Bad news. Good news?

Every August or September, Google seem to enjoy shaking everything around a little.*

In the last few weeks there has been a significant change to their organic search results algorithm – which basically means that a single domain can be returned multiple times for a keyword search on the first page. Malcolm Coles wrote about this last week.

And then at the top of the search engine result pages (or SERPs, if you speak in acronyms), there will be an equally severe adjustment in their paid search policy. Basically, Google used to protect brands by forbidding advertisers to use trademarked terms within their ad copies. Not anymore. From 14 September, resellers in the UK, Ireland and Canada will be able to use brand terms (iPhone, Easyjet, Nike and so on) in their adverts, pushing up their quality score, bringing down CPCs (costs per click) and generally making the whole thing much more competitive. There is a Net Media Planet blog on this (disclaimer – I work there) – if you want a little more detail.

Treated separately, both of these stories are interesting, newsworthy and will have consequences for advertisers and site traffic. Taken together, they add up to something of a little more.

Control of their trademarks gone, brands will lose out to resellers in the paid search listings. But if they do see their amount of paid search traffic drop, though, they will have the opportunity to claw it back by dominating the organic results. Google have taken with one hand and given back with the other.

Some thoughts:

• Paid search on profitable keywords/brands will become much more competitive and brands might well see sales impacted
• SEO Managers working for big brands will have the opportunity to dominate the first page of the organic search results for important keywords
• The user search experience might be affected. I suspect Google anticipate that the paid search results will compensate for the lack of variety further down the page. Will it?

So, these are a few of the changes to look forward to in the next few months. I’m sure that SEO’s will already be finding ways around these changes (they always do).

And, in the meantime, here’s a video about what might be coming next. I’m not quite sure what to make of it.

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* Of course, Google is always changing, fiddling, tweaking and rattling about their algorithms. At certain times, though, their changes are more significant. See this article on their recent Mayday Change, and another on the famous Florida Update, back in the day.

Image Credit: Hans S on Flickr

Nick Griffin and the lost and found

By now Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time has been well dissected.

I’m not going to add much to what has already been said aside from agreeing with the Times, who borrowed a nice descriptive line from P.G. Wodehouse, comparing the BNP leader to Roderick Spode, Bertie Wooster’s nemesis and all-round pantomime villain.

Or, as Wodehouse said:

‘Big chap… with the sort of eye that can open an oyster at sixty paces.’ [link to article]

But from a search perspective, the case is worth examining a little more closely.

Ever since Obama’s beautifully executed digital strategy prised open the doors of the White House, commentators have been speculating about the effect the Internet will have on the next British General Election, which is at the very most only 195 days away.

Some already seem to be suggesting that it will be the Facebook election and swung by social media.

And (interestingly) just this week Charlie Beckett speculated that guerrilla videos might have an impact.

But nobody has said very much about search, especially paid search.

Paid Search and Keywords

For those of you that don’t know, paid search refers to the paid for adverts (referred to as sponsored links) that appear at the top (known as the blue bar) or to the right hand side of the search results.

Paid search rankings are secured by bidding on certain keywords in the Google Adwords Platform. Traditionally they have been most used by advertisers who have used paid search (or ppc/paid per click) to boost their online sales and increase brand awareness.

Political parties should (and will) start to use paid search in the same way very soon.

By ranking at the top of Google’s search results for desired keyword terms, a party, a company or an individual can control their digital footprint far more closely.

Let’s take an example from 22 April this year.

Here you can see that three people are bidding on the keyword term “budget 2009”. The first is direct.gov an information site run by the government who are hoping to increase awareness of their site.

Secondly we have the Conservatives. Budget day is obviously important for them and they have put in place a paid search strategy to direct the maximum amount of traffic to their website.

Thirdly we have some clever marketing by Anne Summers, who drily advise searchers that: ‘There is no recession in pleasure.’ Very nicely done.

It is a useful case study that shows how a political keyword term can be integrated into a paid search campaign.

Throughout the conference season last month, all the major parties missed opportunities in paid search. Off the top of my head, here are some keywords which might have been useful to marketing strategists at Conservative, Labour or Lib Dem HQ:

“gordon brown speech”

“labour party conference”

“tory party conference”

None of these were picked up on. For parties that are desperate to get their message out, it must be viewed as an opportunity missed.

Now we come to Nick Griffin. His appearance on Question Time has undoubtedly been one of the political events of the month, and it has been particularly keenly watched online: followed on Twitter and analysed in the blogs.

Here are Google Insights into searches for the keyword term “Nick Griffin” over the last seven days:

And if you click here you can see the rising number of Delicious bookmarks that have been saved under “nickgriffin”.

So last night it was interesting (and thank you to @matthewncube for pointing this out) that Channel 4 had opted to bid on the ‘nick griffin’ keyword. Here is what their advert looked like:

By appearing alone at the top of the Google search results for one of the most popular keyword terms on the Internet, Channel 4 might have doubled or tripled their site traffic.

Along with social and traditional media and SEO, paid search marketing has a role to play in the construction of a truly holistic digital strategy. So far we have seen political parties (or perhaps just the Conservatives) dipping their toes into Adwords, but their attempts so far can only be described as a scattergun approach.

Paid search has the potential to make an enormous difference. Already this year Jason Calacanis has called it the most important industry of the twenty first century. For a quick visual indication of the difference that it can make to a website’s traffic, have a look at what happened to Spiralfrog on Flickr.

It’s possible to carefully study and collect keywords, to manage and monitor huge campaigns that include short and long tail terms as well as other misspellings and oddities. With such campaigns set up, the parties could increase the number of visitors that come to their websites (the centre of any digital hub) and they could also reinforce their message on the search results – over and over and over again.

The question is this: do any of the major parties have the ability to do this in time?

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image credit: the G on Flickr
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Update: Martin Belam has written a post on this subject. It’s good for further perspective.

Thanks to @matthewncube for pointing this one out to me. Three people are bidding on the UK adwords platform for keywords related with today’s budget. Nice to see the Conseravtives in the digital bed with Anne Summers. Full picture here.