Rumors are that the Google Superbowl ad in the 3rd quarter will be this ad on YouTube.

Rumored Superbowl Google Ad on YouTube

Whether it is true or not I though it would be fun to see how the search engine result page (SERP) is different in Israel. What is interesting is that although the search result is the same, you can see in the screen shot below that in Israel there are ads.

Rumored Superbowl ad SERP in Israel

You might think that there are ads only in Israel. However, if you do the search in the USA you can see that there are even more ads (see screen shot below). Google did not want to show the sponsored search ads in their ad. Could this be because it hurts the search experience?  The ad experience?

To be fair, if Google did include the ads and the clicks were on the ads, some may complain that Google was hinting that people should click on ads. And the ads might distract from their message.

Rumored Superbowl ad SERP in USA

Whether or not the ad will actually run it sure is creating a lot of buzz on the internet. The screen shot below shows just a few reactions to the Google Superbowl ad.

Google Superbowl ad reactions

Most companies know that they have to own their URL, and website. What is surprising is that they don’t know always know that they must own their Adobe Flash website presentations.

In order to increase conversions it is necessary to makes changes on the website and Flash presentations are no exception. Unfortunately, this is not possible without access to the source file.

If conversion optimization is important make sure you have all the Adobe Flash source files so you can edit and optimize your website Flash presentations

The Flash source file is usually with the designers or one of their subcontractors. Even if you just want to change one of the links on the presentation, you first need to retrieve the flash source file from the designer.

Our experience shows that it is not always possible to get this file for various reasons.
The web site owner either has to compromise his conversion optimization efforts or pay for a new flash presentation.

In order to avoid this, you should always insist that you receive the Flash source file so changes can be made. Conversion optimization means you control the user experience. Technical and other obstacles have to be removed.

Recently, SEO companies and web designers have been complaining that Google eliminated Local results for their business segment as you can see in the screen shots below.

SEO Companies don’t have local listings (right screen shot) whereas plumbers have local listings complete with map and phone numbers.

A Google employee, Joel, H. explained this new policy in Google’s support forums

“Today, we’re intentionally showing less local results for web design / SEO queries. For example, [web design sacramento] doesn’t display local listings today. We believe this is an accurate representation of user intent. In some cases, we do show local listings, however (as NSNA/php-er noted) [web design in bellingham].

I’m sure some of you feel we should be displaying local results for queries like [Web Design Vancouver]. I understand that concern, but based on our understanding of our users, we feel this is the right decision for now.

I’ll give the usual disclaimer that we’re constantly working on improving the user experience and results will vary over time. So, this could change in the future, but I wanted to be explicit about what we’re doing today”.

I am sure that Google is basing this decision on the analysis of users’ click actions. It makes sense that for plumbers the location is critical because they have to come to your house. However for SEO companies it is not important at all.

For example, most of my SEO Company’s clients are in the USA, Europe and the Far East—only a small number are in Israel. The same can be said for many businesses and if you do a search for financial analysts you can see that there are no local search results.

No local search for financial analysts.

If There are No Local Results in Google Should You Optimize Your Site for Localization?

In many cases you should for the following reasons:

• Even though location may not be important, all things being equal there are some people who prefer to work with a company that is close by.
• Google’s results page is localized, even if local results are not shown. All things being equal, an Israeli SEO company will appear higher in Israel than outside of Israel.
• Google changes their algorithms frequently. Today they may not show local results for your business segment and tomorrow they may put it back in as mentioned in the forum post above.

Some people wonder why companies from all over the world want to work with us. After all, we are located in a bad neighborhood–one of our neighboring countries openly says they would like to wipe us off the face of the earth.

And it’s not like there aren’t any good Internet marketing companies in America, Europe and everywhere else.

I believe that the reason is the people. Israelis are innovative, creative and get things done fast. But what has nurtured these qualities?
Dan Senor and Saul Singer attempt to answer this question and more.

“START-UP NATION  addresses the trillion dollar question:
How is it that Israel — a country of 7.1 million, only 60 years old, surrounded by enemies, in a constant state of war since its founding, with no natural resources — produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and the UK?”

“How is it that Israel has, per person, attracted over twice as much venture capital investment as the US and thirty times more than Europe?”

One thing I learned from experience was not to talk to potential clients about conversion optimization. They wanted traffic. And more traffic.

If I mentioned conversion optimization I could hear their eyes glaze over through the phone.

Recently, we had some calls from companies that wanted us to manage their Google Adwords campaign. However, after a couple of minutes it became clear to me that they need conversion optimization first.

I took a chance and explained that if existing traffic is not converting enough it doesn’t make sense to increase traffic even more.

And they agreed.

People are finally starting to get it. For the first time we are starting with conversion optimization before we work on increasing traffic.

Take a look at your conversion rates

Multiply your average revenue from each conversion. Now take that number and assume you can increase your conversion rate from 3% to 4.5 % which is the same as increasing your revenue by 50%. That is a worthwhile investment—don’t you think?

In his book, Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely’s 1st chapter is something every one who is interested in conversion optimization should read. Actually, everyone who buys anything on the Internet (and offline) should read it too. If everyone takes my advice, Mr. Ariely will make a lot of money.

