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SMX Stockholm and SMX PhoCusWright

No Comments since November 21st, 2007

The last three weeks I’ve enjoyed the pleasure of testing out quite a variety of aircraft, and airlines. From Airbus I’ve flown the following series; 319, 320, 330, 340. Boeing: 737, 767. From Bombardier, two different RJ’s, plus Dash 8’s in a couple of configs. The Embraer 75 & 90, and an MD 80. There was one other vehicle I flew on SAS which I’ve quickly forgotten. I have to say, the Air Canada’s Embraer’s are really nice and quiet. I had excellent service on Air Canada and SAS. Lufthansa was ok. On JetBlue & United service was notable in its absence.

Anyhow, this post isn’t about airline review; maybe I’ll start a site about that sometime.

This is a short commentary on the first two SMX’s I’ve participated in. Much to my chagrin, I missed attending SMX advanced last year. Stuff gets in the way sometimes. Fortunately, the opportunity to speak at SMX Stockholm, as well as SMX PhocusWright in Orlando arose.

In Stockholm I presented on Analytics, and on Tools for SEO and SEM. Rand Fishkin moderated both sessions. I used a case study in the Analytics session, something which a lot of people told me that they appreciated, as it was very tangible for them, and thus they understood how to apply the information presented to their own sites.

Building Enquisite’s given me some interesting insights into the data within analytics reports. For one thing, there’s way too much information in too many analytics packages. People drown in the data. Our beta version of Enquisite has a ton of information. It’s a search marketer’s delight however, as it’s focused on just search and only search. PPC Assurance however is different. There’s still a lot of data, but we’ve presented it in a very simple and manageable way. We also give you something no other analytics company does; an action item. PPC Assurance automatically files claims with Google, (and shortly Yahoo) on your behalf. Check it out, learn more, and give it a try. It’ll drive the ROI of your PPC campaigns way up, and your campaign management and reporting time way down.

After lunch, the Tools session was a little more challenging. There are so many great tools for SEO & SEM out there, and some people create a lot of them. I tried to draw on a broad selection, and show how to use them how to make best use of them. Everyone on that panel was extremely strong and knowledgeable. Actually this was true of all the sessions I saw. There were no slouches on the podium. (or in the crowd) :-)

I’ve never been to Stockholm before, and quite honestly this was a very rushed trip for me. I flew 18 hours each way, and only spent ~ 50 hours there. Fortunately, I only slept for ~5 of them, so I made the most of it!

The conference itself was smaller, as expected, but a very high quality of participants. There were a number of individuals I had not met before, but had communicated with via email for quite a while. There were also some Enquisite users, and it was very nice to meet them. We have so many whom I’ve never met or spoken to.

One very nice thing about this being a smaller conference was that I was able to speak at length with friends whom I rarely get much of a chance to chat with at conferences, as well as to comfortably meet at chat with new acquaintances.

On the last night, Rand’s parents invited me to join a group they were putting together to go for a smorgasborg. Unfortunately, they are not in these pictures. Dinner was great, although some SEO extraordinaires like Mikkel deMib Svendsen, and Thomas Bindl did appear to be have had a little too much fun, as witnessed in these pictures!

OK - not sure why, but the pictures aren’t pulling, and I don’t have time to figure out wordpress today. sorry.

Thanks to Rand, or rather Geraldine, for thinking to bring a camera and for using it, unlike me, who never seems to remember to take one anywhere.

SMX PhoCusWright was a completely different kind of Conference. Where Stockholm had a broad representation across industries, Orlando was 100% travel related. I presented on Competitive Strategies, as well as balancing SEO & SEM. For both sessions I used case studies; every time I do so people enjoy it.

Earlier this year, I presented at SES Travel in Seattle. It was a very different crowd from Seattle. The audience in the Seattle conference seemed to be made up more of people who actually did manage campaigns, where SMX PhoCusWright had more decision makers, and fewer on page specialists. Both groups were very interesting to speak with, and it’s nice that there is a different crowd at the two series. Both have real value for attendees, and the value of each conference will continue to grow. Marty Weintraub was actively blogging the sessions in Orlando, so please read his session reports to get a gist of the topics. There was a lot of worthwhile information shared.

Posted under Analytics, Click Fraud, Enquisite Search Metrics, Google, MSN, PPC Assurance, Ranking Reports, Search Engines, Search Metrics, Yahoo, market share

PPC Campaign - Tracking URL’s - ValueTrack Tag

No Comments since October 1st, 2007

When you enable campaign tracking URL’s in Google using their ValueTrack tag, there’s quite a lot of information you can collect. It’s an extremely valuable option which anyone running a PPC campaign should enable.

