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Just in case you thought that citizen-created journalism was going to remain on the edges, Google now has connected its powerful blog search to a sort of meme-counter to help gauge the importance of a given story.  It’ll be interesting to see how this changes the traffic picture for bloggers.

I predict that there will also be a reverse… that is, a link from Google News back to the meme count too.

The Google Suggest feature, long a part of Google labs has behavior that will feel familiar to most readers of my blog. But for the remaining millions of casual users, which Michael Jensen refers to as the “Grandma Factor“, we may see some changes in search behavior. Now, a rumor once again has emerged that we’ll soon see it on the default Google search page in the USA.

As PPC marketers we will want to remain aware of the phrases that are suggested for our “money terms” and bid accordingly. Phrase match and Exact Match will start to become more important in many cases as Suggest “structures” the queries.

According to onestat, the 10 most used numbers of word phrases compared to October 2007 in search engines on the web are here…

#Words	I predict after Suggest	June 2008	October 2007
1	less	15.52%	15.22%
2	less	33.65%	31.91%
3	much more	26.27%	27.02%
4	much more	13.81%	14.75%
5	much more	6.13%	6.49%
6	more	2.61%	2.68%
7	more	1.14%	1.12%
8	more	0.51%	0.48%
9	more	0.24%	0.22%
10	more	0.12%	0.11%

I think that Google Suggest will shift these numbers quite a bit, and with it, the need to react as search marketers.

A few other thoughts.

1. We May See More Traffic to Regional Sites. People regularly enter “cheap gas” and “best dentist” in search engines - without qualifying the searches at all. Organic results tend to send people to national portals, but suggest-driven search gets them closer to well optimized, regional sites. A search for “cheap gas” without search suggest offers gasbuddy.com at number one organic result, while a “suggested” search for “cheap gas houston” gives houstongasprices.com.
2. Google Suggest Drop Down a new micro “SERP”: Those who make their way into the suggest feature get a “better than #1″ position. For example, typing “ipod case” into Google with Suggest shows the first suggested feature as “ipod cases at Wal-Mart” - grabbing people and then offering up the organic page free from PPC ads that use “Wal-Mart” in their keywords.
3. Google Suggest Results May Change Long-Tail Search Optimization. Those of us who believe in doing long-tail marketing may find an decrease down the tail from search, and a greater need to develop segments of our site to serve those long tail queries. Searches that used to come in with two word phrases may now have 3-4 words, which helps with medium-tail optimization, but longer phrases previously further down the tail may be “clipped.” This will concentrate search terms so that Adwords bids will rise and competition increases in a sort of “cluster” effect.
4. Google Suggest SERPS offer More Impact for Trademark Blocking in PPC. If your tradename is offered in Google suggest results, and you’ve filed a trademark complaint form, the results page will be free from paid competition giving you a better shot at the traffic through organic or ppc links.
5. Google Suggest Can Improve User/Searcher Skills Forever. With Google suggest constantly popping up when you go about your daily queries, many who never really thought of keyphrases will now start to think about them. It will be a constant reinforcement of our efforts to think about how consumers search. We may have to adjust our planning to meet these enhanced skills.
6. Google Suggest Can Be an Ad-Hoc Negative Keyword Tool. There are other ways to be more comprehensive, but Google suggest can help to identify negative keywords you may want to enter in your campaigns. And I saw some negative phrases with higher index numbers that never showed up in Google keyword tools.
7. Dramatically Reduced Spelling Error Opportunity. While many of us set up adgroups to capture spelling errors, this will have a decreasing impact as people start to use the suggest feature as a live auto-correction. Typo-campaigns may get less traffic.
8. Hijacking Google Suggest May Become a SEO Technique. It may become possible to hijack Google suggest so that competitive phrases are strategically flashed to the user. For example.. if you sell “abc widget” then a suggest of “abc widget fails miserably” could be used to divert traffic.
9. Better Searches Offer Improved Analytics Information. With the user making clear choices among those available, we’ll have better information about what is enticing and engaging to the users. Vague, high volume two-word searches are always confusing when we’re looking to make decisions, and this might just help us plan better.

