Have you ever had to deal with a sudden significant drop in the effectiveness of your pay-per-click advertising? Usually, those types of issues are the result of a bad change with how you are bidding or possibly the failure to adapt to changes on advertising platforms. However, it could also be the result of a concentrated fraudulent effort, as the discovery of a large PPC fraud ring in May shows.
This wasn’t just an issue of click fraud, either. The newer tactic being deployed by the ring of con artists is both serious and hard to detect. Lori Weiman reported that a PPC fraud ring used a tactic called PPC ad impersonation to pose as over 300 advertisers, as well as how they were brought down.
PPC ad impersonation, also sometimes called URL Hijacking, is when a scammer impersonates an advertiser by using the advertiser’s URL as the display URL in PPC ads. But, the scammer then links the ad to the real advertiser’s site through an unauthorized link such as an affiliate link, a phising link, or a cookie-stuffing URL.
Weiman’s report shows exactly how the most recent large-scale PPC ad impersonation ring was brought down, but the issue is far from resolved. Just as with every form of fraud, there are plenty of others out there willing to fill the place of the group that was recently detected.
Normally, these types of fraud are relatively limited, only affecting about 5% of the effected advertiser’s ads, but the recent attack was so bold that between 20% to 100% of ads being shown for some large companies were fraudulent. It is a worrisome sign for the future of these types of attacks, but thankfully this one was resolved rather quickly.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2014-06-09 15:03:132020-08-08 21:55:41A PPC Fraud Ring Impersonated Over 300 Advertisers Before Getting Caught
All week we try to keep you up to date with the most important SEM news across the web, but inevitably there are smaller stories that fall through the cracks. That’s why we compile all the most important news we missed this week all in one convenient place every Friday. After a quiet week before, nearly all of the major platforms have made announcements this week. Let’s start with Google and work our way down.
Google Starts Warning Searchers About Mobile URL Redirects
Google has been warning webmasters about faulty mobile redirects for months, including suggesting they may one day start receiving penalties for sending mobile searchers to the front page of a site rather than the content relevant to their search. It appears Google has opted for another solution, which allows mobile searchers to decide if they want to proceed.
Google alerted webmasters this week that smartphone searchers will begin seeing warnings for sites with redirects that don’t take them where they want to go. An example of how these warnings will appear is above. On a Webmaster Central blog post, Google stated:
We’d like to spare users the frustration of landing on irrelevant pages and help webmasters fix the faulty redirects. Starting today in our English search results in the US, whenever we detect that smartphone users are redirected to a homepage instead of the page they asked for, we may note it below the result. If you wish to proceed to the page, you can click ‘Try Anyway.’
Google Adds World Cup Street View Tours and a Loch Ness Easter Egg
Just a week before the World Cup kicks off, Google has added street view images that will allow users to tour all 12 stadiums that will be used for the tournament. Whether you want to stand in the middle of the field and do a little spin, or preview the view from the stands, you’ll be able to give a look from anywhere within the stadiums.
Google has also added significantly more images from Brazil’s painted streets and other sites across the country, but perhaps one of the most popular finds on Google Maps this week is an Easter Egg found far away from Brazil.
If you’d rather hunt legendary monsters than watch soccer, Google Maps is able to give you directions to Loch Ness. If that isn’t enough for you however, Google says you can always catch a ride on Nessy.
If you get directions from Fort Augustus to Urquhart Castle in Google Maps, you will get the option to travel via Loch Ness Monster. You just have to click on ‘Route Options’ and then choose ‘Fewer Transfers’ or ‘Less Walking.’ Though you have to wonder how no one has managed to get a picture of Nessy while hopping a ride down the Loch.
Bing Celebrates Its 5th Birthday With Some Memories
Bing turned five earlier this week, and to celebrate it has posted a retrospective of the last five years. Bing is also offering Bing Reward credit perks to any user who searches on the site before June 9th.
The retrospective covers all of the ways Bing’s appearance has changed over the past five years, but it also covers how it has worked to achieving its initial goals of leveraging semantic search, introducing new verticals, and generally expanding how search could function in our lives.
Bing Shows Off New Dynamic Carousel For Music Video Searches
Bing has prided itself on being ahead of the curve in respect to music and music video searching and discovery, and its latest feature continues to expand on the functionality it previously offered for music video searches.