What it does is allow your analytics software to track individual PPC campaigns more precisely. I wish every ad network offered a similar feature: it makes your campaign tracking much more transparent, and makes it a lot easier to understand what is actually going on within individual campaigns.

Have you ever looked at your stats and wondered if you paid for all those clicks from China when your campaigns were geo-targeted to the U.S. only? Have you tried running one campaign weekdays and a different one on weekends, and been left wondering if the ads ran properly, or if you paid for the clicks that came through from a campaign on the wrong days? The ValueTrack tag lets your analytics reports drill into this information easier.

Even with the ValueTrack tag turned on, it’s still not simple, which is why we built PPC Assurance.

But one thing that has become apparent is Google update times. Since we’re monitoring so many campaigns, a really clear understanding of how quickly Google responds to changes in your campaign settings or configuration is pretty obvious; you can actually see it in the graph below.

Some people believe that if you make a campaign update, the effect is immediate. It’s not. It takes a while not only to get “published” but also to get published across the network. First off, many changes will take until the next day to be promoted to the live network. But some changes will take a few days to make it to live status across the entire ad network. Here’s an example:

For purposes of explaining data, we use 4 colors:

• Green: Good PPC traffic: It matches what you set for campaign parameters.
• Yellow: This traffic does not match your campaign settings, but due to the number of invalid clicks you were credited for, we’ve established you did not pay for it. So, it’s deemed “acceptable.”
• Red: This is traffic you paid for, and it did not match your campaign settings. We term it “undesired” traffic. You’ve paid for it, and you ought not have.
• Gray: this is “missing” traffic. Don’t worry about this at the start of the campaign, but you need to watch it as a campaign unfolds. In this case it reflects traffic which is not matching the campaign parameters as set. It’s not actually missing, it’s not matching, because the campaign info from the ValueTrack tag was not being transmitted. The amount of PPC traffic could be ascertained, but not matched to which campaign it belonged at the granular level.

So Gray (or grey depending on where you are sitting :-)) is the color you need to focus on in this example screenshot. The reason it’s gray in this example is because up until June 25, there was no tracking code enabled. We were able to validate that there was traffic to the site from the various PPC Campaigns, not if it matched the settings on a granular campaign by campaign basis, (we can work without the ValueTrack tag, but for this example we’re not doing so). We added the ValueTrack Tag to each of the customer’s campaigns early in the morning on June 25, but it was only midday (12:00 PST) on the 26th when Google’s network actually started referring traffic with the tracking tag information attached. It took until June 29 for all referrals to start incorporating the tag.

So, when you make an update to a Google PPC Campaign, where you are adding a tracking tag, be aware that the change is not immediate. It seems to be pretty consistent that most of Google’s adservers will update within 24 hours, but that it can take up to four days for it to propagate fully.

Once the integration period is over, you need to watch for the grey spikes for a completely different reason. But I’ll post about that at a later date.

Posted under Analytics, Click Fraud, Enquisite Search Metrics, Google, PPC Assurance, Search Engines, Search Metrics, Yahoo

Enquisite Launches PPC Assurance Reporting Suite

No Comments since August 20th, 2007

Here’s the announcement - PPC Assurance, our first revenue product is now live.  It’s designed for anyone running a pay per click campaign.  You don’t need to be knowledgeable about PPC to benefit from this service.  This is a PPC management service which helps anyone from a beginner to recognized market experts make their PPC campaigns more successful.  We’re not kidding.  Our testers, focus groups, and reviewers came from both groups;  absolute beginners, and the best in the world.  They all found PPC Assurance to be simple, intuitive, and dead simple to use.  It’s not easy making something simple!

San Mateo, CA. August 20, 2007 – Enquisite, a search analytics firm has today unveiled its PPC Assurance reporting service at http://ppcassurance.enquisite.com. The PPC Assurance suite fills the void in third-party verification of Pay per Click (PPC) charges. The suite empowers businesses with a simple way to audit and verify their PPC charges, and automatically submits instances of improper billing for a refund.

When a business contracts a PPC Provider (such as Google AdWords or Yahoo Search Marketing) to display their advertising, they set out Terms and Conditions for the display of the advertising; these parameters include when, where, and how the ads should display. Campaign conditions might include such options as geo-targeting, time of day and day of the week scheduling, specification of which networks to display the ads on, and excluded sites.

