ppc
Parked domains: is Google wasting your money?
Sep 6th
You have probably come across sites such as the one in the image, a defunct domain allowed to lapse by its owner that has now been taken over by a pointless directory that nobody would ever use to real purpose.
It invariably contains a lists of paid links categorised into groups of expensive search terms. You would never buy links on such a site, and you definitely would not pay for clicks from ads on parked domains. Or would you?
Right now, it is my bet that if you are running PPC campaigns of a reasonable size, you are indeed paying significant amounts of money for clicks on these sites. It is also my bet that these clicks are delivering next to nothing in terms of value for you.
I regularly perform landing page tuning and for one major client, the Website Optimiser tests showed significant conversion rate increases. Why then, was the overall conversion rate on the biggest and best performing search campaign falling?
On investigation, the Google search traffic was performing as expected, with increasing conversion rates, but it was the search partner network that was getting worse and spending more.
My top-level impression of search partners was that they are basically other search engines that are powered by Google’s search results. These smaller ‘search engines’ can choose to show Google ads. What I didn’t realise, and what our investigation showed, was that parked domains are included in Google’s search partners.
I also noted that the appearance of parked domain traffic in the campaigns under investigation had increased massively since last year. In one campaign it had increased by 900% in one year!
If you navigate to the site in the image above and see any of the ‘related searches’ categories, you will see that these are all premium search terms i.e. they carry high click prices.
I doubt that any of the advertisers on those sites are aware of their placement. At the time of writing, I doubt that confused.com, Saga, GoCompare, USwitch and MoneySupermarket are aware they are paying for clicks in the ‘Auto Insurance’ category of this domain.
To turn this off in your AdWords account is easy when you know where to look, but the setting is buried in a place that I think is misleading.
I have a few problems with Google’s view of parked domains:
- This is not ‘search’ traffic. If you stumble upon one of these domains like the one above, you are not searching for these terms; the site is simply displaying expensive categories for the purpose of making money.
-
Who is clicking and why? This is extremely low quality traffic, despite getting a 34% click through rate,we received no value from this traffic in the campaign under investigation despite getting lots of expensive clicks.
Is this not Google turning a blind eye to a similar type of click fraud to that which occurred widely on early AdSense accounts? Google and the site host are making money from this.
- Turning off parked domains involves going in to a section of AdWords called ‘Exclude Placement’. However, this is not display network traffic, which this setting suggests. The setting seems to have been buried so that most people will not find it and therefore will not turn it off.
When we complained to Google they came back very quickly with a case study highlighting a business case for using parked domains. Google seemed prepared for the question.
Please, analyse the traffic you are getting from parked domains and assess its quality. You may want to turn them off while you investigate. This post shows how to turn off parked domains.
Google needs to decide how it is going to crack the SME market
Sep 1st
There aren’t many established businesses who operate online and who aren’t already engaging in Google Adwords in some way.
With Google’s dominance in the search market place the only way they can look to grow Adwords revenues within the £5,000 per month and above bracket is through supporting agencies in convincing clients to spend more, and sometimes even recommending strategies that are more beneficial to their quarterly earnings than to the advertisers bottom line.
Product expansion aside, the best way for them to grow their revenues is to find new businesses not yet using Google Adwords, most notably the SME market.
While a single SME isn’t going to make a dent in Google’s figures, when you consider that SME’s account for 99% of all UK businesses(according to the department for business innovation and skills), the total marketing budget of this sector is something Google is keen to tap into.
How it does so effectively however, is something that Google doesn’t seem to have decided, and its mixed up efforts mean it isn’t making much headway in this area.
Google’s routes to the SME market
Google currently has a number of projects in place aimed at attacking the SME market:
The reseller scheme is aimed at partners with large SME client bases who wish to offer Google Adwords as an additional service. More prominent in the US, there are only a handful of registered resellers in the UK.
In return for being part of the programme a reseller gets support from a Google Account Manager and access reseller technology but must ensure a certain percentage of all PPC spend goes Google’s way.
The Google Jumpstart programme is aimed at advertisers who want help setting up a Google Adwords account. Google has a team of individuals who, providing you meet certain criteria, will set you up and account and build a campaign for you to get you started.
Get British Business Online (GBBO)
The GBBO scheme is a joint partnership between Google, BT, eskills UK and Enterprise UK and provides SMEs with a free website and domain name to get them up and running, I also believe it comes with some free Google Adwords Vouchers.
