In advertising we are always talking about putting the right message, in front of the right person, at the right time. The rapidly evolving advertising technologies online allow us to get closer to this goal then ever before. When it comes to search marketing people are typing in exactly what they want, and therefore giving you as an advertiser an opportunity to capitalize on this.

Many companies take advantage of this and deliver highly tailored ads to match the search queries. The result is that people expect their ads to be targeted so when you see an advertisement that doesn’t fit with your search query, it can be quite offensive. I was researching some text ads for a campaign when I ran across a perfect example from Wal-Mart of why you should make sure that your agency is using negative keyword targeting for their search campaigns.

It would have taken 30 seconds to add “coping” as a negative keyword to prevent this from happening.

This ad represents two failures. Firstly the ad clearly shouldn’t be displayed for this search query. Secondly the ad itself has a typo, which is a minor detail given the offensive nature of the keyword it is paired with but it is yet another sign that their QA process failed.

This is particularly bad given that the company is Wal-Mart, which people are far more likely to pounce on for blunders such as this. When a person types in “coping with a death in the family” I don’t think they want to see this message from Wal-Mart, especially not at this time.

Google has had an ongoing problem with providing fresh content and until the launch of the “Freshness” algorithm earlier this week they didn’t have a solution – only a series of quick fixes.

During 9/11 when there was a massive number of searches for “world trade center” related terms nothing showed up except outdated informational pages about renting office space and tours. As a result they had to add links directly from their homepage to news sites to divert users away from using their search features.

On the more recent side of the war in Afghanistan we saw better but still flawed search results from Google when news broke about the death of Osama Bin Laden. Google began putting “Google News” in search results years ago to provide up-to-the-minute content at the top of search results that were tied to current events but this fix is only a band-aid on a larger issue.

If you look at the screenshot below (source: Search Engine Land) you will see that while Google News provided people with fresh content the actual algorithmic search results below were about the White House Correspondents Dinner and one of President Obama’s past budget speeches although the user intent was clearly focused on what had just gone down in Pakistan.

Google started to get into a bit of a rut with its search results, pushing down the actual results with Google news, Twitter updates, and other additional features to liven up the search results pages but not the actual search results themselves.

Earlier this week Google announced an actual fix to the problem of outdated content- a “freshness” algorithm update was launched on Monday building off the infrastructure established by the Google Caffeine update. Caffeine did not change the actual search results, it was a new way to collect and index information on the web.

Caffeine was designed to radically change the way that Google indexed content, giving them the ability to quickly index frequently changing content. The update that Google released on Monday is an algorithmic change that will utilize this high-speed indexing system to provide fresh search results.

What impact does this change have? It allows Google to respond to three separate scenarios where fresh content is necessary for a good user experience, impacting 35% of all search results in the process. Quoting from their announcement:

• Recent events or hot topics. For recent events or hot topics that begin trending on the web, you want to find the latest information immediately. Now when you search for current events like “occupy oakland protest”, or for the latest news about the “nba lockout”, you’ll see more high-quality pages that might only be minutes old.

• Regularly recurring events. Some events take place on a regularly recurring basis, such as annual conferences like “ICALP” or an event like the “presidential election”. Without specifying with your keywords, it’s implied that you expect to see the most recent event, and not one from 50 years ago. There are also things that recur more frequently, so now when you’re searching for the latest “NFL scores”, “dancing with the stars” results or “exxon earnings”, you’ll see the latest information.

• Frequent updates. There are also searches for information that changes often, but isn’t really a hot topic or a recurring event. For example, if you’re researching the “best slr cameras”, or you’re in the market for a new car and want “subaru impreza reviews”, you probably want the most up to date information.

This is a seismic shift in the SEO world, but it wasn’t unexpected. It has been clear for many years that Google wanted to move in this direction for those of us that were prepared the changes have provided a nice boost to organic search traffic.

Regardless of industry there are ways to provide fresh content whether it be starting a company blog, releasing a new product line, or finding some other way to engage your users.

Through this update Google has made it clear that if you don’t start paying attention to your content, you will be left behind.

Yahoo’s summary ouster of CEO Carol Bartz this past Tuesday was quite a surprise in more ways than one.  From a big picture perspective though, the news should not really come as a surprise aside from the way in which it was delivered;  Ms. Bartz was reportedly notified of her termination via phone call from Chairman Roy Bostock.

It was not long ago we wrote of the Yahoo and Bing search alliance then presided over by the newly minted Bartz, (September 2009 to be exact).  Her “vision [was to position Yahoo at] the center of people’s lives online” as well as to better address Google’s increasing search marketshare.  Her goal at the time was to shift the company’s focus to their bread and butter, content and display advertising.  The company was losing traction and focus even back then, which coincidentally precipitated shareholders’ ugly dismissal of co-founder and former CEO Jerry Yang.  Quantcast’s rough estimates show Yahoo traffic nose-diving in July 2010, but flapping and fluttering downward from as early as 2008.

Yahoo was once the big fish in the industry, but has struggled to find its identity the past several years.  Is it a technology company, a media property, a search engine, or what?  Corporate direction?  The answer to this question is always the responsibility of the CEO, and as such the failure to find it incurs the blame.  Both Jerry Yang and Carol Bartz are immensely intelligent and talented people, but both seemed unable to find the compass needed to direct Yahoo, and therefore, they failed.  Should they really take the blame though?

It certainly can be no consolation for shareholders to see existing CFO, Timothy Morse, assume the position of interim chief executive (not to take anything away from the man himself).  He will reportedly lead a team of 5 senior executives in the management of the company.  Yahoo is also considering a possible divestment of Asian holdings to right the ship.

