Selected AdWords advertisers are having a line show up below their ad in search results that says “+Show Products from [Advertiser] for [search query].” When clicked, this link expands to a box with three product images, complete with title, price, and description. The box takes up a very large portion of the screen, bumping the next results far below.

A Google AdWords rep confirmed in a message to us that the name of this feature is the “Product Search Plux Box,” and that the alpha test involves a very limited number of advertisers and is closed to additional participants at this time. The Google team may decide to re-open the test to additional advertisers in the future, but for now only those advertisers that were previously invited are able to participate in the test.

We were personally unable to replicate search results that featured the Product Search Plus box, but Search Engine Land posted a couple of screenshots a few weeks ago that we took the liberty to draw on:

It appears that the advertisers involved use GoogleCheckout, but it is unclear whether these products come from Google Base. Search Engine Land speculated that they do not.

Questions we have are: Can anyone out there find examples of the Product Search Plus Box out there? Can any of you replicate this? Also, are there similar results coming up with local adwords listings of some kind?

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In his post, Rand poses the question: Why does paid search earn so many more marketing dollars than search engine optimization when organic results get more traffic than PPC ads?

In this post, we’d like to respond to this issue as well as question the assumption upon which the question is made.

Part of the data for the conclusion that most traffic comes from organic listings comes from a study done by Eyetools Eyetracking Research, which shows that out of a study of 50 people, most of them viewed a Google search results page like this:

As you can see, most people looked at the top left corner, with a smaller % looking at the right side. The SEOMoz blog concludes that SEO drives much more traffic than PPC, and several users then debate the reasons why more money isn’t spent in SEO if this is the case.

The assumption behind this conclusion is twofold. It assumes 1) that the triangle in the heatmap moves down to the organic results when sponsored ads are present above the organic listings, and 2) that traffic from SEO converts well enough to achieve a greater return on investment for SEO spending than PPC spending for traffic does.

Eyetools states in this study that the triangle of the most views “appears to include top sponsored, top organic results, and Google’s alternative results.” This would indicate that when ads are shown at the top of the page they receive more exposure than the top organic listings.

So in the screenshot that we see here, there are only sponsored links on the right side, and organic results go all the way to the top on the left. We overlayed a screen shot of a search results page with 3 sponsored results at the top on the left, and drew a box on the heat map where these ads were. As you can see, the majority of users’ eyes would scan the sponsored ads in the top 3 positions most heavily in this case:

So in the case of ads being shown on the left, PPC will get more traffic. This taints the data and the assumption that the SEO is best argument relies on. A more conclusive test would separate search results pages with ads on the left from those without them, drawing heat maps accordingly. This would help us to make some more educated assumptions about the topic we’re discussing.

Additionally, it can be said that traffic from sponsored ads may convert more easily than organic traffic, since many users click on ads with the intention to buy, where organic clicks may be less transactional and more informational. This will definitely vary depending on a lot of factors, and it’s all subject to verification or debate by data from studies, but what I’m saying is that your ROI may not necessarily be greater for SEO spending based on how targeted your traffic may be. Many of you will say “not likely,” but I say “not impossible.”

So who wins? SEO or PPC?

The answer is not to choose one over the other. As James Zolman pointed out,

I [have seen clients'] net income double and triple because PPC and SEO work together. SEO is slower, therefore the expense is lower for these particular clients. They would put more money towards SEO (beyond the $20k-$40k they already spend per month on it) if the results had a wider, faster reach. When they see the return on investment from one set of targeted keywords, they move to the next with the ROI obtained from the previous while leaving some on the table to manage and continue to strengthen their organic rankings. The same goes for PPC - except it is much faster moving, has a much wider reach, and proves a ‘good enough’ ROI to reinvest in it even more. It’s quite scalable… just like SEO, only a little faster for the most part.