Bing has recognized that people search for music videos very differently than they do other video content. By exploring these changes in user behavior, Bing was able to determine that music video watchers wer significantly more likely to hang around and check out other content instead of moving on once they found the video they were looking for.
To give users easier access to all the music videos they may be interested, Bing has implemented instant access to an artist’s top hits as soon as you search only the artists name. Bing describe this as a dynamic carousel, because it allows you to open up songs and videos from teh carousel and play it within the same window. You will never have to keep going back and forth between choosing the video you want to watch and actually watching it.
The carousel also allows you to view all of an artist’s albums and watch the videos for those songs as well.
Pinterest Continues To Work Towards An Actual Ad Platform
Pinterest has made its intention to establish an ad platform for their social network very clear ever since it unveiled Promoted Pins. However, Pinterest is working slowly to guarantee that the ads shown on their platform won’t stick out or detract from the experience, and as such it has been very hands on and selective about who it allows to run ads.
Now, businesses of all types have been given access to a do-it-yourself Promoted Pins tool that allows them to promote their own pins to more people and increase visibility. Similar to most other social ad platforms, these will work on a cost-per-click basis through ads.pinterest.com.
Pinterest also announced they would be expanding the analytics tools offered to users, giving them more insight into who is clicking and re-Pinning your content. You can get more information from their announcement.
LinkedIn Joins The “Large Cover and Profile Photo” Club
LinkedIn announced earlier this week it would be making a major design update to user profiles, which will feel very familiar to anyone who uses Facebook, Google+, or Twitter. Currently, the layout is only available to premium users, but LinkedIn says it will be available for all users after a short period. It isn’t entirely clear why LinkedIn would stagger the rollout of this layout change, but you can add it to the list of social media sites that are beginning to look very, very similar.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2014-06-06 12:20:272014-06-06 12:20:27Quick SEM News of the Week – June 6, 2014
None of the big search engines like to talk about it, but negative SEO has been a problem for years. By Google’s admission, negative SEO has been occurring since 2007 – though they claim it is rare.
As “rare” as negative SEO may be, it has managed to cause serious problems for sits as large as Expedia, and it has been enough of an issue for Google to have to reword their own documentation on the subject.
If you’ve yet to run into any cases of negative SEO, it is a practice of using purposefully bad SEO against a competitor. For example, it is possible to point huge numbers of low-quality links towards a competitor’s site and potentially cause the competitor to be punished by Google’s Penguin algorithm. Penguin is designed to take down sites who build backlink profiles filled with low-quality links in order to cheat the search engine for high rankings.
You would think search engines would be actively trying to fight the possibility of SEO companies using their skills against competitors or former clients, but according to Search Engine Roundtable, it is only getting easier.
Barry Schwartz reported on a conversation occurring over at WebmasterWorld, where a site administrator going by Engine said “negative SEO is now much easier to do than it was prior to google’s latest updates.”
It turns out, the majority of webmasters and SEOs seem to agree. The overwhelming response to the question on WebmaserWorld agreed with Engine’s statement, and over 70% of the respondents to a poll on Search Engine Roundtable sided with those who believe negative SEO is getting easier.
Considering the latest algorithm updates from Google are receiving the majority of the blame for this trend, it isn’t particularly surprising they remain relatively mum on the issue. But, business owners have every right to be concerned. Hopefully, Google’s next big algorithm they unveil will be aimed at protecting innocent webmasters from the “black hat SEOs” who use such destructive practices.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2014-06-05 14:24:132014-06-05 14:24:13Negative SEO is Getting Easier
With each new study focusing on consumer behavior, smartphones are proven to be even more integral to our purchasing habits than many of us may realize. I think everyone is aware of the increased importance of smartphones and mobile browsing in the market, but it may still be surprising that the majority of consumers (up to 60 percent) exclusively rely on mobile for purchasing decisions within the categories of telecom, restaurants, auto, and entertainment.
Numerous analysts suggest the rise shown in the third-annual Mobile Path-to-Purchase report from xAd and Telemetrics could be partially caused by an increase in consumer satisfaction in mobile devices and tablets, both rising 2 percent from 2013. Smartphone satisfaction grew to 61 percent, with tablets increasing to 68 percent.
