Android Device Manager Finds Your Lost or Stolen Smartphone

Google has launched a remote management tool for its mobile operating system called Android Device Manager.

The feature, which is similar to Apple's Find My iPhone app, lets users of Android smartphones and tablets locate and remotely wipe the device if it is lost or stolen, a feature long called for by Android users. While firms like HTC, Sony and Samsung all have proprietary security tools on their Android smartphones, this is the first time Google has released such a feature.

As well as proving a useful tool for lost and stolen smartphones, it's also handy for those who frequently lose their smartphone without even shifting from the sofa. Android Device Manager lets users ring the device using its accompanying website at maximum volume, even if the device has been silenced. If even that can't help find the device in the depths of your home, it can also be pinpointed in real-time on a map.

Google's Android product manager Benjamin Poiesz wrote in a blog post:

Have you ever lost your phone in between the couch cushions or forgot it in a restaurant? Or maybe searching for your phone before you rush out the door is part of your morning routine? Let the new Android Device Manager help you out! It's one of a few simple features you can use to keep your device—and the data you store inside—safe and secure.

Android Device Manager will be available toward the end of August and will be compatible with devices running Android 2.2 and above. To use the app, users will need to be signed in to a Google account, too.

This article was originally published on the Inquirer.

The SES agenda focuses on aligning paid, owned and earned media to help you drive quality traffic and increase conversions.

SES Chicago is coming up!Book your pass to SES London
3 keynotes, plus over 60 sessions Super Saver rate ends Nov 1

Follow Me Follow You: WhyFollow Twitter Poll

With Twitter riding the social media wave to a $1 billion valuation, the attention from celebrities, usefulness for everything from real-time communications in natural disasters to serving as a profitable marketing channel, a momentum of interest has spawned in how to make the most out of spending time on Twitter. Like any tool, Twitter is what you make of it. But Twitter and social communication applications like it are a lot more than just tools. One question about Twitter best practices that often comes up deals with how people (not bots) decide to follow one another on Twitter.

I ran an informal poll (on Twitter of course, another of it’s many uses) to proof a few ideas I had on what factors weigh most heavily for people when deciding whether to follow another Twitter account. My initial influences included location, bio, offline connections and others. You can read the replies to that poll here: #whyfollow. A self-assessment in combination with the informal poll feedback are what power the potential answers in this Reader Poll.

What 3 things most influence you to follow someone on Twitter?

Their Tweets (81%, 225 Votes)Bio (47%, 130 Votes)Industry Reputation (31%, 87 Votes)Connected Elsewhere Online or Offline (30%, 83 Votes)Follower Count or Follower/Following Ratio (21%, 59 Votes)Web site Link (18%, 49 Votes)Others that @reply the person (18%, 49 Votes)Photo or Avatar (11%, 31 Votes)Location (10%, 27 Votes)Other - please explain in comments (3%, 9 Votes)Background Design (2%, 5 Votes)Gender (1%, 4 Votes)

Total Voters: 278

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By sharing your top reasons for following others on Twitter, we can all learn how to be more useful to the communities we’re trying to reach.

If one or more of your answers are in the “Other” category, then please add them in the comments below. � Sharing this poll with others is GREATLY appreciated. Can we get over 200 responses? How about 500?

U.S. Search Awards Nominations Deadline is This Friday

If you haven't yet entered your nominations for the U.S. Search Awards, you only have a few more days to do so. The deadline is this Friday, July 19, for individuals, agencies, or organizations hoping to have their outstanding search achievements honored during Pubcon Las Vegas.

Entries opened on May 1 for 22 categories. They are:

Best use of SearchRetailFinanceTravel / LeisureGamingThird SectorBest Local CampaignBest Low Budget CampaignBest use of PR in a Search CampaignBest use of Social Media in a Search CampaignBest Integrated CampaignBest Mobile CampaignBest PPC CampaignBest SEO CampaignBest BlogInnovationBest PPC Management SoftwareBest SEO SoftwareBest In-House TeamBest ConsultantBest AgencyYoung Search Professional of the YearUS Search Personality of the Year

There is also a Grand Prix category, which will recognize "the best of the best US search campaign, platform or software to be selected by our judges from the previous categories."

Winners will be picked by a panel of 15 expert industry judges. I'm excited to be one those judges, and will be working with a group that includes Chris Boggs, Bruce Clay, Bryan Eisenberg, Duane Forrester, Bill Hunt, and Julie Joyce, to name a few.

A few tips to make sure your entry stands out: keep it clear, concise, and well-written, and make sure to share your impressive ROI or metrics, all while showing some creativity. Best of luck!

Entries can be submitted by companies or agencies/organizations. There is an entry fee of $100 for most categories. You can check out all those details on the How to Enter page.

The U.S. Search Awards dinner will take place during Pubcon Las Vegas, which will take place from October 21-24 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The awards ceremony will be on the night of Oct. 23 at the Treasure Island Hotel & Casino. Tickets are $200 for individuals, or $1,800 for a table of 10, and will go on sale when the nominees are revealed in early September.

The SES agenda focuses on aligning paid, owned and earned media to help you drive quality traffic and increase conversions.

SES Chicago is coming up!Book your pass to SES London
3 keynotes, plus over 60 sessions Super Saver rate ends Nov 1

33% of U.S. Consumers Use Social Media for Health Care Info [Survey]

One might think concerns over privacy and accuracy of information might prevent people from searching for and sharing medical information online. Well, one would be wrong, according to the results of a recent PwC Health Research Institute survey.

A full one-third of U.S. consumers are using YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to find medical information, research and share their symptoms, and offer opinions about doctors, treatments, drugs, and health plans. The trend isn’t new, though it does seem to be growing, with consumer confidence in the information they are finding through social contacts higher for some people than others.

Ninety percent of respondents from 18 to 24 years of age said they would trust medical information shared by others in their social media networks. This age demographic were also the most apt to share their own personal medical information online; 80 percent said they would, compared to less than half of the older (and wiser?) 45- to 65-year-old survey participants.

Health status also played a role in a person’s likelihood to engage, trust, and share about health using social media. Those in better health were more likely to trust and share, though their less healthy counterparts were more engaged.

Those who are updating social contacts on their experiences with health care issues are more likely to share positive experiences than negative, though the difference is slight.

Of those searching for information, 41 percent are using it to make decisions about which doctors or hospitals to use. Thirty-four percent said the information they find in social networks affects their decision whether or not to take a specific medication.

"The power of social media for health organizations is in listening and engaging with consumers on their terms. Social media has created a new customer service access point where consumers expect an immediate response," Kelly Barnes, U.S. Health Industries leader for PwC, said in a statement. "Health organizations have an opportunity to use social media as a way to better listen, participate in discussions, and engage with consumers in ways that extend their interaction beyond a clinical encounter."

While a 2010 study condemned the social media landscape as the “Wild West” when it comes to health and medical information, the tide certainly seems to be changing. Do you trust medical information you read in social networks, or elsewhere online? Let us know in a comment!

The SES agenda focuses on aligning paid, owned and earned media to help you drive quality traffic and increase conversions.

SES Chicago is coming up!Book your pass to SES London
3 keynotes, plus over 60 sessions Super Saver rate ends Nov 1

Facebook on Graph Search Posts Index: 700 TB of Data & 100+ Ranking Factors

What does it take to power a social search index with over a trillion total posts and hundreds of terabytes of data? Facebook search quality and ranking engineer Ashoat Tevosyan shared a peek under the Graph Search hood in a post on the Facebook Engineering page yesterday.

Tevosyan highlighted the challenges facing Facebook as they gave users the ability to search posts in Graph Search, a feature added last week:

“Facebook's underlying data schema reflects the needs of a rapidly iterated web service. New features often demand changes to data schemas, and our culture aims to make these changes easy for engineers. However, these variations makes it difficult to sort posts by time, location, and tags as wall posts, photos, and check-ins all store this information differently.” 

Facebook sorts and indexes on over 70 different types of data kept in a production SQL database. Their search engine, Unicorn, is an inverted index framework with capabilities including index building and data retrieval; raw data is converted and separated into two parts to work within it. Document data contains the post data Facebook uses to rank results, while the inverted index is more typical of a traditional search index, in that it goes through each post to determine which hypothetical search filters match.

The Graph Search posts index is much larger than any other at Facebook, Tesovyan wrote. They had to move from RAM (which worked well for the smaller indices) to solid-state flash memory to accommodate the more than 700 terabytes of data in the posts index.

For a bit of perspective, consider that Amazon, with its over 59 million active customers, has about 42 terabytes of data to deal with. YouTube, where over 100 million videos are watched daily, holds at least 45 terabytes of video in their database. Google is mum on the size of their database, though we know they answer over a billion queries daily. Each query is stored and over the course of just a year, Google packs away data for over 365 billion queries. Even back in 2008, they were processing 20,000 terabytes of data daily.

The ability to search posts was born out of a company Hackathon, he explained.

“My second day as a Facebook intern coincided with a company-wide Hackathon, and I spent the night aiming to implement a way for my friends and me to find old posts we had written. I quickly discovered that the project was much more challenging than I had first anticipated. However, the engineering culture at Facebook meant that I was supported and encouraged to continue working on it, despite the scope of the project. The majority of the work--infrastructure, ranking, and product--has been accomplished in the past year by a few dozen engineers on the Graph Search team,” Tevosyan wrote.

Tevosyan also shared the fact that Facebook uses over 100 distinct ranking features in their post result scoring, in order to serve up the most relevant Graph Search content to users. Before a query reaches that ranking system, though, it is rewritten, which “involves tacking on optional clauses to search queries that bias the posts we retrieve towards results that we think will be more valuable to the user.”

The SES agenda focuses on aligning paid, owned and earned media to help you drive quality traffic and increase conversions.