Let me tell you about the conversion lift that PPC brings to SEO and vice versa - One company was making roughly $100k/mo from SEO 1 year ago. That seemed to be steady as they ranked in the top 10 for well over 1000 high quality terms. Enter PPC - within 3 months, their new income was at $400k/mo at an expense of $200k/mo on PPC. PPC contributed to doubling their ‘net’ even though the second $100k/mo net was more expensive than that provided by SEO. Their entire net increase could not all be attributed to PPC. We had return visitors, and we noticed that several who clicked on paid search ads would come back via an organic route and vice versa. I would say the doubling of net came because of the natural lift that each (PPC AND SEO) had on the other. Of course, without that added reach and traffic from PPC the SEO may/may not have increased two-fold within 90 days because PPC let us target 10,000+ new keywords/combinations where the company did not have quite the exposure that SEO was currently bringing to the brand/site - coupled with ‘owning’ more real estate for the 1000 or so terms they rank well for.

At the very least, I would never turn off PPC when a client gets top rankings via SEO - the added lift can be incredible. You just have to learn what combination gives you that ROI lift/brand lift. When I say combination, I mean which ad text compliments the organic listing, what position is positive vs negative, when is there a real ROI, etc. It’s all in the analytics.

Bottom line for me: SEO is not better than PPC. PPC is not better than SEO. PPC is not easy ‘out of the box’ beyond the surface. SEO is definitely technical. They NEED to work together because they MAKE YOUR CLIENTS MORE MONEY, MAKE YOUR COMPANY MORE MONEY.

And I’d add to that that the more real estate your website listing takes up on the page the better. Whichever investment is more profitable, both investments together are the most profitable. Until you get to the point that your marginal cost is higher than your marginal return, a joint SEO and PPC spending strategy is a great idea. As long as you can make money back from each investment, why not pile them up together?

And of course, PPC is a great way to sustain profits while you wait for your SEO to take effect anyway.

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This flow chart is useful in helping you to not forget important things in your campaign setup like remembering to separate brand vs non-brand keywords. And even if you’re experienced at PPC management, it’s nice to not have to write your own checklist.

So be sure to check out this flow chart at PPCBlog.com!

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While a monthly budget may seem like the intuitive method of budgeting ad spend in the first place, the addition of this new option does not mean you should hurry up and change all of your campaigns to monthly in order to save yourself from having to do math. Until recently the amount of money spent on Adwords campaigns was throttled by a daily budget cap, and there can be distinct advantages to either budgeting method.

Advertisers can access this feature by clicking on Campaign Settings inside their Adwords account:

(Click to view screenshot)

The following outlines the advantages and disadvantages of each method:

Daily Budget:

• Pros: You know exactly how much you will be spending each day. Unwanted fluctuations in cost or traffic can be leveled out.
• Cons: Opportunities for traffic are capped by your budget. You may miss out if some good press or other external factor causes a huge lift in traffic for a day, or several.

Monthly Budget:

• Pros: Months with large fluxuations of traffic can be taken advantage of - you don’t have to lose out on an opportunity if a sudden spike in traffic comes your way.
• Cons: You can wipe out your whole budget for the month very fast.

The ability to show ads evenly over time or at an accelerated rate is still available for both options, and advertisers are free to switch between options as well. The new addition of the monthly budget simply gives advertisers more freedom. This could be especially helpful to businesses that wish to monitor monthly goals more easily than before.

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Antitrust investigations by the U.S. government are cited as responsible for giving Google “cold feet” even after the magnitude of the partnership agreement was scaled back significantly last week.

Chief legal officer at Google, David Drummond, wrote, “After four months of review, including discussions of various possible changes to the agreement, it’s clear that government regulators and some advertisers continue to have concerns about the agreement.”

Now that the agreement is off, it appears that the U.S. government will be discontinuing its antitrust investigation.

Assistant Attorney General, Thomas O. Barnett, said to the New York Times, “The companies’ decision to abandon their agreement eliminates the competitive concerns identified during our investigation and eliminates the need to file an enforcement action . . . The arrangement likely would have denied consumers the benefits of competition — lower prices, better service and greater innovation.”

Yahoo’s stock shares are trading at around $14 today, and there is speculation that in light of these events a similar offer from Microsoft’s previous one of a buyout for $33/share may again be brought to the table.

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semvironment’s previous slogan was “Turning Clicks Into Customers,” and whereas this continues to be a primary focus of what we do, we have changed our corporate slogan to “Empowering Advertisers Worldwide.” This is demonstrative of our new focus on giving companies the tools, knowledge, and expert agency management they need to maximize their online marketing efforts and branch out in terms of profit growth.

