The Search Agency: CPC Increases Across The Board, Weaker Bing Ads Spend In Q4 2013

The Search Agency released its Quarterly State of Paid Search Report today with Q4 performance data among its client set that spans several industries with global spend. The report shows paid search spend rose 37.4 percent year-over-year. Mobile Growth…

Study: Display Ads Drive Search Clicks After Two Weeks

Though there have been several studies on the impact of display ads on search queries, researchers from Harvard and Ozyegin University in Turkey sought to bring academic rigor to this discussion.  Their findings are contained in a Harvard Business School paper entitled, “Do Display Ads…

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Covario: Global PPC Click-Through Rates Hit New Highs, Spend Up 17 Percent YoY In Q4

Though the numbers vary, the Q4 reports we’ve covered all point to solid year-over-year increases in paid search spending. Covario’s Q4 analysis of the global paid search advertising landscape is no different. Based on results from their high tech, consumer electronics and retail…

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RKG Report: PLAs Fuel AdWords Growth, Bing Ads Spend Rises Sharply In Q4

RKG has released its Q4 2013 Digital Marketing Report, and as other reports have indicated, paid search saw solid year-over-year growth in the holiday quarter. Paid search spend among RKG’s retail-heavy client set rose 23 percent year-over-year. Overall click volume increased 19 percent, and…

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Health & Medical SMBs Spend More On Marketing Than Other Industries

When we conducted an online survey of 668 US small and medium-sized businesses in October 2013, a large number of these businesses (just over 20%) classified themselves as belonging to the Health & Medical Industry. This group consisted of a wide spread of specialists, including chiropractors,…

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Report: US Search Ad Spend Rises 12 Percent YoY In Q4 2013; Smartphone CPCs Drop

IgnitionOne released its fourth quarter Digital Marketing Report today, showing that the paid search market in the US continues to grow. Search ad spend rose 12 percent year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2013. In part as a result of the later kick…

Retailers Spending Record Levels On Paid Search In 2013 Holiday Season

An early look at the paid search performance this holiday season shows retailers invested at record levels, beginning earlier, and are realizing new levels of revenue from their paid search efforts this year. The record highs in paid search activity se…

Is Bing A Better Buy Than Google AdWords For Small Business?

Data released yesterday by small business (SMB) marketing platform Pricing Engine argues, as a number of others have in the past, that Bing ads are a “more efficient” buy than Google AdWords. While Google has more search volume and higher CTRs, Bing emerges as a lower cost source of…

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Mobile Accounts For One-Third Of Google Paid Clicks In Q3, Yet CPCs Drop From Q2 [Report]

The Search Agency released its third quarter State of Paid Search Report, showing strong growth in mobile for Google since the completed roll-out of enhanced campaigns this summer. Mobile clicks accounted for one-third of Google’s click share. In contrast, Bing’s mobile click share…

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Google’s [Not Provided] At 87% Of Google Search Traffic To Major News Sites [Report]

If you’ve been hoping that the hypocrisy of Google hiding keyword referral data from natural search traffic but still sharing it with advertisers would get some attention from the mainstream press, this might help: New data from Parse.ly shows that 87 percent of all Google organic traffic to…

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Bing SEO Ranking Factors 2013 Study By SearchMetrics

Searchmetrics has released their SEO ranking factors for Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, today. Similar to their Google ranking factors, Searchmetrics analyzed 10,000 popular keywords and 300,000 websites appearing in the top 30 search results and looked at how various factors correlated…

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AdWords Smartphone CPCs Drop Sharply After Enhanced Campaigns Transition [RKG Report]

With two months of enhanced campaigns behind us, RKG’s Q3 Digital Marketing Report offers a look at the near-term impact of the roll-out on its client set, which includes 40 of the top 500 online retailers. Most metrics remained relatively stable, however the effects were seen in smartphones…

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Organic Vs. Paid: What $10 Million In Search Revenue For Hewlett-Packard Tells Us

It certainly isn’t the first look at the relationship between paid and organic search, but new a new study by Resolution Media and Kenshoo claims to put an end to the debate over whether paid search campaigns cannibalize organic revenue or add incremental value, even when organic visibility…

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Survey: Quality Of Citations Matters More Than Quantity

At the start of August, David Mihm published the findings of the latest installment of the Local Search Ranking Factors Survey. This year, the breakdown & presentation of survey results has been taken to a new level. Ranking factors are grouped by signal type (e.g., Place Page Signals), then…

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Trust In Search Ads Rises, Along With All Other Ads Except Newspaper [Nielsen]

A new Nielsen study on consumer trust in advertising shows trust in search ads has risen since 2007. Nearly half (48 percent) of consumer respondents now say they trust search ads, that’s up 14 percent since 2007. This is certainly good news for search advertisers. In more good news, with the…

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Lily Collins: 2013′s Most Dangerous Celebrity To Search For

Move over Emma Watson. Actress Lily Collins has taken the title as 2013′s most dangerous celebrity to search for online. McAfee, the security technology company, is out with its seventh annual most dangerous celebrities survey, which uses the company’s SiteAdvisor site ratings to…

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Google Dwarfs Bing & Yahoo As Traffic Source For Major News Sites

Google is said to have about 65-70 percent market share of searches in the U.S., but for many publishers, Google’s share of incoming search traffic is much higher. That’s certainly the case with major news sites like Reuters, Mashable, Dallas Morning News, The Next Web and others that…

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Google Gets “Lowest Score Ever” In Customer Satisfaction Survey

There’s a mystery surrounding the latest customer satisfaction numbers released by ForeSee Results (for the American Customer Satisfaction Index [ACSI]). Published late last night, they indicate the lowest levels of consumer satisfaction with search engines (and portals) since 2003. The…

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50 Percent Of Companies Struggling With SEO Aren’t Integrating Social Media [Survey]

What’s one key difference between companies that are successful with SEO and those that aren’t? According to a new study from Ascend2, it’s this: Successful companies integrate social media into SEO strategies and tactics more extensively than companies that struggle with SEO. The…

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