SES Chicago is coming up!Book your pass to SES London
3 keynotes, plus over 60 sessions Super Saver rate ends Nov 1

Online Marketing News: Google Banner Ads, 50 Tech Megatrends, Oracle Buys Compendium, The AP Sells Out

50 Powerful Statistics About Tech Mega Trends Affecting Every Business�� There are five mega trends impacting the IT departments of every company: Mobile, Social, Cloud, Apps and Big Data. In this presentation, Vala Afshar reveals ten startling stats for each mega trend. @ValaAfshar

Oracle Buys Compendium, A Content Marketing Startup, To Build Up Its Arsenal Against Salesforce�- Congratulations to Chris Baggott, founder of Compendium (and Exact Target) on the aquisition by Oracle, which also aquired Eloqua late 2012. The cloud markting space is heating up!�TechCrunch

2014 B2C Content Marketing Research � 60% of B2C marketers expect their company�s content marketing budget to increase over the next 12 months. Learn about more trends here. Content Marketing Institute

Associated Press is the Latest News Organization to Try Sponsored Content � The roll out is expected in early 2014, with potential sponsorship deals centered around major events the AP is planning to cover, such as the Super Bowl, the Winter Olympics and the Academy Awards. AdAge

What Can We Expect From The Next Decade of Marketing? � Like it or not, we�ve entered a post-promotional paradigm. Marketers must focus on experiences, adaptive strategy and platforms that hold customers� attention. Forbes

The Evolution of Content Marketing Software�� Becoming a full-fledged segment was the result of a steep climb over fast-changing buyer behaviors and technology providers adapting to those shifts. Check out this great horizontal infographic chronicling this evolution from 1993 to present.�Kapost

Google Tests Banner-Like Ads in Search Results � Google confirmed that it has been experimenting with these visual search ads among a select group of desktop users in the United States, but in a very limited test in the U.S. Mashable

Twitter Experiments With a Private Feed � Opting in to the experiments involves following two special Twitter accounts, which then send personalized messages using the service�s direct message function. The experiments may provide a preview of how Twitter will further expand a service that started out simple but is now becoming more complex. Follow @MagicRecs and @eventparrot to experience it yourself. MIT Technology Review

Twitter Now Offers Tweet Scheduling Function for Advertisers � Many marketers use third-party social media dashboards to schedule their tweets ahead of time. But Twitter advertisers may be able to give those tools a rest with Twitter�s new scheduled tweets option. ClickZ

3 Hashtag Tools That Rock � This technology blogger reviewed three sweet hashtag tools, complete with screenshots, tips, and some practical takeaways. A must read for anyone wanting to improve visibility among influencers on Twitter. SteamFeed

Study: New Algorithm Can Spot the Bots in Your Twitter Feed � Borrowing some tricks from computational neuroscience, coauthors Gabriela Tavares and Aldo Faisal have come up with an algorithm that can tell�with 85 percent accuracy�whether a Twitter account is home to a bot or (worse) a corporate shill instead of a regular person. Wired

Study: Facebook Ad Profit a Staggering 1,790% More on iPhone than Android � More than 200 billion ads on Facebook says that mobile ads on iPhone generate 1,790 percent more return on investment than ads on Android. Even worse, advertising on Android actually costs more than it returns. Venture Beat

Study: New Algorithm Can Spot the Bots in Your Twitter Feed � Borrowing some tricks from computational neuroscience, coauthors Gabriela Tavares and Aldo Faisal have come up with an algorithm that can tell�with 85 percent accuracy�whether a Twitter account is home to a bot or (worse) a corporate shill instead of a regular person. Wired

6 Seasonal Christmas Email Marketing Ideas – ‘Tis the season for marketing, so this is an ideal time to be planning your holiday promotions. Online retailers in particular can benefit from strategically planned cross-channel sales promotions. SUREFIRE Blog

Report: Google+ Drives a Fraction of the Referral Traffic That Facebook, Pinterest & Twitter Do � According to Shareaholic, Google+ has consistently driven less than one-tenth of one percent (> 0.1%) of all referral traffic to its publishers over the past year. Statistics suggest that Google+ usage continues to grow, but critics point out that those numbers are �goosed� to some degree because Google has integrated Google+ features across its properties and activity on other properties can count as being �active� on Google+, too. �Marketing Land

Millennials Want Technology to Invade Their Lives More Deeply � The survey of 12,000 people aged 18 and older in eight countries, commissioned by Intel Corporation, showed that 18- to 24-year-olds want technology to be more personal and know their habits, but also think technology makes people less human. Older women and those living in emerging markets are the most enthusiastic about the role technology can play in their lives. Are you optimized for that? The Globe & Mail

Study: Facebook Delivering 152% ROI for Retailers in 2013 � E-commerce may not have taken off on Facebook, but a new study suggests that retailers can still use the social network to drive sales. Online Media Daily

41 Redundancies You Should Ditch � Have your ever experienced editor�s block? Read this list of redundancies to cure you of these copy writing gaffes. The comments are worth a look too. Ragan�s PR Daily

Google Launches New Google Media Tools Site for Journalists � Whether it�s refining your advanced search capabilities, improving audience engagement through Google+, or learning how to visualize data using Google Maps, this website is intended to guide you through all the resources Google offers to journalists. Google

Think Social Media Is a Waste of Time? Don’t Give Up So Soon � Before you rush to judgment, give your effort an honest assessment against the following three basic criteria of effective social media. Marketing Profs

Facebook Announces New �Stories To Share� Feature For Media Sites & Publishers � Stories to Share makes it even easier for media sites to find the most engaging content they might want to post on Facebook. Publishers can now easily post any of those suggestions to their page directly from their Insights Dashboard in their admin panel. This is currently a test starting with media organizations and publishers and is not available on all Pages. Facebook

A Marketer�s Guide to iBeacons and Bluetooth Low Energy � By combining the use of mobile apps and location-based services, marketers are able to reach out to their customers in the right place and at the right time to help increase engagement and drive conversions. Learn how here. eConsultancy

3 Analytic Tools to Improve Your Social Media Performance � It�s important to analyze your social media efforts and try to improve results. These tools can help you do just that. SocialMedia Examiner

7 Big Recent Twitter Changes You Should Know About to Optimize Your Tweeting � The communication dynamics happening on Twitter could drastically change how customer support interacts with followers and the ability to direct message anyone will increase the velocity of newsworthy exchanges with PR and marketing pros. Buffer

From the Online Community

From �Digital Marketing Has Changed; What Are You Doing About It?,� Luke Collins said, I agree that it is a necessity to use the right tools in order to reach customers, but it is no longer just about providing information regarding products and services, it is also about engaging in a conversation. Social media provides an opportunity to have a give and take between you and those that you are trying to reach. By producing content that encourages dialogue you are much more likely to get customers actively involved in your campaign.

From �8 Things You Need to Know About Influencer Marketing,� Ted Atwood said, Blogs are a great opportunity to share content – decentralize the control news papers and media outlets have on content and expose all angles of a story. Great way to define the science behind the success.

What�s Your Take?

Have you been optimizing your Twitter feed? Are you optimizing for the Millennial Generation? Are you harnessing the power of mobile apps to engage with your customers at the right time and the right place? I guess we’re just in an “optimized” state of mind this week.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

Photo credit: Shutterstock

Yandex Posts Q3 2013 Revenue Growth Of 40 Percent

Russian search engine Yandex announced third quarter revenues this morning. The company saw strong growth for its overall business as well as for search-based advertising.

Yandex said that total revenues grew roughly 40 percent vs. 2012. The vast major of the company’s revenue comes from paid-search advertising (92 percent). Display ad revenue was the bulk of the remaining 8 percent.

Revenue from ads on Yandex sites grew by 33 percent vs. last year. That represented 69 percent of total revenue. Roughly 23 percent of revenue came from the company’s partner network. Those revenues grew by 82 percent vs. last year.

Overall Yandex paid clicks in the aggregate (O&O + partner network) increased 50 percent compared with last year. However like Google CPCs were down vs. a year ago. In Google’s case it was 8 percent. Yandex’s average CPC prices fell by 5 percent in the third quarter.

Display revenue grew 35 percent compared to a year ago. However it makes up less than 10 percent of Yandex’s overall revenue as indicated.

Yandex also operates a payments platform, Yandex.Money. It made a relatively tiny amount of revenue (0.1 percent) from commissions on processing payments.

Overall Yandex revenue for the third quarter was�10.1 billion RUR ($320 million approx) and for the first nine months of 2013 was 26.8 billion RUR ($847 million roughly).

Online Marketing News: Google Banner Ads, 50 Tech Megatrends, Oracle Buys Compendium, The AP Sells Out

50 Powerful Statistics About Tech Mega Trends Affecting Every Business�� There are five mega trends impacting the IT departments of every company: Mobile, Social, Cloud, Apps and Big Data. In this presentation, Vala Afshar reveals ten startling stats for each mega trend. @ValaAfshar

Oracle Buys Compendium, A Content Marketing Startup, To Build Up Its Arsenal Against Salesforce�- Congratulations to Chris Baggott, founder of Compendium (and Exact Target) on the aquisition by Oracle, which also aquired Eloqua late 2012. The cloud markting space is heating up!�TechCrunch

2014 B2C Content Marketing Research � 60% of B2C marketers expect their company�s content marketing budget to increase over the next 12 months. Learn about more trends here. Content Marketing Institute

Associated Press is the Latest News Organization to Try Sponsored Content � The roll out is expected in early 2014, with potential sponsorship deals centered around major events the AP is planning to cover, such as the Super Bowl, the Winter Olympics and the Academy Awards. AdAge

What Can We Expect From The Next Decade of Marketing? � Like it or not, we�ve entered a post-promotional paradigm. Marketers must focus on experiences, adaptive strategy and platforms that hold customers� attention. Forbes

The Evolution of Content Marketing Software�� Becoming a full-fledged segment was the result of a steep climb over fast-changing buyer behaviors and technology providers adapting to those shifts. Check out this great horizontal infographic chronicling this evolution from 1993 to present.�Kapost

