Caffeine was designed to crawl, index and display results faster than ever before and is estimated to have affected around 17.5% of search queries, but the latest update (yet to be given a catchy nickname) is said to affect around 35% of all search queries.

So what kind of search queries will be affected by this change?

From Google…

• Recent events or hot topics. For recent events or hot topics that begin trending on the web, you want to find the latest information immediately. Now when you search for current events like [occupy oakland protest], or for the latest news about the [nba lockout], you’ll see more high-quality pages that might only be minutes old.
• Regularly recurring events. Some events take place on a regularly recurring basis, such as annual conferences like [ICALP] or an event like the [presidential election]. Without specifying with your keywords, it’s implied that you expect to see the most recent event, and not one from 50 years ago. There are also things that recur more frequently, so now when you’re searching for the latest [NFL scores], [dancing with the stars] results or [exxon earnings], you’ll see the latest information.
• Frequent updates. There are also searches for information that changes often, but isn’t really a hot topic or a recurring event. For example, if you’re researching the [best slr cameras], or you’re in the market for a new car and want [subaru impreza reviews], you probably want the most up to date information.

It’s worth noting that Google has not renewed its agreement with Twitter which expired in July this year, something that limits Google’s ability to crawl the most up to date index of new and popular content on the web (although Google says this is only delayed by minutes rather than hours).

How Will it Affect Me & My Website?

As a website owner creating content relevant to the types of searches mentioned above you may see pages indexed faster and traffic arrive in a shorter space of time. Of course it’s possible your page will be ‘flushed out’ as newer pages are crawled and indexed so while it may be tempting to pump out targeted and spammy content to get the ‘quick wins’, the wins won’t last long and that content will soon sink down into the lower results pages never to be visited again.

Quality content combined with a lucky break through the new algorithm changes will mean your content will get noticed and the long term benefits will be worth the extra effort!

Step 1: Enter your search query and go the results

Step 2: Click on a search result – I went with animatedknots.com

Step 3: Press back on your browser to return to the search results and you’ll see the following fade in from red to blue:

Step 4: If you click the link you’ll either be asked to log in or you’ll see the following:

And that’s it – I will never see results from animatedknots.com again! I of course have no problem with this website and have removed the block.

What does this mean for website owners?

It’s no secret that Google is on a march to stamp out bad content from appearing in its search results as the Panda updates show, but this is giving people the ability to filter their own search results based on their own personal tastes and opinions on what constitutes relevant and quality content.

As a website owner it means that low quality content is going to be subject to blocks from logged in Google users. While this isn’t a significant percentage of Google users it is a percentage that’s likely to increase.

Could this affect my SEO?

As with most things Google do, it’s hard to say for sure what the real intentions are but it’s not unreasonable to imagine Google penalising websites that have been voted down by many of their own logged in users and I expect it won’t be long before we start hearing about examples of this.

This video shows an update straight from the horse’s mouth about just some of the changes Google makes to its search results pages and algorithms over the course of a year to help drive more relevant search results for users.
Every year, Google implements over 500 improvements to its search algorithms. That is 500 changes to the ways in which Google will decide which websites rank, in which order and for which search queries. These changes are tested in a variety of ways before launching. They initially use ‘Raters’ who compare results pages to decipher manually which is more relevant. These changes are then tested and monitored in a live environment to learn if the feedback and findings from the ‘Raters’ translates to actual users. If this is the case, the changes are made live for all to use.

This is how Google continues to be a leading force within the search market and why users continuously return to search. However, it does mean that it can be extremely difficult for agencies to guarantee anything. Google could change their rules from one day to the next and this could have a huge impact on your websites positions as well as how and where they are displayed.

So what can agencies guarantee?
A good agency will work alongside the client to ensure that best practices are implemented both on and offsite. They should also be at the forefront of releases of new algorithms and changes to search results and keep you up to date on elements that may impact you and your business. Most importantly, they need to know their onions. This comes from experience and learning. By looking at the results that search engine marketing has generated and reporting on these in a clear, ’non techie’ way you should be able to see clear value from your agency and understand what can be done to further improve your online positioning as a successful business.

