What does this mean for marketers?  That the Amazon.com ad network has the possibility to open an entirely new door for retargeting.  Retargeting based on a buyer’s behavior patterns and trends will undoubtedly increase the demand for targeting through the Amazon.com platform, and marketers will begin to expect better results from their retargeting efforts.

To learn more about this change to the retargeting industry, check out this article from TechFlash.

Google Instant attempts to improve the user experience even more:  by saving time, providing smarter predictions and serving instant results.  Google estimates that Instant will save 11 hours of search time for every second spent searching.  With the combination of time savings, and more accurate search results, Google is certainly staking their claim as the most forward-thinking company in search.

Google’s announcement this morning began with some amazing statistics: over 1 Billion searches occur on Google each week.  In these 1 Billion searches, it takes more than 9 seconds to enter a search term, with many searches taking 30 to 90 seconds.  Google Instant promises to save 2-5 seconds per search, as well as decrease the time it takes a user to click on a search result as well.

How does it work?  As you type in your search query, the search results will adjust based on what you Google Instant searches for you as you type, predicting the most likely keywords that you will search.  Once you see results that match what you are looking for, simply stop typing.  Your results are already there.

Here, we began a search for ‘woodpecker’ to show the results that we got along the way:

How Will Google Instant Impact Paid Search?

One of the largest concerns about Google Instant for B2B Advertisers is how this new tool will impact paid search.  Specifically, the impact on ad impressions.  As users type in a query, the search results rapidly change, displaying different ads with every keystroke.    As shown in our search for ‘woodpecker’ we returned paid advertisements for MapQuest, the Pacific Science Center, the Woodland Park Zoo and more, before we finally got to information about woodpeckers.

According to Google, an ad impression is counted if a user takes an action to choose a query (for example, presses the Enter key or clicks the Search button), clicks a link on the results page, or stops typing for three or more seconds.

Ad Position

Google Instant will also change the layout of the Google search results pages.  Because the search suggestions box remains open, the organic results, as well as any top position ads, are pushed down the page.   In some cases, the organic results are pushed completely below the fold, and users will only see the search suggestions box, as well as paid advertisements.

Though this will initially increase impressions and clicks on paid search campaigns, the quality of the clicks received is not likely to improve.  With organic results beginning far below the fold, many users will confuse paid and organic searches- resulting in low quality clicks on top performing ads. Paid ads in position 1 and 2 will likely show above the organic search results, but below the search suggestions box. Ads in lower positions (particularly positions 3, 4 and 5) appear to have a higher rank because the paid search results on the right side begin at the top of the page.

Quality Score

With increased impressions due to the ever changing search results pages, paid search marketers can expect to see a decline in their click through rate (CTR)- simply due to this increase in impressions.  Because CTR is one of the main components of quality score, B2B Advertisers may see a change in the overall competitive landscape of paid search.  Will quality scores begin to decline because of Google Instant?  At this point, we can just wait and see.

What’s your search story?

Why This is a Bad Link:

- It’s generic and clearly template driven. It just looks spammy.
- Fake email address. Only blog admins see your email address on a comment, so why give a fake one?
- It was blocked by Cookies For Comments (CFC) as spam. If it looks spammy to CFC, you can rest assured that it looks spammy to Google and the other search engines.

If you have ever heard someone complaining that they got “Google Slapped” and were knocked out of the search results, odds are good that it is because they were participating in link building such as this.

We deleted this comment right off the bat. And I now assume that this company is probably not legit since they (or their vendor) used spammy SEO practices.

There is more to link building than just links and this type of link building does NOT generate the kind of results that most are looking for, however it is typical of what often happens when you outsource this important element of SEO.

A large part of SEO and Social Media overlap, posting to blogs is one of those areas. Make sure you are actively participating in a positive way with the audience and your link building efforts will be much more effective because of that.

Good social leads to good SEO.

The key to a keyword’s high quality score in PPC? Relevancy.
The key to a landing page’s high conversion rate? Relevancy.
The key to an ad’s high click through rate? Relevancy
The key to a listing’s high position in the search results? Relevancy.

Relevancy is the key to ALL online marketing –– but particularly so to SEO.

Let’s take a look at how relevancy plays an influential part in SEO:
End-users want to find relevant content when they type a search query into the search engine. In turn, the search engine wants to provide relevant results to that search. If you want your website to be found in those search results, your website must be relevant.

Most people think solely of keywords when they think of relevancy but relevancy is so much more than just matching keywords.

An example of what relevancy is:
•    Page titles that clearly describes a page’s fundamental content in a readable manner.
•    Logical and organized structure themes:

•   Easy and clear navigation that follows the structured theme.
•    Descriptive anchor text in links.
•    Images with alternative descriptive text.
•    Indicators of authority and trust:

• Easy to find contact information.
• Toll-free number.
• Privacy policy.
• References, associations and affiliations (you are known by the company you keep).

An example of what relevancy is NOT:

•    Keyword stuffing.
•    Cloaking.
•    Duplicate page titles.
•    Duplicate content.
•    Overly general content.
•    Thin content with little text and heavy use of graphics.
•    Overly optimized content.
•    Long URLs of database-generated query string parameters.
•    Poor grammar and spelling.

To succeed in search, you must be relevant. To be relevant, your site must be designed with the user in mind first, because doing what’s right for the user is a large part of doing what’s right for the search engine.

Essentially, the two key findings are:

1. Users exposed to both distributed social marketing content AND paid search are nearly three times more likely to search for that brand’s products compared to users who only saw paid search.

2. In organic search, consumers searching on brand product terms who were exposed to their social media marketing are 2.4 times more likely to click on organic links than the average user who only saw that brand’s paid search ad.

I’ve believed this to be true for a while now but it’s exciting to have data to back it up from a well-respected intelligence company like comScore.

Specifically, I’ve seen this happen with Facebook PPC ads. A PPC campaign on Facebook will often have a much lower CTR than a similar campaign would on Google. But the real value is in the new fans to your Facebook Page (which you better have if you’re running ads there) and overall increased site traffic.

Keep in mind, social media users are very savvy. These users spend nearly three times more time online than the average consumer, according to this study. They’ve seen a banner ad or two (million).  When they see one, they know they’re being marketed to in their personal space.

So sometimes instead of clicking your banner, they run a search in Facebook to see if you have an actual presence on the network where you’re marketing yourself. Or they open a new tab and run a Google search on your brand to see where you live.

“Social media-exposed consumers are far more likely to search for brand and product-related terms, and click on a brand’s paid search ad,” said Graham Mudd, VP of comScore, Inc. “This finding provides strong evidence that investing in social media marketing can both increase brand consideration and drive higher conversion rates once the consumer has decided to purchase.”

This study gives weight to what many internet marketers already knew: search marketing and social media marketing play very well together.

And that reinforces what traditional marketers have known for many years: effective marketing campaigns consist of multiple channels with multiple touch points within those channels, enabling you to reach your customers in the way they want to be reached.

Get started in search and social media marketing:

•    Show your boss this blog post and the press release from comScore to convince him that social media and search marketing really do work hand-in-hand.
•    Find your audience where they live (on Google, Bing, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.).
•    Listen and research first, then engage.

And remember, it’s called social media for a reason. So please, be social.

Robert offered some expert insights into prospects’ search behavior, campaign structure, and lead gen:

“There are so many things you can do with search as a lead-gen tool, and a thousand ways to approach it,” Coats said. “The key is, it’s not so much how you want to be found as how your prospects are searching. It’s understanding psychology, and human nature and how people begin their searches around issues they’re trying to resolve.”

Read the full article here: Search as Lead Gen

Great work, Robert.