Web Search & Marketing News

July 2004 Newsletter

Welcome to the second edition of our monthly newsletter and thank you to everyone who provided feedback following last month’s launch issue.

I hope that this edition includes as much useful information as the last month and please do let us know if you have any burning questions or issues that you would like to see covered here!

Best regards,
Clive Hawkins

On to this month's news...

• Search Engine News - Market share
• Using Affiliate Marketing
• Online Marketing News - Content targeted adverts
• Search Tip - searching for people
• Creating an Effective Website

Search Engine News – Market share

So which search tools dominate the market and attract most searches?

Of course Google is usually quoted by people as the search tool of choice. Indeed, this engine has established a very strong position in the last few years as the main players have consolidated together, so that today search is focused through a small number of sites.

A new report* published by Hitwise highlights the recent growth and dominance of 3 major search tools in the US – Google, Yahoo and MSN – which now account for 5.5% of all web traffic. Ask Jeeves is the next most significant search tool, but this receives around 10 times less traffic than Yahoo which confirms that there are really only these 3 main players in the US search market.

The Hitwise report also hints at some small demographic differences among users of the top 3 tools. Google receives slightly more traffic from a higher income audience, whilst Yahoo receives more visits from a younger audience and MSN more from a female audience.

In the UK, Neilson//NetRatings provide a monthly report detailing the top 10 parent companies visited by UK web users every month. However, as with the Hitwise report, the distinction between MSN and Yahoo’s search usage and their general usage for news and other information becomes blurred, so that a direct comparison with Google can be hard to track.

However, ComScore provides the best comparison of actual searches made on the top 3 search engines in April 2004. For the UK, Google’s search service received 77% of the searches, compared to Yahoo’s 14% and MSN showing 9%, compared to the US, where Google had a lower 44% share, with Yahoo and MSN performing stronger with 37% and 19% shares respectively.

These UK figures tend to be confirmed by the referral traffic on many websites, although of course much will depend on the ranking positions being achieved on each tool. Search traffic from smaller search tools can still be significant and Yahoo’s ownership of AltaVista and Alltheweb will probably see their usage grow in the future. And then there is Microsoft’s new search engine due towards the end of this year…

* this report is not available online, but we can send you a PDF version of the report if you wish to see this in full. Please contact us for a copy.

Using Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a technique that allows a website to generate traffic from adverts or text links placed on other websites (often referred to as the affiliate or publisher). Payment for this traffic is made on a performance basis, by the website owner either paying the publisher a set fee for visits generated by the adverts (click throughs) and/or a percentage of revenue for sales produced (conversions).

A successful affiliate campaign can provide considerable benefits for an advertiser, such as:

• you pay only for results achieved, so that increased sales can be generated for a marginal cost
• the publisher takes responsibility for setting up and running adverts
• you can potentially establish a wide network of affiliate partners driving significant traffic volumes to your website
• affiliate spending can be easily controlled and monitored, leading to a high level of accountability
• promotions and branding can be integrated with other marketing activities.

An affiliate campaign can be set up directly with partner sites, although the tracking and reporting software needs to be in place and contact made with possible partner sites. The easier route that many advertisers will follow is to sign up with affiliate management companies like Trade Doubler, Commission Junction and UK Affiliates. These have a large network of affiliates in place, both in the UK and overseas, plus they will handle the administration, such as payments and communications, plus the advertiser can control their campaigns online in return for a set-up charge and monthly management fee.

Like any online marketing activity, the campaign needs to be effective and the upfront costs can be a barrier before results are achieved. However, many financial services, retail and other B2C websites gain good additional business from affiliate marketing, due to their volumes of traffic, sales margins and their ability to provide special offers to web users clicking on their adverts.

A successful affiliate program requires intensive management. One difficulty lies in attracting high quality publishers that can generate good traffic for you, so that fostering a close relationship with your best publishers and providing them with incentives is one key to success, as publishers can lose interest quickly if they do not initially see good results.

Finally, there is also some confusion about the added value that a link from an affiliate advert can give to your link popularity and therefore its benefits to search rankings. Such a link will usually be dynamically generated and pass through a tracking program and as such will not be recognised by search engines as a link to your website.

If you would like to know more about how affiliate marketing could benefit your website, contact us now for our advice.

Online Marketing News – Content targeted adverts

Both Google AdWords and Overture have recently extended their pay-per-click advertising programs to allow website owners to display adverts on their site that are relevant to their page content. These ‘contextual adverts’ are branded as Content Match by Overture and AdSense by Google, who provide information on some of their partners and an example of how these adverts work are displayed.

Our experience has been that, although contextual adverts can generate high volumes of impressions, they do not currently create a significant amount of traffic or conversions as the main PPC adverts displayed in search listings. This is mainly because the adverts may be displayed when users are not actually searching for a product or service, or are not directly related to the content page where they are displayed.

Google attempts to recognise this with its variable ‘smart pricing’ structure, which can discount contextual adverts if they are less effective. Within Overture it is up to the advertiser to assess the worth of contextual adverts when making bids. Another factor to consider is whether you want to retain a high level of control over which websites you are being associated with, so with both campaigns you can decide whether to include the contextual adverts in your PPC campaign or not.

On the positive side, contextual adverts can extend the reach of your campaign at a very reasonable cost, so may well be suitable if you are looking for maximum exposure or if pay-per-click is proving a very effective medium for you. If you are already running a PPC campaign, or are planning on setting one up and would like more information about the role of content targeted adverts, please contact us for more details.

Search Tip – searching for people

If you’re searching for information on a famous person, the US Ask Jeeves site can be a good place to start. They provide a short biography and a number of links to further information on a wide range of famous people at the top of the search results. Although still quite US-biased, it does well for David Beckham and Michael Owen, although Wayne Rooney has yet to make an appearance!

Google has also become a place to search for information on anything and anybody! ‘Googling’ a person is apparently now widespread in the US but has yet to catch on here. Another technique is ‘neighbourhood research’ to find out snippets of information about your neighbours by searching a post code on Google!

Creating an effective website

A useful article appeared recently in The Sunday Times, which provides advice on creating an effective website. This is based on recent research that claimed that a typical business could increase online sales by 64% if it improved its online services. The feature gives examples of ways that a site can be developed to enhance the user’s experience and help to convert more visits to sales.

If you would like to review how your website currently performs, or if you’re considering overhauling your site, contact us first to see how we can help.

We hope you’ve found the above information useful. Please contact us if you need any more details on the items covered, or our advice on any aspect of your website’s performance.