Google Adwords Vouchers
Google Adwords Vouchers are pretty freely available in the market and are aimed at providing the SME with some free clicks in the hope they see the benefit and start paying for a campaign once the free budget is exhausted.
On top of this you obviously also have the SME focussed independent search agencies who are in the market trying to service clients.
Convoluted efforts
The problem I have is not with any of these initiatives, they are all pretty sound, but just that they in many ways conflict each other, and all in all lead to a jumbled mess of a strategy.
The Google reseller scheme is only open to business with very large client bases already, which limits its reach and potential, while the Jumpstart programme is only open to businesses new to Adwords with an available budget of £5,000 per month or more, which makes its use pretty limited.
The Google Adwords vouchers are great, but aren’t available for use by agencies, and most end up in the hands of affiliates, meaning again that their use is limited. Meanwhile, the GBBO scheme feels like it is going to have a lot of cross over with the reseller initiative.
Surely Google would be better deciding on one strategy for this market, and focussing on making that a success. With so many projects attacking the same market they are making things even more confusing for the SME which will lead to many of them abandoning pay per click all together.
The case against Google house ads
Sep 1st
Many publishers run house ads. But in Google’s case, the situation is a bit different. In a post called The Problem With Google House Ads, Goldman writes:
“When Google runs house ads, it simultaneously conducts the auction that
it is bidding in—an impermissible conflict of interest.”
This is something that all search platforms deal with. But it’s becoming
a bigger problem because Google simply handles so much of the online
search market. (71.4% in July, according to Hitwise.)
Google often runs its own ads to explain strange search results and to promote charity pages during large crises. But Google also runs ads to promote its own services. And when it does this, the company is bidding against its own customers. Writes Goldman:
“Google’s positioning breaks down when Google buys house ads via AdWords.
In those situations, Google is both running the auction and bidding in
that auction as an advertiser.”
Google claims that it pays the same price as any advertiser would. But it’s different when the money is coming from and going to the same place. Moreover, Google’s bids affect the price of ads for its customers (and competitors for these ads).
No one knows how Google’s internal bidding goes, because Google does not make its algorithm public.
But advertisers who lose an ad auction to Google could be paying more for the ads they get, or they could simply be paying same price for a lesser search spot. In either situation, Google’s entrance into a search ad bid changes the outcome for its customers. According to Goldman:
” If the other bidders’ prices stay the same and Google siphons away some
clicks from them, Google’s ads have a clear opportunity cost. However,
if Google’s entry into the auction prompts other bidders to pay more,
some or all of that opportunity cost will be made up by increased
revenue on the remaining clicks. It’s even possible that Google’s house
ads could create net new profit. From an auction integrity standpoint,
it’s unacceptable for Google’s entry into the auction to affect the
prices bid or paid by other bidders (its advertisers), whether Google’s
profits increase or decrease.”
Google already buys ads from sites like Yahoo and Bing. But Goldman suggests that if Google wants ads in its own search results, the company should create additional units that others cannot bid on.
The recommendation seems sound, though it would bring a level of transparency to the process that it currently lacks. And that could encourage more complaints. If advertisers (or more likely direct competitors) see that Google is reserving prime real estate for itself and not allowing others to purchase certain spots, it could open a whole new can of worms.
Goldman concludes:
“I feel a little silly writing nearly 2,000 words explaining why
auctioneers should not bid in the auctions they run. We all already
knew that. Yet, Google apparently violates this basic rule every time
it runs house ads in AdWords auctions. Google should fix this—and
restore integrity to its AdWords auctions—by no longer competing with
its advertisers in those auctions.”
And Google has already responded. According to a spokesperson:
“As we’ve always said, all search engines run ads to inform users
about services that they provide. Google is no exception to this
practice. We believe in the value of our advertising platform and use
it in the same way that other advertisers do.”
The problem with this repsonse is that Google’s competitors don’t control over 3/4 of the search market. And the bigger Google gets, the more this becomes an issue.
PPC Bid Management Technology Buyer’s Guide 2010
Sep 1st
Overview
Author: Jake Hird and Linus Gregoriadis, Econsultancy
Pages: 165 pages
Structure: Market trends and issues, 18 vendor profiles
About this Guide
This buyer’s guide is aimed at those who are investigating the US and UK markets for paid search bid management technology. The report contains profiles of 18 leading suppliers, a detailed analysis of market trends and guidance about how to select the right technology.
