By installing social extensions, all your +1′s from your Google+ Page, your AdWords ads, your website and search results will get added together and thus appear as a single total. It means that consumers will be able to view all of social recommendations outside of Google+.
Last week Google announced that it was giving AdWords customers the ability to connect their Googe+ Pages and AdWords accounts using “Social Extensions”.

By installing social extensions, all your +1′s from your Google+ Page, your AdWords ads, your website and search results will get added together and thus appear as a single total. It means that consumers will be able to view all of social recommendations outside of Google+.

Prior to the roll-out of social extensions, AdWords ads only showed +1′s when people had +1′ed the landing page relevant to that ad, which meant that there was significantly less likelihood that someone who viewed the ad also had a colleague or friend who recommended it.

With the failure of Google Buzz and the relatively recent launch of Google+, it’s no surprise that Google is pulling out all the stops to increase its “share of social”. We know that the power of social advocacy or recommendation plays a huge role in consumer decision making and Google is utilising all of its assets, particularly search and search advertising, to encourage this. In the long term, this will improve customer experience and encourage better value from advertisers.

Furthermore, it wouldn’t surprise me if Google eventually aggregates +1 data and uses it as part of its quality score algorithm as it knows that sentiment analysis is a critical factor to consider.

But in my view there’s another more political motive on Google’s part. Currently, Google+ has around 40 million users (according to Google!), something like 5% of Facebook’s user base. Whilst the demographic breakdown between both social channels is slightly different, Google still knows it has a huge task in building critical mass.

Given its massive dominance in the search marketing and online advertising space, Google wants to leverage this in favour of building critical mass around Google+. It wants to encourage AdWords customers to create Google+ pages as in the long term this will encourage better ad performance through positive social sentiment. And the by-product of this will be to increase Google+’s share of social.

Expert Opinions

We were interested to hear the views of industry experts and asked Greig Holbrook of Oban Multilingual and Matt D’Alton of Navigate Digital their opinions:

Greig Holbrook, Director of  Oban Multilingual says:

This is yet another recent example of Google shifting their focus to social metrics, try to improve the results they serve to their users. Social networks are now one of the first places that people go for recommendations on products and services, and as the Google blog post says: “71% of shoppers say that recommendations from friends and family impact their purchasing decisions”.

This aspect of their algorithm is becoming increasingly sophisticated and sentiment analysis is coming into play more and more, whereby Google can recognise good or bad reviews and rank sites accordingly.

It will be interesting now that they have started integrating +1’s and annotations into AdWords whether these good or bad reviews could begin to influence things like ad placement and quality score and leave those businesses with the worst service paying the most for their clicks.

Matt D’Alton, MD of Navigate Digital says:

In theory it all sounds like a great move from Google. It’s good for users:  rather than shoppers having to visit review sites before a potential purchase, social extensions will bring friends and family’s recommendations straight to the Google search results page.

It’s good for advertisers that have a) bothered to build a Google + page and b) have gained plenty of +1′s as this will help distinguish their ads and provide them with an extra element of credibility. Depending on the take up by advertisers there is also the potential for +1′s to influence the order in which ads are ranked.

Until now quality score in particular has been all about relevance, however friends and family recommendations could be seen as a more important factor, giving way to a different kind of quality score – “the people’s quality score”.

There is however one big ‘if’ – in order for this move to have any significant impact Google has a lot of catching up to do with Facebook. It wasn’t long ago that many offline ads contained a call to action to “search X” or “google Y” for consumers to find out more. This now seems to have been largely replaced with “visit our facebook page at facebook.com/brandname” as brands have learned the benefits of using Facebook pages to engage with their consumers.

If you’ve played around with Google Analytics advanced segments (as below), you may have noticed that some of this data is already available.

But having it so readily available in AdWords is definitely a bonus as it is far more accessible.

How does it help us?

As you can see using the above example from Google, the additional data let’s us gain further insight into user behaviour in SERPS and contributes to refining our listing position strategy.

In the above case, we can see that top Google search ads have a better CTR of 2.43% versus 1.67% for side ads. In our experience, top ads tend to have a better CTR, although this depends on the sector and the competitive landscape.

