Sometimes the articles cause many comments, tweets and even controversy (which is fine, just keep it respectful). This time around is a record for me, 85+ tweets and counting, many comments and it was even the third article in the Search Cap newsletter today. Woot!

Check out what all the fuss is about - Google AdWords Partner Sites Gain SEO Benefit from Paid Ads.

SEO job listings:

http://twitter.com/NewSEOJobs

The travel team at Google:

http://twitter.com/googletravel

Google:

http://twitter.com/google

Danny Sullivan:

http://twitter.com/dannysullivan

Matt Cutts:

http://twitter.com/mattcutts

Quality Score:

http://twitter.com/Quality_Score

And of course follow us at Viator:

http://twitter.com/ViatorTravel

And little ole’ me:

http://twitter.com/kellpickles

Also we’ve been poking around and noticed a site getting SEO benefit out of the AdWords ads on it. We cry unfair, not cool to take my AdWords work and give the credit to someone else’s site. AdWords advertisers beware! You can read more about our beef: Google & The Infinite SEO-PPC Loop.

SearchEngineWatch responded with a critical blog post on me “dissing” bid management, but I think they missed a lot of my point and I wrote a very polite comment saying so to further the discussion, which they have yet to post. So much for a community dialog! For shame.

Also, check out SEMcast #11, now live on geekcast.fm, also on the topic of bid management.

Lastly, have I mentioned lately that I’m on twitter? I am. For random life updates and some search commentary follow kellpickles.

• Bing will be the exclusive algorithmic/paid search platform for Yahoo.
• Yahoo will be the exclusive seller of both companies’ premium advertisers while self-serve advertising will be fulfilled by Microsoft’s AdCenter.
• The latest timeline I’ve seen suggests that paid Microsoft/Bing results will being appearing on Yahoo in early 2011 in major markets with the goal of all results by early 2012.

While it might be tempting to forget all about Yahoo’s switch to Microsoft paid search results, after all you have until early 2011 (that’s like a year away!), I would definitely encourage search engine marketers to start laying the groundwork now to manage risk in the switchover and get ahead of the competition.

1. Start a MSN AdCenter account. If you haven’t already, get your ppc campaigns up and running on Bing/Microsoft. They are garnering more search query share (~9% in July 2009) so search engine marketers should be advertising on Bing just to get the incremental revenue from another search engine anyway at this point. And eventually, you’re going to need an account there when Yahoo stops showing your ppc ads. If there’s any hiccups in transferring over Yahoo campaigns when the switch is made, it won’t matter to you as you’ll already have all those campaigns running on MSN. Bonus, you’ll have historical MSN data to compare to before the switchover, that plus your historical Yahoo data will tell you what your new MSN with Yahoo performance should be if all is working well after the switch.
2. Start getting regular reports out of Yahoo. Data is one of the most valuable assets a search engine marketer can have and who knows what will happen to yours when Yahoo ceases to operate their sponsored search platform. Pull regular monthly reports and store them if you haven’t been doing regular reports. When the switchover occurs, you’ll be armed with historical data to compare how well your Microsoft listings on Yahoo are performing versus your old Yahoo listings. You can also identify any year over year losses or softness and focus on improving those areas. This is all about mitigating risk and keeping your paid search engine marketing campaign performance as good as ever.
3. Get familiar with MSN’s interface and reports. I am sure in the coming year changes and enhancements will be made, but MSN’s AdCenter is a different beast than Yahoo or Google’s paid search platforms. Spend some time learning how it works, you’ll have an advantage over everyone scrambling to learn when the switchover is made.
4. Try to get an account manager at MSN. If your spend is in the thousands, try to get an account manager at MSN. Sometimes there’s no substitute for a real person when issues arise. If you start now, by 2011 you will have built a rapport with your account contact and they’ll be ready to help with any transition issues that arise when Yahoo changes over.
5. Don’t procrastinate. I know, I know, 2011 seems like ages from now. But think about how busy you are with just day to day search engine marketing tasks and if you spend just a little time each week pulling some Yahoo reports and getting your account up on MSN, you’ll be happy you had a year to get it all done. Trust me, its going to suck if you wait until the last minute.

Do you have other suggestions on preparing for the Yahoo-MSN switchover? I’d love to hear them, leave a comment!

Don’t just take my advice. Google has now released a very simple and useful Quality Score guide. Check it out and go forth to pare out those irrelevant keywords and improve click-through rates.

I know some search engine marketers hate Quality Score, but I love it. Why? Because we pay a much lower cost per click than our competitors for a much better position. Quality score is a reward for running a well managed paid search campaign. When Quality Score becomes your friend instead of your enemy you’ll see what I mean.

Also I have a crazy travel schedule for the remainder of the month, so I doubt I will be posting much before August. So get out from behind the computer and enjoy summer!

As a reminder you can send me questions via twitter, a blog comment or a youtube video and I’ll answer them in a future podcast. I also accept questions via telegram (singing only) or carrier pigeon.

1. Google’s search query report just got more useful. Many less “other unique queries” and more actual queries exposed. I checked this one out myself, and its true, so thanks Google for making that better!

2. Only 5% of internet users time is spent searching, the other 95% is spent doing other things on the web. Fascinating. See, I told you content targeting was a good idea.

3. No one seems excited about bid management tools. One session has presenters explicitly talked about ways to calculate for yourself what your ideal bid should be and most people I talked to either weren’t using a system or didn’t think it was worth the money. Also with quality score’s ability to enormously impact bids, most marketers thought that was more important to optimize quality score than finely monitoring the bid itself.

4. Quality score is super important. There was a whole session on quality score and how important it is at the account, ad, keyword and landing page levels. Also general advice was given that if you have keywords with a score below 5, you should consider removing them or at least moving them to alleviate possible tainting. I knew it was important, but this really made me think much more about it.

5. Mobile is still early days. The mobile session presenters were great, but my big takeaway was that unless you’ve got a super perfect for mobile product (like a ringtone, or iphone app), then its still really early days for you to gain mobile adopters. The volume isn’t there yet.

Thanks to everyone who gave their time and expertise to making the sessions and roundtable discussions so worthwhile! I had a great time speaking and meeting lots of other search engine marketers.