According to the study, the most common reasons for dissatisfaction included not enough information, slow connection, or a small screen. While website owners can’t control the size of screen their users have, they can improve the amount of information on their site, increase load speeds, and optimize their design for smaller mobile screens.
More than 40 percent of consumers cited mobile as the most important media source for information as well. Print industry continues its march towards complete irrelevance as it was called the most important source by only 5 percent of those surveyed.
The increasing relevance of smartphones in shopping habits continues, with smartphones showing a 26 percent increase from 2013, with 29 percent citing it as the most important shopping tool in 2014. A quarter of users also said they utilized mobile devices on the entire path to purchase, from research, to comparison, to conversion.
“Capturing consumer engagement points throughout the mobile path to purchase is essential to optimizing mobile ad programs to reach consumers when they are most open to options for fulfilling their purchase needs,” said Bill Dinan, president of Telmetrics.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2014-06-04 12:37:122014-06-04 12:37:12The Majority of Consumers Use Mobile Exclusively to Make Purchasing Decisions
Marketers have overwhelmingly confirmed that social media is a highly valuable target for campaigns of all shapes and sizes, but you have to be able to effectively aim your message. If your social marketing strategy is out-dated or unfocused, then it will never gain traction on any of the major social platforms.
Social Media Examiner recently released its annual Social Media Marketing Industry Report, based on surveying more than 2,800 marketers. If you want to make sure you are up to date with the state of social media and guarantee you are sending out the right message to the right people, you’ll want to know these important trends highlighted by this year’s report.
1. Blogging is Back – It should be obvious by the widespread cries of “Content is King!” over the past year, but blogging is all the rage yet again. The report shows this blogging is only going to get more popular looking forward as 68 percent of marketers said they would be increasing their blogging efforts. That is the most attention blogging has received since 2010 according to the report.
2. Facebook is Showing Its Age – Compared to the relatively short lifespans of popular social media platforms like Myspace, Facebook’s reign at the heights of social media has been extremely long. But, the report supports numerous claims over the past year that Facebook is beginning to lose users and marketers alike. Despite still being the most important social network overall, by a significant amount, only 43 percent of marketers feel their efforts are effective and 7 percent intend to decrease their use of Facebook this year.
3. Google+ is Finally Getting Some Attention – Despite still being the source of plenty of derisive jokes, Google+ is finally seeing some light on the horizon. The report explains, “While 54 percent of marketers are using Google+, 65 percent want to learn more about it and 61 percent plan on increasing Google+ activities in 2014.”
4. Is Podcasting the Next Big Thing? – Only 6 percent of marketers are currently involved in podcasting, but expect to see efforts skyrocketing soon. The report says 21 percent of marketers are planning on increasing their podcasting activities this year. Many also showed heightened interest in podcasting, with 28 percent saying they wanted to learn more.
Are you trying to stay on the cutting edge of social media? It is hard to stay ahead of the curve, but with enough effort you can corner all the new emerging platforms while keeping up with the content trends.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2014-06-02 12:48:512014-06-02 12:48:514 Important Changes in Social Media Happening Right Now
Twitter continues to grow and draw in new users, but a new report from eMarketer suggests the boom may be coming to an end. Year after year Twitter’s growth is slowing down, and it looks like the trend will continue for the foreseeable future.
As eMarketer reports in their first-ever forecast of global Twitter users, Twitter’s user base will increase by 24.4% in 2014. If this is proven true at the end of the year, it will continue the pattern that has already been taking place for the past few years. In 2015, it is predicted Twitter’s growth rate could drop to just 9%.
In 2013, Twitter grew by 30%, and 2012 saw a 50% rate of growth. The majority of recent growth has come from overseas.
If eMarketer’s estimates are correct, it would put Twitter at a total of 227.5 million users this year, and 269.9 million in 2015.
Several people have noted that these numbers are quite different from Twitter’s own reported 225 million monthly active users, which the service said it reachedlast month. The difference in the figures can be explained however by eMarketer’s decision notto include business accounts and instances of multiple accounts. As they explained:
Our figures differ from Twitter’s reported figure of 255 million monthly active users in 2013 because we rely heavily on consumer data to weed out business accounts, multiple accounts for individual users, and other sources of potential double-counting.