Google Tests Banner-Like Ads in Search Results � Google confirmed that it has been experimenting with these visual search ads among a select group of desktop users in the United States, but in a very limited test in the U.S. Mashable

Twitter Experiments With a Private Feed � Opting in to the experiments involves following two special Twitter accounts, which then send personalized messages using the service�s direct message function. The experiments may provide a preview of how Twitter will further expand a service that started out simple but is now becoming more complex. Follow @MagicRecs and @eventparrot to experience it yourself. MIT Technology Review

Twitter Now Offers Tweet Scheduling Function for Advertisers � Many marketers use third-party social media dashboards to schedule their tweets ahead of time. But Twitter advertisers may be able to give those tools a rest with Twitter�s new scheduled tweets option. ClickZ

3 Hashtag Tools That Rock � This technology blogger reviewed three sweet hashtag tools, complete with screenshots, tips, and some practical takeaways. A must read for anyone wanting to improve visibility among influencers on Twitter. SteamFeed

Study: New Algorithm Can Spot the Bots in Your Twitter Feed � Borrowing some tricks from computational neuroscience, coauthors Gabriela Tavares and Aldo Faisal have come up with an algorithm that can tell�with 85 percent accuracy�whether a Twitter account is home to a bot or (worse) a corporate shill instead of a regular person. Wired

Study: Facebook Ad Profit a Staggering 1,790% More on iPhone than Android � More than 200 billion ads on Facebook says that mobile ads on iPhone generate 1,790 percent more return on investment than ads on Android. Even worse, advertising on Android actually costs more than it returns. Venture Beat

Study: New Algorithm Can Spot the Bots in Your Twitter Feed � Borrowing some tricks from computational neuroscience, coauthors Gabriela Tavares and Aldo Faisal have come up with an algorithm that can tell�with 85 percent accuracy�whether a Twitter account is home to a bot or (worse) a corporate shill instead of a regular person. Wired

6 Seasonal Christmas Email Marketing Ideas – ‘Tis the season for marketing, so this is an ideal time to be planning your holiday promotions. Online retailers in particular can benefit from strategically planned cross-channel sales promotions. SUREFIRE Blog

Report: Google+ Drives a Fraction of the Referral Traffic That Facebook, Pinterest & Twitter Do � According to Shareaholic, Google+ has consistently driven less than one-tenth of one percent (> 0.1%) of all referral traffic to its publishers over the past year. Statistics suggest that Google+ usage continues to grow, but critics point out that those numbers are �goosed� to some degree because Google has integrated Google+ features across its properties and activity on other properties can count as being �active� on Google+, too. �Marketing Land

Millennials Want Technology to Invade Their Lives More Deeply � The survey of 12,000 people aged 18 and older in eight countries, commissioned by Intel Corporation, showed that 18- to 24-year-olds want technology to be more personal and know their habits, but also think technology makes people less human. Older women and those living in emerging markets are the most enthusiastic about the role technology can play in their lives. Are you optimized for that? The Globe & Mail

Study: Facebook Delivering 152% ROI for Retailers in 2013 � E-commerce may not have taken off on Facebook, but a new study suggests that retailers can still use the social network to drive sales. Online Media Daily

41 Redundancies You Should Ditch � Have your ever experienced editor�s block? Read this list of redundancies to cure you of these copy writing gaffes. The comments are worth a look too. Ragan�s PR Daily

Google Launches New Google Media Tools Site for Journalists � Whether it�s refining your advanced search capabilities, improving audience engagement through Google+, or learning how to visualize data using Google Maps, this website is intended to guide you through all the resources Google offers to journalists. Google

Think Social Media Is a Waste of Time? Don’t Give Up So Soon � Before you rush to judgment, give your effort an honest assessment against the following three basic criteria of effective social media. Marketing Profs

Facebook Announces New �Stories To Share� Feature For Media Sites & Publishers � Stories to Share makes it even easier for media sites to find the most engaging content they might want to post on Facebook. Publishers can now easily post any of those suggestions to their page directly from their Insights Dashboard in their admin panel. This is currently a test starting with media organizations and publishers and is not available on all Pages. Facebook

A Marketer�s Guide to iBeacons and Bluetooth Low Energy � By combining the use of mobile apps and location-based services, marketers are able to reach out to their customers in the right place and at the right time to help increase engagement and drive conversions. Learn how here. eConsultancy

3 Analytic Tools to Improve Your Social Media Performance � It�s important to analyze your social media efforts and try to improve results. These tools can help you do just that. SocialMedia Examiner

7 Big Recent Twitter Changes You Should Know About to Optimize Your Tweeting � The communication dynamics happening on Twitter could drastically change how customer support interacts with followers and the ability to direct message anyone will increase the velocity of newsworthy exchanges with PR and marketing pros. Buffer

From the Online Community

From �Digital Marketing Has Changed; What Are You Doing About It?,� Luke Collins said, I agree that it is a necessity to use the right tools in order to reach customers, but it is no longer just about providing information regarding products and services, it is also about engaging in a conversation. Social media provides an opportunity to have a give and take between you and those that you are trying to reach. By producing content that encourages dialogue you are much more likely to get customers actively involved in your campaign.

From �8 Things You Need to Know About Influencer Marketing,� Ted Atwood said, Blogs are a great opportunity to share content – decentralize the control news papers and media outlets have on content and expose all angles of a story. Great way to define the science behind the success.

What�s Your Take?

Have you been optimizing your Twitter feed? Are you optimizing for the Millennial Generation? Are you harnessing the power of mobile apps to engage with your customers at the right time and the right place? I guess we’re just in an “optimized” state of mind this week.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

Photo credit: Shutterstock

Stop Obsessing Over AdWords Quality Score

Quality score is more complex than you think it is, but probably less useful. It's an integral part of the ad auction, yet the metrics Google provides to advertisers can be misleading. Don't get suckered into making the wrong decisions.

Why Does Quality Score Even Exist?

Imagine you're Google and you want to maximize your revenues. You can break that down into two main goals: revenue per search, number of searches.

Number of searches performed is pretty outside the control of the AdWords team. Google can do lots of work to break into new markets, to take share from other search engines, and to be so helpful in so many areas that they become the first port of call for answering problems. That's still pretty limited and very difficult to make an impact.

Revenue per search can be influenced by the design of AdWords. Let's break it down further: revenue per search is equal to the ad clicks per search, multiplied by the revenue per click. Revenue per click is based on advertisers' bids. The better the ROI of AdWords, the higher bids get. Great. This is the side of things that drives Google to keep improving AdWords for the advertisers.

Ad clicks per search? Now that one is trickier. It's generally assumed that the top of the page is more likely to attract a click. Anybody who has ever run an AdWords campaign can see how their CTR varies as they show higher up the page, particularly the jump when moving from the right hand side into the banner. So those top slots are valuable. If the ads in the top slots are the most valuable to Google (because they attract more ad clicks per search) then the ads in those slots need to be ads people want to click, otherwise they're wasted.

What Does It Mean?

Google's revenue gets maximized when the ads in the most valuable slots (the top of the page) are the ones with the best product (multiple) of two things: their bid and their likelihood of getting clicked.

Introducing Quality Score: essentially a measure of your predicted likelihood of getting clicked. By using that as a multiplier that works alongside your bid, Google pushes the revenue-driving ads into the best positions. 

But Quality Score Isn't the Same as Predicted Click Through Rate...

No, but it kind of is. It's pretty close. There is a reason that the biggest part of the quality score calculation is your historical clickthrough rate. There are other factors, but they're all just gravy in comparison. The meat and potatoes are your CTR.

The Other Factors:

Let's look at those a moment, because we can't simply dismiss them. If we're working on the assumption that Google is trying to predict your CTR, they need more than just your historical CTR. Things change, right?

The presence of the search query in your ad text. This isn't a good predictor on any individual level. If you perform any search now that shows ads, the ads closest to your search aren't necessarily the best ones. But across a million advertisers? The ones that aren't related to your search are likely to be worse. So when there isn't that much data about your historical CTR, or it might be a poor predictor... Suddenly this factor can help.The presence of the search query on your landing page. Basically the same as above, this predictor has a thousand reasons to be wrong. But across all advertisers it can give Google a bit of a guide towards the poorer quality AdWords accounts.Your ad extensions. These have always indirectly affected your QS by their effect on your clickthrough rate, but now it's explicit. Google will show the extensions they predict will maximise your click through rate (and therefore Google's total ad clicks) and use your history for those extensions to help predict your click likelihood now.But What About CTR?

I've left this till last because it's so crucial. Click through rate depends on your ad text, it's that simple. There are many other factors out of your immediate control (like brand recognition) but the quality of your ad text is the distinguishing factor in how well people respond after performing a search.

Historical CTR applies only to previous searches, where the same ad showed. Immediately, you can see how much more complicated quality score can be than a simple score per keyword. Every time the search is performed, that adds on to your historical stats. The calculation needs to be performed fresh every time. What was your historical CTR when you showed the same ad you're showing now?

What Else is Important?

Good question. We have every reason to believe that the predicted click through rate of search query A is different from that of search query B, even if they trigger the same keyword.

That's an important distinction. For quality score calculations to accurately determine your predicted click through rate, they must be calculated based on your historical click through rate for the same search query, when you showed the same ad. That's not the same as a keyword.

But I Have a Keyword-Level Quality Score in the Interface!

You do. And it's worthless.

Now I appreciate that's a bold claim, and I mostly just wanted to rile you up. I'll calm down in a minute. Bear with me here.