When running a display campaign, first you build it; then Google recommend the following:

‘’Leave it alone, let it run for two weeks with a decent budget so you can determine where the most suitable traffic will come from’’

Make sense, but being the cynic I also think that means:

‘’Let it run for as long as possible on with as much budget as possible, and DONT alter it.. Then we can take as much media spend on irrelevant sites as possible – No questions asked!’’

Once the GDN campaign has run for its 2 week ‘introductory’ period, the next process is to have a look at which sites on the network generated the most bang for your buck – i.e. the most conversions.

Once these are identified, add them to ‘Managed Placements’ and ensure the GDN campaign is running on ONLY Managed Placements in the Network settings tab.

Great in theory, but how do we determine which sites across the network have performed well and should be kept? The most obvious way if you have conversion tracking is to see which site generated the most conversions – Any sites without a conversion get deleted.

Simply tracking number of conversions and using that as a measuring stick to determine the effectiveness of a site is pretty basic. Of course, you’re going to want to know what sort of revenue those conversions have generated; Especially when working with clients with very specific Profit Margins.

And here lies the problem; Using the MCC, we are only able to see the Total Revenue generated from a GDN campaign, NOT the revenue generated per site.

That’s great if we want to know if a GDN campaign is effective (i.e. profitable), however, we literally have no idea using the MCC which sites on the Network are responsible for that profit.

Without going into detail, one of my clients had 12 conversions in a week period on one particular site – looks fantastic, until we eventually found trawling through analytics that the 12 conversions had generated a smaller revenue than media spend on that site. Luckily the rest of the GDN campaign had performed well!

Since this happened, I’ve spoken to Google’s own Display Network team and no one there knows why the Revenue per site/placement is not available? They gave me the company line of ‘we are making changes all the time’ – which I pretty much read as ‘can you get off the line so I can speak to people who want to spend money with us, not poke holes in our platform’.

So if Google do eventually allow revenue per placement available on the MCC, you now know where they got the idea from!!

Hosted at Microsoft’s London HQ, presenters included Orla Malone – Sales Associate UK and Ireland for Facebook, Director of Search at Bing – David Coplin and Colm Bracken – Microsoft Advertising’ Group Search Manager. It was a good turn out and some interesting case studies were delivered by Radisson Edwardian’s Amy Clarke, as well as some interesting insights into Microsofts steps to integrate Social and Search.
However throughout each of the presentations the elephant in the room was Google.

In the UK Google still holds 92.27% of the search market with the remaining 7.73% being split across Bing, Yahoo and other search sites according to StatCounter Global Stats data.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Search Engine Market Share

The US tells a different story however with Google only reporting to have 80% on Global stats but as little as 65.6% reported from ComScore for January 2011. However Google search on mobile is by far the dominant force in both UK and US.

The US search and social market leads the way for the UK and often we see the same or similar trends breaking in the US reflected in UK market. This would suggest that Bing’s Search Engine market share is likely to grow and that growth may be to Google’s detriment.

So what does this have to do with Facebook?

Well Microsoft and Facebook seemed very comfortable together and currently Bing provides the search results within Facebook. Facebook is the most used website in UK and with over 500 million global active users and 50% of them logging on every day, with this in mind if Facebook can integrate a search function that delivers the relevance at the quality of Google’s results then this may be a fighting force for Google. Whether they develop this themselves, partner with the likes of Bing to deliver the search results or if they move in this direction at all is something that Google must have on their radar.

The clear problem I see at the moment is Bing’s Search results are just not as relevant as Google’s.
To test this I ran a search for ’what is Quora?’ on Google and Bing and this was the result:

Bing is delivering Sponsored links for totally irrelevant ads to the search query as well as the natural listings being less relevant. The layout of the page even makes it difficult to find what you want and the related searches bear no relevance to Quora only the ‘what is’ part of my search query.
So Bing has a lot of work to do here in my opinion. But back to Facebook, if people are spending such huge amounts of time on Facebook every day, and this includes on their mobiles, tablets, PC’s and laptops, why not facilitate a search into the tool which allows users to stay in the Facebook environment but effectively search.

I then looked on Facebook to see what results were delivered on the same search for ‘What is Quora?’ to my surprise the results (which are powered by Bing) were more relevant than the Bing searches themselves? It displays fewer results but all are highly relevant to Quora.

There is no denying it Google have the Search market sussed at the moment, however in order to stay ahead of the curve and to drive search and social integration I am waiting to see there next move. Google’s search results currently integrate social results and often Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn results will populate the search engine results pages (SERPs) but what are they doing to engage with users on via social platforms?