These numbers paint a grim picture for Twitter, who has already admitted its trouble with retaining users, especially as Wall Street becomes increasingly disappointed in Twitter’s slow user growth.
Every month, comScore releases a “U.S. Search Engine Rankings” report illustrating the market shares of the most commonly used search engines. From month to month the results have stayed largely the same for over a year, with Google taking in almost exactly two-thirds of the market and the other search engines like Bing and Yahoo slowly growing and shrinking by minuscule percentages.
ComScore’s report is widely trusted by most of the online marketing community, but recently analysts from Conductor attempted to challenge comScore’s findings with their own report claiming Google actually rakes in a significantly larger percentage of searches. They even went as far as to title their reports “Why You Shouldn’t Trust comScore’s Numbers for Search Engine Market Share.”
For such an obvious attack on another analytics firm, you would assume Conductor was publishing new information or even comparing the same factors. As Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land shows in his article reviewing Conductor’s findings however, Conductor’s findings shouldn’t be news to anyone paying attention, and they don’t disprove comScore’s findings.
The issue i that, when people hear that Google controls two-thirds of the search market many publishers assume they should see close to the same proportion of traffic coming from the search engine. Instead, most publishers see significantly more traffic from Google than their market score seemingly indicates.But, market share isn’t a measurement of the traffic sites receive.
The monthly report from comScore reflects the number of actual searches conducted from the major search engines. Most importantly, their report isn’t affected by where the user goes after clicking on a search listing. Sullivan refers to this type of measurement as “before-the-click” behavior. Every search gets counted equally, no matter what the destination is.
Conductor’s analysis instead focuses on “post-click” behavior, or the traffic publishers receive from search engines. In their report, the information that matters most is the post-click activity. If someone does a search and clicks on a link that leads them back into the search engine, it isn’t measured in Conductor’s report.
The discrepancy between these two types of reports isn’t anything new. In fact, Sullivan cites 2006 as the last time it received significant attention due to Rich Skrenta writing that Google’s “true market share” being 70% while most measurement services were estimating their market share at 40%. Most entertainingly, Sullivan’s response then still perfectly explains why a gap might form. So much changes in search on a daily basis it is always noteworthy when something manages to be admirably accurate after eight years. As Danny Sullivan wrote at the time:
“But a search for something on Yahoo Sports? That might be counted as a “search” and it is – but it’s not the type of search that would register with site-based metrics. The searcher might stay entirely inside Yahoo.”
Search engines with the largest gaps favor their own services more than others, which would suggest that Bing’s 13% gap indicates they direct searchers to their own services and platforms more than any other search engine. Surprisingly, Google appears to favor themselves the least, with a -18% gap.
Of course, there is always the possibility that this gap could be created or exacerbated by other factors that may not have been in play at the time. When Sullivan asked comScore for its opinion on the difference between its reports and Conductor’s recent study he was told mobile search could also potentially be an influence. Google has a higher share of mobile search than compared to desktop figures, and comScore’s reports only include data from desktop users.
Both reports serve their own purposes, but both also highlight the same issue. Google has a huge hold on search traffic that should be recognized and planned for. But, those who buy into Conductor’s study may be tempted to ignore the other search engines entirely. To each their own, but my opinion still favors an approach which puts the most weight in Google but doesn’t cut out the other search engines too much.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2014-05-29 13:09:482014-05-29 13:09:48Just How Much of the Market Does Google Actually Control? Making Sense of Conflicting Reports
Despite all the advances and changes in online marketing in recent years, email marketing is still one of the most valuable tools any business or marketer has at their disposal. It is so effective that up to 66% of online consumers have reported making a purchase just because of an email marketing message.
To highlight the importance of email marketing, digital marketing agency Fathom created an infographic complete with a 6 step guide to email marketing, 7 ways to improve your emails, and even a few interesting facts.
If you’ve been neglecting your email marketing in favor of social media or content creation, you’re hurting yourself as much as you are helping. The newer platforms for online marketing can be very effective and useful, but sometimes the traditional methods stay popular for a reason. Email marketing is powerful and won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. It’d be best not to cast it out before it loses its effect.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2014-05-27 12:39:312014-05-27 12:39:31Email Marketing is Still One of the Best Strategies for Marketers
With the constant stream of information coming out of the online marketing industry, it can be hard to keep up with all the latest updates without missing some important news. That’s why we compile all the biggest stories you may have missed this week all in one convenient place every Friday. This week was short on big announcements from most of the major platforms (aside from Panda 4.0), but there are still plenty of small updates you might not have heard yet.
