With Google universal on natural listings, recent tests on video adwords, and hte introduction of display into image search the days of the text link may really be numbered

This has been debated to death ever since it appeared with little consensus. So, an opt out seems to be the best option

At first glance seems like another useful addition by Google. Except on closer inspection this is not a search box for products or holidays in this case provided by Virgin, but a search box for other pages on the site. Same as the one in the Google toolbar – quite handy if the search functionality of the website is a bit crap. But for specialist vertical searches like travel where Google has managed to fail so far, I’m not sure.

When it’s bought out into the results like this, I start to question the motive. On the one hand it’s great that a user can search deeper into the site, but the problem I have is the way these new results are displayed, back into a normal results page, but this time you have to compete against all the paid search ads.

To demonstrate –
If you wanted to find a holiday in Antigua from Virgin, you’d ordinarily search for Virgin Holidays, and then go to the site and search for Antigua using their holiday search functionality. The chances are you’d find one.

But now, instead of going to the site, you could be persuaded to search for Antigua using the additional search box provided by Google. And this is what you’d get

So now virgin has to compete with all the paid search ads from competitors and if they’re lucky the user may click on their own PPC ad. You may be able protect your trademark for a brand search, but not for the generic term.

Let’s hope this never comes out properly without the option to turn it off from your Google webmaster tools console.

Marissa Mayer explained this was in response to the impact of blended results. When video, news and images are included in regular results, the eye scans to the images first and ignores the ads.

“With universal search, something is getting shaken up a bit on the bottom part of the page,” she said. “The ads on the top part of the page should match.”

The screenshot of an Enquiro eye-tracking study shows clearly the traditional golden triangle being displaced by a very different scan when an image is introduced to the results page. The eye scans first to the image, and then to the text alongside the image before continuing at the top left hand corner of the page.

Using the same argument we could question what happens when a multimedia ad is included in a results page where there are no universal results – will advertisers have an advantage over natural results? Also does this mean all advertisers use MM in order to compete for attention? Guess we’ll need to see how this evolves.

One of the most advance technologies deployed with Google universal search was the ability to compare relevance of ordinary text documents with video, images and news. This ability to compare apples with pairs and position them on the same page based on user needs – promoted an important question ‘Will Google blend advertising with regular listing?” Marissa Mayer’s answer then was characteristically vague –

“I do think that this opens the door for the introduction of richer mediums into the result page,” she said, adding, that search results in any form should encompass the best answer no matter the medium. “For us, ads are answers as well…. And so I was hoping that we could bring some of these same advances in terms of the richness of media to ads.”

Well now they have.

Search as direct response to brand
Traditionally, search has been used strictly for direct marketing – selling boxes. The branding benefits have been an added value thrown in but rarely paid for.

With MM ad formats on search results, Google may protest about being seen as a media company, but, the migration of traditional display dollars to search is inevitable. The introduction of multimedia ads will be a real threat to the current dominance of search by DM. At the very least the lines will blur between brand and DM or we’ll see a more severe displacement of DM as a result of higher click costs driven by the budgets available for brand.

With the slowing economy and advertisers increasingly moving to online channels, Google for the first time in the last two years saw a decline in share of online ad-spend. John Battelle argued this was due to brand advertisers preferring to spend their money on display ads distributed on content sites, as oppose to search properties. So it’s not entirely surprising that Google would try to make their search space more attractive to brand advertisers.

When Google Universal launched everyone knew this was a big deal, but we’re only just starting to see it playing out. For advertisers there’s a real opportunity to combine targeting synonymous with the pull marketing power of search with the capabilities of multimedia display advertising.

Similar to Adsense (contextual advertising) – A publisher can have videos from youTube embedded on their site with ads placed above and below the video.

The Publisher can chose to have content from a specific content provider, by content or let the system decide based on your on-page content.

The advertiser is charged for every click or impression and revenue is shared between Google, the content provider and the publisher.

Could mean content providers get a chance to monetize their content. Publishers get to make their sites more interesting and provide a better user experience. And Google finally get a change to make money from youTube.

But this could be a nightmare for brand and reputation managers. If I was to put up contextual Video Adsense next to my post about Mcdoanlds providing free Wifi– are my visitors likely to see the video of Louis Ogborn strip searched at a mcdonald’s in Kentucky – currently ranking 1 in YouTube for Mcdonalds?

Guess we are going to have to wait and see how this pans out.

As Danny explains over at Search Engine Lands, this does not mean the same thing as click fraud is less than 0.02%. Nope, it’s much more complicated than that. This is just the number that they know about – no one really knows how much click fraud gets pass both Google and the advertiser.

Guess most Adwords advertisers in any high click area is going to find these laughable. For them these figures doesn’t really say anything.

In the study, click-through rates (Percentage of click on sponsored listings) increased by 5% in the first week and 9% in the second week. This is great news for Yahoo! and their advertisers.

They also looked at the percentage of clicks on sponsored results compared to organic results, and again the new platform appears to be enjoying a greater share of clicks. Almost a 1% increase in paid search clicks to 11% from 10% before the new system. I guess, this can be interpreted in two ways, either Yahoo!’s sponsored search is delivering more relevant results or their organic search is less satisfactory compared to their new paid search model.

Overall the result look good for Yahoo!, and I hope, Like many in the industry that Yahoo! makes a good second to Google’s ad platform.

For details on the changes introduced by Panama, SEO Roundtable has a discussion on the new platform

He claims to have evidence which is currently being investigated by Google, which suggest, AdSense members who are connected with Al Qaeda and Hezbollah are creating blogs within Orkut and encouraging their readers to click on the ads. In addition they’re using clickbots to increase the revenue from the ads.

At search engine journal Loren Baker argues this is the kind of thing that needs to happen before Google takes clickfraud seriously. When this story breaks, I’m sure they’ll no longer be able to keep their heads buried in the sand. But, I think this particular case of click fraud maybe very difficult to stop. They may be able to identify automated software, but, if thousands of people who support a terrorist cause, decides to do the clicking, it makes things much harder.

Expect an announcement very soon from Google