Google Changed “Sponsored Links” to “Ads”
Filed under: Pay Per Click, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engines
Google Changed “Sponsored Links” to “Ads”
Last week, Google started using a new description in the ad frame that the text ads appears in it’s search results. Instead of the usual long-standing “sponsored links” disclaimer, they have just use the word “ads” rather.
Here is a screen shot showing the change. See the little word “Ads” above the ad?
Normally, “Sponsored links” should appear there, below is a screen shot of the previous:
A few things we observe here:
1) This might symbolize a shift in Google going beyond “text links” in the ad frame. Google had been experimenting with many ad formats in this area, such as product ads, map ads, image ads and even tested video and other interactive ad units in this area before. Labeling this ad frame as a “ sponsored link” might be too limiting.
2) There might be a change in user behaviour towards the text ads. Through our course of work, we had meet some clients who did not even realised that “sponsored links” are actually paid advertisements. And they had been clicking on them regardless. Having the word “Ads” obviously shown now, less-savvy users may start to think twice about clicking on to them, well knowing they are advertisements with vested interest.
3) This may lead to users becoming more “ad-blind” when using Google. Having said “ad-blindness” do occur across all forms of media, be it TV, newspaper, magazine, online banners, etc, it may become worst on Google now.
How can it affect SEO and PPC(SEM)?
For SEO, with users starting to be more aware of the presence of advertisements, they would rather click on the natural/organic results. This means that it is ever more important to make your site more relevant to the search results by doing proper On-page SEO work on your site.
For PPC, marketers have to be more meticulous in constantly making sure that their text ads are well related to the keyword. With the text ads closely related to the user’s search, there would still be a fair chance for them to click on your text ads. Marketers must do more optimisation on their ad copies, A / B test the ads with more variations or even the dynamic keyword function which are already existing methodologies we are using at AdVantage SEO.
If the above sounds complicated and difficult to apprehend, do not worry. We are the experts, so that you do not have to be one. Contact us at +65 9450 0295 / +65 6640 9987 or email info@advantageseo.net and we would provide you with a solution!
Google Expands Maps Into Much More of Africa
Google is expanding Google Maps into 30 African countries where it was not previously available.
“One of the things we spend a lot of time thinking about at Google is how we can make the world’s information more accessible and useful to people all over the globe,” Google says. “This includes providing rich local geographic data because, after all, a huge number of search queries have a geographic component. Our efforts to start putting Africa on a map kicked off back in 2009 when we announced the launch of Google Maps for Kenya. Not long afterwords, we announced that users across 45 African countries could build and edit maps in Map Maker. Most recently, we launched Google Maps for South Africa.”
With Google Maps launching domains for 30 more countries, that means not only scenery and roads for these countries, but also local business listings, which can drive a lot of business to brick and mortars. Search engines have all but replaced print yellow pages for many people, and businesses in these countries should feel the effects of that as the listings grow.
Google is encouraging users in the new countries to get involved and help them make the maps better. “You know your local area better than we do, which is why Map Maker is on offer. With Map Maker, any user can create or edit map data, ranging from schools to local businesses, national parks to taxi stops. If you know your local area, or you’ve seen something that’s missing, take up the opportunity to get mapping! As we’ve pointed out before, maps are also invaluable for governments, NGOs, universities and entrepreneurs, who can visualise, plan and market the areas and projects that they work on.”
Including islands there are now over 50 African counries with Google maps available.
Grading Google’s Marketing Practices Based On Google’s Standards?
The following is a guest post by Slaven Radic.
The Google Buzz team has had quite a week. Their new product quickly lived up to its name, though mostly for the wrong reasons, generating buzz about its own privacy issues. Calling the original Google Buzz privacy settings lax would be a gross understatement. It created a storm of complaints, best put in perspective by Harriet Jacobs in her F*ck You, Google piece.
In short, when you logged into your Gmail account Google simply took all of your frequent contacts and mashed them up into an active social network without much input from people they were connecting. If you exchanged a lot of emails with your editor and your under-cover sources from the same Gmail account, now they were connected through your public profile if you didn’t happen to catch the Buzz opt-out checkbox. Or what about using the same Gmail account for emailing your husband and your boyfriend? Well now they’re introduced – you’re welcome.
Yes, sounds like a pretty naïve and reckless way to implement a major feature but Google protested that they just wanted to help and meant no evil. After all, their CEO Eric Schmidt had an interesting take on expectations for privacy online: “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place”. That was said nary two months before Google Buzz launched – I guess people like Harriet Jacobs and her abusive ex-husband just didn’t listen.
