March Search Market Share: March Madness in the Search World

March Search Market Share: March Madness in the Search World

Things were ticking along nicely in the search world with not so much as a speed bump to be seen (set aside the market panic about Google’s paid click decline). Then along came March. Overall volume of search in March exploded, with total queries increasing over 6% and surpassing the 9 billion That’s the biggest month-over-month increase in total search volume since July of last year. Interestingly enough this growth was not driven by our perennial search leader Google. In fact Google actually underperformed the market for the first time in 9 months and saw market share decline more than ½ a point. So where were the big gains?
Windows Live search kicked into high gear in March. Month-over-month Windows Live search queries increased 28.8%, pushing market share up almost 2ppts to just over 10%. Year-over-year, Windows Live search queries were up nearly 52%. Wow! My guess is that there are some dollars flowing out of Redmond that may be driving this. Maybe this April fool’s joke wasn’t a joke.
Then there was Google. Normally 5% month-over-month gains in search volumes would be stellar considering the average for the past year has been about 3%. Unfortunately in March that 5% growth meant Google lagged the market by about 1% and saw market share dip back under the 70% threshold to 69.4%. That’s the first time Google has lost market share in nine months. Oh boy … what will the markets do now? Read more...
Source: http://blog.compete.com/2008/04/04/search-market-share-march-google-msn-live-yahoo-ask-aol/?src=em001

New Hours for Customer Support

On March 31, 2008, Yahoo! Search Marketing Customer Support hours will change to the following:
Monday – Friday: 6:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. Pacific TimeSaturday: 7:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. Pacific Time
During those times you may contact our Customer Support Team by phone at (866) 924-6676, and we’ll be happy to help you with any questions you may have regarding your Sponsored Search advertising.
Thanks,
Satyanarayana

Adwords Budget Optimizer

adwords budget optimizer: "AdWords users have a new feature available to them called the 'budget optimizer' which google claims will automatically adjust their CPC to maximize the number of clicks they get for a specific budget. In other words, rather than the advertiser setting the CPC per keyword this optimizer takes over-they just specify their monthly maximum.
So first of course everyone is skeptical about whether this thing will really work or whether it will just up the CPC to make sure the budget gets spent. It's possible it just doesn't really work.
But if it does that should spell lower earnings for adsense publishers, as what it is billed as doing is delivering more clicks for less money."

Yahoo Partner Results

"Yahoo Partner Results"

Yahoo started showing video ads sin partner results.
Search for shop honda in Yahoo, you will find Honda’s video ad in partner results. its not displaying any sponsored listings for this keyword.

Thanks,
Satyanarayana

Heads up: Adwords spam "please update your billing info"

Heads up: Adwords spam "please update your billing info"
Similar to the paypal type of spam "update your details" first one I've seen and found no mention on WW, link points to China.

AdWords API Version 12 Now Available

Google introduce AdWords API Version 12 (V12). V12 introduces several changes to the AdWords API.
V12 HIGHLIGHTS:

• Conversion Optimizer support: Now you can enable Conversion Optimizer to pay only when an ad click leads to a conversion. Using Conversion Optimizer requires conversion tracking to be enabled on an existing campaign with at least 200 conversions in the past 30 days.
• CPC bidding for placement-targeted ads: Now you can use Website.maxCpc orAdGroup.siteMaxCpc to pay only when a user clicks on your placement-targeted ad.
• Expanded code sample library: As mentioned in a previous blog post, we have released 140 new code samples, 20 in 7 programming languages.

Google Adwords Enforcing Display URL Policy

Alert to all SEMs Adwords is to strictly enforce a new policy to all advertisers for using display URL starting from 1 April 2008, With the display URL policy, Adwords will no longer allow certain exceptions which will include, but will not be limited to redirects and vanity URLs, regardless of past approvals.

If your destination URL is www.yoursite.com, your display URL must also be www.yoursite.com.

Example#1:

Display URL: www.yoursite.com/site
Destination URL: www.mainurl.com/page123
Landing page URL: www.yoursite.com would be acceptable.

Example#2:

Display URL: www.yoursite.com/site
Destination URL: www.mainurl.com/page123
Landing page URL: www.mainurl.com would not be acceptable

Regards,
Satyanarayana

Google AdWords Opens Demographic Bidding to All : Catches Up to adCenter & Yahoo

"Google AdWords has opened up demographic targeting (or demographic bidding) to all AdWords advertisers according to the Inside AdWords blog. Demographic bidding lets advertisers target demographic (lifestyle) variables such as age and gender and the targeting can be done on the Google Contextual Network.