While companies can customize their ad campaign parameters in order to more effectively spend their ad dollars and reach a specific target market, there has been no effective means of validating whether the ads have been displayed in accordance with the agreed upon conditions.

Enquisite’s patent-pending PPC Assurance reporting suite provides businesses with the data needed to validate their Pay per Click charges. PPC Assurance equips companies with easy-to-understand information that confirms whether or not individual paid ads are being properly displayed. This allows companies to effectively resolve possible PPC overcharges, fine tune campaigns and maximize ROI on paid search spending.

Enquisite’s CEO Richard Zwicky explains: “The search engines and advertising networks are working hard to ensure that PPC campaigns execute properly. But problems do arise. Advertisers need to know when something goes wrong, and how to resolve the issue. Advertising networks need to know what’s happening as well, so that they can improve their services. PPC Assurance provides both parties with the objective information they need, leading everyone to a quick and equitable resolution.”

This year, online marketing campaign spending is expected to exceed $25 billion. The medium of search marketing has escalated to a point where it is routing significant dollars away from other typical marketing and advertising channels including print and TV. With audit systems at present almost non-existent, an important gap exists that requires companies to pay their online advertising bills without 3rd party validation of the accuracy of their campaigns. The phenomenon of paying un-validated online ad bills is akin to a situation where a home buyer would purchase a new home based simply on his faith that the seller was accurately representing the property. Though the seller might not purposely misrepresent the value of the property, it is generally accepted that a buyer should obtain an independent third-party inspection before they pay for it. This professional third-party inspection validates that the facts are as presented and leaves the purchaser with peace of mind and in-depth knowledge about the wisdom of their investment.

PPC Assurance empowers companies of all sizes with independent verification of their PPC campaign charges, and a simple resolution mechanism to settle billing disputes.

About Enquisite:

Enquisite is an award winning web analytics firm, specializing in search analytics. Enquisite’s SAAS reporting suite is currently used by thousands of companies worldwide. PPC Assurance is the flagship for fee service offering in the Enquisite suite of reports.

Posted under Analytics, Ask, Click Fraud, Enquisite Search Metrics, Google, MSN, PPC Assurance, Ranking Reports, Search Engines, Search Metrics, Yahoo

Search Engine Market Shares - Google in the U.S. & Canada

3 Comments since April 19th, 2007

When search engine market share numbers get published, they generally reflect Google’s overall numbers, Yahoo’s overall numbers, etc. I was chatting with an Enquisite user this morning, and realized that when our users look at their reports, they get to see much more detailed breakdowns. For example, they can look at search engine search traffic from the U.S. alone, and then see google.com v google.ca v yahoo.com v yahoo.ca. That’s valuable. But whenever I have published breakdowns, I’ve always just noted it as “Google” along with Google Images, Google New, etc, never the breakdowns into national TLD’s.

So, we pulled through our database of queries since January, and bring you this highlight, based on almost 100M queries..

Sites in our network which received a search referral from a searcher located in the U.S. used this version of Google:

Obviously, users in the U.S. went to Google.com more often than any other Google property. But look at Canada below for a usage comparison.

The national tld is still dominant, but froogle is absent, (not surprising considering it never took off in Canada), and Google.fr shows up at #5.

Posted under Analytics, Enquisite Search Metrics, Google, Search Engines, Search Metrics, Yahoo, market share

Search Engine Market Shares - Google in the U.S. & Canada

3 Comments since April 19th, 2007

When search engine market share numbers get published, they generally reflect Google’s overall numbers, Yahoo’s overall numbers, etc. I was chatting with an Enquisite user this morning, and realized that when our users look at their reports, they get to see much more detailed breakdowns. For example, they can look at search engine search traffic from the U.S. alone, and then see google.com v google.ca v yahoo.com v yahoo.ca. That’s valuable. But whenever I have published breakdowns, I’ve always just noted it as “Google” along with Google Images, Google New, etc, never the breakdowns into national TLD’s.

So, we pulled through our database of queries since January, and bring you this highlight, based on almost 100M queries..

Sites in our network which received a search referral from a searcher located in the U.S. used this version of Google:

Obviously, users in the U.S. went to Google.com more often than any other Google property. But look at Canada below for a usage comparison.

The national tld is still dominant, but froogle is absent, (not surprising considering it never took off in Canada), and Google.fr shows up at #5.

Posted under Analytics, Enquisite Search Metrics, Google, Search Engines, Search Metrics, Yahoo, market share