Oops, Our Bad: Thanks For All the Users…
Since the launch, Google has done an amazingly quick about-face and pledged to do better. The latest set of changes make signing up for Buzz a tangibly more transparent experience, probably what it should have been at launch time. The press has mostly applauded their quick response and patted Google on the back for their responsiveness and keen focus on Gmail user experience.
But let’s see what Google’s naiveté about privacy issues meant for Google Buzz:
- 9 million posts and comments
- 300,000 mobile check-ins per day
- Buzz already rivals Twitter for sheer network size
Those are some pretty impressive numbers for any online launch, but to achieve this in under three days is just unheard of. Actually, there are businesses that do generate this level of interests from their prospects in that short of a time-frame and Gmail deals with them on a daily basis: spammers.
The ‘9 Million-Post’ Question
The question is did Google simply make a “mistake” and not consider these fairly serious privacy issues, or did the massive amount of spam Gmail churns through each day actually demonstrate effectiveness of a new business model?
The former is hard to believe when you consider the army of privacy lawyers Google has and their job to review privacy considerations in revenue-generating AdSense programs. This is especially critical in Gmail, where you are shown ads based on emails you exchange. Gmail achieves this by reading through all your email and matching you up with advertisers interested in addressing your daily struggles. After the initial outrage over this concept a few years ago most users have resigned to trust Google that they have their best interests in mind.
Your Trust, Google’s Toilet Paper
Google Buzz violates this trust in a serious way. In light of Google’s experience in this field, it is hard not to take Google’s mea culpa with a huge dose of skepticism. After all, if Google had made Buzz an opt-in service – something that users had to enable rather than be tricked into joining – they would be just another social network trying to compete with Facebook and Twitter.
Leveraging millions of Gmail users was a shortcut simply too tempting to avoid. The fact that Google decided to revise Google Buzz activation process over the weekend is simply a red herring: they only needed a few days to convert some of the hundred million plus Gmail users into millions of Buzz users, and become the de-facto Twitter competitor over a single long weekend.
Google “fixing” this privacy snafu a few days later is equivalent to spammers adding an “Unsubscribe” link to an email that’s already done its damage.
The strong impression from the last few days is that Gmail users were a pawn in a very cynical game: Google trying desperately to become a player in the social networking space, after the Orkut launch and their acquisition of a handful of other companies in this space failed to produce results.
We’re Not Evil
This is a tough act to pull off when your motto is Don’t Be Evil. It’s been said that eventually Google’s shareholders will push it to make product moves and decisions that end up hurting its brand in a quest for monetization. It will be interesting to see if Google comes out of this with their motto intact.
Google AdWords Tax Calculator
Many experienced advertisers realize that there are many gotchas in the AdWords system…optimization tools and default setting which optimize to boost Google’s yield at the expense of unsuspecting advertisers, who don’t yet know what match types are or that their ads are syndicated to content sites by default.
To help new advertisers get past many of the gotchas we created the Google AdWords tax calculator – a free utility which highlights many stumbling blocks that catch new AdWords advertisers.
Given that each keyword market is unique it would be impossible to make a tool that was 100% accurate in every situation, but the goal of this tool was to simply highlight common issues, and help new advertisers address them. Individual efficiency gains may be greater or smaller than the rough initial estimates the tool provides.
Please let us know what you think, as we will gladly iterate this calculator to make it better if you have some great ideas you think we should include in it. Like all of Google’s products, our calculator is starting out in beta 
Yelp Not Being Acquired by Google
Update: Reports now say that Yelp has backed out of the deal.
Original Article: Multiple reports say that Google is in negotiations to acquire Yelp, a site that caters to reviews of local businesses. Mike Arrington claims to have confirmed this with “multiple sources,” and says the price is at least $500 million.
Yelp has an interesting page in which it squashes 9 “myths” about the service. Yelp says you don’t have to buy advertising to rank highly in Yelp search results, and that the only paid reviews are in clearly-marked ad form. Apparently a common myth is that Yelp reviewers are all young, and in high school or college.
“In January 2009, 94% of Yelp reviewers were over 23 years old,” says Yelp. “This means about 6% of reviewers fall into that ‘high school or college age’ category.”
Yelp.com had over 26 million unique visitors in the US in November. According to Yelp, people have written over 8 million local reviews, with over 85% of them rating a business 3 stars or higher.
Let’s remember that nothing is final yet, and there is still a possibility that Google will not acquire Yelp. According to Arrington, one source says the deal is 80% likely. Take that as you will.
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