PPC Research: who will win the battle of the search labs?
For PPC account managers to be successful you need to be thorough on your keyword research otherwise you will miss out on searches that will potential lead to business. But what resources are available in order to do this successfully and which is best? There are two of note, Google have their own called Google Labs and Microsoft have theirs called Microsoft Ad Labs. Funnily enough Yahoo have one called research.yahoo.com but you can’t really call it a Search Lab! Not as advanced as the other two. This article discussed the benefits and weaknesses of Google and Microsofts’ solutions to determine which is best. Lets begin Battle of the Search Labs.
It is important to understand, before we begin, where the idea came from. In actual fact, Search Labs began in the advent of PPC. Pay Per Click marketing began with GoTo.com which in turn became Overture, however the holding company of GoTo.com was IdeaLab owned by the founder of PPC Bill Gross (who is frantically trying to re-invent the wheel with a CPA search marketing model). IdeaLab was a company created to employ people to create other companies and therefore make money. What a great solution – everyone is employed to make money and setup new business, yet covered by the financial security of IdeaLab company umbrella.
This idea was then adopted by Google and Googlers (Google staff) were rewarded for new search innovations. These fell under the bracket of Google Labs and each employee had the chance to have their idea created as a way of benefiting the Google company. Monthly leader boards were published of staff who were winning the race to get their idea turned into an actual product used by Google and some of these ideas are discussed here. Microsoft have followed suit and since moving away from Yahoo in August 2006 have created their own version which is pretty good. But who will win?
Microsoft have loads of funky tools (adlab.msn.com), similar to Google (labs.google.com). The problem I find with both labs is that they never seem to be the finished article.
Lets take Microsoft’s Keyword Mutation Detection Tool as our first example:
http://adlab.microsoft.com/keymut/
After reading an interesting article by serial blogger Mel Carson, adCenter Community Manager for Europe, he was talking about how important this tool can be. Agreed, it can be, but the main reason is because it is important to get thorough keyword generation done. The tool above helps for variations which are key to being successful on PPC, however this tool is very vague. Mel used the example of a search for ‘bikini’ for which the tool brings back loads of spelling variations. However, try other searches and there is little or no data.
That’s where Google has the advantage because they have 80% of the UK search market share. However, even with this amount of search data, I think some of their resources for PPC research could be a whole lot better. Take Google Trends for example:
Google.co.uk/trends
This seems so vague, you can not quantify specific search volumes by month.
Google also do ‘Page Creator’ which allows people to create their own webpage free of charge. What a great thing if you are strapped for cash, however from a quality perspective for PPC marketing it doesn’t really work. The quality of enquiries and sales that come through PPC is partly down to the website but many people see PPC as the culprit. How visitors interact with the site depends on their final action, whether they purchase or whether they leave!
There are a few interesting tools in Google Lab, however Microsoft has some cutting edge ones which I love!
Have a look at the ‘Detecting Online Commercial Intent’ tool – this tells you the percentage chance of action from the search query. This is great for relating the buying cycle to the search terms and you can really use this to help in optimisation of PPC data. The percentage chance of commercial intent is not wholely accurate but as a rule of thumb it is very useful.
Search Funnels is another amazing tool – type in a search term and it will tell you the search buying process that is involved. It would be great if it works, I can’t get it to do so though. AdLabs also has a couple of other tools that rival Google’s, including ‘Seasonal Keyword Forecast’ and ‘Keyword Forecast’.
For search volume, Google win the battle. For the Battle of the Labs, Microsoft just ahead for innovation. The key lies in understanding buying cycles in relation to PPC, and intentions behind search. MSN are making an effort in this department but Google have made little. Here is a deserved pat on the back for the stocky search engine (short of search volume, but big on quality). Pay Per Click Marketing is a safe investment on MSN, especially if you are in a retail sector.
Isn’t it funny that Yahoo doesn’t have the same resource! It has Research.yahoo.com but isn’t at the same advanced stage as the other two.
It is a two horse race to be king of search, Google is winning but with MSN attempting to snap up Yahoo, 2008 will be fascinating for search development. Come on MSN!
