Its possible that with AI and big data, that banner ads could soon perform better than search ads. my only concern is “privacy” advocates that have attacked the remarketing technique. all remarketing does is give a business the ability to “tag” a person and be able to serve banner ads to them. AI and big data do a lot more. it gives you the ability to track which websites a person has gone on to figure out if theyre a good match to serve banner ads too. im not sure if the public is going to be cool with that.
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November 13, 2016
Go to google and do a search for “king of the united states”. and you’ll see “barack obama” in google’s answer box. its a tricky situation that google has with their answer box when it comes to polarizing subjects, such as politics. the newest controversy in our industry is democrats being upset that if you do a search california’s prop 63, a republican answer shows up in the answer box. my guess is that google’s algorithm is going to have to figure out which websites have content that is political and provide a democrat answer and a republican answer. this could also be done when it comes to questions such as the origin of earth. you could have a religious answer and an atheist answer. (disclosure: search engine land, like many in the tech industry, writes from a democrat perspective)
Direct answer fail: Google gives only one side of proposed gun ammo & magazine law
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November 13, 2016
Its possible there could come a time when malls are filled with only restaurants. even for clothing stores where people are trying clothes on then buying for less online.
US Department Store Sales Are Declining Ecommerce sales are on an upward trajectory
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November 13, 2016
I predict within the next 1-2 years, small businesses will get more text messages from potential customers than phone calls and emails. as such, google is about to launch an extension that allows potential customers to text businesses directly right off of google.
Google AdWords click-to-text message extension is coming out of beta
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November 13, 2016
not cool yahoo. advertisers will frown upon this when they become aware. i want to advertise with you so google doesnt acquire a complete monopoly. but shortcuts like this dont help anybody.
Yahoo is using display ads to drive search traffic for competitive terms
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November 13, 2016
and to think. the dominant search engine in the world could have been “excite”. brin and page wanted to sell google for $1 million. excite ceo george bell talked them down to $750k. but bell still got cold feet and walked away. Click link below for the story.
When Google Wanted To Sell To Excite For Under $1 Million — And They Passed
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July 31, 2016
There’s a lot of people excited about RLSA (remarketing lists for search ads).
But unless you’re a bigger company with a big remarketing list already, it’s something that will take awhile before you can really take advantage of it.
For small business, remarketing works way better with banner ads than search ads.
Why? All the people that go on your website and then are tagged are way more likely to be going on various websites within Google’s display network, than your tagged people will be to go to Google and search for a keyword on your list.
That means way more inventory for remarketing with banner ads than search ads. Which means the cost and effectiveness are way better for banner ads.
In order for remarketing lists for search ads to be effective, you need to have lots and lots of people on your remarketing list. Like at least a couple thousand people.
Otherwise, you’ll get RLSA set up and be wondering why it’s not working.
Just wanted to pump the brakes for people reading up on it and thinking it’s going to work right away like some writers make it seem like.
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July 31, 2016
There’s a big problem with banner ads right now, when it comes to trying to get leads.
The problem? Accidental clicks. But especially on mobile devices.
I don’t have evidence, but my very educated guess is that a majority of clicks on banner ads with mobile devices is accidental.
And that’s the number one reason right now that if you use banner ads to try and get sales leads, you’re not getting them. The clicks you’re paying for are not legit.
When I use banner ads, it’s only for branding purposes. I pay CPM (cost per 1,000 views), so when the accidental clicks happen, it doesn’t hurt the campaign.
I’d bet the only businesses that pay per click with banner ads are either giant companies looking to get as many clicks as possible and have giant budgets so they don’t care if there’s some junk mixed with their ad spend. Or businesses that don’t know what they’re doing (either people that think banner ads get leads or people that don’t know how to opt out of the banner ad network).
Why does this keep happening? Because publishers (websites that sell ads), in a lot of cases get paid by the click and they want the accidental clicks to happen because they make more money. A lot of publishers purposefully try and place the ads on their websites in a way where a lot of people will accidentally click them.
The search engines, namely Google (cause Bing and Yahoo copy what Google does), needs to crack down on this because banner ads should be more effective than they are.
Banner ads will never reach their full potential until the publishers are unable to do this.
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July 24, 2016
Yeah. I think we’re near the end of link building as a means to SEO. I think it’s going obsolete.
Why? Because of the rise of mobile.
Close to 60% of all people access the internet from a mobile device, while close to 40% access it from a desktop computer. I predict in the next few years, we could get to mobile 70%-75% and desktop 25%-20%.
Now what’s hard to do on mobile? Linking to a website to share content. Linking on mobile can be done but it’s difficult and I’d imagine most consumers don’t do it.
What we could have in the next few years instead of link building is “share building”. In other words, try to get people to “share” websites. Probably, mostly through social media.
The whole reason why Google rates links so highly in determining SEO rankings is because a link represents the user is vouching for the content. A share does the same thing.
My prediction on how to position yourself best for our mobile future is to write great, unique content and get it to go as viral and shared as possible.
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July 24, 2016
Just got a bad review for your business?
Good. As long as you’re not getting too many of them, it will help you.
Have a lost my mind? Nope! Not yet.
The situation is that consumers are not stupid. They’re interested in seeing business reviews but they’re skeptical. A recent study from Northwestern University shows this.
Lots of businesses or people they hire will try and create fake reviews, all 5 stars to make themselves look good.
The truth is that you can’t get everybody to like you. Not even God can get everybody to like Him, so there’s not much point in the rest of us trying.
My premise here is that a couple of negative reviews can make the rest of your positive reviews authentic.
Obviously, the big caveat is that you have a have a lot of positive reviews for the negative reviews to be a good thing.
The thing I recommend to businesses is to have your website link to all the major review websites out there: Yelp, Google reviews, Angie’s List, Yellow Pages reviews, etc. Make it as easy as possible for customers to leave reviews.
I’d argue that having 8 good reviews and 2 bad reviews would be stronger than 10 good reviews and 0 negative reviews.
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