Contents
Like all our buyer’s guides, the report starts with a look at trends in the marketplace, as well as an assessment of the sector’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
Trends in this sector include:
- Advertisers turn to technology to improve campaign performance and measurement.
- Vendors adapt to keep pace with search engine evolution.
- Social media set to become the new PPC battleground.
- Marketers focus on multichannel integration and attribution.
The report contains profiles of the following vendors:
Acquisio, ChannelAdvisor, Clickable, ClickEquations, Coremetrics, DART Search (DoubleClick), DC Storm, Efficient Frontier, Kenshoo, Marin Software, Quant (Greenlight), SearchCenter (Omniture), SearchIgnite, Search Laboratory, SearchForce, TradeDoubler, Unica, VCCP.
Who is this guide for?
It is primarily aimed at US and UK paid search advertisers and agencies who want to assess and compare different technologies, while also gaining a detailed understanding of what is happening in this marketplace.
As well as prospective technology buyers, it is also relevant for others, including vendors and analysts, who want to research this market. Many of the issues explored within the guide are also applicable on a global level.
Download the free sample to learn more about the contents of this report
Related Resources
Our Paid Search Marketing (PPC) Best Practice Guide is a how-to report which covers this topic in depth. For those in the UK, we have also published a Paid Search Agencies Buyer’s Guide, which contains profiles of leading PPC marketing agencies.
Our Paid Search Business Case can make the case to your boss about why paid search makes sense for your company and we also have a PPC Advertising Request for Proposal (RFP) template file.
Man vs. Machine: the automation of PPC campaigns
Aug 9th
The inherent competitiveness of the paid search market means it’s easy to see the appeal of part-automation in controlling and managing accounts on a daily basis.
Of the trends highlighted in our new report, three out of four point to the increasingly important role of technology within the search engine marketing industry.
- Advertisers are turning to technology in order to improve campaign performance and measurement.
- Technology suppliers are having to adapt, to keep pace with a constant evolution of the search engines.
- Marketers are beginning to give greater attention to multichannel integration and attribution.
However, some search professionals still appear to be questioning the value of using these tools. This is an issue explored recently by Semvironment in two great articles.
The first suggests that manual PPC management is very much dead. Or at least, it is if you want to be successful in the paid search environment. Author James Zolman explains how bid management technology allows you to maximise the potential of your campaigns.
He argues that while your software is working hard to save you time in basic account management and bid control, automated bid management allows you to focus on:
1. Writing and testing ad copy.
2. Creating new landing pages to improve conversion rates.
3. Working closely with clients and other relevant parties to developing further paid search strategies.
4. Making changes to any campaign, at any given time, under any circumstances.
5. Performing “millions (and even BILLIONS) of mini-tests between keywords and ads in every ad group and every campaign at every hour of every single day”.
Still failing to see the value?
What if it was highlighted that many of the
paid search management tools are self-learning… and use statistical
prediction models which most normal people could never understand or compete
with?
Technology is getting smart – and so are the paid search managers who use it, as it allows a significant competitive edge in an increasingly complex
environment.
I’m a big advocate of bid management software… and not because it allows me to kick back and browse YouTube when I’m supposed to be working on PPC campaigns.
In reality, the idea that you can just plug in these tools and sit back is a misconception, as they actually create quite a large challenge to those practising paid search marketing.
Although the available technologies are automated, the individuals in charge of campaigns have to think smarter, in order reap success. The technology is only as intelligent as the person running it, meaning that sharp operators will see far greater performance than those who sit back and expect total automation.
This is something that Zolman also explores in his second article, where he questions the myth that PPC software means total automation. In a nutshell, those who make little effort will not enjoy great returns, despite the promises of the tech providers.
But, it’s also worth highlighting that too much manual interaction can hamper the capabilities of the tool. A fine balance is needed, hence the importance of having someone skilled enough to oversee things.
This is not to say that organisations should be put off from using PPC bid management tools, as those who do use them are likely to see substantial improvements across their campaigns. Ultimately, the benefits of using such technology can far outweigh the negatives of not doing so.
[Image credit: meškašiaurėj]
Facebook vs Google: does size matter?
