticed and the PPC industry will see little to no effect.

It will be interesting to see the reality of the “Do Not Track” browser once it is implemented.  But as for myself, I happily agree to be a focused target of PPC advertisement.

The broad match modifier is a new keyword targeting option. (The existing match types are broad, exact and phrase.) I’m a firm believer in using exact and phrase match terms in an account, but am very leery of using broad match. Broad match allows Google to show on searches that they think are related to your keywords. I use this example when I’m explaining broad match to clients: you are a fruit seller and all you sell is apples, so you advertise on the keyword apples. Google decides that an apple is a fruit, therefore they could show you on searches for oranges or bananas. Not a good use of your advertising dollars.

A couple other examples from my clients at JumpFly: how about finding out one of your clients ads is showing on the term “nudist camp?” (My client runs a kids summer camp.) Or how about a moving company spending thousands of dollars on what turned out to be the term “movie” because Google was mapping to the word “moving.”

So broad match has not been my favorite match type, unless a client has a large budget and wants huge amounts of traffic.

But with the new broad match modifier, I can try more broad match terms for my clients because it gives me more control. Basically, when I put a plus sign in front of a keyword, Google will know that that particular term has to be in the search or will match on close variants. (Close variants include misspellings, singular/plural forms, abbreviations and acronyms, and rood words, like “floor” and “flooring”.) Here’s an example: if the term is +golf +shoes, your ad will show for “gulf shoes” or “golf sport shoes”.

Broad match modifier just came out of beta testing in the UK and Canada. I’m looking forward to seeing how it works for my clients, as I’m doing my own beta testing for a few clients. If it works, I’ll start adding it to more of my clients accounts. If you are interested in seeing how the broad match modifier might be able to work for your business, contact a professional PPC Management Company.

For example, let’s assume that you own Randall To Go, a local restaurant delivery service. Let’s also assume that through various forms of advertising, you attract hundreds of visitors per day to learn about your service. If you have setup Google Remarketing, you can now re-reach these visitors when they are searching websites that are part of Google’s Content Network, which is an incredibly large number of websites. In fact, according to Google, the Google Content Network reaches 80% of global Internet users. So after potential new clients visit Randall To Go, they can now be re-targeted with a new set of ads if desired when they are visiting any number of websites, including Gmail. So a potential visitor can visit Randall To Go, and then be targeted in their Gmail account for a remarketing ad. This remarketing ad can then offer coupons of incentives if desired. The potential for this technology seems rather staggering as it benefits both advertisers and website publishers as well.

You can also run a number of remarketing campaigns at the same time. This can be especially powerful. For example, back to the Randall To Go example, this business can use Google AdWords Remarketing to effectively place unique ads in front of visitors that were potential customers, and can place a totally different set of remarketing ads to appear to visitors who visit the “Become a Partner” page. Previous visitors looking to dine may see a remarketing ad with a coupon while visitors who had previously looked to partner can be exposed to ads explaining the benefits of partnering.

Google states that, “Remarketing is a great way for businesses to reach users who are likely to be highly receptive to their ads and special offers… It helps advertisers and websites get higher returns. It also means more relevant and useful ads for users, and more opportunities for your customers to receive special offers and discounts that may be of interest to them.” I tend to agree. Here at JumpFly, we recently implemented Google Remarketing for various clients, but it is still too early to determine the direct impact from these efforts. Time will tell how powerful this new feature really is, but if used properly, it sure seems to make a lot of sense for everyone involved: advertisers, publishers & users. Thanks Google for providing yet another great tool for your advertisers. Contact a qualified PPC Management Expert to learn more.

For Example:  JumpFly would like to advertise their blog to bring in new readers.  Before this display URL policy change, JumpFly would have been able to use the display URL www.JumpFly.com/Blog (or something similar if desired).  However, after this policy change is implemented, the example display URL would need to be www.Blog.Jumpfly.com.

Going forward, ads that do not include the additional information in the display URLs will be disapproved during the AdWords ad review process.  Google AdWords advertisers will be notified via e-mail that their ads require editing before they can go live and a suggested display URL will be provided.  Google is also encouraging AdWords advertisers to proactively adjust all ads that might be affected by this change.

This Google AdWords display URL policy change is understandable and conducive to the smooth user experience that Google prides itself on providing.  Advertisers not currently utilizing the services of a PPC Account Management company will need to go through the campaigns in their AdWords accounts to make sure their ads are compliant with this new display URL policy change. 