I think that this will have a measurable impact on how people search - possibly forever.

If you’re part of the Lexington Ad Club or just interested in the new marketing scene, I hope to see you on July 16th when I present:

Conversations, Control and Calamities - A Social Media Snapshot

From their site:
Join us on Wednesday, July 16 as guest speaker Scott Clark helps us explore the emerging world of social media marketing and find out exactly what this powerful medium looks like in our everyday business lives, and more importantly, what impact this new communication tactic will have for our customers’ overall advertising and marketing strategies.

Date: Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Location: The Signature Club of Lansdowne (enter through the front door)
Networking: 11-11:30 a.m.
Buffet Luncheon: 11:30-12 p.m.
Program: 12-1:00 p.m.

Active Members (prepaid lunch): $0
Active Members and Students: $20
Potential Members: $35

Register here.

Those of you planning to attend are invited to post comments here about topics you’re particularly interested in. My presentation slides will be posted afterward for downloading.

Pay per click advertising works best when you maintain control over your match types, negative keywords, ad rotation, and landing pages. The minute you relinquish control to broad match and other “lazy” modes of traffic, the minute your cost-per-lead/sale can go through the roof. This got worse in the Summer of 2005 when Google started making broad match into “expanded broad match” - greatly increasing the situation an ad will display by loosening restrictions — and now it sounds like things are going to go broader still. I’ve read that on May 20th Google is expanding the beta (or possibly launching) the Automatic Match system (nicknamed “Screwgle” by Paul Boutin at Vallywag) and it sounds like broad match gone amuck meant to improve Google’s profitability.

From Google:

“Automatic matching shows your ads on relevant search queries not already captured by your keywords. It works by analyzing the content of the landing pages, ads, and keywords in your ad group. It then shows your ads on search queries relevant to this information. The system will continually monitor your performance on these queries and adjust its matches accordingly. Automatic matching aims to show your ads only on queries that yield a high clickthrough rate (CTR) and a cost-per-click (CPC) comparable to or lower than your ad group’s current average CPC. This way, your ads receive additional targeted traffic at a similar cost to your current traffic. Automatic matching won’t allow your spend to exceed your budget, and it also won’t affect the traffic you’re currently receiving. In addition, automatic matching will have no impact if your campaigns already capture the majority of relevant traffic.”

I’ve not used this system ( I wasn’t in the beta ) but even just reading this email I can already list at least 9 things I dislike about it.

1. It does the equivalent of keyword research on the fly, trying out keywords to see if “they stick” based on Google’s data. This removes the human from keyword research. My experience is that 80% of keyword research is ELIMINATION of poor quality choices before you spend money on using them in your campaign. In other words, there is a lot of intuition applied based on advertiser domain knowledge and automatic match eliminates that phase. While some may think this approach is a good way to learn keywords to use, I think there are better ways, especially when they involve harvesting keyword data and then doing some smart detective work on the results.

2. The almost impossible task of creating negative keywords that will negate the constant algorithmic display of Google-chosen keywords. Think “automated embedded match without the associated automation on the negative embedded match side…. How often will you check it? How often will amateur or new advertisers? I’m guessing never. So you will very likely end up advertising for phrases where you do not offer the product being searched for - a classic waste scenario.

3. The enabling of the system by default. Many advertisers won’t know what hit them. While Google has assured everyone that this is an optional system, it would be likely that it will be turned on.

4. It further dismantles the smart idea of keyword-specific URLs and landing page parameters, not to mention dynamic keyword insertion. Caveat - I have no idea how Google will handle existing exact match and phrase match keywords - I’m assuming it will use the old rule of most-restriction-first-shown.