Aug 4th
To answer these questions, we have to get beyond the popular headlines and delve a little deeper into the numbers, so apologies in advance to any arithmophobiacs…
The size of opportunity
One useful measure of online advertising effectiveness is CTR (Click Through Rate). The average CTR for search is 1.27%, compared to 0.09% for display (ie the majority of advertising on Facebook).
In other words, people are 14 times more likely to click on an advertising message they encounter via search than one they see on Facebook. By this measurement you can suggest that Facebook would need around 7bn users in order to represent a similar sized opportunity as Google.
Bearing in mind that the entire world’s population isn’t expected to hit that figure until 2011, that’s asking a lot, even for Facebook.
True, Facebook is a much less mature advertising platform than search, meaning methods are not as advanced. However, with time marketers will learn how to improve the CTR they are getting from Facebook. For example, we are already seeing Facebook CTRs increase as a result of automated creative rotation. This combats creative blindness from the same creative being presented to the same user on a number of occasions.
Does size matter?
So, Facebook is undoubtedly growing in importance, but Google is still out in front, in terms of the size of opportunity. However, maybe size doesn’t really matter.
Whilst there are similarities between the two advertising platforms, they are essentially fighting different battles but for the same budget. It’s important to understand this size of opportunity that Facebook presents compared to Google. It is also worth remembering the subtle differences that exist between the two advertising platforms.
Search marketing has risen to prominence mostly based on its engagement, as opposed to the interruptive nature of traditional online display advertising. Search puts your brand in-front of consumers at the time they are signaling purchase intent for one of your products or services.
Conversely, Facebook is more of a hybrid between search marketing and traditional online display advertising. Whilst having a similar Cost Per Click (CPC) pricing model as paid search it still has the interruptive nature of traditional online display advertising.
Facebook takes this interruptive advertising to a more targeted level. By tapping into information in a user’s profile, as well as the enormous amount of personal information a user typically adds to their site every day, Facebook makes it possible for brands to target groups of people at an extremely granular level. You don’t just segment on basic demographics (age, gender etc) but can go as deep as targeting people on the basis of their favourite film.
Essentially, with search you’re buying keywords, but with Facebook you’re buying an audience.
But despite all of this, I still think there is a fundamental reason why search will remain extremely relevant for many years to come, and that is related to how people use Facebook.
Today, Facebook is used by most people to stay in touch and interact with others, whereas search is still the place that people start when they are looking to research and purchase a product or service.
Certainly, the engagement phase of a marketing campaign can take place on Facebook, and display ads can be used to build awareness and understanding. But when it comes down to the transaction, search is where it’s at.
Of course, you might be thinking that the transaction-based world of search would benefit hugely if it could be married to some of the segmentation of Facebook. And perhaps you’d be forgiven for then having the reaction that “my campaigns are way too complex already. There is no way I can do both.”
I think that you can and explaining how this is possible will be the subject of my next post. Stay tuned.
Google changes its trademark policy (again!)
Aug 4th
Since a change back in May 2008, advertisers have been able to bid on trademarked phrases on Google, but until this latest change, use of trademarks within ad text has strictly been with the trademark owner’s permission only.
The changes, which come into force on September 14, will see Google wash their hands of the trademark argument, and come soon after winning a high profile legal battle against Louis Vuitton in the EU law courts.
Why has Google made this move?
Im sure Google would argue that it is just bringing the UK in line with its US trademark policy and also that it is in the interest of user experience.
One of the stipulations of being able to include trademarks in ad text is that you must link through to a page about the trademark or product. This effectively means that retailers and resellers will be able to use the trademark, but competitors will not.
Google has perhaps decided, through its US experiences and through the Louis Vuitton case, that it is unlikely to be liable for any cases brought, and it removes a large administrative burden.
At present, if an advertiser wants to be approved for use of a trademark they must provide an email stating approval, which then has to be processed by Google before their account is white-labelled. This process needs to be managed by Google and once removed, this will free up the staff and technology currently involved.
What can we expect on September 14th?
There will probably a little craziness for a short time, but it will soon sort itself out. I imagine the market will still be policed, just not by Google. Retailers and trademark owners will find new ways of limiting unwanted trademark usage via business relationships and affiliate terms.
It will probably take a little while for them to develop their stance and enforce it, but things will probably calm down within a month or two.
How should you prepare for this?
As an trademark owner, have a look around your trademarked terms now and have a look who is appearing on them, have they got content about your trademarked phrase or product? If so, they will be able to include the phrase in their ad text.