The Google AdWords display URL is a potentially valuable tool that is unused or underused by many pay-per-click (PPC) advertisers. Don’t make the mistake of neglecting this valuable piece of online advertising real estate. It can partially act as an additional advertising line if used wisely.

The USCA was established with the intention to recognize the best of local businesses in their community. The organization works exclusively with local business owners, professional associations, chambers of commerce and other business advertising and marketing groups to help promote local business activity through public relations, marketing and advertising. JumpFly was selected for the 2009 USCA Best of Local Business award in the Search Engine Marketing Consultants Category based on information gathered by the USCA and data provided by third parties.

Based in the Chicago suburb of Elgin, Illinois, JumpFly has served as the leading Search Engine Marketing Consultants for small and medium businesses throughout the United States for over 10 years. Specializing in PPC Management, JumpFly’s sole purpose is to enable its clients to maximize the results of their PPC advertising efforts while saving time and money. As proven Search Engine Marketing Consultants, JumpFly has earned several industry awards, in addition to the USCA recognition, due to its commitment to client satisfaction and successful client results. In 2009, JumpFly received an “A” grade from the Better Business Bureau and was also proudly recognized as TopSEOs’ #1 PPC Management Company in the US.

“We are grateful to be recognized for providing a valuable service to our community and our clients. This award is a testament to our staff and their ongoing contributions and dedication. We are fortunate to have a group of committed professionals that all have the same goal in mind, and that is to help our clients achieve success. An over-abundance of self proclaimed search engine marketing consultants often makes identifying truly qualified companies a challenge. This award and others achieved by JumpFly over the past several years, in addition to our clients’ ongoing success, help demonstrate why JumpFly is the PPC Management Authority.”

Picture this:  You are not running a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaign, but relying only on SEO to bring business to your site.  A potential customer searches your business name on Google because they are interested in buying your product.  In the search results, they see a live feed containing information from a disgruntled customer who was unhappy with your product and/or customer service.  This dissuades your potential customer and they decide to buy the product you are selling somewhere else.  FAIL. Google real-time search certainly didn’t do this advertiser any favors.

Don’t fear – there are benefits to having a pay-per-click campaign in place during this time of SEO doubt.  First of all, your PPC ads will frequently show up higher than the Google real-time search feed so potential customers will see them before they have an opportunity to view the live feed.  Second, the sponsored search results are typically viewed as trustworthy. This means that your message as a PPC advertiser will be stronger and likely displayed higher on the page than a random post from an anonymous Twitter user. Furthermore, the Google real-time search information will be constantly changing, while your PPC exposure can be controlled. Contact a qualified PPC Management Company for a free consultation.

In light of this new uncertainty in the SEO industry, marketers will likely race to get the top natural positions in order to appear above the real-time search feed.  During this fierce competition for the top natural position using SEO; it appears that NOW might be the perfect opportunity to invest more of your marketing budget in your PPC advertising efforts in order to gain control of your online presence.

This is especially silly, since any experienced pay-per-click (PPC) advertising manager knows that using the keyword that someone searches on in your ad helps increase CTR. I’ve never understood the fact that a company will allow someone to sell their product, but not allow them to use the product’s name to advertise it, but it happens all the time.

Under the existing Google Trademark Policy, you can contact the BrandX company and get written approval to use the trademark in your ad. But a lot of times it’s a time-consuming process – Google requires very specific language sent in an email to their trademark policy department, you can’t just use a blanket letter from the company or verbal permission. With some companies it was ridiculous in how long it took to get the required email. The bigger the company, the longer it seemed to take. I had one client that it took a month-and-a-half to get approved by legal – a four-line sentence took three lawyers and a month-and-a-half of time.

So I’m very glad to see Google has revisited their trademark policy, and the new policy seems pretty reasonable. There’s some pretty specific guidelines for the trademark use because we wouldn’t want anyone to be able to use any trademark as they saw fit. Here’s the new Google Trademark Policy, in a nut shell:

1. You can use a trademarked term at Google AdWords if you use it in a generic or descriptive way and not in reference to that specific trademark. I’m thinking Kleenex instead of tissue.

2. You can use the trademarked term at Google AdWords if you are a reseller of the trademarked product and your landing page and website clearly demonstrate that you can purchase that trademarked product. Since you are a reseller of BrandX cameras, you could now say that in your ad.

