According to Google Insights for Search, web search traffic for JetBlue has really taken off since flight attendant Steven Slater quit his job.
Google Insights for Search - JetBlue
It appears JetBlue has received a five-fold increase in search traffic since Slater “quit” his job.
Google has released the 2008 Zeitgeist which includes their list of the fastest rising global searches along with search data from 35 countries.
Fastest Rising Global Searches
The US Zeitgeist search data categories include Top of Mind, Politics, Trendsetters, Showbiz and Sports along with the following list:
2008 US Google Zeitgeist
Google Zeitgeist provides search data for germane categories from within each respective country.
Every country’s Zeitgeist features a list of the “Fastest Rising” search terms.
In addition to the United States, Google’s Zeitgeist is available from the following countries: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, China, Chile. Columbia, Denmark, Germany, Spain, France, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Austria, Philippines, Russia, Poland, Switzerland, Singapore, South Africa, Finland, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom.
The most interesting takeaway from Google’s 2008 Zeitgeist for me was the presence of searches for American brands in nearly every (possibly all – I didn’t have time to translate every non-English language) country’s Fastest Rising lists – irrespective of their country’s native tongue.
Its only natural – since the search engine itself was first invented by American company Hewlett Packard in 1986.
The following are examples of American Made products and their searches from abroad:
Austria iPhone
Austria iPhone
Belgium Google
Belgium Google
Poland YouTube
Poland YouTube
Spain Facebook
Spain Facebook
Taiwan Chrome
Taiwan Chrome
United Arab Emirates Facebook
United Arab Emirates Facebook
This blog: Search Marketing Communications generated its third highest month in terms of traffic during November 2008 with 9,179 views.
Previously, this WordPress blog’s highest trafficked month was September 2008 with 22,897 views.
Roughly 40% as many views occurred during November 2008 as compared with September 2008, however combined traffic totals from September, October and November 2008 have generated 43,740 views – or slightly over 45% of all blog traffic received since inception.
By the end of November 2008, cohn.wordpress.com had been viewed 95,839 times since its launch in September 2006.
In its first month of existence this blog had 1,593 total views.
November 2008 traffic was approximately 6 times greater than September 2006 traffic.
Few people subscribe to this blog, thus the vast majority (an estimated 99% or greater) found this blog through some type of search query, which is why this blog is titled:
“Search Marketing Communications”
Search Traffic November 2008
Third Largest Month Blog Search Traffic: 9,179 Views
November 2008 Total Blog Traffic
Total Search Traffic November 2008
This blog: Search Marketing Communications generated its second highest month in terms of traffic during October 2008 with 11,664 views.
Previously, this WordPress blog’s highest trafficked month was September 2008 with 22,897 views.
Roughly half as many views occurred during October 2008 as compared with September 2008, however combined traffic totals from these two months alone have generated 34,561 views – slightly over 1/3 of all blog traffic received since inception.
By the end of October 2008, cohn.wordpress.com had been viewed 86,750 times since its launch in September 2006.
In its first month of existence this blog had 1,593 total views.
October 2008 traffic was 7 times greater than September 2006 traffic.
Few people subscribe to this blog, thus the vast majority (an estimated 99% or greater) found this blog through some type of search query, which is why this blog is titled:
“Search Marketing Communications”
Search Traffic October 2008
Second Largest Month Blog Search Traffic: 11,664 Views
October 2008 Total Blog Traffic
Total Search Traffic October 2008
There are many tactics search engine advertisers can use by design to either induce searchers to click or not click on their ads until after the ad viewer has self qualified their interest in the advertisers’ message.
Placing an offer’s price in the ad is one tactic often discussed.
Placing a lower price than other visible or known offers can reduce pay per click ad friction with its audience and tends to increase an ads click through rate. However, placing low prices in a pay per click ad doesn’t necessarily translate into more qualified searchers or buyers nor will it translate into high transaction volume.
Another tactic not mentioned as often is placing high price points in the pay per click ad which increases click friction. High price points within pay per click ads purportedly dissuades dis-interested and the budget conscious from clicking through to view the advertiser’s offer.
Today, I came across the most extraordinary example of an advertiser’s use of premium pricing to qualify search traffic I ever recall ever seeing.
Pay Per Click Friction
Theoretically, in this example placing their minimum annual fee requirements of $150,000 in the ad would create click friction and cause searchers unwilling to spend $150,000 a year to pass the ad over – thus sparing the advertiser unwanted clicks and costs from disinterested searchers.
However, by placing such a high barrier into their ad this particular advertiser will more than likely experience extremely low click through rates which in turn will create the ultimate form of pay per click advertising friction for instead – the advertiser… lower click through rates, lower ad quality score and ultimately an ad that requires higher bids just to be shown at all.
Will the above example prove to be a successful marketing strategy for the advertiser or will their ad’s premium pricing cause fewer clicks and lower click through rates – ultimately bringing their pay per click advertising campaign to a screeching halt?
This blog: Search Marketing Communications had its single highest monthly traffic during September 2008 with 22,897 views.
Previously, this WordPress blog’s highest trafficked month was April 2008 with 8,307 views.