What about conversion rates and cost per conversion?

When it comes to conversion rates, sometimes we can see the opposite effect where side ads convert better despite the lower click volume (see below)

As part of a listing position strategy, you may want to experiment with your ad position to see if you can increase your campaign ROI.  You may find that lower positions give you better ROI in the long run despite attaining less clicks.

Now that Google AdWords has dropped position preference, you can modify your listing position by varying your keyword bids.

What about localised search?

If your sector is very focussed on localised search, your side ads will be dominated by the Google Place search map top right.

Given the dominance of the map, it’s even more important to monitor top versus side ad performance, especially as ads disappear underneath the floating map as you scroll.

We’ve seen the launch of the Google+ project in addition to seeing +1 buttons appear in organic search results and next to AdWords ads (if you’re logged into your Google account).

This is of huge significance to marketers as there will be countless debates about the +1 button’s impact on search rank and click through rates in addition to its persuasive effect a la social commerce.

Google also announced that Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools have added new social monitoring tools tracking the impact of +1′s, Twitter tweets, Facebook likes and other social actions on your website traffic.

Google Webmaster Tools +1 Metric

+1 Metrics in Google Webmaster Tools publishes the impact +1 buttons have had on your search performance.

The search impact report illustrates the number of +1 annotated impressions by page in addition to CTR (click through rate) with and without +1 annotated impressions.

+1 annotated impressions refer to the number of times a user saw a page in SERPS with a personalised annotation. The metrics will quickly highlight the impact of social advocacy in search results.

Google Webmaster Tools also publishes an Activity report indicating how many +1′s your individual web pages have received; and an Audience report illustrating demographic and geographic data about the people who have clicked on the +1 button on your web pages.

Google Analytics Social Tracking

As if that wasn’t enough excitement for one day, Google Analytics (the new interface) now publishes Social Engagement reports enabling marketers to see a plethora of social data such as how visitors shared your website content via social actions. This could include Google +1 button clicks, Twitter tweets, Facebook Likes and Del.icio.us bookmarks.

This is a welcome addition to Google Analytics and not surprising as Google seriously ramps up its social offerings.

It’s a bit like Google Trends or Google Insights for Search in reverse where users can enter a query and receive search trends by time and location. With Google Correlate, users enter data and get back a list of search queries which follow a similar pattern. Hence the name Google Correlate. Clever eh!

If you’d prefer, you can even upload your own data or draw your own line chart and Google Correlate will try to publish the same correlation search data as your own. But that’s for later.

Keyword research for search marketers

So I’m a keen cyclist and I wanted to know what correlation data existed around the search term “cycling”. Google found the following correlations after entering “cycling”.

The results may not be particularly surprising in this instance as search terms like “road biking” and “road bicycle” are obvious synonyms of cycling. But nonetheless, this is useful when carrying out keyword research for your search marketing activity.

And it’s one step up from the Google Keyword Tool we all know and love.

Google Correlate will also output either a line chart or a pretty cool scatter plot showing correlations by time (which you can zoom in on by selecting a time period):

If you want a better understanding of correlation data by region (currently US only), Google Correlate will accommodate:

Interestingly, in this instance, Google Correlate chose to correlate cycling with cycling clothing regionally, possibly due to climate differences across the US.

Draw your own line chart and find correlation data…

Turning Google Correlation in reverse, you can draw your own line chart and Google Correlate will find correlation data that matches. This took some attempts on my part and eventually I came up with the following results from my drawn series.

Not a bad tool amidst a dizzying week of announcements including the launch of  the Twitter “follow” and Google +1 buttons. But that’s for another blog post…

Or have you ever wondered whether your campaign performance was losing you ad impressions; and if so how to calculate how many impressions you were indeed losing?

Impression share metrics

The answer to this conundrum is in Google AdWords impression share metrics illustrated below. The 3 columns highlighted in red are the secret to understanding how to claim your lost AdWords impressions.

Let’s explain the meaning of these columns further:

Lost IS (Rank)

Lost IS (Rank) is defined by Google as follows:

The percentage of impressions that wasn’t received by your ad due to low ad rank. You can improve your ad rank by increasing your bid for keywords in your campaign or by improving your ad quality.

