I don’t think it is going to be a surprise to anyone to know that not every paid search test they implement will be a success; if it is a surprise, I am sorry. (p.s. there is no Santa Clause, either). The key to successful management of paid search is to determine acceptable margins of failure and test within those margins. How much failure can be tolerated and how much are you willing to risk? Gord Hotchkiss has spoken and written on many occasions about internet speed and what this means for organizations trying to adapt to a rapidly changing [...]

Posted on 26 November 2010 | 11:45 am

In last week’s column, I talked about the number of changes I was seeing on the Google results page, and, in particular, how they might maintain the delicate balance between driving revenue from the page and maintaining user trust. No sooner did the digital ink dry on the column than I received an email from an old friend, Chris Knoch, formerly of Omniture and now VP of Marketing at Ready Financial. In his email, Chris included a screen shot of a rather interesting beta that Google is running: It’s hard to say, given Google’s love for beta testing, how widely [...]

Posted on 24 November 2010 | 2:28 pm

Imagine you’ve just shelled out x-thousand dollars for a 30-second TV spot that will run in prime time for the next three weeks or a full-page, full-color spread that will be published in the New York Times on Saturday. You’re crossing your fingers that you’ll get a good ROI, because your boss is breathing down your neck. I sure hope that you included a URL in your ad. Whether you like it or not, potential customers who watch/read your ad will go looking for you online. Are you making it easy for them to do that? In a research study [...]

Posted on 22 November 2010 | 8:31 am