Your keyword represents an indeterminate percentage of your searches. The actual searches that triggered that keyword for which the current search is relevant? Only 100 percent for exact match, and for everything else a keyword level score is not representative of what you're entering the auction with. Especially when you consider that the current ad only showed some of that time.Your quality score is not really a score out of ten. Google are trying to predict your click through rate. A score out of ten does that poorly. The score out of ten simply represents how well you meet the criteria: Did you typically break above a 1 percent CTR? Or 2 percent? Are search queries represented in your ad text? Those kinds of questions let you reach benchmarks that give you the metric you see. But it's not representative of what's actually going on in the auction.The only stats that are used for calculating that metric are those for when the search query exactly matched to the keyword. That's unlikely to be all of them. So that mark out of ten? Not representative of the auction dynamics. By failing to take into account search query and ad combinations, they become unhelpful. If they're unhelpful, don't trust them.So What Can I Do?

First off, focus on your commercial metrics instead. If your ROI is within target, do what it takes to push more sales. You've heard all this before, I don't need to repeat it.

As far as quality score goes: assume it can always be improved. Once you do that, it ceases to matter whether at the moment you're good or bad. In either case, you can make it better.

How?

Ads. Your ad text is your weapon. Test, test and test again. Make sure your best ads are awesome, then make them better. Steal ruthlessly from your competitors, use every extension, apply your creativity, and judge by the numbers. Just make them better.

The better your historical clickthrough rate, the better your predicted click through rate, the better your ranking for your nicely calculated, profitable bids. Awesome.

The SES agenda focuses on aligning paid, owned and earned media to help you drive quality traffic and increase conversions.

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Spurred By PRISM Scandal, StartPage & Ixquick Surpass 3 Million Daily Searches

Alternative search engines are having a good week, likely thanks to public awareness and concern over data and privacy issues being raised by the PRISM scandal.

StartPage and Ixquick, two small search engines from the same company, announced this week that they surpassed three million daily searches for the first time. More specifically, they hit 3.4 million direct searches on Wednesday (June 12).

Ixquick.com is the company’s meta search engine that doesn’t include Google search results; the company launched StartPage.com in 2009 to provide Google search results with the increased privacy that Ixquick offers.

CEO Robert Beens credits this week’s surge in traffic to consumers looking for a more private search experience in light of the PRISM-related revelations of the past week.

“People are outraged over secret US surveillance programs and they’re looking for safe, effective search alternatives,” Beens says in the company’s announcement. “We’re excited at this growth and we welcome our newest users with open arms.”

DuckDuckGo, another alternative search engine focused on privacy, just announced its first day with 2 million searches, and it’s now set its own search quantity record for four straight days this week.

More New Tools From Bing Ads: Change History Graph In The Works

Following up on the new Bing Ads�keyword performance visualization tool, Keyword Distribution Graph, Microsoft will soon be rolling out a visualization tool for change history.

The Change History Graph will be available in the Web interface and is meant to offer�quick visual insight into the effectiveness of your optimization changes.

When you hover your mouse over a point in one of the trend lines, you’ll see the date and the number of changes made that day. Clicking on that will then display a chart detailing those changes.

You can then filter by type of changes made during that time, including adding new keywords, changing ad copy or increasing the budget, for example.

The Bing Ads web UI has come a long way recently. It’s nice to see Microsoft is investing in smart ways to make campaign management less cumbersome with tools like the�Keyword Distribution Graph, pre-formatted Excel reports and this soon-to-come Change History Graph.

Google Wants to Launch Trusted Stores in UK

Google is looking to bring its Trusted Stores program to the UK later this year.

The Trusted Stores program allows retailers to display a badge on their site once they meet criteria from Google on areas such as delivery times and customer service, in order to give web users confidence they are a reputable merchant.

To date this has only been available in the U.S., but with thousands of sellers now signed up to the program, the firm's UK industry retailer leader, John Gillan, is pushing to bring the service to the UK.

"We launched in the U.S. last year and thousands of retailers have joined in. I'm championing to get it launched in the UK on a test basis with a few retailers later this year," he said. "It's good for SMEs in particular to help build up brand loyalty. One firm Beaucoup, which sells flowers online, saw an eight percent improvement in online engagement once it had the Trusted Stores badge on its site."

Beaucoup's chief executive officer, Tom Cole, said on a testimonials page of the Trusted Stores service that the benefits from having the badge are numerous.

"It's a win-win situation: consumers get the assurance of seeing our performance grades based on the actual experience of customers, while Beaucoup enjoys the higher sales that come with that buyer confidence."

Gillan, speaking at the ChannelAdvisor Catalyst conference in London, added that it was not guaranteed to launch, but appeared confident that it would.

"I would love to launch Trusted Stores today but it's a lengthy process," he added.

Clearly, though, it would seem to be a logical move for the firm to expand the service given the feedback he said that U.S. businesses have shown for the program.

Another service that may come to the UK is discount offers within search results. This allows firms to send Google data from their feeds relating to any deals within their stock, so it can be displayed directly within Google results in order to try and pique user interest.

This article was originally published on V3.

The SES agenda focuses on aligning paid, owned and earned media to help you drive quality traffic and increase conversions.

SES Chicago is coming up!Book your pass to SES London
3 keynotes, plus over 60 sessions Super Saver rate ends Nov 1

9 Ways to Prepare for a Future Without Cookie Tracking

It was over a year ago that I first wrote about do not track legislation, and luckily for most organizations the browser-provided imperative is loosely supported or regulated today, with very few sites adhering to interpretation and compliance of the preference.

For the most part, do not track legislation is often misunderstood by the general public, and even our regulators in its definition, usage, and most importantly the privacy implications and confidence it is meant to instill.

From a digital practitioner standpoint “do not track” is the least of my worries but upcoming news about Microsoft and Google pursuing cookie-less tracking capabilities indicates to me that education on how digital information is collected and shared will become even more important in the near future.

Rather than panicking, there is a lot we can do today to enact guiding principles that will likely ease a transition into tighter privacy controls in the future.

Education

One of the biggest problems facing digital marketing and analytics practitioners will be education. The industry has evolved so quickly that much of the technology that we rely on every day is likely taken for granted.

Personalization is one such area that relies on tracking, profiling, and delivering a lot of information about visitor preferences and behavior, which many of us likely take for granted.

One might argue that personalization is a byproduct of contextual advertising, and without underlying tracking technologies, wouldn't be possible to deliver.

Teasing apart a key delivery mechanism such as a session or persistent cookie will be very challenging, but explaining the importance of cookies and their usage to visitors and customers even more so.

What can you do to prepare?

1. Ensure your privacy policy is up to date and fully transparent.

2. Explain what tracking technologies are used (savvy users will know how to check for this themselves anyways).

3. What cookies are employed and for what reason.

Usage

It’s probably safe to say that aside from a few specific highly-regulated industries and regions, most digital marketing practitioners don’t spent too much time or due diligence in reviewing data usage models with third-party vendors and their technology.

Regulators focus both on collection and usage of data in these scenarios, particularly when third parties are involved because in many cases, these partners assume ownership of the data collected on your digital properties. This is the same reason why many browsers automatically block third-party cookies, to ensure data collection services and the usage of visitor information are being entrusted to the right recipients.

What can you do to prepare?

4. Explain how data collected is used.

5. Explain how disabling functionality may affect user experience or functionality.

6. Ensure correlating verbiage between your privacy policy and acceptable use policy are complementary.

Consent

In my opinion, this is where most of the opportunity is for much of North America. Very few companies actually gather consent in a clear and concise manner.

To be brutally honest, most of us think that relying on a single line radio box at the bottom of a registration page, with a link to a hundred page disclosure is acceptable. From a legal standpoint, it probably will cover you from any litigation, but from a customer experience perspective, hundreds of pages of disclosure tend to make the average Joe either uninterested or a little paranoid.

What can you do to prepare?

7. Humanize your terms and conditions. Less legalese and more transparency.

8. Separate your service level agreement and delivery conditions from your data consent.

9. Introduce ways visitors and customers can opt-into and out of technology that enables digital marketing and personalization quickly and easily.

Conclusion

Think about the steps you can take today to instill a greater confidence in your digital business and marketing efforts today. Sometimes little things go a long way to earn the respect and trust of visitors and customers, making the impact of future technology tracking capabilities or regulatory guidelines easier to transition into.

Have you done anything to prepare your website and visitors for the future of tracking and digital marketing personalization?

The SES agenda focuses on aligning paid, owned and earned media to help you drive quality traffic and increase conversions.

SES Chicago is coming up!Book your pass to SES London
3 keynotes, plus over 60 sessions Super Saver rate ends Nov 1

Brands Account for 40% of Top 1,000 Most Shared Instagram Videos

According to new data released today by Unruly, 40 percent of the 1,000 most shared Instagram videos last month came from brands. More than 80 different brands - including Samsung, Nike, BMW, Disney, General Electric and Red Bull – are featured on the Unruly Viral Video Chart’s top 1,000 Instagram videos.

With 26,962 shares, Peanuts Snoopygram was the most shared branded video on Instagram.

It was followed by EA Sports FIFA 14 real-time spot, with 16,499 shares.

A promo for HBO’s popular TV show Girls ranked third, with 15,376 shares.

Other key findings from Unruly’s data include:

The most shared brand on Instagram Video was MTV, with 84 videos in the top 1,000, attracting a total of 134,110 shares altogether across Facebook, Twitter and the blogosphere. Other brands to appear in the top 5 were the NBA, Peanuts and GoPro;The most popular verticals in the top 1,000 were Entertainment and Clothing & Apparel;The total number of unique Instagram videos shared on Twitter was 176,016 which is equivalent to 10% of the unique YouTube videos shared on Twitter during the same period (1,871,530);9 out of 10 Instagram video shares occurred on Facebook;14 of the top 20 most shared user-generated Instagram videos came from Justin Bieber, with his top three videos generating a total of 522,029 shares.

Interest in short-form video content has grown significantly in 2013 following the launch of Vine in January and video for Instagram in June. Instagram now boasts 150 million active users, while six-second sensation Vine has gone from zero to 40 million registered users in just over 9 months.