So clearly we are looking for as low a score as possible, indicating that our campaign performance is running optimally. A score of 50-85%+ indicates that much improvement can be made to the campaign in order to increase the number of possible ad impressions.

Lost IS (Budget)

This metric is more straightforward and is defined by Google as follows:

The percentage of impressions that wasn’t received by your ad in the Search Network due to insufficient budget. Consider increasing your budget to capture this missed potential.

If your Lost IS (budget) is running at 0% then you have maxed out your budget and exhausted possibilities of receiving more impressions by increasing your budget.

For those with deep pockets, a 0% Lost IS (budget) can be a frustrating situation as it requires you to look at other avenues for improving your AdWords campaign performance other than budget.

A much higher Lost IS (budget) on the other hand, would imply that you have more opportunities for impressions if you were to increase your budget. Ironically, this can be an advantageous position to be in!

Impression share

Finally, impression share is defined by Google as follows:

The percentage of impressions where your ads were shown out of the total available impressions in the market that you were targeting.

Clearly, what we want is as high a % as possible, indicating that we are making use of as many potential impressions as are available for our keyword bids.

How do I get this data?

When you look at your campaign metrics these columns aren’t always visible. To add them to your campaign data, click on the “Columns” button and select the “Competitive metrics” as highlighted below.

If anyone has Lost IS (rank): 0%, Lost IS (budget): 0% and Impression Share: 100%, we’d love to hear from you!

When it comes to demographic targeting, Facebook is leaving the major search and social networks in its wake.

With the Google Display Network offering a mix of gender and age within its contextual advertising environment, and LinkedIn targeting ads by profile data, Facebook still reigns supreme.

So the question is why? Enter the concept of the social synonym.

Facebook is widening the goal posts

While publishers are deploying some pretty cool behavioural targeting, Facebook is widening the goal posts in its reach and sophistication. Reach doesn’t just refer to the audiences you can target, but also the fact that media agencies can be dis-intermediated paving the way for direct advertisers.

At this point in time, Facebook advertising is not a threat to Google AdWords which offers a supremely clever quality based keyword bidding system (far more sophisticated than the competition at Binghoo!). However, Yahoo has admitted that Facebook is a bigger rival for them than Google, and its only a matter of time when Facebook advertising will be on a level playing field with Google.

When it comes to demographic targeting, Facebook offers advertisers a tastier selection of demographic and social filters that can improve ROI by exposing ads only to the most relevant audience.

Facebook allows advertisers to target audiences by:

• Age (range, exact match and birthdays)
• Gender
• Location (country, city or a distance around a city)
• Likes & interests
• Connections or friends of connections
• Relationships/Interest in
• Workplaces
• Education
• Groups and pages subscribed to
• Language

Some examples…

I spent that last hour having some fun testing Facebook’s demographic targeting.

If I’m an etailer targeting women in Manchester (UK) who love gardening, I have a healthy target group who will click on my ads.

If I’m a recruiter looking for a Chinese speaking accountant or financial officer, my target group size may be small, but at least I wont receive unwanted clicks. In the world of pay-per-click, small is beautiful.

If I’m targeting journalists who happen to work at the BBC (our SEO copywriting course springs to mind!), I can clearly define my demographic by company as well as interest.

Social Synonyms

The concept of social synonyms and Facebook’s demographic targeting was neatly summed up by Aimclear’s charismatic chief exec Marty Weintraub who I had the privilege of meeting last year.

So if I’m Mothercare, on Google AdWords I may well be bidding for “kids clothes” or similar, but on Facebook, I’ll target all women whose likes include “I love my daughter” – a social synonym.

If my Facebook like happens to include dolphin-friendly tuna, I’ll be targeted by Body Shop or similar. Again, the concept of the social synonym.

End of the traditional advertising model?

The venerated CPM display advertising model that targets audiences by content, geography, context or behaviour is not going to disappear in the foreseeable future.  But advertisers cannot ignore the rise of social advertising. Facebook is allowing advertisers to choose another channel that doesn’t involve traditional display ad targeting, nor does it involve keyword bidding seen within search networks.

