Why to be great at PPC you have to be good at SEO
Google’s Quality Score is forcing paid search advertisers to adopt joined up thinking in PPC campaigns, writes Andrew Girdwood.
Feature filtering - what is it and why do you need it?
Providing effective feature filtering - allowing users to narrow search results and / or navigate through a website by selecting multiple product features - can make a big difference to customer experience.
Many people will only use the search option on an e-commerce site as a last resort, and most prefer to navigate through a site using links, because this requires less mental effort.
All in one search engine launches in the UK
WebFetch is a search engine which claims to give its users the 'best search results available on the web' by combining search results from the major search engines.
WebFetch's search results can be displayed by relevance or by search engine, though you need to scroll down the page for organic results if you display Google and Yahoo results.
Travelocity bets ad budget on brand search
Brand names function better as search marketing keywords than non-branded terms, according to a study conducted by online travel agency Travelocity.
The company found that only 4% of its bookings came from ads bought on un-branded search terms, suggesting Travelocity's own brand name is responsible for 96% of its business.
DIY: How to marry your marketing and tech teams
How can you get the marketing team back in control of the business done on the website? And do marketing teams and tech teams have to act like its the battle of the sexes? Not if both sides can share the DIY...
comScore metrics re-jigged to acknowledge AJAX
Web stats auditor comScore has introduced a new 'visits' metric to augment its 'page views' tracking after conceding its previous system unfairly represented Yahoo!
Yahoo! protested in December after comScore data placed it behind MySpace for pages viewed. Yahoo!'s increasing use of AJAX means users create fewer page views because tasks can be completed without reloading pages.
Google redefines ROI, misleads marketers
Lots and lots of people use Google AdWords, and have more recently layered Google Analytics over the top. But the search giant has confused these users by re-defining a well-defined business metric: 'ROI'.
This has led to confusion within companies - and at worst, caused Google AdWords users to think their campaigns are more profitable than they are, and thus pump more money into Google while decreasing their own business' profitability.
So has Google 'done evil' this time?
The pros and cons of gift vouchers and wishlists
A study by Jakob Nielsen has shown that many etailers are failing to realise the potential of wishlists and gift vouchers.
The report, called E-commerce User Experience: Wishlists, Gift Certificates, and Gift Giving in E-Commerce, found that, despite highlighting usability issues, certificates and wishlists are excellent ways to attract visitors to a site.
Microsoft tests Google Analytics rival
Microsoft is due to release web metrics software that is expected to become a challenger to Google Analytics.The company last night confirmed it was running a closed 'alpha' test phase for a "very limited' number of our existing customers".
'360-degree' view of site metrics
Feed management service Feedburner has rolled out a new website statistics package following its acquisition of blog tracking service BlogBeat.While Feedburner previously only offered metrics on subscribers' RSS feeds and clicks to corresponding pages on the main site, the integration of the new features allows publishers to tackle the thorny problem of marrying stats for both web and feed views.
Social media: the best and worst of 2009
Email marketing: six steps to improving customer engagement in 2010
Web 2.0
Graham Charlton
Strategy & Planning