5. It spends your budget. All of it, on your behalf. With my clients, I prefer to ease “up” to their daily budget. That means starting with precision matches and loosening them gradually to find a sweet spot between relevance and volume. This way you don’t waste money or possibly reduce quality score while you tweak your campaigns or testing (by throttling our ads.)

6. It encourages lazy adwords management. When your ad campaigns are running, having them unattended can create an unhealthy black box between you and your pay per click. The variety of auctions, bid types and match types already has advertisers perplexed - and adding another dimension will make it worse. I really worry about “rush” and “fire and forget” Adwords solutions. They are insanely wasteful. This is why I hate turnkey PPC setup programs.

7. The only way you can see what queries are generating ads is to turn on a Search Query Performance report and watch for irrelevant queries - then create negative keywords for them as they come up, whack-a-mole-style. A never ending cycle that few advertisers will remember to do.

8. Advertisers will need to look at the special Automatic Keyword Performance data in reports to see how well these automatic matches are working and add special tags to your destination URLs for logfile analysis. This means yet another tag on the URLs.

9. Google does a pretty bad job of limiting broad match. With this already causing grief, are we really going to make things better by loosening it further? Yes, I know - some of you will say that broad match has its place in pay per click marketing. As Brent Hodgson expertly points out, perhaps that it’s a way to cast a net and capture heretofore unknown keyphrases. If you have endless funds, yes. But it’s a bit like testing newly designed bulletproof vests on real humans - it’s nice when you get it right - but when you don’t, it’s bloody expensive. I think other keyword development tools + log analysis + intuition + internal search logs make a hell of a lot more sense.

The right way to do Adwords

Take the time to grow a keyphrase list, divisions into thematic adgroups, and built up a collection of negative campaign and adgroup keyphrases that use phrase and exact match. Easing into your budget using split testing of ads and optimization of landing pages, you can eliminate broad match (conceding: except on your experimental campaigns.) This process alone can improve the conversion performance of your campaigns by a factor of three or four.

I should underscore that I’ve not used the system, but I’m very familiar with adwords and extended broad match issues. Is there a chance that the algorithmic remnant-sale system will work? I guess, but only if your Adwords campaigns were AWFUL to begin with and you’re willing to throw money to the wind and see where it lands.

Update:  Some real world data about this feature has been posted by Jim Gilbert and Mike Churchill

The expansions continue at Google Transit with the addition of several more cities.

USA

Davis, CA - Unitrans (and their wonderful double-deck buses)
Rio Vista CA - Rio Vista Delta Breeze
Lubbock TX - CitiBus

Walla Walla WA - Valley Transit and Grapevine
Los Angeles, CA - coming soon!

France:

Bordeaux, France - Tram et Bus de la CUB services 27 municipalities via over 90 lines in Aquitaine, France.

top photo: Unitrans - City of Davis, CA,
Bordeaux Tram Photo by Baptiste Lafontaine used under Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic

I was really surprised by the new study by Arbitron, called “Infinite Dial 2008: Radio’s Digital Platforms” showing 33 million Americans age 12 and older listen to web radio, a growth of 14% over 29m last year.

• Thirteen percent of Americans age 12 or older (an estimated 33 million people) listened to online radio in the past week.
• Nearly 25% of all Americans age 12 or older have a profile on a social networking Web site such as MySpace, Facebook or Linked-In, nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of online radio do.
• One-third of online radio listeners with a social network profile visit their social networking site nearly every day or several times per day
• The top social networking Web sites among online radio listeners are MySpace and the business professional networking service Linked-In.
• Twenty-eight percent of online radio listeners have a MySpace page.
• Twenty-four percent have a profile on Linked-In.

From an advertiser’s perspective, this means that social media participants, often the sneezers in social media, are listening online. While I’m not advocating interruption marketing strategies, one could make a strong case for participation in talks shows, podcasts, and other web media events held on web radio srouces.