Knowledge is the Foundation To Success  

New clients will often ask us here at JumpFly which search engine is the best to begin pay-per-click (PPC) advertising on. Clearly, Google is the first obvious choice if you are looking for the greatest volume of traffic. According to the latest numbers from Hitwise, Google received 71.7% of U.S. search queries in October 2008. That’s a huge chunk of online traffic and search volume moving through the Google search box. If you only had one search engine to choose, there is no question that you should choose Google.

Yahoo search volume is dropping consistently, down from nearly 22% in October 2007 to below 18% for October 2008. MSN took a drop from last year as well in their search volume, but it seems to be holding in the mid 5% range from month to month now. So that does beg the question, is it even worth running PPC campaigns on Yahoo and MSN? Clearly, there is some volume to be had on both of those search networks, so they definitely have some value to some advertisers. If your budget is tight, though, and you are testing the PPC waters, I would suggest starting on Google only and then see where you can go from there.

Another strategy to consider for Yahoo and MSN, which we have implemented and seen success with, is to start out strong on Google for a month or two and then only move your best performers over to Yahoo and MSN. Since Google does bring in the most volume by a large margin, their search platform can really give you a good indicator as to whether a certain product, or a certain groups of keywords, or specific ad copy, will bring you the ROI you are looking for. It isn’t always an apples to apples comparison, and what works on Google does not necessarily always work on Yahoo or MSN, but you can certainly get some strong indicators as to what might work on the other engines by analyzing what is working on Google first.

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Google just announced yesterday a new keyword tool they released in beta called the Search-based Keyword Tool.  Before further exploring this new tool, I would first like to revisit the regular Google Keyword Tool and its recent improvements.

The Keyword Tool at Google AdWords

I use Google’s Keyword Tool for a large majority of keyword research now.  Yes, services like Keyword Discovery or Word Butler will give us a longer list of long-tail keywords, but according to Google, bigger is not always better in a new campaign.

Google’s Keyword Tool has been improved greatly over the last few months.  We now get very detailed search volume numbers – be sure to change the match type of your results to “Exact” before taking those numbers seriously.

They have also fixed a problem they were having a couple of months ago where they were randomly presenting terms that were not as relevant (called “Additional Keywords to Consider”) before the relevant terms.  That has been fixed and we now see the Related Keywords first on every search.  They have also fixed little annoyances like the scrolling and the ability to download all the terms at once.

So, how is the new Search-based Keyword Tool different?

It’s main difference is that instead of taking your suggested words, Google will now go look at your website and provide suggested keywords based on its content. 

There are  a few new features that make this tool an interesting addition to our arsenal of research tools here at JumpFly:

1. A magnifying glass icon takes you straight to Google Insights for that term.

2. Ad/Search Share tells you how your ad is showing up for that search term

3. We can filter the results by search volume, competition and suggested bid.

I am disappointed that the search volume numbers are apparently from the broad match search volume – not nearly as useful as the existing keyword tool that allows you to change that to exact match for more accuracy.  I also feel that I get a much larger and comprehensive list when I use the Google Keyword Tool.  However, if we are looking for a single term or set of terms, this tool lets us narrow things down quite a bit and may help uncover some valuable new keywords.

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The state of the PPC advertising industry according to Google earnings

In a word, the PPC industry continues to look healthy.

After the closing bell today, Google, Inc. reported their most recent quarter’s earnings, including an impressive profit increase of 26% compared to the same quarter last year. This is pretty impressive growth, especially considering just about every other company seems to be slowing down.

Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said that the company experienced “revenue growth across all of our major geographies thanks to the underlying strength of our core search and ads business.” 
Google officially started generating more than half of its revenue from international markets. 
 
In regards to their paid click revenue, Google said Thursday that the number of paid clicks rose 4% from the previous quarter, and 18% compared with the same period a year earlier. Though the economy is hurting, people continue to search the web and click sponsored results with increasing regularity.

Google continues to grow its workforce, adding another 519 people during the quarter, though this is down from an increase of 2,130 employees at the same time last year. The company now has 20,123 employees.
We’ll see what Yahoo! has to say when they announce their quarterly earnings early next week.

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