Like the word “Free”  in ad copy, Google product listings ads deliver exceptional results.

One question I get asked is “Why are the product listing ads cheaper than my other campaigns?”

The answer is that there are not as many people using PLAs comparatively. This will likely change over time.

Another question I get asked the most is “Where can I see keywords for the product listing ad queries ?”

The answer is  - you can’t.

In Google Analytics, the best you can do is to correlate the landing page with the possible keyword that was used.

To see this in Google Analytics -

Click on Overview:

Change your Primary Dimension to ‘Keyword’

and your Secondary dimension to ‘Landing Page’ :

Within your Filter, include your Keyword to exactly match ‘ * ‘ (asterisk):

Hit Apply and now you have a listing of landing pages along with their metrics. See which pages are getting the most visits and which pages have the highest bounce rates.

Example:

In the above screenshot,  the number 1 & 4 keywords have the highest bounce rates. You don’t know what those keywords are, but you can see the names of the  landing pages (blacked out in this example).

At this point, you can try to making changes to the product pages with the highest bounce rates. You can also add negative keyphrases related to those specific landing pages.

Either way, you’ll be happier than you were before.

Forty years ago, downtown department  stores were in their twilight years. Suburban malls were sounding the bell tolls proclaiming the death of the downtown stores.  Looming in the distance, strip malls and big box discount stores were getting ready to lay waste to the department store.

But in 1973, you could still go downtown to a Kaufmans or Lowensteins to see the big Christmas displays and maybe take a walk through the Enchanted Forest. Where have you gone Mr Bingle?

Retailers were worried then as they are now about the future of shopping.  Many predictions from 40 years ago were close to predicting the current state of retailing.

In 1973, President S Donnell of Montgomery Ward & Co stated that “Two way cable television, with its multitude of channels, makes in-home electronic selling feasible. A miniature, up-to-date, flexible and economically practical electronic catalog already is foreseeable.”

Professors Alton F Doody and William R Davidson of Ohio State predicted, “a closed circuit device that will picture merchandise. By pushing buttons the customer can order it and also pay for it by automatically transferring money from her/his bank account to the city wide shopping service.”

Although these predictions could foresee that more shopping would be done electronically, they could not forsee the medium used exactly. Cable and television screens did play a big part but in the form of fiber optic cable and computer screens.

Its true that history repeats itself although in slightly different forms. Former retail giant Montgomery Ward started out as a mail order company.  Like Amazon today, Montgomery Ward had giant warehouses across the country to meet order demand.  In 1908, Montgomery Ward opened a huge warehouse in Chicago which is now a historic landmark.

But low cost competitors put an end to the mail  order business. In 1993, it is interesting to note that Sears Roebuck stopped its general merchandise catalog which is the same year CERN announced that the World Wide Web would be free to everyone.  The announcement occurred just as the predictions from 1973 were coming to fruition.

The current state of online ecommerce retailing will meet its demise one day as well. The medium will transform and the costs of distribution will change. If history is any predictor, general merchandisers that carry many departmentalized products will stumble and fall.

In the near future, my prediction is that tablets with speciality store apps will take over the shopping experience. In another forty years, an artificial intelligent agent will do your shopping and manufacture many products to spec at or near your location utilizing 3D printing.  Shopping will have then come full circle reminiscient of a time before mail order.

I own a Lexmark printer and have for quite a long time now. Everytime I go to buy a new inkjet cartridge, I cringe at the price I have to pay. However, I also admire the business model Lexmark has setup. Sell cheap printers and make up the margins on the ink cartridges. Seems like an excellent way for Lexmark to make money.

So, imagine my surprise when LexMark announced its exit from the development and manufacturing of inkjet printers. Why would a company abandon its core business?

Also last month, Hewlett Packard posted the largest loss in the entire 73 year history of the company.

What is going on?

Inkjet printers have been hit by the gale force wind of a shift in technology that has turned consumer spending away from desktop PCs and printers. Very soon, tablets and mobile are expected to overtake the PC market.

Layoffs at HP and at LexMark are imminent. The day of reckoning has arrived.

Google has published some great tutorials on YouTube. Surprisingly, many of the newest videos don’t have a relatively high number of views despite major press regarding the recent Penguin update and new factors regarding search quality.

The videos serve as nice reminders to experts and are very informative for novices. Most importantly, the videos are straight from the horse’s mouth.

I’ve added my two favorites below:

WEB SPAM CONTENT VIOLATIONS

CREATING GREAT CONTENT THAT PERFORMS WELL IN GOOGLE SEARCH RESULTS

The following are 10 tips to increase the effectiveness of your ads in Google AdWords:

1. Keywords: Have the keyword show up in the ad at least one time.  Certainly try to get the keyword in the headline.
2. Make your Audience feel like your speaking directly to them: Use words like “you” and “yours” to make it appear that you are talking to the ad reader directly. Having the ad contain “you” or “yours” makes them feel special.
3. Call Them to Action: Use action verbs like “Save”, “Find”, “Get”, “Shop”, “See”, and  ”Take” in the ad description.  Better to tell your ad readers what to do.  Even better, make the first word in the text an action word.
4. Create a Sense of Urgency: Having a sense of urgency in the ad can make the reader act more quickly if they feel like they need to act right away. Use words like “Now” and “Before”.
5. Free is Good Thing: If you can use it in some fashion, “Free” has consistently been shown to boost clicks in studies.
6. Capitalize Every Word (almost): Capitalizing every word in the ad seems to boost click-through-rates (CTR).  Its an old adage that works.  However, I don’t recommend capitalizing such words as “and”, “for”, “of” or “in”.
7. Showcase your Strengths: If you have a lot of competitors, make notice of your strengths. Include such terms as “Top “, “Most”, “Max”, “Latest” or “Newest”. Doing so can set your ads apart and make them more attractive.
8. Symbols: Symbols such as dollar signs and trademark symbols can help your ad stand out.
9. Authoritative terms:  Use terms that sound similar to what an established entity would use such as “Official”, “Direct”, and “Complete”.  These terms imply that a firm may be more reputable and a reader may be more inclined to click on these ads versus an obvious attempt to grab the reader.
10. Short Words: Because you don’t have a lot space and because nobody reads more than few words in an ad anyway, you need to get the message off quickly and concisely.