Unruly’s US President Richard Kosinski said, “New short-form content platforms such as Vine and Instagram are experiencing explosive growth. By engaging consumers in their native environments across today’s complex and fragmented media landscape, and utilizing the Open Web to amplify awareness of their content, brands can maximize the effectiveness of their content marketing strategies to drive sharing and ultimately increase their market share.”

He added, “It’s remarkable that within just five months of launch, Instagram videos now account for almost 10 percent as many tweets as YouTube videos do. Smart marketers are no longer measuring success based on a YouTube view count and advertisers understand that it’s people first, platform second.”

Brands and agencies looking to make the most of this surge in activity around short-form video content now have the chance to amplify, optimize and analyze the success of their campaigns across the social web using Unruly’s end-to-end social video product set for Instagram, which was also launched today.

This means advertisers will now be able to evaluate Instagram videos for shareability and effectiveness using Unruly’s ShareRank algorithm. They’ll also be able to distribute Instagram videos to a global audience of one billion users across the Open Web and benchmark the social footprint of their Instagram videos against their competitive set.

Unruly’s new product set for Instagram means brands and agencies can now:

Evaluate Instagram videos- Advertisers can use Unruly ShareRank to test the ‘shareability’ of their Instagrams pre and post launch;Distribute Instagram videos- Unruly has launched an Instagram app and an Instagram Social Video Player so that advertisers can now distribute their Instagram videos across the Open Web to Unruly’s audience of 1 billion global unique users;Optimize Instagram videos- Brands can optimize their Instagram video campaign performance by using Unruly’s Dynamic Creative Optimization technology to automatically display the best-performing Instagram by campaign KPI;Measure Instagram videos- Brands can track the social success of their Instagram creatives and compare it to other Instagram and video creatives in seconds using Unruly Analytics.

Matt Cooke, co-founder and CTO at Unruly, said, “Short-form content has evolved rapidly as more and more people are creating and sharing content on their mobile devices. With mobile engagement rocketing by 265.7 percent over the past 12 months, brands have been quick to establish themselves on Vine and Instagram. Some brands are already taking highly shareable content created on these platforms and distributing it to wherever their target audience is discovering and enjoying content.”

He added, “Our social video player drives exceptional engagement and sharing levels to drive earned media outside on a brand’s owned channels across desktop, mobile and tablet devices and I’m pleased that brands can now partner with Unruly to turbo-charge the success of their Instagram videos.”

You can read more about Unruly’s Instagram product set here.

The SES agenda focuses on aligning paid, owned and earned media to help you drive quality traffic and increase conversions.

SES Chicago is coming up!Book your pass to SES London
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Become a Leading SEO Mechanic with Both Google & Bing Webmaster Tools

Webmaster Tools offerings from both Google and Bing can offer a wealth of insight to business owners. In order to get the whole spectrum of insights, marketers must learn just what they can do with both Google and Bing Webmaster tools. Using both together allows you greater insight into the factors contributing to the success—or lack thereof—of your SEO strategy.

Internet Marketing Ninjas COO Chris Boggs and Grant Simmons, director of SEO and social product at The Search Agency, shared their advice on better integrating data from Google Webmaster and Bing Webmaster Tools earlier this year at SES San Francisco.

Google Webmaster Tools: Proactively Monitor and Have a Plan in Place to React (P.R.E.P.A.R.E)

Internet Marketing Ninjas COO/CMO and SEMPO Chairman Chris Boggs started the presentation with the topic everyone really wanted to hear: Google Webmaster Tools (GWT). He started with SEO diagnostic principles and explained that you need to be both proactive and reactive when monitoring SEO. Marketers need to have a plan as well as the ability to manage from a reactive perspective, he said. If you come across something in your diagnoses, your analytics are going to be a good second opinion. Without tools, it’s just a guessing game.

Once you have this in mind, you can start digging into GWT by focusing on a few things first:

1. Quick Barometers

Boggs referred to the “Brand 7 Pack” as a company’s homepage and six sitelinks that appear in search results. If you don’t have seven, you have an SEO problem, he said. Your social entities such as Google+ should also be ranking, with your titles to be clear and easy to understand. If you want to see what your domain looks like from Google’s perspective and see the cleanliness of your page titles, type in “site:” and then your domain name without the “www.” Below is a screenshot of a website with a good 7 pack:

You can then go to your Webmaster Tools account to diagnose any problems you may see and determine exactly where the problem lies and how to fix it. From a reactive mode perspective, look at your analytics and verify. It’s very important for SEOs to live by this mantra. Webmaster Tools isn’t something to take for granted. Have an agency or consultant monitor the findings in GWT and relay information to design, development, and marketing teams.

2. HTML Improvements

Visit the HTML Improvements category to determine if your titles and descriptions look bad on a Google SERP. You can see if Google agrees, then click on anything with blue writing to learn more about the problem.

Boggs was asked after the presentation what tool might get users in trouble if they don’t understand it, and this was his answer. He explained that almost every site is going to have some duplicate descriptions and titles, so he wouldn’t try to get that number down to zero. You don’t need to remove every single warning from GWT.

How to Find the Tool: Located under Search Appearance.

3. Sitelinks

You can visit the sitelinks tab to demote a certain sitelink (one of the links under your company homepage shown on a search results page like in the screenshot above). Google is going to automatically generate links to appear as your sitelinks, but you can tell Google if you don’t want something there.

How to Find the Tool: Located under Search Appearance.

4. Search Queries

Here, you can look at the top pages as well as the top queries for your site. Most people will just take the default information, but Boggs stressed that there are tabs for a reason. Look at the top queries as well as use those “more” tabs to get more information.

How to Find the Tool: Located under Search Traffic.

5. Links

You can click on “links to your site” to get a full list of those linking back the most, but the tool that many forget to use is the “internal links” tool. Internal links are very important; Boggs explained it’s worth the time to go through and look at the number of these internal links and then download the table so you can really slice it and dice it.

How to Find the Tools: Located under Search Traffic.

6. Manual Actions and Malware

With this tool, no news is good news. If you get a manual action warning, it means you need to do something that is probably substantial in order to keep your rankings where they are. Malware is also something you can look into which is another place you don’t want to see anything.

How to Find the Tool: Find manual Action under Search Traffic, Malware under Crawl.

7. Index Status

If your page index is 10x, you might have a problem. The advanced tab here gives you a much better look at that data.

How to Find the Tool: Located under Google Index.

8. Content Keywords

What you want to look for here are the words you are using in your content. You don’t want to see a lot of “here” or promotional phrases. Identify where your gaps are or where you have too much content.

How to Find the Tool: Located under Google Index.

9. Crawl Errors

Google now has a feature phone tab to help you with crawl errors. You have to understand any crawl errors that might occur and remember that you should provide data that is very specific to mobile, as well. You can also take a look at your crawl stats, which means the time spent downloading, and make sure there is no spike.

How to Find the Tools: Both located under Crawl.

Finally, Boggs explained that Google Webmasters Tools should be thought of proactively by pairing it with Google Analytics. What kinds of things is GWT telling you when it comes to your analytics and how that data is affected? Consider this screenshot from Boggs’ presentation:

In the end, Boggs explained that expertise is knowing the most basic things about SEO and doing them repeatedly, perfectly, every time. You’re going to come across situations where there are a lot of hooks and changes in the algorithm. Something someone might have done one to five years ago could be a very bad move now. That’s part of the game.

Bing Webmaster Tools: Bing Stands for “Bing Is Not Google”

Director of SEO and Social Product at The Search Agency, Grant Simmonsbegan his presentation with the quote “Bing stands for Bing is not Google,” and the laughter amongst the marketers and SEOs just about said it all. It’s true; Bing is often not taken as seriously as Google because it just isn’t as popular, yet Bing Webmaster Tools (BWT) does offer some good insights that Google does not.

Once you’re signed upand logged in, consider the top things that you should look at first to really get a handle on BWT:

1. Dashboard

You want to make sure that pages you think you have are the ones the Bing has indexed. If that number isn’t what you expected, ask yourself a few questions: Are they crawling my site frequently? Am I not updating my site? These are all quick things you can see right from the dashboard, and you can even look at search keywords to see how people are finding you.

Quick Fact: Bing doesn’t use Google Analytics.

2. Diagnostic Tools

The diagnostic tools category is comprised of 7 subcategories: keyword research, link explorer, fetch as Bingbot, markup validator, SEO analyzer, verify Bingbot, and site move.

How to Find the Tool: This is a category all on its own!

3. SEO Analyzer

This tool works great when analyzing just one URL. You simply type in the URL and hit “Analyze” to get an overview of the SEO connected with that URL on the right hand side of the page. The tool will highlight any issue your site is having on the page; if you click on that highlighted section, Bing will give you the Bing best practice so you can make improvements.

How to Find the Tool: Located under Diagnostics & Tools.

4. SEO Reports

This tool shares a look at what is going on with your whole site (as opposed to just one URL). You will get a list of SEO suggestions and information about the severity of your issue, as well as a list of links associated with that particular error. The tool runs automatically every other week for all of the sites you have verified with BWT (so not your competitor’s sites).

How to Find the Tool: Located under Reports & Data.

5. Link Explorer

You can run this tool on any website to get an overview of the top links associated with that site (only the top links, however, which is considered one of the limitations of the tool). Export the links into an Excel spreadsheet and then slice and dice the information as you’d like.

How to Find the Tool: Located under Diagnostics & Tools.

6. Inbound Links

Link Explorer is probably one of the more popular tools when it comes to BWT, so it’s certainly worth mentioning. However, according to Simmons, Inbound Links is a better tool that doesn’t have as many limitations. This tool will show you trends over time so you can really see if there is value on deep page links. You can see up to 20,000 links, as well as the anchor text used, with the ability to export.

How to Find the Tool: Located under Reports & Data.