It is offering a more subtle approach to targeting, that has not only shifted the goal posts, but has done so within the fastest growing social media environment we have seen to date.

I was looking to buy some cycling shoes yesterday and searched for “shimano shoes” on my favourite cycling website.

What I saw in Google SERPS was an AdWords “plusbox” ad – a relative newcomer that lives under the banner of Google AdWords Product Extensions.

The AdWords Product Extensions feature lets advertisers showcase certain products that they have uploaded to Google’s Merchant Center.

In short, when a searcher’s query matches a product contained in your Google Merchant account, your AdWords ad will display Product Extensions that relate to that search. This new format known as a “plusbox ad” may show the title, price and image of the closest matching product beneath the ad.

Bear in mind product extensions will only appear on the Google Search Network and not other Search Network websites or the Display Network (formerly known as the Content Network).

Advertisers can easily activate this feature in their AdWords campaign settings by selecting the Ad Extensions tab and then choosing Product Extensions as illustrated below.

In terms of reporting, only “aggregate statistics” for the linked Google Merchant account is available. Performance data for each individual product is not currently available.

Time will only tell whether this feature comes into its own, but we recommend you try it nonetheless.

In the last couple of weeks, Google has tacitly launched Google Instant, an enhancement to the Google SERPS user interface where the SERP updates dynamically to show results as the user types search terms.

The effect is that searchers will see results more quickly than before (where searchers would have traditionally either clicked the search button or the “enter” key).

Currently, Google Instant is only available to Google account holders, but no doubt it’ll be rolled out across all users in time.

The question on the lips of digital marketers is: how will Google Instant affect SEO and PPC performance. The possible effects on metrics and measurement, brand and content strategy need to be taken into consideration.

Impression metrics according to Google

Let’s just talk about metrics first. According to Google, they will only record an impression in the following situations:

• The user begins to type a query and then clicks anywhere on the page
• The user chooses a particular query by clicking the Search button, pressing Enter or selecting one of the predicted queries
• The user stops typing and the results are displayed for a minimum of three  seconds

PPC Performance

1. Impact on Quality Score

From a Google AdWords performance perspective, Google’s definition of an impression should in theory mean that Quality Score wont be negatively affected on the occasions where searchers change their search term rapidly. However, the question begs, how many of us dwell for longer than 3 seconds when searching; or click “enter” or the search button by default? And will the effect of Google Instant change our behaviour requiring us to search less than before?

2. Listing position strategy – which position will perform best?

Aside from Quality Score implications, my feeling is that the first three ads (appearing in the box directly above the organic results) will most likely get more attention than they may have had in the past. This could mean that traditional ad positions such as 4 and 5 – that were often cited as the most efficient in terms of CTR and conversion rate – may lose their popularity in favour of ad positions 1 – 3. Only time will tell!

If this is the case, our keyword CPCs will need to increase – or respective keyword Quality Score will need to increase to improve our listing position.

SEO Performance

1. More impressions – lower CTR

The first thing that springs to mind is, will I get more impressions as the number of SERPS presented to searchers increases. The answer is most likely, yes. 

Google has kindly illustrated this as we can see on the left.

But what about SERP click-through rates (CTR)?

If we see a drop in CTR for each of our keyphrases, this could impact on our SEO performance. Again, back to Google’s definition of an impression: if searchers don’t click on the screen, refresh their query before 3 seconds is up, or don’t click “enter” or “search”, then in theory no impression will be recorded.

But given that even Google estimate impressions will increase, the chances are strong that CTRs will indeed decrease.

Once again, time will tell.

2. The decline of the long tail?

As searchers type in search terms, the dynamic and instant results are likely to prevent us from searching long tail. Not only does the screen distract us, but the constant nature of being spoon-fed results may well make us less interested in long tail searches.

If this is the case, we may need to rethink our content strategy and focus more on the first two or three words in a phrase as opposed to qualifiers that make up long tail phrases.

