Spencer Frasher, industry director for higher education at Google, says this time of year searches on Google reveal increased interest for information related to going back to school. |
About 72% of college-bound high school seniors found a school’s homepage by searching online, Frasher says. Search terms related to higher education continue to rise 42% year over year, which out pace searches for consumer electronics or automobiles. “You have to fish where the fish are,” he says. “These students are digital natives and if marketers want to communicate with them they need to fit in that mold.” Read more at www.mediapost.com |
Google Slightly Loses Explicit Core Search Share
Google Sites led the US explicit core search market (which measures user engagement with a search service with the intent to retrieve search results) in July 2010 with 65.8% market share, down 0.4 percentage points from June 2010, followed by Yahoo Sites with 17.1% (up 0.4 percentage points) and Microsoft sites with 11%. Ask network captured 3.8% of explicit core searches, followed by AOL LLC with 2.3%. Read more at www.marketingcharts.com |
Kate Maddox from B2B Magazine released a story today outlining key findings from a recently completed study on The Impact of Social Media on Search. This study was a collaboration between B2B Magazine and Business.com. I was not able to find the full story – once I do I will post a link. |
The survey was designed and conducted to explore how marketers are integrating social media with search marketing and the collaborative results. |
According to survey, the top goals for social media marketing are:
• 81% – building brand awareness
• 77% – increasing traffic to a website
• 67% – generating leads
• 66% – providing deeper engagement with customers
• 57% – improving search results |
It was very interesting to read how B2B Marketers were using using social media to improve their search results: |
• 48% – to drive inbound links through various social media channels
• 45% – social media accounts to increase rankings on major search engines
• 40% – monitoring social media conversations to influence organic SEO
• 26% – monitoring social media conversations to influence keyword purchases |
They were then asked what has been the impact of social media on their search performance. |
• 44% – impact has been positive
• 28% – impact has been neutral
• 27% – impact was unknown
• 1% – impact was negative Read more at whunt.com |
| A flurry of paid-search reports released Tuesday may have marketers’ heads spinning, but each provides insights into specific parts of the process. |
SearchIgnite released the Q2 2010 U.S. Search Market Report Tuesday. Year-over-year paid-search spend increased 14% in the U.S., following an 11% YoY increase, sequentially. |
Similar to Efficient Frontier’s report, SearchIgnite found retailers spent more — about 7% — compared with the prior year. Microsoft’s search engine Bing gained market share by 26% from the year-ago quarter, but declined 9.6% sequentially. Overall, Bing dropped slightly to 6.2% share of search spend in the U.S., while Google and Yahoo reached 78.4% and 15.4%, respectively. |
Google increased the average number of paid-search ads shown per search session by 15%, followed by Yahoo at 22% and Bing at 11%. More premium ads in sponsored listings and down the right rail don’t necessarily suggest good news, however. Increasing ad coverage can diminish returns, and result in a poor experience for consumers, according to the report. |
Relying on Google for metrics, the report suggests that consumers can withstand between 5.5 and 6.0 ads per search query. Yahoo now serves up 6.85, making it unlikely the increase in ads will lead to additional revenue. Bing serves up about 3.85 ads per keyword, so it’s “extremely” likely that this will reflect in better-than-expected revenues for the search engine. Similarly, Google went from 4.97 to 5.72, so they could report healthy increases as well. |
| Google now monetizes nearly 8% more of their keyword searches. Stokes says keywords searched with no ads decreased from 43.6% in Q1 to 39.7% in June, making the inventory easier to monetize. |
In the Americas, paid-search spending by tech companies increased 12% during the second quarter, while the Asia/Pacific region rose 33%, sequentially. Combined, spending in Europe, the Middle East and Africa grew 25%. Google’s China strategy and move to serve content from Hong Kong has influenced performance. During the second quarter, Google’s share in the region dropped from 69% to 61%, while Baidu’s share of paid-search spending rose to 22% from 12%, sequentially. Read more at www.mediapost.com |
According to SearchIgnite, year-over-year paid search spending was up 14% in Q2, compared with a gain of 11% in Q1. Spending was down slightly, by 2%, quarter-to-quarter—considered a normal part of the summer slowdown in marketing activity.
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Companies in retail, travel and auto industries dug into budgets during the second quarter in 2010 to spend 24% more on paid-search ads overall, compared with the prior year, and 9.7% sequentially, according to the Efficient Frontier Q2 2010 Executive Summary released Tuesday. |
Yahoo, Microsoft Make Slight Gains
Google Sites led the US core search market in June with 62.6% of the searches conducted (down 1.1 percentage points from May), followed by Yahoo Sites (up 0.6 percentage points to 18.9%), and Microsoft Sites (up 0.6 percentage points to 12.7%). |
CHART OF THE DAY: Microsoft’s Head Of Sales Blames Facebook For Low Online Ad Prices |
Social networks, with their massive inventory of page views, have much lower ad rates on a cost per thousand impressions (CPM) basis than the Internet at large. ComScore reports that Facebook and MySpace only get a $0.56 CPM on average, while the Internet at large gets $2.43. |
SUMMARY: How are small, medium and large organizations allocating SEO budgets differently? In this week’s chart, you’ll learn what portion of SEO budgets various SEO expenses are taking for small, medium and large organizations, in regards to staff salaries, agency expenses, analytics programs and purchasing inbound links. |
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72% of College-Bound High School Seniors Found a School’s Homepage by Searching Online