Consider what implications this has to you and whether you want to find other ways to enforce a trademark removal. If they are resellers of your product you can still enforce a ban through this relationship, regardless of Google’s stance. If they are an affiliate then you can do this through your affiliate marketing terms and conditions.
As an agency, you need to speak to your clients and agree how you are going to deal with this. In many cases it may not actually impact your click through rate (CTR). If you have a clear URL and prominent positions you may see little change.
If you are acting on behalf of the reseller, then make sure you have a whole host of new ads lined up for submission in September, as it could provide a boost to your performance.
Google’s official search agency and scammers
Jul 27th
First up: a pretty heavy disclosure; the agency in question is called Ventura and I’m writing this post without speaking to them first.
I went to Google. I searched for Ventura. I found a whole heap of sites but in my 14.5 seconds of searching I didn’t find the site that is conclusively Ventura’s web presence. So I gave up looking.
Okay; that might be the difference between a casual blogger like myself and a proper journalist or professional blogger but I’m sure it’s also why scammers have had some success in pretending to be Ventura.
Perhaps the biggest single factor the scammers have been able to use was Google’s official “Why am I being contacted by Ventura?” page.
You see, in Google’s official help articles there is a page that says Ventura is the only organisation in the UK working on behalf of Google. The good news for SMEs that have to tell the difference between Ventura and the scammers is that Google’s somewhat recently updated this help page to offer some guidance on telling the two apart.
You can read Google’s “Why am I being contacted by Ventura?” page here. However, here’s the updated text.
Ventura works with Google AdWords to help establish initial online advertising campaigns and provide customers with related support and services.
While Google has many valued partners and resellers of Google AdWords in the UK, Ventura is the only organisation in the UK working on behalf of Google to help new advertisers start and optimise their campaigns. Always be careful about checking the identity of people claiming to be operating on behalf of Google. The simplest way to do this is to ask them to send you an email to verify their credentials – Google representatives, like those at Ventura, will always have an @google.com email address.
This blog post isn’t intended to start a debate among agencies that offer PPC and AdWords services to SMEs, although I fear it may be unwelcome news to some of them, but as a note of caution that there are those who will make use of this page (or indeed anything Google might say) for a scam.
I first became aware of Google’s deal with Ventura a few years ago when an affiliate client of bigmouthmedia’s had been approached by someone claiming to be Ventura. In fact, they had a “googlemail.com” address which included Ventura in it.
They were not suspicious of the email address. They were suspicious that Google would have a page supporting a single agency in place and had thought they’d had their network hacked perhaps (and if you know about hacking changes into the hosts.txt file then you know this is possible). Imagine their surprise when I had to explain that the page was real but the email was fake.
In recent months, I’ve encountered far less pretenders to the role but one popped onto my radar at the start of the month to remind me the problem still hasn’t completely gone away.
Retailers: understand your search revenue through integration
Jul 22nd
The main problem is
the primitiveness of measurement capability. All revenue optimised against
search is simply picked up by the conversion tag and pushed into the optimisation
technology as “Revenue”. While this is undoubtedly an important category, there
are many significant factors it doesn’t take into account, such as whether that
order was actually dispatched, if the details changed later and what the actual
margin was for that order in real terms.
So, how have retailers
got around this obstacle? This information is critical to measuring e-commerce
campaigns. Alarmingly, this has been executed through guesswork and averaging
out – hardly the best tool for any form of measurement. ROI expectations can
currently be increased or decreased for protection against cancellations and
delivery charges. Different ROI targets can also be implemented for sets of
keywords that tend to sell certain products.
Take Mother’s Day,
for example. Higher margins could be placed on keywords related to flowers than
those related to chocolates to allow for the variation in margin between the
two product lines. Seems logical enough. However, what happens if the user
comes to the site and buys both flowers and
chocolates – hardly the most unbelievable situation to happen around
Mother’s Day.
The retailer then faces a dilemma. Which margin do you use? The
high margin target you allow for the flowers or the low margin target for the
chocolate? The truth is either way is wrong. In fact, it has traditionally been
impossible to solve as you can’t tell in advance the mix of products that
keywords will sell and what true revenue and margin will be by picking this
information up at the point of transaction.
This leaves
retailers with a vast data problem. Millions of pounds could be going through
their site, yet the numbers being reported and optimised against simply do not
match the actual revenue numbers that the CFO will see at the end of the month.