As Microsoft pointed out with the launch of Bing, only one query in four is successful and hits the nail on the head first time round; this may well be set to change as Google Instant gives us more instant feedback.

3. Bigger brands will benefit

What about the brand effect with Google Instant?

Many SEO consultants have already hinted that big brands that are more likely to rank well with single short tail search terms – branded or not – will get more exposure. So, whether I’m searching for “apple” or “hotels”, the bigger brands with the higher search rank will receive impressions as the searcher types the initial part of a search term.

Furthermore, even if searchers do make it to a long tail search term, the top half of the SERP – often dominated by bigger brands – is likely to receive even more attention.

The IAB has just released their 2010 search marketing barometer which makes for essential reading if you operate in the digital marketing or search engine marketing arenas.

A total of 144 questionnaires were completed by 91 top brand (chosen as they are were the top advertising spenders for April/May this year).

A summary of the IAB findings are as follows:

1. Integration opportunity – only 28.7% of advertisers said search is fully integrated with the rest of the marketing mix, yet 99% said there is a greater opportunity to integrate and 100% of Search Council agencies felt all of their clients could do more to integrate.
2. Brand building – 78% respondents said search can build brand either directly or as part of the full user journey, reflected by actual use. 70% include brand building as a primary objective of SEO and over 50% for PPC.
3. Budget – 99% of SEO budgets and 90% of PPC budgets will stay the same or increase in 2010 (55% and 43% increase respectively).
4. PPC Activity – Only 14% of respondents DON’T employ a PPC agency; and 72% of respondents are restricted by their PPC budgets.
5. Website effectiveness – only 37% of websites are ‘good’ at achieving objectives, leaving much room for improvement once consumers reach their destination.
6. Advanced testing – 19.4% of respondents carry out A/B testing with 5% carrying out MVT (multi-variate testing); 35% carry out both. 39% of respondents do not carry out testing – so clearly there’s room for improvement.
7. Strong understanding of search? – the majority of respondent claim to understand the main principles of SEO and PPC (only 38.6% feel teams outside of digital also understand the importance of search); but few have enough information about new or advanced tools and data. This would indicate that knowledge is not being filtered to all levels, which is also hindered by an ever changing IT landscape.
8. Efficiency of search – cost, value and resource are clear concerns at the moment, indicating a shift in advertiser attitudes to search where reviewing and optimising activity is currently of greater importance.
9. Finding skills – 37% of respondents said they found it hard to find staff with skills in search marketing; and search qualifications were considered unimportant for 53%.
10. Social Media and mobile – 39% of respondents believe social media will be more important than search in 2015; 49% believe mobile search will overtake desktop search by 2015.

With the Google content network reaching more than 80% of Internet users and serving more than 6 billion ad impressions per day, as an advertiser you’d want to know what kind of CPA (cost per acquisition) performance you’re likely to get compared with the search network.

The report published by Google in November 2008 was based on results from 25000 Google AdWords accounts with a statistically measurable number of conversions (tracked using Google AdWords) over a 12 month period.
A summary of the findings were as follows:

1. Ads published on the Google Content Network are likely to be as cost-effective – or possibly even more cost-effective – than ads appearing on the search network. Half of the advertisers had a content network CPA at least 2.6% lower than their average found on the search network.
2. The Content Network accounts for around 20% share of total conversions.
3. Conversion rates tended to be improved when advertisers used either of the two available campaign management controls namely:
   1. the Conversion Optimizer and 2. site exclusion.

Take what you will from the findings! Contributors to the various digital forums such as Webmaster World have inevitably raised eyebrows as to the validity or accuracy of these findings, as many PPC experts consider the content network to yield little in the way of useful CTR or conversion metrics.

I am also rather sceptical of the results not necessarily because they may be inaccurate, but because I tend to find that the vast majority of AdWords advertisers have little experience of the content network.

These advertisers tend either to leave the content network active (accidentally in most cases) or have made little attempt to target their content network campaigns using site exclusions, negative keywords, placement targeting and the interpretation of reports.

If you’re interested, the full report can be read at: http://www.google.com/ads/research/gcnwhitepaper/#utm_source=fyiagencynews&utm_medium=blog