7. Crawl Information

It’s important to remember that the Bing bots are different than the Google bots, and the crawl information tool can help give you insight. From a high level, Simmons explained that when the tool gives you the stats, you should be looking at the challenges you might have from the migration you did last year. Are your 301s still in place? Are they still driving traffic? From the 302 pages, should they be made permanent? It’s also a good idea to look at the last time your site was crawled. If it’s been a while, remember Bing likes fresh content and you may need to make some updates. Again, this information is exportable.

How to Find the Tool: Located under Reports & Data.

8. Index Explorer

Simmons said this is one of the coolest things found in BWT, one reason being that Google doesn’t really have anything like it. You can see stats for a particular page, which can be good to see based on a subdirectory or section of your site. The tool has great filters and offers an awesome visual representation of crawled and indexed pages.

How to Find the Tool: Located under Reports & Data.

Of course, there is a lot more to BWT than just the eight features listed above, including the keyword research tool, geo targeting, disavow tool (they were the first to offer this), and crawl control. Their features are very comparable to Google, they have excellent navigation and even a few extra capabilities. Simmons concluded the presentation by saying that we should really focus on BWT to make a difference.

Do you think Boggs and Simmons singled out the best tools in both GWT and BWT? Simmons will speak to attendees at SES Chicago in early November on what it takes to become a leading SEO mechanic, alongside Vizion Interactive’s Josh McCoy. Keep an eye out at SEW for coverage!

The SES agenda focuses on aligning paid, owned and earned media to help you drive quality traffic and increase conversions.

SES Chicago is coming up!Book your pass to SES London
3 keynotes, plus over 60 sessions Super Saver rate ends Nov 1

9 Ways to Prepare for a Future Without Cookie Tracking

It was over a year ago that I first wrote about do not track legislation, and luckily for most organizations the browser-provided imperative is loosely supported or regulated today, with very few sites adhering to interpretation and compliance of the preference.

For the most part, do not track legislation is often misunderstood by the general public, and even our regulators in its definition, usage, and most importantly the privacy implications and confidence it is meant to instill.

From a digital practitioner standpoint “do not track” is the least of my worries but upcoming news about Microsoft and Google pursuing cookie-less tracking capabilities indicates to me that education on how digital information is collected and shared will become even more important in the near future.

Rather than panicking, there is a lot we can do today to enact guiding principles that will likely ease a transition into tighter privacy controls in the future.

Education

One of the biggest problems facing digital marketing and analytics practitioners will be education. The industry has evolved so quickly that much of the technology that we rely on every day is likely taken for granted.

Personalization is one such area that relies on tracking, profiling, and delivering a lot of information about visitor preferences and behavior, which many of us likely take for granted.

One might argue that personalization is a byproduct of contextual advertising, and without underlying tracking technologies, wouldn't be possible to deliver.

Teasing apart a key delivery mechanism such as a session or persistent cookie will be very challenging, but explaining the importance of cookies and their usage to visitors and customers even more so.

What can you do to prepare?

1. Ensure your privacy policy is up to date and fully transparent.

2. Explain what tracking technologies are used (savvy users will know how to check for this themselves anyways).

3. What cookies are employed and for what reason.

Usage

It’s probably safe to say that aside from a few specific highly-regulated industries and regions, most digital marketing practitioners don’t spent too much time or due diligence in reviewing data usage models with third-party vendors and their technology.

Regulators focus both on collection and usage of data in these scenarios, particularly when third parties are involved because in many cases, these partners assume ownership of the data collected on your digital properties. This is the same reason why many browsers automatically block third-party cookies, to ensure data collection services and the usage of visitor information are being entrusted to the right recipients.

What can you do to prepare?

4. Explain how data collected is used.

5. Explain how disabling functionality may affect user experience or functionality.

6. Ensure correlating verbiage between your privacy policy and acceptable use policy are complementary.

Consent

In my opinion, this is where most of the opportunity is for much of North America. Very few companies actually gather consent in a clear and concise manner.

To be brutally honest, most of us think that relying on a single line radio box at the bottom of a registration page, with a link to a hundred page disclosure is acceptable. From a legal standpoint, it probably will cover you from any litigation, but from a customer experience perspective, hundreds of pages of disclosure tend to make the average Joe either uninterested or a little paranoid.

What can you do to prepare?

7. Humanize your terms and conditions. Less legalese and more transparency.

8. Separate your service level agreement and delivery conditions from your data consent.

9. Introduce ways visitors and customers can opt-into and out of technology that enables digital marketing and personalization quickly and easily.

Conclusion

Think about the steps you can take today to instill a greater confidence in your digital business and marketing efforts today. Sometimes little things go a long way to earn the respect and trust of visitors and customers, making the impact of future technology tracking capabilities or regulatory guidelines easier to transition into.

Have you done anything to prepare your website and visitors for the future of tracking and digital marketing personalization?

The SES agenda focuses on aligning paid, owned and earned media to help you drive quality traffic and increase conversions.

SES Chicago is coming up!Book your pass to SES London
3 keynotes, plus over 60 sessions Super Saver rate ends Nov 1

Seeking Broader Appeal Blekko Offers Bold New UI

In January, upstart search engine Blekko launched a specialized tablet app called Izik. The UI and overall experience were optimized for the touch-screen devices. Search results were more visual and finger friendly. Most of all, CEO Rich Skrenta stressed that Izik was leaving behind the familiar “10 blue links.” As part of the Izik launch, Blekko built an API.

Now that API, together with Blekko’s corpus of curated search categories (slashtags), form the infrastructure behind a new Izik-inspired design for the main Blekko site. This morning, Blekko is introducing a bold redesign that puts more content on a single page even as it makes the page easier to navigate.

The “old Blekko” had a more or less conventional search UI and link-centric results (immediately below). The new Blekko is much more “visual” and also uses responsive design.

Results on the new Blekko are organized into visually labeled, multi-colored categories that make it easier to quickly find the type of information being sought. This is perhaps most effective with ambiguous queries such as “Apple,” “Tesla” or “Diabetes.”

Each category can be expanded, allowing users to scroll horizontally through many more pages of results. This action is akin to users on a tablet flipping through many pages of information quickly.

This expanded-category approach enables Blekko to pack much more information into a single page of search results. Indeed, each category is effectively a SERP with potentially hundreds of results. What Blekko has effectively done is execute multiple searches and organized them on a single page to free the user from having to refine and search several times to obtain the desired information.

For comparison, below is Google’s current search results page for “Apple”:

If you compare Izik’s UI with the new Blekko you can see where the design changes came from. With this new aesthetic Blekko hopes to appeal to a broader spectrum of users.

Currently the site has roughly 12.5 million users conducting approximately five million daily searches. Blekko has raised roughly $53 million to date, including $30 million from Russian search engine Yandex.

One of the major selling points of Blekko — indeed its mission — is to create an index that is essentially free of “spam” (here defined broadly to include low-quality sites). Human editors and third-party expert curators have identified authoritative and high-quality sites in most of the major categories. Those form the basis of Blekko’s results. It’s truly a hybrid person-machine approach.

Here’s how Blekko describes what it does:

Blekko�s proprietary technology operates on a unique system that intersects our own original search index, Dynamic Inference Graph (DIG) algorithm, and editorial evaluation. Using the text from the Web stored in our datacenter, we distill the text and links down to a small semantic database, and use that database to map queries to a large list of editorially-crafted slashtags.

Blekko CEO Skrenta and I spoke about how mobile and tablet UI design in particular is influencing PC site design. There are numerous examples of this, including at Google. But while the Blekko redesign is much more than a cosmetic revamp that’s how most users will experience it.

It’s not clear to me whether the new UI will seem “different enough” to attract significant new usage. However, the company has the “runway” to continue experimenting and can afford to build its audience over time.

Meet the New AdWords Flexible Bid Strategies: When to Use Them & What's Missing

Advanced paid search management tools such as Kenshoo, Marin, Acquisio, and IgnitionOne have always provided SEM managers with advantages that AdWords just could never match. One of the key reasons agencies and advertisers chose to utilize paid search management tools was the access to advanced bid algorithms.

Announced on Inside AdWords, you now will be able to utilize flexible bidding strategies in enhanced campaigns. These bid algorithms offer significant improvement and a wide variety of options compared to enhanced CPC and conversion optimizer options that were previously available and also allow you to mix and match bid rules across campaign and ad groups.

Here's a breakdown of the bid rules now available and their potential uses.

Target Search Page Location

The blog post explains this bid rule as "Automatically tries to get your ads to the top of the page, or onto the first page of search results." Similar bid rules are available within other paid search management tools that actually may provide better results. The explanation provided by Google in this blog post specifically calls out altering your bid for the top of the page or climbing onto the first page of results.

This type of bid rule compares directly to bid to position bid rules that are available in other paid search management tools except it doesn't offer as much flexibility. Bid to position bid rules allow you to select the position you would like to target, not just the top position. This can allow you to control your position instead of just having your bid pushed up to get your ad in the top spot.

When it makes sense to use this bid algorithm: Usually one of the less used options, taking hold of the top spot can be useful for branded search queries and fighting off any pesky competitors bidding on your brand name.

Maximize Clicks

An upgraded bidding option from the old "Automatic Bidding" option, this will maximize the amount of clicks you receive within a set budget.

When it makes sense to use this bid algorithm: If you're attempting to drive as much possible traffic to your site but have a limited budget, this option will fit your goals. This is a great option for a general awareness campaign but isn't something that should be utilized for lead generation or retail.

Target CPA

An updated version of Conversion Optimizer, this bid algorithm will alter your bids to reach a CPA goal you have provided.

When it makes sense to use this bid algorithm: One of the most commonly used bid optimization rules, if you happen to have a target dollar figure you are willing to spend on advertising to convert a new customer, this is your best option. This type of bid rule is often utilized in lead generation campaigns.

Enhanced CPC

An updated version of Enhanced CPC, this option automatically adjusts your bid on the likelihood of you receiving a click. You might end up seeing Google continuously raise your bid into the top position to generate clicks.