Facebook on the other hand have their own challenges, people are there to communicate with friends and family, to share photo’s and updates on their lives, are they there to search? And if so what is the best way to facilitate that and try to take some of Google’s market share?

This is all just to say thank you to a few small businesses for taking the first step towards enhancing their online presence.

This good deed of Google’s may have been a big gift for those select companies but has created uproar from many other small businesses in the US and across the world. There are definitely opinions suggesting this is a major publicity stunt as well as many people questioning why these small businesses were chosen over them.

In every review, audit or consultancy I have done on a Google AdWords account I have always been asked by the client ‘What should my Click Through Rate be?’, ‘How can I improve my CTR’ or ‘Is my CTR good for my industry?’.

Now these questions do not have a straight forward answer. This prompted me to look into the influences of CTR and hopefully identify how you can try and gauge if your CTR is good, bad or indifferent.

What is CTR?

Click Through Rate is the percentage of clicks you have received from a number of impressions.

E.G. If my AdWords ad had 500 impressions and 50 people clicked on my ad my CTR would be 10%.

This is one way to measure the relevance of clicks based on the keywords you are using. By delivering a strong ad to capture people’s attention, which also clearly reflects your products and services on the website, the more likely you are to achieve a good CTR. In some cases though you may want a lower CTR to show you are deterring irrelevant users from clicking.

E.G. If you sell Skiing holidays and have the keyword ‘Holidays in France’ your ad copy is the only thing conveying that you only sell Skiing holidays. By making this prominent in your ad copy you can prevent clicks from those users looking for sunny holidays in France and hence you’re CTR may be lower.

What is in your control?

So when you are optimising your account to try and improve CTR what can you change to influence your CTR percentage.

• Keyword Selection
• Keyword Match Type
• Ad Copy
• Negative keywords
• CPC bid price

Keyword Selection

Be conscious of which keywords you select to use. The more generic the keyword the broader the range of meanings. If you are looking to run a very tight, specific campaign with a high CTR choose long tail keywords which are very specific to your products and services. This will allow you to get a much higher CTR but can restrict the exposure and volume of traffic and conversions you can look to achieve.

Generic keywords will often overlap into other market sectors, meaning the keyword is relevant but it depends what the user is looking for. This is where generics are great for drawing in the users at the research stages, i.e. before they have refined their search, however they may not be the keyword to show conversion to sale.

Keyword Match Type

By choosing your match type you can influence how specifically you’re ads are matched to a search. Again the more volume you are looking for the broader you should match. If you are looking to refine your search terms and improve CTR it is recommended that you use exact match to appear only when someone searched for your exact keyword. This will limit the number of impressions you achieve and in turn clicks. However if you have selected your keywords to be specific and you’re keywords are on broad match you should get a higher volume of clicks from your impressions and a higher CTR.

Ad Copy

Your ad copy is the door to your landing page. It needs to tell the user what they are going to find on the next page they click to. Therefore by selecting the right keywords, match type and reflecting these searched in your engaging adcopy, this can influence a higher CTR. Try using pricing, incentives, USP’s within your ad copy and make sure they include your keywords.

Negative Keywords

Prevent the wrong clicks by using negatives. If you are on broad or phrase match then negatives are essential. Keywords like ‘Free’ and ‘Images’ are often top of the list to make sure irrelevant searches are not leading to clicks and wasting your budget. Without negatives you may see a lower CTR because you are not promoting ‘Free’ products in your adcopy for example. In order to increase the CTR, make sure the people searching are the ones you want to be clicking.

CPC Bid Price

It may not seem obvious that your CTR is influenced by your CPC however it can be. Position one on Google will often receive the highest volume of clicks and the highest CTR as it is the first listing that people see when they search. Often users will click the top ad without even reading it. Equally if you are half way down the page you are going to get a great deal less clicks but still a high volume of impressions generating a low CTR. By increasing your cost per click bid, you are likely to see an increase in CTR, however all of the above still apply to making that CTR as strong as possible. It is best to experiment with the best positions and CPC’s for the results you are hoping to achieve.

What is out of your control?

There are many influences outside of your control which may affect your CTR and this is important to take into account when optimising your AdWords campaigns.

