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Doing a quick search on Google this morning lead me to realise that at some point since yesterday, Google had enabled Realtime Search on my account. Upon experimenting with the new feature, it raised a few questions for me in relation to PPC.
Let me explain; As an example, If I were to search for “Cheap Car Insurance For Women” Google appears to run a search on each of these steps, including the initial phrase “cheap”.
Thomas Cook are currently bidding on that very generic term - this would be a reasonable term to display results against, if I was actually searching for “cheap holiday” phrases - it would be the first advert I see and I may very well click on it.
As I have discussed, this was not my intention at all, I actually want to search for a far more specific longer tail search term. As I carry on with “Cheap Car Insurance” it would seem that GoCompare have had an impression against their ad which I have no intention of clicking on.
I finally finish typing my search and have seen Aviva at the top of the paid search results.
The real questions that this raises for me are:
Throw your thoughts in the comment hat…
Michael is an Online Marketing Executive in Coast Digital’s Online Marketing team. His work combines SEO, PPC and he takes a keen interest in social networking trends.
He joined the team fresh out of University, where he completed a degree in Computer Science. He is currently working with various B2B and B2C clients in many diverse verticals.
Michael is extremely passionate about online marketing and is always keen to expand his knowledge and refine his skills in relation to web analytics and PPC account optimisation, as well as stay on top of all the latest practices and developments in the industry.
(4) comments
Comments
Michael, good point - the flip side of the coin i suppose. And yes i agree, i heard about the 3 second rule, and i've noticed if you watch and wait 3 seconds whilst using instant, you can see that google 'refreshes' to count the impression(s) on the ads showing.
I think my original post was a bit quick to assume - so far there has been no unusual behaviour for any of my clients at all and reporting is fine to treat as normal. Good stuff :)
@DaveHatton
It is mostly irrelevant anyway as Google announced that impressions are only counted if the ad is displayed for at least 3 seconds.
I think Google certainly would not commit suicide by making a decision such as this without thinking of the advertising implications, therefore i reckon they have a plan and all will be made clear soon...
As far as i can tell, it can only be a good thing for advertisers, as surely this would increase the number of impressions of your ads and therefore potentially increase the number of clicks/conversions (with a knock on effect of increasing cost, for good reasons). I dont think generic terms will be affected, just more now than ever, all bases need to be covered when targeting keywords/terms.
@DaveHatton