The concept behind Google’s newest claim to fame ‘Google Flu Trends’ is a bit far fetched if you ask us but as ridiculous as it may sound – it is actually feasible!

It’s a model developed in partnership with the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) which found a correlation between the number of flu-related searches and the number of people who actually have the flu. These searches form patterns or trends of flu outbreaks in real time so that outbreaks can be identified 1-2 weeks earlier than previously. Although it is not a new concept in the appearance of sites like whoissick.org and Health Map it is the first of its kind on such a mass scale.

We all know this is just the beginning for Google and it will be interesting to see what is the next infectious disease they decide to tackle with the power of collective intelligence behind them.

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We felt it was about time we celebrated the launch of Make It Rain, so we will be holding our official launch party in Soho on Thursday, November 20th 2008.

It’s sure to be a great night attended by our friends, clients, members of London’s Online Marketing community, the press and of course the Make It Rain team. Invites are on the way so make sure you RSVP, and we hope to see you there!

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Wouldn’t it be great if you could guarantee that your website would appear on the first page of Google’s search results, under any keyword, without undertaking any Search Engine Optimisation? Wouldn’t it also be great if you could dynamically update the text and images within those search results using TSV, XML and RSS feeds?

Well, it’s possible; say hello to ‘Google Subscribed Links’, an extremely powerful service that allows you to control content within the first page of Google’s (sort of) natural search results.

So what’s the catch? There always is one right, let’s face it.

Well, the catch is that to see your search results in Google, the user has to first click a button on your website. Oh,…. and they also have to be logged-in to their Google account at the same time, hm. But don’t let that get you down. The simple fact remains; this service has serious applications, and with a little foresight now, Subscribed Links may have the potential to bear fruit for you in the future.

So before you begin to subliminally demote Subscribed Links in your list of projects for 2009, it might be worth taking a few seconds to think through the implications.

Firstly, lets deal with the negatives. Personally, I wouldn’t get too hung-up over the fact that the user needs to be logged into Google to subscribe to your service. We should remember that it’s predicted Google Mail will overtake Yahoo! Mail by 2010 (and who would doubt it), meaning a significant percentage of your potential subscribers will soon have an existing Google account when they reach your webpage. We should also remember that Google are very clever in keeping their members logged-in to their account, even when the client PC is left idle or in hibernation.

So what should we do? We could either wait until Google has a large enough share of the web mail market before we act, or, investigate it now so that we have plenty of time to examine where the service can be applied to our online existence in the future.

Well, that’s up to you. All I would say is that if you manage to define a compelling case for your website visitors to sign up to your Subscribed Links, then the service has the potential to be a real winner.

OK, so, to demonstrate how life changing Subscribed Links can be, lets look at Make It Rain’s service as an example.

So, imagine this; your browsing the web one day, looking for a website that allows you to keep up to date with the latest innovations and developments within the Internet Marketing industry. That’s when you stumble upon make-it-rain.co.uk, a website that’s packed full of interesting commentary on the Internet Universe. You think to yourself: “This website’s fantastic, wouldn’t it be useful if the latest articles from make-it-rain.co.uk would appear in Google’s search results, each time that I enter ‘Internet Marketing’, ‘SEM’, ‘SEO’ (or one of the service’s 97 other keywords) into Google Search.”

You then see this button on the site that allows you to do just that.

Go on, be brave, click the button!

All you need to do it confirm, and that’s it; you’re subscribed! So now every time you enter one of our 100 keywords into Google Search you will see make-it-rain.co.uk in the forth slot. How good is that?

So, how does it work from our end (or your end potentially)? Well, it’s very straightforward to set up, as you would expect from a Google service.

You simply need to define your search terms, the contents of your listing (or advert whichever way you want to look at it), and the URL (it feels a lot like creating an AdWords advert I must say).

You then need to add the button to your website (the code of which is generated for you of course). And that’s it, you’re ready to start thinking about how to convert your visitors into Subscribed Linkers.

If you decide to incorporate Subscribed Links into your online business strategy, let me know, and I review it in my subsequent ‘Subscribed Links’ blog.

Can’t wait.

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How many of your accounts show that the majority of sales occur within one click? I have worked on accounts that achieve over 65% of their sales from single visits, or did they? I think this is where, we may over analyse and the data can be misleading.

The data says one click, one sale, but the reality is that the user could have moved from their work station to their home laptop, meaning we lose the cookie data and are left with one click, one sale.

The heavy focus on analysis means we are now forced into having conversations at keyword level when we should be looking at the performance of the campaign as a whole.

Let me get one thing straight; this does not mean you don’t have to optimise your accounts. There is always room to improve.  What it does mean is that deleting a keyword should be the last resort and not the first. Search Engine Marketers (SEM’s) are often trigger happy while focusing on the keywords bringing in the sales.

In most cases they find that once they delete the so called underperformers, the sales fall for the top performers. Funny how that happens! As long as keywords are relevant to your business they have a part to play.

There will be some keywords that generate traffic but no direct sales, does this mean they have no place in your account? I’ll let you decide, but, before you do, make sure you tick all the boxes before deleting!

What are the boxes? That’s for another time, but same place!

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Once upon a time, back in 2004, I had only one client out of 15 that was tracking sales and revenue. The rest were happy to be on the world wide web and were waiting for the phones to ring off the back of all this traffic.

PPC tracking today

We know that the benefits of PPC are endless; but has the heavy focus on measurability finally come back to haunt us?

• PPC is highly measurable
• You can monitor the performance of every keyword

However, shouldn’t the most important benefit be that the masses are actively looking for you and your offering online?

