To be successful in paid search, marketers need to, obviously, have a presence on Google. As Christine Churchill of KeyRelevance points out, Google controls anywhere from 60-80 percent of the paid search engine market share, based on various reports.
She goes on to say that marketers also need to utilize the recently combined Yahoo and Microsoft adCenter. Operating as one, “Binghoo,” as Churchill calls it, has approximately 30 percent of the paid search market share. Although Google AdWords is established and has great tools, there is still value in “Binghoo.”
“Keep advertising on Google, but don’t give up on adCenter. I think that it will prove in the long-term to be a beneficial thing because it gives us another opportunity to get in front of potential customers,” she said.
For those marketers who still need to embrace adCenter, Churchill offers an easy tip. She suggests that marketers download their Google accounts into the AdWords Editor tool, which is free. Marketers can then export the information into an Excel spreadsheet. Although marketers will need to do some tweaking especially regarding negative keywords and geo-targeting, this step saves a lot of time when beginning an adCenter campaign.
In this interview with WebProNews, Churchill also discusses several basic, older tools that are still relevant today. For instance, Xenu’s Link Sleuth is still very effective for checking links.
In addition, she talks about recent changes to Google’s keyword tool. The search engine changed the data source from Google.com and its partner sites to just Google.com. Google is also looking at commercial words as opposed to informational words. Churchill personally believes this was a bad move on Google’s part since 80 percent of searches on the Web are informational.
“I think Google is doing a real disservice to users by doing that,” she adds.
What are your thoughts on adCenter and Google’s recent changes to its keyword tool?
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