When it makes sense to use this bid algorithm: The blog post on Google calls out "when conversions are the main objective, but you also want control over keyword bids." In essence this is a more flexible version of the Target CPA algo.

What's Still Missing?

While these options are a big improvement and may cause some agencies/advertisers to not make the investment in a paid search management tool, there are still some options that are missing.

Revenue based bid rules: Specifically catering to retail, tools like Kenshoo and Marin allow you to upload or input revenue/margins generated from sales. When you're selling multiple products that have different costs and margins, a simple CPA bid rules won't provide you with what you need.Profile based bid rules: Some paid search management tools allow you to set an overall target for your entire set of accounts. For example, if you run a lead generation company and want a 20 percent ROI across all of your engine accounts, you can set up a bid management algo that takes into account every single keyword you manage and alters bids to drive that specific ROI.

The SES agenda focuses on aligning paid, owned and earned media to help you drive quality traffic and increase conversions.

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Guest Blogging vs. Guest Posting – Imagine A World Without Links

For several months now debate has continued about the merits of guest posting, the relationship between content and links, backlinks, publishers and signature links, guest posting, and comments.

It's sad to read articles about the decline in the importance in guest blogging. It's pure drivel and the irony is not lost on many a marketer. All this does is confuse people and tie in two separate discussions that should remain independent in many ways but are, however, intrinsically tied with a black hat ribbon.

It's time to shed a little clarity on the subject in a simple format.

The Confusion

In the run up to Penguin 2.0 people have talked about two aspects of guest blogging:

Spam, backlinks, comments, and irrelevant content and outreach.Content marketing strategies and guest blogging and outreach.

We all know that Penguin 1.0 was aimed to stop people "gaming the SEO" system. As I have mentioned in several past posts we subsequently witnessed a huge shift toward content marketing. Guess what? Guest blogging became an even more important part of many a content marketing strategy.

The dark side of SEO began to cast a wider shadow over the content marketing world with an even steeper rise in blog comment spam, links, and dubious and irrelevant requests to webmasters and blog owners to consider crap guest posts.

When people talk about Penguin's evolution and discuss guest blogging and Google publisher paranoia, it's important to remember that we're talking about Point 1 above. The conversation should focus on spam and dodgy backlinks, irrelevant content marketing, and spam networks.

We aren't talking quality, consistent and relevant content on quality publications.

A World Without Links

Let's imagine for one moment that we had a world without links. Publishers went back to print material. Do you think people wouldn't write for these magazines and publications and offer thought leadership, best practice advice, and opinions? I don't think so.

Google likes good content, relevancy, and uniqueness.Google doesn't like spam, irrelevant content, spam, and dubious backlinks.

A very simplistic way to look at this, I know, but this is aimed to be a very simple post with a very simple point.

Google set up Author Rank to encourage content creators and bloggers to publish insightful, relevant, and regular content. Point 2 above.

People who write and talk about issues with guest blogging need to focus on the separate issue of low quality drivel, over linking, and spam comments and links. Point 1 above.

The Good Guest BloggerEstablished authors continue to write for quality publications.They write quality, insightful, opinionated, and timely content and do this to share experience, thoughts, and knowledge.In my opinion, an earned quality, relevant link is fine in these circumstances.The Bad Guest Blogger

Writes sporadic and irrelevant content with too many links and little substance of "off topic" themes

The Plain Ugly "Blogger"Networks and "bloggers" who aim to "game" the backlink, comment spam, and content marketing ecosystem.Their guest blogging strategy is a pure dark art linking strategy in disguise.Their outreach strategies are aggressive aimed to push irrelevant content to an audience that isn't topic targeted.Final Thought

If you're going to write a post on guest blogging and speculate about Penguin 2.0 and the challenges that publishers face, then focus on the ugly and try not to draw in the good side of guest blogging just for an over sensational headline or a spike in traffic. Don't confuse the two points above. Take links out the equation and guest posting becomes a different kind of discussion.

I decided to place no links in this post but you can share it on Google+ and share with your friends on social media channels. Feel free to comment. Oh the irony.

The SES agenda focuses on aligning paid, owned and earned media to help you drive quality traffic and increase conversions.

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The Double Serving Myth: When One Company Monopolizes PPC Ad Results

Here are two scenarios that are currently keeping many PPC advertisers up at night — maybe you’re one of them:

A parent company buys up a significant portion of the competitors in a sector, and with the backing of large budgets, �advertises each site on AdWords and Bing Ads, shutting out most of the competition.A parent company launches several brands in the same sector and advertises them all with the same keywords on AdWords and Bing Ads, shutting competition out of the auction.

Cases of one player monopolizing ad share happens more than you may realize, often devastating the once-successful paid search performance of smaller advertisers left in their wake.

But aren’t Double Serving policies written to prevent this type of monopolization from happening? It turns out, not really. Google and Microsoft’s policies don’t seem to protect smaller advertisers from either of these scenarios.

Real World Examples

Let’s look at two situations happening today:

J2 Global Communications has acquired the bulk of websites that offer online faxing services, including� eFax.com, Fax.com, MyFax.com and SmartFax.com.� The company has been accused of taking aggressive measures to crush competition. But does the company’s paid search strategy violate double serving policies?

Below are screenshots of recent search results for “online faxing” on both Google and Bing. The ads in red boxes are by sites operated by J2.

Now, here’s another example of a parent company operating and advertising sites within the same vertical. Build.com runs a network of sites including LightingDirect.com, HandleSets.com, VentingDirect.com and FaucetDirect.com. The company also owns additional sites within each of these verticals.

Below is a screenshot showing how the company can monopolize the top ad spots for a search query — in this case “faucets”. The company owns FaucetDirect.com, Build.com and Faucet.com.

On the face of it, these examples above appear to violate of Google and Bing Ads’ double-serving policies. Upon closer reading it is clear the search engines leave much to their discretion.

Bing Ads Duplicate Ads Policy

Let’s look at Bing Ads’ policy for Duplicate Ads first (emphasis mine):

To provide the best possible user experience, Microsoft reserves the right to disallow specific ads or sites for offering a redundant user experience if the search results are too homogeneous. For example, we may disallow ads that link to websites whose content is too similar.

Multiple ads from the same advertiser may be displayed if the target site for each ad has:

A separate, distinct brandA unique look and feelDifferent products or services

Notice the language does not explicitly say duplicate ads WILL be disallowed; Microsoft “reserves the right” and “may” disallow ads for sites it deems too similar. Microsoft also doesn’t mention anything about common ownership of the websites.

Looking at the bullet points in the policy: the various J2 and Build.com sites do have separate branding and all have a unique look and feel from the other sites. Bullet number three, “Different products and services”, is where things get fuzzy. Obviously, it’s in the best interest of the user to serve ads for sites offering faucets on a search for “faucets”. However, the inventory and pricing on Faucet.com and FaucetDirect.com are identical, so it seems unique branding and look and feel trump the different products stipulation.

Microsoft was quick to issue a statement when I asked for clarification. A Microsoft spokesperson said,

�We remove specific ads or sites from showing on a query when they provide a redundant consumer experience. Multiple ads from the same advertiser are allowed provided that they are marketed as a distinct experience with a unique look and feel. We do not take into account parent or affiliate company relationships, as each of these sites have unique landing pages. For example, we would not block Amazon and Zappos from bidding on the same terms, despite the fact that they share the same parent company. For more information, please see our�ad content and style guidelines.�

So it seems clear that both scenarios we’re looking at — J2 and Build.com — are not considered violations Microsoft’s Duplicate Ads policy. As long as the branding and experience are different, Microsoft most likely won’t take issue with duplicate ad serving by a parent company that either acquires competing sites or launches sites that carry the same inventory within a vertical.

Google Double Serving

Google is where the real financial impact is felt by advertisers who find themselves getting squeezed out of the auction. Google’s Double serving policy appears fairly straight forward, however, in practice it’s anything but (again, emphasis mine):

To protect the value and diversity of the ads people see on Google, we generally discourage advertisers from running ads for the same or similar businesses across multiple accounts triggered by the same or similar keywords. This policy, known as “double serving,” prevents multiple ads from the same or commonly-owned company from appearing on the same search results page.

To comply with this policy, advertisers should avoid running ads from different accounts on the same or similar keywords that point to the same or similar websites. Violations of this policy occur when multiple websites share Common Ownership … plus when two or more of the following factors are present:

Common product offering:�For physical goods being sold, the sites share products in common such that a user browsing the site would perceive little difference in inventory between the sites.Similar pricing:�When pricing is available on the sites, there’s a price difference between the sites of 25% or less for substantially the same product or service. When two or more sites solicit contact information from users in order to provide a custom quote, they will be considered to have zero price difference.Similar customer support experience:�The sites offer the same or similar type of product or service for which the customer can expect to receive the same or similar level of Support.Brand:�The sites have non-differentiated Brands for which either the brand name is the same or the logo is the same.

Again, note the lack of clear directives such as “prohibit” instead of “generally discourage” and “must” instead of “should” in the policy.

Let’s look at how our two scenarios stack up against Google’s policy:

Common Ownership, check. In both cases, J2 and Build.com are transparent in their ownership of these websites. All sites are registered to their respective parent company in WhoIs.com; the footers on each of the sites include either the logo or registered name of the parent company.

Next, Common Ownership needs to be coupled with at least two of the bullet points to indicate “Violations of this policy”.

Common Product Offerings, check. Similar pricing, check. Again, in a spot check of Pricing on the Build.com sites, the prices are identical, and the pricing on the J2 sites are within Google’s 25 percent threshold.

Bonus points for Similar Customer Support Experience is harder to pin down. It’s likely these companies have consolidated customer service teams (and this point applies to customer service, not the actual sales process) so it’s nearly impossible for Google to determine without proactively contacting the companies.

That leaves Brand as the sole differentiator among the sites and the only point for which the sites aren’t in clear violation of the policy. It seems, despite how the Google policy is written and that in these two cases at least two of the three criteria have been met, branding trumps everything.