Not being online is like having a store that never opens. Users know what you offer but if you’re not online (or open) then they can’t buy!

I think it’s fair to say the tracking landscape has changed alot relative to what it was 5 years ago. Now, we wouldn’t dream of activating accounts until tracking is in place! Not only has the market moved towards tracking performance, we now track click journeys which provide rich information and great insights for our clients, but are we missing the full online picture?

We now track everything including:

• What keyword did they use to find us?
• What keyword did they use to convert?
• What message was the user exposed to when converting?
• How many visits did it take before the user converted?

All the information that these answers above provide undoubtedly gives PPC the edge against all other marketing channels. This is where the market is today and rightly so. In the current climate where budgets are tight the benefits of PPC will be ringing around meeting rooms all over the world.

Nonetheless, there are some holes in our data that prevent us from seeing the entire picture. Where are the holes in PPC results? All will be revealed in Part 2.

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We always like to help, so check out our new search marketing events page to keep up to date with the latest conferences, expos, parties and showcases in the industry. We’re always out and about at events all over the UK.

Catch us at the e-consultancy SEO Supplier Showcase and other events like SES London and SMX London to name a few.

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For starters let me say i found this quite amusing this morning. No, not the minimum bid thing but the glaring headline typo in Yahoo’s search marketing ‘News and Tips’ newsletter they sent me. Oh dear.

Moving swiftly on to the subject of this post, Yahoo! actually introduced the change in the standard minimum bid in the US back in February. So now they’ve introduced it into the UK what does it mean for advertisers?

Well, it would be quite easy to just expect the same campaign adjustments for minimum bids as you do with Google but I would be more inclined to keep a close eye on your accounts during the change period. Why? well Yahoo! state there are two factors that will determine your minimum bid now:

• The relevance of your keywords (as measured by the quality of the ads associated with them).
• The number of bidders and bid amounts in the particular keyword market.

Sound familiar?

If you’re running your search campaign right, the first factor shouldn’t really have any negative impact, moreover it may offer reduced costs. However, the second factor is pretty much a free reign for Yahoo! to run wild on your minimum bid prices, bearing in mind the opaque nature of the bid marketplace, only Yahoo! can see this information. Potentially, there could be some crazy minimum bid increases which could really affect campaign costs. Anyone for a £10 minimum bid?

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I love the iPhone app store, but it’s a victim of it’s own success as more developers submit apps. Thinking way back (about 2 months ago) it was easy to find an app you wanted because there wasn’t that many. But now, it’s life-draining to wade through all of the apps to find a hidden gem you may have missed, so i now only check the recent and what’s hot pages.

With many apps being added constantly, how do you ensure as a developer you don’t get buried?

Well, you may have noticed that there is a ridiculous amount of updates for the apps you have downloaded (i’ve got 10 waiting right now), which seems fine if it has just been released to iron out bugs, but how many problems can these apps really have on an on-going basis? So i thought maybe they were giving me more cool stuff to add to the apps, unfortunately not.

What is actually happening is they have been taking advantage of the way the app store is categorising new applications. Every new app update release meant that the app store thought it was a new release which meant a front page slot. Timing of pushed updates became critical in order to maximise front page position and downloads. Easy SEO or what?

Unfortunately, the latest release means that apps are no longer categorised in this way but are solely based on the first date of release, which Apple say should aid more innovation within app development. Short-lived but brilliant.

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We raved previously about how much we love Google Suggest, which got us thinking is there anything else that this could have a big effect on?

Yes! An increase in 2-3 word keyword searches

If we anticipate to see an increase in short-tail (2-3 word) keywords as searchers who would previously use one word keywords opt for longer Suggestions instead, surely this will change the dynamic of your campaign spend, but how?

Let’s think about this logically - there hasn’t been an increase in search traffic, it’s only being redistributed from other keywords. Currently your account pricing works like this; you have expensive header keywords, less expensive short–tail keywords and even less expensive long-tail keywords.

So how can you expect your campaign pricing structure to change?

1. An increase in bid prices of (2-3 word) keywords
2. A decrease in bid prices of 1 word header keywords
3. A decrease in bid prices of long-tail keywords

It’s probably too early to tell, but my prediction is there wont be an overall increase in your campaign spend and the increase in short-tail keywords will be offset by decreases in header and long-tail keywords.

The good news overall is potentially traffic should be more qualified and click to action should improve. We’ll be monitoring the campaign structure shifts closely to see if this is the case!

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Google has recently unveiled its newest feature, Google Suggest, which will provide real time keyword suggestions for searchers. We know how it works, but what should we be excited about?

More qualified searches

Personally, I think a great advantage is you can expect more qualified leads to your site because Suggest is really a search funnel, narrowing down peoples search with every keystroke until they find what they’re looking for. Let’s face it, not everyone is tech savvy enough to know how to search efficiently. Thankfully, Google Suggest can now take the guesswork out of it.

Take this example, I can’t remember what David Beckham’s team in LA is called, so I type in “LA soccer” and look “la soccer galaxy” appears as a suggestion - problem solved!

Make it work for you

Okay, so now that you know your audience can find you more efficiently, how do you make Google Suggest work for you?

Well for starters, you need to determine if your customers search patterns will be affected? The major change will come from the less advanced searchers. These people will type in one word and scroll down the list until they see something related to their term. We could generalize that B2C products and services could benefit from Suggests funnel action.

Once you’ve figured that out, play around with the tool by entering words you think your customers might enter and see what comes up. This should give you an idea of how your funnel works.

Also worth thinking about is if Google will make this more advanced by taking the data from search patterns and optimizing by user search behaviour for future results they receive.

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