Facebook Gives Restaurants Easy Way To Display Menus
Restaurants who are taking advantage of their Facebook profiles may have noticed a new feature yesterday, which will make it easier than ever to make their menus available to the general public. Facebook pages associated with restaurants can now upload PDF versions of their menus and display them directly in their page tabs. The feature is available worldwide within page settings.
Facebook Introduces New Default Privacy Settings and Privacy Checkup Tool
Yesterday, Facebook announced some changes to their privacy systems that are intended to raise the ease of controlling how secretive you are with what you share to their site. The most notable change is that posts are now set to only be shown to friends for new users. Previously, the default setting was Public.
Facebook is also working on rolling out a new and improved privacy checkup tool for users over the next few weeks. The tool will walk users through a series of steps to review their privacy settings ranging from who can see their posts to what apps they’ve given permissions to.
Facebook has been making efforts to improve the privacy and security of users in the past few months, including introducing Anonymous Login and making it easier for smartphone users to see which audience they are sharing with.
Google Brings Okay Google Voice Detection To Chrome on Desktops
Google announced via Google+ that Chrome, the popular web browser made by Google, that they have added the crowd-pleasing ability to say “Okay Google” to activate voice search by default from the Google search page. To set up the ability, you may have to click n advanced settings and check off “Enable ‘Ok Google’ to start a voice search.”
DuckDuckGo Relaunches With a New Look
DuckDuckGo made its name as the search engine for those want user privacy in the wake of the NSA scandal that broke open last year, but it always suffered from a rough layout that didn’t favor public usage. All that has changed as the engine relaunched earlier this week with a new look and feel, as well as tons of other new features like maps, local search, and image search.
The new layout resembles a traditional search engine much more, while still championing users privacy, and improving on existing features while they’re at it.
DuckDuckGo is using OpenStreetMap for its map system.
Image search results are shown in a carousel-style presentation by default, but you can also switch to a more familiar full-screen grid with the click of a mouse.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2014-05-23 12:08:082014-05-23 12:08:08Quick SEM News of the Week – May 23, 2014
Over the past 2 days, the SEO community has received confirmation that Google is rolling out not one, but two web spam focused algorithm updates; Panda 4.0 and Payday Loan 2.0. Panda 4.0 was confirmed by Matt Cutts on Twitter, while Search Engine Land initially announced the newest Payday Loan update which was later verified by Cutts.
Google is rolling out our Panda 4.0 update starting today.
As with any major algorithm update, there is much more speculation than there are facts at the moment. However we do know a little bit about the roll outs of the algorithm updates and what they are focused on.
Panda 4.0
Panda 4.0 is being called the ‘softer update’ in relation to its precursor thanks to a discussion back in March. It has been stated that the update affects different language queries to different extents, but Google estimates the effect on English searches is about 7.5% of queries.
Considering the reports of sites seeing significant recoveries, it is safe to assume this update is a little more generous and more welcomed than than the previous updates to Panda.
Payday Loan 2.0
The Payday Loan Algorithm is a bit less well known, as it was first launched last June and only targets ‘very spammy queries’; primarily the type of spammy queries associated with payday loans, insurance, and accident claims.
A Google Spokesperson issues a statement on the update, saying:
“Over the weekend we began rolling out a new algorithmic update. The update was neither Panda nor Penguin – it was the next generation of an algorithm that originally rolled out last summer for very spammy queries.”
So far estimates say only .2% of English queries were affected by this update, though this is also an international rollout affecting different languages to different extents.
Have you ever had to deal with a sudden significant drop in the effectiveness of your pay-per-click advertising? Usually, those types of issues are the result of a bad change with how you are bidding or possibly the failure to adapt to changes on advertising platforms. However, it could also be the result of a concentrated fraudulent effort, as the discovery of a large PPC fraud ring in May shows.
None of the big search engines like to talk about it, but negative SEO has been a problem for years. By Google’s admission, negative SEO has been occurring since 2007 – though they claim it is rare.