14,950 more views occurred during September 2008 nearly triple the prior traffic record.
By the end of September 2008, cohn.wordpress.com had been viewed 74,927 times since its inception in September 2006.
In its first month’s existence this blog had 1,593 total views.
September 2008 traffic was 14 times greater than September 2006 traffic.
Since few if any people subscribe to this blog, the vast majority (an estimated 99% or greater) found this blog through some type of search query, hence this blog’s title:
Search Marketing Communications
Record Search Traffic 22897 Views
Record Single Month Blog Search Traffic: 22,897 Views
September 2008 Total Blog Traffic
Google Adwords lets advertisers adjust their ad display times at the campaign level through its “Edit Campaign Settings” ad scheduling and serving section.
Ad Scheduling Serving
This feature can be beneficial for business-to-business advertisers who primarily generate leads and sales Monday through Friday.
Businesses who have identified unique time periods where search traffic and conversions peak and trough can also benefit.
Most businesses I have been involved with experience search traffic and conversion troughs on weekends.
However, I have some clients who generate more search traffic and book more sales on Saturday and Sunday than they do during any other day of the week.
The first step to determine whether your business can benefit from ad scheduling and the initial savings it can bring is to begin capturing and measuring your online traffic and conversions to identify any traffic and sales patterns.
It’s the odd – albeit – the great business – who produces business every hour of every day.
Does your advertising produce the most results during business hours or after business hours? Or, does your advertising produce leads and sales in some combination thereof?
If any patterns develop within your data, you can use the Google Adwords ad scheduling tool to optimize the performance of your advertising to reach prospects at the times they will most likely be in the market for your products or services.
Ad Scheduling
Ad Scheduling
With Google Adwords, you can edit days and times to see how the schedule updates. When you’re happy with the schedule, click ‘Save Changes’ to activate Ad Scheduling. To adjust your pricing during any time period, use the advanced ad scheduling mode.
The Advanced Ad Scheduling feature can be used to increase bids during times when competition for your product and its demand are the greatest.
Advanced Ad Scheduling
Click edit to set custom prices for ads on a given day and time. Example: If your default bid is $1.00 CPC, and your custom “% of bid” entry for Tuesdays is 120%, your CPC bid for Tuesdays only would be $1.20.
Both Google Adwords ad scheduling tools give advertisers more control over how advertising dollars are apportioned which is just one requisite for advertisers who want to begin managing their return on advertising investment.
As promised on the Inside Adwords blog, Adwords accounts are now showing Quality Score data for each ad and its keyword.
I first noticed the Quality Score data across all of my active accounts yesterday.
Each ad and keyword’s Quality Score shows its status – whether the ads are showing or not as well as its numeric Quality Score.
I have found Adwords Quality scores ranging from 9 down through 2.
I am not sure whether Adwords assigns a Quality Score of 10 to any ads and keywords performance. Nor am I sure whether they score any ad and keyword below 2.
If Adwords does, I haven’t yet found any examples to share.
Within the new Adwords Quality scoring system, ads and keywords which score 9 and 8 are considered “Great”.
Adwords Quality Score 9
Adwords Quality Score 8
Ads and keywords showing 7, 6 and 5 are “OK”.
Quality Score 7
Quality Score 6
Quality Score 5
Ads and their keywords with Quality scores of 4, 3 and 2 are considered “Poor”.
Quality Score 4+No
Quality Score 3 No+Poor
Quality Score 2 No+Poor
I have found examples of OK Quality Scores where the ad and its keywords weren’t being shown for numerous reasons.
Additionally, I have found examples of ads and their keywords being shown while still having a Poor Quality Score.
Having numeric Adwords Quality Scores for each ad and keyword will surely help Google Adwords deliver more relevant and targeted advertising while also helping their advertisers score more targeted search traffic.
comScore has released its August 2008 qSearch analysis of the the U.S. search marketplace.
According to comScore, Google core search sites continued to lead the U.S. core search market in August with 63% of the searches conducted, up from 61.9% in July.
Yahoo core search sites had the second largest amount of search traffic with 19.6%, followed by Microsoft with 8.3%, the Ask Network with 4.8% and AOL LLC with 4.3% of searches conducted.
At the top web properties where search is observed, Google web properties led with 10.2 billion searches followed by Yahoo web properties with 2.4 billion searches, Microsoft web properties with 1 billion searches and AOL LLC and it search sites with 839 million search queries.
What I found most interesting in the comScore top web properties search data was Fox Interactive’s web sites – including MySpace.com – conducted 593 millions searches compared to Ask Network’s properties 572 million searches.
July August 2008 comScore Site Search Shar
Also, according to comScore data and to my surprise, MySpace.com has even surpassed AOL’s Search Network – not including MapQuest – fielding 117 million more search queries per month than AOL search.
Even with MySpace network’s growth slowing, at some point won’t its user base and growth cause it to generate an equal and then ever increasing number of search queries per month?
At its present size and barring any significant search market disruptions, will MySpace.com eventually generate more searches per month than AOL?
Ultimately, will MySpace.com generate more search queries per month than even Microsoft’s web properties?
Search Marketing Communications 
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