Airely’s experiment proves that we are easily manipulated by the way price options are presented on the Internet (and offline too)

He found that The Economist had 3  subscription options:

1. Web Subscription for $59
2. Print Edition for $125
3. Print and Web Subscription for $125

When faced with these choices students at MIT chose:

• Web Subscription: 16 students
• Print Edition: 0 students
• Print and Web Subscription: 84 students

This makes sense as the Print Only Edition was the worst deal.

However, When Ariely removed the Print only edition you might expect that rational students would make the same choice as no one chose this anyway. Here are the results:

• Web Subscription: 68 students
• Print and Web Subscription: 32 students

Apparently the decoy Print Edition option was added by The Economist to increase revenues. The take away for conversion rate optimizers and consumers is to understand that: How the information is presented can be used to manipulate buyers. We focus on comparing things that are easily comparable. That is why the students tended to compare option 2 and 3 above  – and ignore option 1.

For more information on the concept of relativity read the book and take a look at this video.

Most companies stumble when technology shifts. How can that happen with search engines? In 10 years the web will be 32 times as powerful as it is now. So instead of many results you may get a single Answer. At least that is what Kevin Maney suggests in his Atlantic Monthly article.

Actually, Google does have an option for this-it is the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button which takes you directly to the 1st web site. Not exactly a button to inspire confidence in Google’s ability to give the Answer. In Hebrew it is worse-the rough translation is “More luck than brains“.

Google’s Hebrew Interface’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” button is roughly translated as “More Luck Than Brains”

Will Search Engines Give Us One Correct Answer in the Future?

I personally don’t think there is one correct answer to many questions, so we will continue to get many results for searches. In any case, I wouldn’t want the search engines to decide for me what the Answer is. That is not to say they can’t do a better job of organizing and filtering the answers. Bing’s search engine results are a step in the right direction.

What Does Google Have to Worry About?

Maney explains how Microsoft worried about companies like Novell and Netscape Communications. Its real competition - Google - was 3 years from starting operations. Google’s real competition has probably not been invented yet. It will be interesting to see if Google is able to buck the trend and reinvents itself when the competition shows up.

In the supermarket the other day I was happy to see a sale for low fat cottage cheese in a 3 pack. There were many 3 packs available and I soon found out why.

The expiry date was fast approaching and my son nixed the purchase. Unfortunately there were no single low fat cottage cheese containers for sale–only these fast expiring 3 packs.

Apparently this 3 pack idea didn’t go over well in this store.

All I could think of was the VP Marketing person looking at his graphs which show that the 3 pack idea was increasing revenue and profits. What he forgot to do is segment his analysis. If he would have checked each store type he would have found that some segments didn’t buy the 3 pack.

Segment your analysis to optimize your campaigns

Segment of people who won’t buy the 3 pack:

• Smaller families that don’t need 3 cottage cheese containers
• Or a lower income group that only buys what they need for the near future
• Or people who are trying to gain weight and skip the low fat stuff

What’s good for brick and mortar stores is good for bit and pixel stores

Even when your campaigns are successful make sure your web analysis includes segmentation in order to find out where the campaign did not succeed. Segmenting ideas include:

• Time of day
• Day of week
• Location
• Language
• Products bought

This way you will optimize your campaign even more. Don’t make the same mistake as this supermarket VP. If he had been more proactive I wouldn’t have had to leave the store without my cottage cheese.

Photo credit: stu_spivack

Understanding web analytics and statistics is becoming more important for web marketers. People who read this blog or work with us know that we are data driven. Our decisions are made after testing and analyzing. And we are not the only ones.

The New York Times as well as Wired ran interesting stories on Statistics and Data.  Google figured prominently in both articles.

The world is changing from analog to digital. Data is going to become more important to businesses as time goes on. I agree with Arthur Benjamin that statistics should be a required subject.

Replacing Calculus Education with Statistics and Probability

Maybe this will help the next generation of website analysts to be more successful.

Anyone who does web analytics knows how easy it is to make a mistake.  So it is not surprising that the New York Times published an article which can be misleading.

The NYT headline is “The Payoff of Ads on Search Engines” and reports on a study by Engine Ready that “visitors who get to retail sites through sponsored links are more likely to buy than those who click on organic results.”

Unfortunately this really doesn’t mean anything. There are many reasons for this:

• We are not comparing the same keywords
• A search ad keyword can represent a whole family of keywords
• A search ad keyword can be manipulated so that the ad will not show if an undesirable keyword is used with it

In order to have meaningful conclusions we have to analyze the same exact match keyword with the same positions. That way we will know if PPC is beating out the organic results. Actually, this may be interesting information but it really won’t answer the question of where should we be investing our resources.

SEO vs. PPC: What Should Companies Invest in?

In order to answer that question we should compare:

• The ROI of PPC vs. SEO
• The revenues of PPC vs. the cost of ads
• Managing the PPC campaign vs. the cost of running a SEO campaign

Even this is more complicated than it looks as not everyone buys something on the 1st visit.

A buyer could 1st come to the site through PPC and then come through SEO on the buying visit. So you have to decide which channel gets what credit

Or

The same person can buy the first time when he comes to the site through Adwords and then buys again a month later when coming through the organic results

Organic results can be better than search engine ads

You should probably be using both SEO and sponsored search  channels but you do need to decide how to divide your budget. Most companies under invest in SEO and SMO because it is more challenging and harder to predict results.