No Clarification From Google

Unlike Microsoft, Google declined to issue a clarifying statement. This silence, more than anything, is what’s so maddening for advertisers that find themselves getting shut out of the auctions by larger parent companies. One advertiser, who declined to be named, told me that after they presented Google with their findings about the J2 ads several months ago, were told, “We’ll look into it, but you won’t know what we decide one way or the other”.

Here’s what I have learned while researching this: Google won’t provide any further clarification or comment on the double serving policy. The company leaves it to its discretion of when and how to police potential violations. If an advertiser has reported a violation and nothing is done about it, then they should interpret that as Google did not classify it as a violation and has given tacit approval.

In other words, the fact that the J2 and Build.com ads are still running means Google decided they aren’t in violation of the double serving policy. This, in turn, seems to prove that distinct branding and unique logos are the only aspects of sites that Google really considers when deciding if ads violate the Double Serving policy. And yet, even then, the policy is often not enforced.

David Veldt highlighted a number of apparent double serving violations on his Interactually blog in July. It’s still easy to find many of them. Here’s just one of his examples that I was able to replicate today.� The Terminix “offers” site is not an affiliate; both Terminix domains are registered to parent company ServiceMaster in Memphis, TN. Both landing pages have the same $50 off offer.

This is just one case that violates every bullet on Google’s policy, and yet, these ads have been running for months.

Mixed Signals Cause Even More Confusion

The reality is the double serving policies weren’t designed t0 keep parent companies from advertising their various brands and sites. They were written to keep companies (of all sizes)� from trying to cheat the system by cloning their sites or running various versions of landing pages in order to hoard all the ad spots. The real problem is Google’s Double Serving policy causes more confusion and frustration than it should, in part by the way it’s written, but in far larger part because the company seems uninterested in enforcing it with any uniformity.

Here’s one example in which the policy actually was enforced: In August, after an AdWords community contributor reported that a fairly small company was running ads for two sites — BritishFoodShop.com and BritishFood.com — Google did find it was in violation of the double serving policy. This despite the fact that the sites have different branding and design.

It begs the question, how is this situation any different than Faucet.com and FaucetDirect.com other than the size of the company buying the ads?

The advertiser that reported the violation finally got results by posting the case with screenshots on the AdWords Community forum. The complaint encapsulates what I’ve been hearing from advertisers who find themselves facing these situations:

As an Adwords user, i’m curious and frustrated when I see someone violating the double serving policy. Whats more frustrating is when we report it several times over the years, wait patiently for Google to correct the issue but nothing gets done. It makes it difficult for us to compete and drives up our advertising costs.

For whatever reason, this time the complaint was heard, acknowledged and the duplicate ads were taken down. So, if you’ve been complaining about a specific case to Google but received no word, you might try the AdWords Community Forum. If you still hear nothing, it could be time to move on and redirect some of that paid search budget to other channels.

See what marketers recommend to advertisers getting the PPC squeeze in an article on our sister site, Marketing Land:�Now What? When New Competition Suddenly Makes PPC Unprofitable

(Image by Mike Fleming and used via Creative Commons licensing.)

Google Launches Shopping Campaigns To Ease PLA Management

While Google’s switch to paid Product Listing Ads for Google Shopping has proven wildly successful, growth has likely been hindered by the fact that setting up and managing Product Listing Ad campaigns for Google Shopping has been plagued with complexity. Today, Google announced a new campaign type called Shopping Campaigns designed to� make it easier for advertisers to manage PLAs.

The key feature in Shopping campaigns is that feed data will now be visible from within AdWords, rather than being walled off in Google Merchant Center. You’ll be able to see attributes in your Google Merchant feed such as product category, product type, brand, condition, item id within AdWords.

In Shopping campaigns you’ll set up “product groups” from any of the attributes listed above and new “custom labels”, which offer a way to tag products in your feed with custom attributes such as Margin.

From the Products tab, you’ll be able to see a full list of approved products and their attributes.

Reporting for Shopping campaigns now allows you to view performance by product or product attribute. Performance metrics are associated with the actual product, rather than product group. You’ll be able to filter and segment data by your available product attributes from within your categories: As an example, “you�ll see which Apparel & Accessories categories drive the most clicks, without having to break out your clothing category into a separate product group.”

In addition to performance reporting on your own products, Shopping campaigns offer competitive benchmarks as well. From the Product Groups tab, you can add benchmark columns to see the estimated CTR and max CPC for other advertisers with similar products. These are aggregated averages, so the value of the estimates will vary. Google says impression share columns and a bid simulator (based on those aggregated averages) will be added soon.

Shopping campaigns are available to a small set of advertisers now and will be rolling out to advertisers in the US “gradually”. Global availability and API support won’t come until early next year.

Interested advertisers can fill out the form here to be contacted with more information in the coming weeks.

Google's Misogynistic Autocomplete Suggestions: Who's Responsible?

Google’s autocomplete function is a complicated matter. Scratch that. The Internet’s content as a whole is a complicated matter. Or is it the world we live in that’s complicated? Actually, it’s a little of all three. And nowhere is this more apparent than in a recent campaign by UN Women, which demonstrates perceptions held across the globe about what women should and should not do, using Google autocomplete as the catalyst. 

But what’s Google to do? Censor free speech? Well, that’s tricky. People will always hold strong beliefs offline, which will be reflected in the content that lives online. And Google isn’t going to change that without first censoring free speech.

What about suggesting something before a person has even finished typing his or her query – is that something Google should be policing?  

Should Autocomplete Exist?

Many people use Google’s autocomplete function on a regular basis and find it helpful. In fact, this study by Rosetta back in 2011 showed autocomplete was one of the most-used features in an eye tracking study.

Autocomplete suggestions are served up by an algorithm that takes into account the popularity of certain search phrases, the localion of the person searching, the freshness of the search query and a person’s previous searches. 

Marketers sometimes use the info in autocomplete to get a sense of what the majority of people are searching for when using a keyword or set of keywords. 

At face value, Google autocomplete doesn’t sound all that bad, until you start talking about important issues like the misogynistic suggestions that are surfacing and referenced in the ads UN Women put out. 

Should Google Censor Autocomplete Then?

Well, Google has and does censor autocomplete and the connected Google Instant feature (serving up results before a person hits enter) at will. There is a rumored blacklist of terms that Google won’t assist searchers in finding results for in autocomplete or in Instant. 

In fact, this website started a list back in 2010 of all the terms that trigger Google to deactivate its autocomplete and Instant feature. You can try a term yourself to see what happens.

Google states in its help files that autocomplete is monitored in some fashion: 

While we always strive to reflect the diversity of content on the web (some good, some objectionable), we also apply a narrow set of removal policies for pornography, violence, hate speech, and terms that are frequently used to find content that infringes copyrights.

The violation of copyrights is likely referring to when Google put the kibosh on autocomplete suggestions that promote piracy back in 2011. Many speculate this was due to pressure from entertainment giants.  

And then, of course, there are the countless legal battles involving Google for defamation of character in autocomplete. Individuals have sued Google in court across the globe for suggestions they want gone when people search for their name.

Take the cases in Germany, Japan, and France as examples. These prove that some countries don’t agree with Google’s autocomplete functionality in some cases, but something like this has yet to be won in the U.S., where freedom of speech is a closely guarded right.  

In fact, legal experts have speculated that Google would be protected against libel as it relates to autocomplete suits under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in the U.S., because Google itself is not making the defamatory remarks, rather it’s collecting and presenting the speech of others.

So What About These Misogynistic Suggestions?

We know Google has the ability to censor autocomplete, and does so on a case-by-case basis, so what about this latest campaign by UN Women? What should Google do about those autocomplete suggestions, and was the UN Women campaign a success?

No doubt the campaign had a powerful message that helped raise awareness. Countless people, after seeing the campaign, undoubtedly went to Google to try and replicate those results, therefore propagating the issue (since autocomplete suggestions are based in part on how many people search for something). 

Perhaps Google will take a closer look at this campaign and the autocomplete suggestions related to it because of the campaign and resulting spike in interest.

It’s worth noting that not all search results are bad if you start a statement with “women should” and ignore the autocomplete suggestions altogether, then hit enter. Case in point:

So this brings up an interesting dichotomy about what is and what could be in the search results by simply following a suggestion. 

In a 2013 study at the university level, researchers explored Google autocomplete as a tool to perpetuate negative stereotypes. From the abstract of the research paper: 

Google was interrogated by entering different combinations of question words and identity terms such as ‘why are blacks…’ in order to elicit auto-completed questions. Two thousand, six hundred and ninety questions were elicited and then categorised according to the qualities they referenced. Certain identity groups were found to attract particular stereotypes or qualities. For example, Muslims and Jewish people were linked to questions about aspects of their appearance or behaviour, while white people were linked to questions about their sexual attitudes. Gay and black identities appeared to attract higher numbers of questions that were negatively stereotyping. The article concludes by questioning the extent to which such algorithms inadvertently help to perpetuate negative stereotypes.

But there are more questions. Are people searching for the answers to these queries because they are trying to gain an understanding into another group they are not familiar with, or are they fueled by hate?

Where to Next?

It’s true, Google may be propagating hate, misunderstanding and stereotypes in its autocomplete suggestions, but it’s a complicated issue. Now that Google is the publisher of content worldwide, many people are struggling to find the answer to just how much it should police its content.

Is it realistic to think Google can play a significant part in changing perceptions around the world through its autocomplete suggestions (or lack thereof)? You decide.

Perhaps marketers have the greatest opportunity to make a change, with their knowledge of how algorithms work. Maybe it’s time we help take control of those results by putting content out there that is thought provoking and balanced for popular search queries.   

All in all, this matter creates more questions than answers, but this is for certain: we have a long way to go as human beings when it comes to understanding one another. Free speech will always be a precious right to many and as long as Google is a dominant player in the dissemination of global content, it will forever be at the heart of issues such as this.   

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