The knock-on effect
of this problem is huge. Firstly, there are the restrictions this brings. Retailers
cannot push online as hard as they could because they need to leave buffer
zones of ROI to allow for the unknown. Secondly, there is the time (and
therefore money) drain. A huge amount of time and resource is spent trying to
reverse engineer the actual revenue numbers to what happened a month earlier.
Every
sinew of a retail organisation should be spent trying to bounce back from the
difficulties of the last two years and increase sales and efficiency, not
meeting barriers and backtracking on what happened 30 days ago. For many
retailers, their online store may now be their biggest store. Yet due to these
hurdles, it is the store they actually know the least about. It is hardly an
exemplary business model.
But if this issue
has been impossible to solve, then surely all companies are in the same boat
and there is no competitive edge to be had? Maybe previously, but that is
certainly not the case now.
Search marketers therefore need to go through a fundamental
shift in the way they are capturing revenue. Rather than relying on capturing
revenue at the point of transaction through a tag on the conversion page, they
should be looking to actually integrate with the very numbers the client is using
internally, whether through ERP or an order management system from the likes of
Oracle and SAP.
This way, search
marketers can understand revenue based on what was actually shipped out of the
door. With visibility of delivery costs and varying margin based on the mix of
products actually bought, also comes visibility of their true ROI.
This
flexibility enables marketers to set varying targets for many different aspects
such as new versus repeat business, lifetime value, upload offline revenue that
was converted via call centres etc… However, the killer advantage on top of
this is that these numbers are the same that the CFO will look at the end of
each month.
As recent research has
revealed that two thirds of organisations believe search is going to be the
most important marketing channel in
2010, the
ability to demonstrate measurability will allow clients to push search even
harder and see greater rewards through being confident with aggressive margin
expectations.
Would you be happy
to push harder if you knew for a fact that revenue generated at a keyword level
will actually hit the bank account? Search marketers who are deploying
integration techniques are seeing instant results. There’s no reason why you
shouldn’t experience the same.
Numbers Game: Bing goes up as Google’s search share drops
Jul 13th
Bing has slowly been creeping up in the search market since last year. According to Hitwise, Bing’s share of the search market has grown 88% since its debut in June of 2009. At launch, Bing captured 5.25% of the
U.S. search market. Now it retains 9.85% of the market. While still small, Bing is taking some business from the competition. Yahoo’s marketshare has declined 11.24% over the last year,
while Google is down 3.2% in that time according to Hitwise.
comScore has similar numbers, measuring that Google dropped to a 62.6% command of the search market in June, down
from 63.7% in May.
That’s the fourth month in a row Google has dropped. comScore estimated that Google has a 65.5% marketshare in February.
Both Yahoo and Microsoft have been using contextual search methods that have thrown off comScore’s numbers in the past, but even accounting for that, the two engines made some gains against Google in June. According to JPMorgan analyst Imran Khan::
“Contextual searches at Yahoo! and Microsoft continued
to impact the core search volume in June. As such, numbers may not be
directly comparable to past months. On a reported basis, Google lost
110 bps market share in June vs. May, while Yahoo! and Microsoft were up
60 bps each. Excluding the impact of all adjustments, Google lost 20
bps of market share, while Yahoo! increased 10 bps and Microsoft grew
20 bps.”
A more important measure for Bing’s revenues might be ad impressions and click-throughs. And according to a new report from Efficient Frontier, both are on the rise at Bing, while
remaining flat or down at Google and Yahoo.
But online marketers will be glad to hear that Bing’s gains are not stealing their gains in a dwindling market. The online search business as a whole is improving. comScore estimates that U.S. core search volume increased 16.9% in the year since last June. That’s even better than the 11.2% acceleration found in May.
And a report
issued by SearchIgnite found
spending on paid search in the U.S. grew 14% in the second
quarter and 11% in the first quarter, compared with the same periods
last year.
According to Roger Barnette, CEO of SearchIgnite:
“We’ve seen a
marked increase in activity across our clients this year, with nonretail
marketers bolstering their search investments for the first time since
2008.”
Meanwhile, Google finally resolved its censorship issues in China this week and won approval to renew its ICP license in the country. Perhaps unfortunately for Bing’s gains — the search giant is about to have a lot more business in the massive Asian market, and it might soon recover from the slight declines its search business has seen these last few months.
Image: SearchEngineLand