A couple of our new services include:

• Website design testing and full-site redesigns.
  Our creative team is now offering more than landing page design for our clients. Now, you can put their creative talents to use in employing a site-wide redesign in order to enhance your users’ experience at your site. The key advantage to a site redesign from semvironment is that before building a whole new site, you can see the results of various design tests that we perform through paid search test campaigns. This way we can ensure that the new design we roll out maximizes your conversions, both organically and through PPC efforts.
• Omniture Site Catalyst analytics suite.
  If you AND all of your competitors use Google Analytics, then you are all receiving the same data. Seize an advantage by utilizing our professional analytics and event tracking system via Omniture Site Catalyst. Using both Omniture and Google Analytics, we empower you with more information, so you can come out on top of your PPC competitors. Additionally, we enable you to track specific page and form events, goals, and variables, so you can discover how much of your form users complete before they abandon them, or what specific things cause visitors to leave before the conversion happens.
• Free PPC Education and Knowledge suite.
  We’re going to be releasing several series of educational manuals, tutorials, case studies, and white papers in the coming weeks in order to empower you with the facts and knowledge you need to create and manage your own campaigns. Of course, we are still offering full-service management for larger clients, but we’re shifting our focus to helping the start-outs and the smaller companies effectively manage themselves, while we invite advertisers with expansive campaigns and large ad budgets to take advantage of our management, design, and analytics services.
• Custom PPC Management Consulting For In-House Teams.
  Planning on having your own in-house marketing team manage your paid search efforts? Let semvironment train them in the best practices in account setup, management, reporting, and testing. We work with your team by showing them our step by step process as we create your accounts and get your PPC campaigns up and running. We build a customized blog with the step by step procedures that your team will follow for your specific campaigns in your specific industry, and we let them follow along as we manage your account for 2-3 months before handing everything over to them. In this manner, your team will have the best mentorship and training it can receive and gain a competitive edge on your competition - even those that are hiring full-service agencies.

We invite you to check out our new website and comment on the new services we are offering, as well as our sparkling new design. We hope to hear from you soon!

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Well I happened to take a peek at James’s Halloween costume this year (you know, the big boss at semvironment?), and it looks like he’s got a surprise in store for Mr. Cutts. He’s going to be spamming everyone within 10 feet of him.

(This is a real costume people are selling)

Hopefully Matt & James don’t end up at the same party, or there might be trouble. Happy Halloween everybody!

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Wish us luck as we make the big switch!

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Previously, data from Search Partners and Google Search was aggregated, so advertisers could view all of their search stats and all of their content network stats separately. Now, however, Adwords allows users to drill down even more and separate the search network partners such as Ask.com and AOL from the regular Google Search. The Report Center will soon reflect this change as well and give users the ability to run reports with search statistics separated or aggregated according to their preference.

How will this change help you as a PPC manager or advertiser? Well, now you can see if the search network is helping or hampering your regular Google search performance. It’s well known that the Content Network can sometimes drive costs unnecessarily high for certain campaigns (and sometimes it can be quite cost effective as well). Now you can see if AOL and the other search partners aren’t converting as well, which enables you to make the wise decision to cut the cord if necessary.

It’s kind like if you’re advertising on cable and you get the results from your TBS and TNT advertising campaigns lumped together. It might be nice to know that TNT is doing awesome and TBS is doing poorly instead of knowing that overall everything is doing average.

Once again, the more information at your disposal, the more empowered you are to make important marketing decisions.

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The two partner companies and their benefits to Google advertisers are described by Google as follows:

COREMedia Systems is the leading provider of direct response (DR) advertising technology and provides the most widely used technology for planning, purchasing and analysis of direct response commercials… For direct response advertisers, this reporting integration will save time in managing ad campaigns by providing the ability to review response and sales data from Google TV Ads campaigns alongside their other TV buys, within the existing CORE system.

Harris Corporation is a worldwide leader in TV advertising traffic, scheduling and billing systems. This partnership will make it easier for our television inventory providers to manage their media sales through the Google TV Ads platform within the existing Harris system. 

Google is a great example of integration all around, yet another lesson that PPC Managers can take to heart: advertise on more than just one front. TV, radio, banners, and video ads are great supplements to a good paid search campaign.

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