3. You can use the trademarked term at Google AdWords if you are a seller of replacement parts, components or compatible products and your landing page and website clearly demonstrate that you can purchase the trademarked product. If you sold camera bags and lens that were compatible with BrandX cameras, you could say so.

4. You can use the trademarked term at Google AdWords if your site is for “non-competitive and informative details”. The “advertiser may not sell or facilitate the sale” of a competing product of the trademarked term. Basically, you can’t advertise on BrandX, take them to an “informational” site that sings the praises of BrandY versus BrandX and then try to sell them on BrandY.

Some other things to keep in mind. This new trademark policy is for US ads served on Google.com, and US users for Search and Content networks. Google started accepting new ads with trademarked terms on Friday, May 15th, but will not begin running them until June 15th. If you currently have ads with trademarked terms that are disapproved, you’ll need to resubmit them.

I’m really pleased with this new change to the Google AdWords Trademark Policy. I think Google did a fine job of improving the results a search user gets, while still respecting the rights of the trademark owners. We’ll see how it plays out, but I think it will benefit everyone involved.

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After evaluating each entrant on customer satisfaction, depth of knowledge, reporting methods, internal principles and competitive advantages, a winner is chosen. According to TopSEOs’ spokesperson Jeev Trika, “These firms have been scrutinized over an entire year. Winning firms understand and excel within their field, have great unique advantages and practice what they preach.”

JumpFly’s only focus isPPC Management. They believe the fast paced, constantly changing PPC marketplace is too important to each client’s bottom line to try and provide a “One Stop Shop” for Internet marketing services. After starting many years ago as PPC pioneers, JumpFly’s dedication to managing the Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft AdCenter platforms earns their team unmatched experience and industry relationships. Mike Tatge, JumpFly Managing Partner, said “This recognition is special. We won based on a thorough evaluation of our clients’ satisfaction and results. We are very proud of this. It’s why we do what we do.”

The JumpFly team has a great reputation earned to date, and looks forward to many more years of providing the best PPC management available. JumpFly is a Google Qualified Company, Yahoo Search Marketing Ambassador and Microsoft adExcellence Member. JumpFly was also invited to participate on Yahoo’s Traffic Quality Council, receives office visits from Google and has never received any complaints according to the Better Business Bureau. Furthermore, JumpFly works month to month and offers a money back guarantee, again demonstrating their commitment to value and relentless drive to provide clients the best results possible.

View TopSEOs’ Press Release

Just last month, Ask.com finalized a deal with NASCAR to sponsor #96 Bobby Labonte and make Ask.com the “Official Search Engine of NASCAR” for this season. That is an interesting approach that just may help Ask.com reach a new and significant audience, with an estimated 75 million NASCAR racing fans. This could provide a badly needed boost for Ask.com’s struggling search engine.

Ask.com currently ranks a distant 4th in Search Engine Market Share, receiving 2.4% of all searches in December, 2008. This equates to 265 million monthly search queries, a decrease of 10% from the year prior (in the same time period, Google grew by 49%, now receiving 7.9 billion monthly search queries). It appears that Ask.com needs to do something. So, maybe NASCAR is the answer, especially since there was no sight of Google, Yahoo or Microsoft anywhere at the event.

Ask.com currently offers PPC advertising via its “ASL network”, consisting of 90+ syndication partners, across a multitude of search properties, portals and meta search sites that include (but is not limited to) Excite.com, iWon.com, CNET.com, Mamma.com and Lycos.com. When I last tried it, I was not particularly impressed with results, but admittedly, that was some time ago.

As far as the Daytona finish, don’t Ask! It was quite disappointing, finishing with an incredibly lack luster rain delay. It will be tough for Daytona to ever come up with a finish like 2 years back, where a last lap crash led to an insane finish with one driver, Clint Boyer, actually crossing the finish line upside down (view video).

However, that is not to say the race did not have its moments. Fan favorite, Dale Earnhardt Jr. caused an accident that took out 9 of the leaders (some say intentionally). Too bad for Ask.com that they can’t just as easily eliminate their competitors; they only need to take out 3.

JumpFly previously had the pleasure of working with NASCAR via relationships with McGlynn Racing in the Cup Series (view pictures) and Key Motorsports in the Truck Series in past seasons. Maybe one year JumpFly will win the Daytona 500. On that note, the driver for McGlynn Racing when JumpFly sponsored them was Derrike Cope, who actually did win the Daytona 500 in 1990.

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