Internet Marketing Blog

I’ve blogged before about how to interpret CTR and what conditions are necessary for a valid comparison of two ads. In one recent case we created two identical ads that went to different landing pages so that we could test the effectiveness of each landing page. The assumption is that each ad — being identical — [...]

Google is working on a mechanism for collecting and sharing users impressions of search results. The system is called +1. It allows users to give a virtual “thumbs-up” on sites that they like by clicking on a small symbol next to their listing in search results. This applies to both ads and natural results. The [...]

With a recent announcement that some searches will result in up to 4 links to a single domain, Google has made it harder to gain traffic through competitive search engine marketing techniques. If Google determines that a domain is particularly authoritative for a search, as many as the top four search results could be for [...]

Google announced today the rollout of Google Instant. Now search results are shown as you type instead of waiting for you to submit a full query. This forces us to rethink the concept of an impression and suggests some new directions in ad targeting. Google Instant changes both natural results and ads as what you [...]

A sudden increase in spending in a client’s Google Display Network prompted some head scratching. Our clicks jumped, but our conversions didn’t budge. After some sleuthing, we isolated the source of the new clicks to be a single domain, adsenseformobileapps.com. This domain isn’t real; its a designation for ads embedded within mobile apps for iPhone [...]

Today we welcome a guest post from Thomas Holtz. Google has just rolled out a new AdWords feature called Remarketing. It is a modification of the AdSense model which so far couldn’t even get close to the traffic quality of the search engine. But now, that might change somewhat. Remarketing provides a second chance for [...]

Google has won a court case in Europe that upholds the right of advertisers to show ads when someone searches on trademarked terms. This case does not address trademarked terms in ad language. This is a big win for advertisers and, as we’ve said before, is consistent with fair use and the rules that apply [...]

A long time ago, we wrote briefly about how higher Click-Through-Rate (CTR) values aren’t always desirable, and our clients often ask how to best interpret the significance of CTR. CTR is literally defined as the percentage of people who viewed an ad that clicked on it.  For example, if an ad is shown 100 times [...]

Google recently announced that AdWords advertisers could enable click-to-call phone numbers for AdWords ads that are rendered on mobile devices with full browsers. This includes, most notably, iPhones. As shown above, the phone number is displayed in the ad. When the user clicks on the phone number, their phone automatically dials it. This service is [...]

Even PPC campaigns that have an Impression Share (IS) of nearly 100% can get more traffic by increasing bids. What happens when you do so? Will doubling bids result in twice the traffic? No, and here’s why. If you increase your bids, your ads will show up higher and will get both more impressions and [...]