I thought I noticed this a few days ago.  Sure enough, yesterday Google publicly announced that their organic sitelinks will undergo some modifications, and not just in appearance.  Sitelinks (both paid and organic) are valuable to searchers in helping to determine mindset, which can be a difficult task from an initial search, especially for very broad queries like brand only keywords.  To use Google’s example, if one conducts a search for “met museum”, it is impossible to predict whether or not that person seeks information on location, hours, exhibits, galleries, directions, etc.  Offering searchers multiple link results under an individual listing provides more relevance and a better user experience.

Aside from evolutionary tweaks along the way, such as columnar alignment, doubled number of sitelinks per listing, algorithm updates and increases in occurrences, more recent improvements include:

• Sitelinks are now full-sized and include a URL and one line of descriptive text (similar to regular listings)
• Sitelinks have been increased to a maximum of 12 from 8, but can vary depending on the query
• The sitelinks algorithm now combines sitelink ranking with regular result ranking to yield a higher-quality list of links. Now, all results from the top-ranked site will be nested within the first result as sitelinks, and all results from other sites will appear below them.

These modifications incent sites to pay closer attention to SEO best practices, especially when considering the amount of real estate consumed by sitelinks will increase and will offer greater exposure on the SERP.

Read more…

Mashable recently reported that Google’s Realtime search function, disabled in July due to stalled negotiations with Twitter, is planned to resurface and will include data from additional social sources as well as Google+.  Realtime Search, “Updates” on the Google SERP, delivered relevant Twitter, Facebook and other social media data streams in real time whenever major current and world events hit a boiling point.

Adding Google+ data to the results is also under serious consideration, with the Google+ Stream possibly functioning as its own search engine and real time feed, which coincidentally is Google+’s most requested feature.  This could essentially negate the need to incorporate any data outside the Google family of products (like Tweets and Facebook News Feeds).

As of July 4th, Google+’s user base was estimated at approximately 1.7 million.  Not too shabby for a site that launched less than two weeks ago;  so thinks Google’s Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt, who spoke at the Allen & Company conference in Sun Valley Idaho last week.

Google intends to use the success of the “circles” concept to fuel and shape existing properties like Buzz and Gmail, while helping to innovate new products in the pipeline, where the “assumption” is that over time, “…everything will move over to using the + infrastructure.”

Schmidt also cited the supply/demand difficulties, especially when considering the many who had invitations but were not allowed access, as being among the greatest problems currently facing the service.  But, he continues to say, “we’re reviewing it on Monday“.

…touts Google Advisor, Google’s latest foray into financial comparison websites.  Riding on the heels of Comparison Ads, the company’s successful search product offering launched in late 2009 and geared toward mortgages, Advisor “makes it easy to find financial offers from multiple providers, compare them side by side, and apply online.”  The site is a destination helping guide users through various financial decisions and making it easier to find and compare relevant offers from qualified financial institutions.

With Advisor, Google is stepping deeper into the lush and lucrative forest of financial comparison sites, already populated by the likes of Bankrate.com, LendingTree.com, and MyBankTracker.com.

Search results on Bing are about to become more socially influenced.  The struggle to maintain search share in the US and globally, against a rival the size of Google certainly keeps the MSN search engine on its toes.  Leveraging its partnership with Facebook gives Bing a leg up in many ways, and starting early this week, Bing searchers will begin seeing results which are influenced to some degree by what their Facebook friends “like” or “share”.

In a Bing Community blog post Monday, Yusuf Mehdi, Corporate VP at Microsoft commented that “today, search remains largely driven by facts and links…Research tells us that 90% of people seek advice from family and friends as part of the decision making process. This ‘Friend Effect’ is apparent in most of our decisions…”, but “…historically, search hasn’t incorporated this ‘Friend Effect’.”  Looking to change this apparent flaw in search results, Bing will begin “including personalized search results based on the opinions of friends”, simply by having users first sign into their Facebook accounts.  Tapping into the larger, “Collective IQ” will also help shape search results when “friends don’t have the right expertise or you’re not sure what you’re looking for. Search is better when it’s not just based in math and algorithms, but also infused with the opinions of people.”

It has been two weeks since Google announced it would expand Instant Preview, initially launched in November 2010 for organic search listings, to paid search ads as well.  Just doing a quick search for Instant Preview for Ads generated over 3,600 results (now plus one!)  For the unaware, IPfA presents a magnifying glass icon adjacent to the headline of a paid search ad, and upon click and subsequent mouse-over, gives users the opportunity to preview an ad’s landing page.  Searchers are able to quickly review the content of the potential landing page to see if it is relevant to their search prior to clicking.

Google asserts, and I would have to agree in theory, that this tactic will send even more qualified traffic to customer sites since users have the ability to pre-screen the result.  However, is it a stretch to assume the average searcher may not be aware of this icon’s utility?

While results, reviews and opinions continue to accumulate, some initial feedback seems focused on the SEO quality of the pending landing page.  Is there enough informative text on the displayed landing page?  Like a supermarket product label, is the displayed landing page eye-catching enough?

This new feature is a good one in many ways.  Among other reasons, it continues to push the “relevancy” proposition that Google espouses.  Advertisers must continue to make their destination pages more relevant, now not just because of the punishment of a wilting quality score, but because of a user’s ability to choose relevancy before clicking.  That being said, it would be interesting to see the relationship between icon “previews” and actual clicks.  Could that be a new metric?

Google recently launched Search Globe, a visual account of daily searches around the world using a new technology only available for certain JavaScript-enabled browsers, like Chrome.  Search Globe visualizes searches from one day, and shows the language of the majority of queries in an area in different colors.  Due to internet availability and world economies, some areas are more densely lit than others.

Search Globe is made possible by a new browser technology, WebGL, which is a cross-platform, royalty-free web standard that works with your computer’s hardware to produce fast graphics in 3D.

You can see other cool WebGL demos here.