search marketing blog: ambergreen

The recent decision by Google to allow brand owners bidding for keywords that are trademarked by rivals has not been welcomed by certain sections of the industry. UK’s largest supermarket chain – Tesco is the first major advertiser to have shown its discontent in this sudden change brought about by Google.

The latest rule by Google that comes into affect from May the 5^th is expected to bring a lot of change and conflict amongst UK’s biggest and highest spending advertisers. Consumers who search for specific brands such as “Tesco” will for the very first time be given sponsored listings for its competitor brands.

Tesco taking a moral stance has made it openly apparent that they will not bid for on any search terms that are related to its competitors. Tesco currently is spending more than £2 million every year on its online advertisements campaign and hopes that other UK brand owners will take a note of its decision which is to prevent unnecessary rise in the money being spent on paid search ads.

High profile brands such a Diageo, Mercedes-Benz and O2 have already started anticipating the major change that this rule will bring about in the market and have begun revising their approach towards Google paid search.

Bidders will now have to pay more as this change is most likely to result in the prices of branded paid search listings to rise. In the past advertisers had the chance to purchase trademarked search terms at a lower price which enabled them make considerable gains from their sponsored search advertising activity.

As you may have read in the papers, blogs and other media, Google have recently announced that as of May 5th they will no longer bar people bidding on trademarked keywords in the UK and Ireland, a 180 degree turn from their previous policy. This announcement has sent ripples through the online marketing world, with advertisers and agencies alike spreading panic as though the entire internet were about to shut down. However, the impact is likely to be fairly minimal, for the following reasons.

Firstly, this is not a one-off experiment. Google has never enforced such a trademark policy in the US and there is absolutely no problem with it there. Paid Search, and AdWords in particular, continues to be an extremely cost-effective and targeted form of marketing despite the presence of competitor ads on branded searches.

Secondly, there is no reason to assume, as many self-proclaimed experts have done so in the media, that CPCs on previously protected keywords will suddenly sky-rocket as a result of increased competition. This is because Google are continuing to prohibit the use of trademarked terms in ad copy unless the trademark holder gives permission. The upshot is that a search for “Company X” will also display ads for “Company Y” and “Company Z” BUT the user is specifically looking for Company X and only one ad will contain that keyword. This ad will continue to attract clickthrough rates much higher than those of the competing ads and will consequently have a much higher quality score. This quality score will counteract the effect of competing bids on CPC so average CPC will rise only slightly while leading rankings are maintained. On the other hand, competitors will be forced to pay high CPCs for any clicks they attract because of their relatively low quality scores.

A final point of note is that the policy also opens up the possibility to bid on your own competitors’ trademarked terms if such an approach is attractive to you. Such a campaign should not be looked upon as a way to ’steal’ traffic from other sources; as noted above such traffic will come at a high cost. However it is an excellent opportunity to raise brand awareness, advertise new product lines relating to those of a competitor and advertise any USPs which may give you an edge over competition. The aim for such a campaign would primarily be impressions rather than traffic.

In the end this all boils down to a storm in a teacup. Yes, there is the fact that brand campaigns will now need slightly more care and attention in the light of new competition; and yes, branded terms may start to cost more than a couple of pence each. However, this can only be a make or break point for the weakest and most marginal campaigns. The purpose of the policy change is simply to open up some more revenue for Google but it’s evident they have enough sense not to endanger their entire advertising network for the sake of a few dollars more.

With its universal search, Google is now going to offer results in web search that integrate results from all of their vertical search properties, such as image, video, maps, local, blogs, etc. The video results will include results from third party video sites like Metacafe, and Google’s own You Tube and Google Video.

With universal search, Google are attempting to break down the walls that traditionally separated various search properties and integrate the vast amounts of information available into one simple set of search results. After all, search doesn’t work in a vacuum, it never has and it never will.

In addition, they have rolled out a few new navigation elements and experimental features to assist users better navigate the site and find the information they’re looking for. These include contextual navigation links above the search results that help users “drill down” to specific types of information. Also, in terms of integration and navigation, Google have also introduced a new universal navigation bar at the top of all Google web pages to provide easier navigation to your favorite Google products, such as Gmail. I suppose, in time, user stats will determine if this was a good idea or not.

While this weeks releases are big steps in making the world’s information more easily accessible, these are just the beginning steps toward the universal search vision.

If ever there was time for search marketing agencies like Ambergreen to promote the benefits of full service search marketing, it is now. Companies again have a chance to own full organic visibility using search results, maps, books, blogs, images, videos, news releases, submitted articles and wikis. Alternatively, those big brands that don’t cover all the bases have left themselves in a precarious situation where someone elses video of your company, or a competitors blog on your services have the potential of taking a front page place on Google’s main results page. Being found for a competitors brand name can be a major advantage, over the next few months, this will be strategically beneficial for savvy marketers to take advantage of.

Google has launched another product, Plus Box, a new search feature that allows you to see more information about individual search results, giving additional rich data in an expandable plus box icon.

Only a few plus box results are available at the moment – on stock information and maps – but Google says that it is working hard to expand its availability. 

Visit the Google Blog to find out more.

Yahoo! is stepping up its fight against click fraud as it announces that between 12 and 15% of clicks coming through Yahoo! PPC ads are identified as invalid and are removed from advertiser’s bills.

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Google has announced a new Pay–Per-Action advertising test for Google AdWords that will allow advertisers to pay only when a predetermined action has been completed on their site.

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Google has announced more changes to personalised homepages, following up announcements from AOL, Yahoo and Netvibes by launching new skins for its personalised homepage.

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Not a company for letting the company cheque book take a rest, Google has bought in-game advertising company Adscape Media, as well as online data specialists Trendalyzer in an estimated £11.8m spending spree.

Details aren’t too clear at the moment, but it is being speculated that Google will use the purchases to allow advertisers to buy online ads through Google’s system as well as ads appearing in videogames.

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Although you’ve been able to see the list of words that are commonly used in the anchor text to your site, Google has announced that they have enhanced this information to give you a clearer picture of inbound links.

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Marketing Pilgrim reports that Google have come clean and confirmed that recent rumours are true, that the company will be launching a telephone handset.

According to Isabel Aguilera, General Director of Google Spain, the company is working on the development of a mobile handset with partners, saying that; “Our engineers have dedicated part of their time to investigating a mobile phone to access information.”

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