Using the tips above, you should see the CTR performance in your ads improve.

You’d be surprised that you have been looking at your search queries in Google Webmaster Tools and not been aware that many of the queries were for image search instead of the web.

In the past, I’ve gone to Webmaster Tools to check out the recent search queries. Often, I wondered where Google Webmaster Tools was getting its information because most search queries I saw listed were not the same ones I saw in the Google search rankings.

At first glance, it appears that the queries are generating a lot of impressions and hence traffic.

Not until Google integrated Webmaster Tools into Google Analytics did the smoke clear.

To get a better picture of the queries leading visitors to your site in Google Analytics, you will need to take an extra step in Queries under Search Engine Optimization.

Underneath the Secondary dimension, click on Visitors and then click on Google Property.

Look! In this example, most of the top queries are for Image search and not Web!

Unless you are checking out the secondary dimension Google Property underneath Visitors, your Search Engine Optimization Queries within Google Analytics may not be as clean as they should be.

A little over a year ago, Panda made its debut. The debut was not soon after it was revealed that AOL was prepping to add massive waves of content. A content farm to end all content farms.  Panda put a stop to that.

Another scandal that erupted just prior to the Panda launch was the J.C. Penny paid link fiasco.  The NY Times wrote the headline – The Dirty Little Secrets of Search.

There was speculation as to how Panda may handle that.

As a prelude,  the first anchor text action was an end to anchor text boilerplate repetition.  And now the second wave has hit.  An end to exact keyword matching in anchor text.

There were predictions early on and later some indications that exact match anchor text was going to be a casualty.

With Panda 3.3, exact match anchor text no longer carries the weight it once used too.

There was always the knowledge that varying anchor text and using descriptive phrases in the anchor text was a good thing.

Google could detect indications when a growing link profile was unnatural.

In Google patent - Document Scoring Based on Link-Based Criteria :

“[0114] This indication may be strengthened if the growth corresponds to anchor text that is unusually coherent or discordant.  This information can be used to demote the impact of such links.

So ongoing, some techniques to follow with your link strategy:

• Try to build a natural link profile and avoid using exact match at least initially.
• Instead of exact match, utilize synonyms and phrases instead
• Incorporate your brand name along with the anchor text

I checked out Insights for Search and was a little confounded about what I saw  for some industry terms.

• “web marketing” search volume is trending down
• “internet marketing” search volume is trending down
• “search engine marketing” search volume is trending down

Take a look at “web marketing” in Insights:

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And, according to analysts covering Google’s recent earning miss:

Google’s core search business slowed more sharply than expected, even in the U.S.

They merely shift the spending from the PC to the mobile device.

• In January 2011, one client example had almost 4,000 visits resulting from mobile devices.
• In January 2012, that same client example had almost 13,00 visits resulting from mobile devices

Click to Enlarge

2. SEO

People are becoming more savvy about search marketing. Search behavior is changing and more specific terms are being used compared to a few years ago as searches are becoming more focused. Businesses have recognized the importance of ranking well for their brand name and for relevant search queries.

Check out the trend below for “seo marketing”:

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3. Social Media Marketing

No need to explain this one.

Click to Enlarge

In their recent earnings, Google has seen the shift to mobile make its impact.  Companies have to adapt as visitor behavior changes. Developing a search strategy that fully realizes the search behavior of your potential customers is paramount in adapting to the fast moving online world.

“Web Marketing” is still stronger than ever but the name of the game has changed. Its become fractured into smaller and smaller sub-segments.

Excerpt from the book Digital Deli (1984)

Homebrew and How the Apple Came to Be

by Stephen Wozniak

“Steve Jobs was a friend of mine from high school. We were introduced because we had two things in common: electronics and pranks. It turned out that he had a tremendous drive to start a company. He had worked at Atari and had become friends with some of the key people there, including Nolan Bushnell, the founder. Nolan was his idol. Steve wanted to have a successful product, go out and start selling it, and make some money. He also had excellent product ideas for the upcoming personal computer.

To produce the Apple I, Steve and I formed a partnership. We didn’t sell many Apple Is the first year. We built them right in our garage. At first we expected to sell circuit boards at the HomeBrew Club:  just put your chips in and it’ll work. Then we got a $50,000 order from a local store and we were in heaven.

The trouble was how to get the money to build a hundred computers – they might cost over a hundred dollars to build. Steve went to a local parts supplier and talked them into giving us a lot of parts on thirty days net credit. It was very unusual for them to give us credit, because we didn’t own anything. We didn’t own houses. We didn’t even own our cars. But Steve is very persuasive. We’d get the parts and then stuff them into the circuit boards, have them soldered, get them back in the garage and test them. And we could turn the whole cycle around in ten days and get paid. It worked really great because we only had one level of management.”