November 17, 2006 Archives

Search Engine Watch user davec004 has posted a question on the forums regarding the word "Georgia" appearing underneath a PPC listing in Google. I've also seen this occuring on the term [car insurance] for an account which my housemate and PPC Guru, Duncan Parfitt, coincidentally manages.

I just put this down to just one of those “features” that sometimes crop up in search results, although a similar occurrence on US adverts appears to show that Google is performing a low scale test. I would assume that this is connected to either Google Local features, or more likely, Google seeing whether reference to a geographical location increases CTR or conversions.

With the search leader already making plans to move into the Cost Per Acquisition model with some verticals, is this a sign of them automatically including copy which is proven to increase targeted clickthroughs and therefore a more efficient CPA model?

Further Discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums

UPDATE: I've just contacted the person running the above Car Insurance campaign and they have confirmed that this is simply geo-targeting and that it's been out for a few months now. With this in mind, I can't believe that I have not seen this before. Surely advertisers in verticals such as these would be fighting to use these features to make adverts even more personalised and targetted?

I am back from the PubCon Vegas conference. It was the best PubCon ever, in my opinion, Brett totally did an awesome job, even without his wife not being able to come (we noticed). This conference is much more laid back than the SES conferences, but that is what makes it special. The speakers are informal, joking around, the search reps are trashing on SEOs, it is just fun all around.

I loved how Tim Converse of Yahoo! started his speech by saying he is imagining everyone in the room are white hat SEOs. It is like when normal speakers imagine people in the room are naked, to relax them. He needed to think white hat, to relax him. I loved how Matt Cutts totally ripped on sites during the site review panel, oh and he totally won the battle against Time Mayer (sorry Tim). Danny also dissed Yahoo!, kinda, in his keynote, saying, all of search is going up, except for Yahoo!'s revenues. I met all sorts of cool, smart, nice, and fun people at the conference. I won't shout out any names, but you guys know who you are. I met MSN adCenter reps, including the PR person (not sure if I can mention names), adCenter411 and adCenterEU were there (sorry about the Microsoft comment EU). The Yahoo! folks, well, they seriously know how to have a good time (thanks guys, you seriously rock!). I didn't see any Ask.com people, but they were a huge sponsor of the conference, thanks for the wifi. Google, well, Google also rocks. Such nice people, they honestly care. Matt Cutts, Vanessa Fox, Brian White (I didn't see Adam Lasnik) but I had long conversations, one on one with those three. I can honestly say, that they care.

Of course, Chris Boggs and Donna (DD) totally rocked with the coverage. I cannot thank them enough. Both honest, down to earth, giving people - the type of people I like to be associate with. Ben, we missed you.

Ok, here is the summary of our coverage: WebmasterWorld PubCon 2006 Coverage Schedule

November 14th:

1. WebmasterWorld Pubcon Kickoff Keynote Address - Guy Kawasaki
   
2. Feeds, Blogs, News, and Social Search (FeedBurner, Digg, Topix)
   
3. SEO and Big Search
   
4. Feeds and Other Alternative Optimization Opportunities
   
5. Link Development and Linking Optimization
   
6. Affiliate Strategies and Content Strategies
   
7. Feeding the Engines - Writing Copy
   
8. Corporate Mega Site SEO Management
   
9. Special Afternoon Keynote by Jon S Von Tetzchner of Opera
   

November 15th:

1. New Age of Web Advertising Keynote by John Battelle
   
2. Local and Mobile Local Search
   
3. What Every Webmaster Should Know: PHP, PERL, ASP.net
   
4. International and European Optimization
   
5. Search Blogger and Reporter Forum
   
6. Purchasing Links
   
7. Duplicate Content Issues (Yahoo & Google)
   
8. Super Session : Search and Research on a Rail
   

Cool Party: Yahoo! Rents Out Hugh Hefner's Sky Villa in Palms Hotel

November 16th:

1. Special Guest Keynote - Danny Sullivan - Search Engine Land
   
2. Press and Public Relation Campaigns
   
3. Forums and Communities : Building and Optimization
   
4. Spider and DOS Defense - Rebels, Renegades, and Rogues
   
5. Interactive Site Reviews and SERP Quality Control Forum
   

Great job Brett, hope the Pub part of the PubCon is going well now! :)

Today, I hope to post a quick series of short posts on recent threads on some hot topics for the past week. I just got in early this morning, so I will take it easy on the blog today. For more info about my personal stuff, check out Cartoon Barry.

Watching the AdWords forums this past week has not been fun. Google has really stuck a nerve right before the big holiday season and they deserve this backlash, in my opinion. Here are some recent threads to bring us all up to speed.

(1) Quality Score?!?! lots of frustration in that thread
(2) Improving Landing pages QS -My Experience tips to get things working right again
(3) Done with AdWords the title says it all
(4) The Google Quality Bot talking bot specific

Hope these threads help.

Today, I hope to post a quick series of short posts on recent threads on some hot topics for the past week. I just got in early this morning, so I will take it easy on the blog today. For more info about my personal stuff, check out Cartoon Barry.

Over at WebmasterWorld there were some recent threads on the new Panama, Search Marketing 2.0 system. As you know, I have some extensive, first looks, at Yahoo! Panama from about a month ago.

(1) anyone in Panama hit by Quality stuff? No, the quality factors for ranking do not get applied to the frontend until after January.
(2) Panama geotargetting available? yes, they have some pretty cool Geo targeting. You can target cities, states, radius by zip code and more.
(3) Panama rants, but Panama isn't perfect yet!

• It does not work well in Opera
  
• Bulk keyword upload allows 50 keywords max, only.