• Google’s algorithm
• User behaviour
• Seasonality
• The Weather
• Breaking news
• Google instant
• Competition
• How Google report on CTR’s

So what is a good AdWords CTR?

I use a general rule of thumb when running accounts however there are always exceptions to the rule as that is the nature of Google and search marketing in general.

Break your reporting into 3 sections:

• Brand terms
• Generic terms
• Specific terms

From here I allocate an ideal CTR based on experience and results I have seen over the years as well as current trends and performance. This is not going to work for all industries, countries, campaigns, times of day and budgets, however it gives a ball park figure or bench mark which you can gauge your campaigns to, maybe just as a sanity check. If you feel you are not getting the results you expect from your campaign you should contact your account manager to discuss what options there are.

Expected Estimated CTR

• Brand terms – 10 – 100% CTR
• Generic terms – 0.5 – 5% CTR
• Specific terms – 2 – 15% CTR

You will often see that the generic keywords generate the majority of your clicks. Therefore on average you will notice your overall CTR will tend to follow the trend of your Generic terms. Remember, Google reports on the CTR for a keyword and its ad copy at any time of day. The averages can therefore vary dramatically just on one keyword. This is accelerated when you start to implement optimisation changes however the overall collective average may not reflect this.

Hopefully this gives a little clarity to a complex metric that can help you to improve the performance of your account or simply a better understanding of the reporting you are provided by your PPC specialist.

Although I think this makes the process more complicated than clicking the mouse. I guess there may be occasions where this could be useful. The table navigation could save time as it can be useful to scroll down through campaigns,  ad groups or keywords.

After having a play around with the shortcuts I actually found it could save some time albeit a few seconds, if you use the AdWords interface day in day out then that can add up to minutes and even hours saved. Try for yourself:

Google Global navigation:

• g then o: Go to All Online Campaigns
• g then c: Go to Campaigns tab
• g then r: Go to Ad groups tab
• g then a: Go to Ads tab
• g then k: Go to Keywords tab
• g then n: Go to Networks tab
• g then u: Go to Audiences tab
• g then s: Go to Settings tab
• ctrl+right arrow: Go to next campaign or ad group in sequence
• ctrl+left arrow: Go to previous campaign or ad group in sequence

Google Table navigation and actions:

• j/k: Next/previous row
• o/enter: Open current row (campaign or ad group)
• x: Select current row (shift+x for multiple rows)
• p: Pause selected rows
• n: Enable selected rows
• d: Delete selected rows
• l: Download

Editing ad groups and keywords:

• e: Edit selected rows
• ctrl+arrows: Move between editable fields
• ctrl+s: Save changes
• esc: Cancel edit mode

1. Default columns – When you download specific reports, you will find that you cannot change or remove certain columns as they are highlighted in grey. This occurs on the majority of the different report types available for example; when I am downloading a keyword report into excel, my default columns which will always appear will be max CPC, status, ad group, campaign and keyword. Not only do I not need some of those columns, the ones I do are always in a skewed order and not to my personal preference; how they use to be. I would like to be able to have the ability to choose all columns that I implement into the report I am generating.

2. Weekly reports – When on the Dimensions tab, if you are creating a weekly report you are unable to do generate reports starting from a day during the week, it has to start with Monday and end on Sunday in order to receive a summary total of the performance. It would be less time consuming for me if I can choose the days I can start the weekly report, as per the old AdWords reporting.

3. Comparing periods of data at once – The Google AdWords interface has never had the ability to compare two periods of data at once, like Google Analytics can. It would make comparing AdWords results in the interface much easier for instance, if you are trying to compare results for this month against last year, it would be clearer to see from the graph displayed at the top the difference in performance if displayed two sets of lines. The ability to compare two periods of data at once would make analysing data easier.

4. Emailing reports – Having the option to receive an email with the report selected within the body of the email, instead of having to click on the link and download it again from the interface. By having the report data within the email body means you can quickly read over the data if you cannot access the Google AdWords account.

5. Summary reporting – To be able to see an overall summary of the data you have selected from the AdWords report. This means if I am running a report, for example over December 2010 to January 2011, I want to be able to see the top line data as a total and not as a monthly breakdown – how it is currently defaulting too. I would like to be able to see an overall summary of data from the date range I select and not broken down into months, years or quarters.