In case you missed what SearchWiki is, it lets you customize your Google Web Search results. In other words, you can delete search results you do not like, promote the ones you do like to the top of the listing and even comment on them. (Read my full blog post on “The change in Search and Organic Search Rankings“.)

Like I said above, with this test of SearchWiki on Paid Ads, you are simply allowed to remove ads. You cannot promote or comment on Ads as with the organic results and you can only do this if you are logged in with your Google Account details.

Is there cause for panic?
All of a sudden the Search World has been thrown upside down (yet again) and many have been asking questions about how this will affect Quality Scores, how much abuse this might generate, will it affect ad variations for that domain for “the same search in the future” and also questions about how much users will really engage with this.

I don’t believe there is any cause for panic. The Pay Per Click (PPC) model has for a long time been “the” mainstream source of revenue for Google and personally and I do not believe that Google will willingly hijack the success of one of their most profitable tools.

Second to that I believe that Google are very aware of how it might affect Advertiser confidence as a whole. Advertisers pay a lot of money to Google to advertise their products and many do have confidence in the PPC model. Google has worked hard to establish trust in their product but a permanent feature like SearchWiki on Paid Ads may damage or dent that confidence.

Finally, I believe that Google is simply testing to see how 1. The Search Marketing World reacts (I have no proof) and 2. how the general Google user responds to changes in SERP’s. I am still of the belief that Google is continueing in their ideal to deliver the most relevant results to the end-user.

Oh, before I forget, some say that this is only being tested in the US, but I am seeing the little “X” next to Paid Search Ads via multiple accounts from my location here in South Africa. Guess Google is testing global market reaction?

How long will the test last and what will Google learn from it? I don’t know, we’ll just have to wait to find out!

I have to mention that longtail previously invited Stafford to speak on Google’s involvement in South Africa at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange which I was not able to attend, so the following are my impressions taken from his latest presentation. This is in the particular order of randomness.

Don’t think only ‘search‘ when you see Google – think BIGGER, much BIGGER. Google are set on bringing information straight to your doorstep, be it on your computer or your cell phone. Relevant content, images and soon also maps for SA. Interesting enough Google has the biggest datacenter in the world – 14 times the size of NASA.

Some interesting stats and notes:

• Information is more accessible on mobile phones
• 1 in 6 searches done on the Internet are done on mobile phones.
• South Africa ranks as 3rd largest in query volume behind Japan and India being 1^st and 2^nd respectively.
• Google recently launched Google mobile ads which functions on their motto of ‘Moment of Relevance’ so you don’t have to scroll through tedious pages of content before finding what you are looking for.
• We are the 4^th country in the world to get mobile universal search.
• There are more mobile phones in the world than tv, pc’s and credit cards combined and I think this is the future for branding your company, getting your information out there and communicating to your target market.
• Currently Google SA does not have any competitors in this field and it is huge for them.

Not only do they bring us search results, they have gone and made it a true experience to search for something.

Pay-Per-Click and Quality Scores
Despite popular belief Pay Per Click Ads on Search Result Pages are actually not ranked due to the amount advertisers pay but according to the Quality Score given. Quality Scores are made up of 4 very vital features which is:

1. The Speed of Landing Page
2. The Quality of Landing Page
3. The Number of ‘click troughs’ (high or low)
4. The Moment of Relevance

Some companies make use of additional links (Google co-op) under their search result listing that allows you to simply browse their site without actually opening their landing page eg. Microsoft.

Google SA will be bringing us Google Maps soon with great prospects. It is currently up and running in the States and a real ground breaker when it comes to mapping. You can get step by step directions that guide you from point A to B and these will update if you drag the dots on the map to alternate the route. You can also place ‘yourself’ in the vicinity by dragging the little man onto the street you would like to view – this will allow you to view the surroundings which opens up even more possibilities. Should it just be to familiarize yourself with the area, to get visual land marks for when you are in the area, to sussing out an area before you go look at a house that’s for sale/rent and even better, you can advertise on this virtual street, meaning that browsers can ‘walk into’ your shop, see what it looks like and even order from your menu. This is a whole new advertising market that’s opening up.

Google prides themselves on using a fast platform, they are able to go through posted content in 0.7 seconds by using their spiders to grab all the relevant information. This is even faster abroad and sitting at a whopping 0.03sec. This allows for up to the minute news reporting and CNN tapped into this market. Instead of sending out reporters they now have over 300 000 civilians uploading ground breaking news where they are in the heat of the moment using i-report.

With YouTube being a part of Google they have expanded their services even more. 14% of total traffic in South Africa is just YouTube and this will probably grow due to the fact that they promise to improve the download time and search experience in September as they are building new centers locally with new servers. YouTube statistics can be tracked for your video – how long it’s been viewed, do they complete the watch and from where they are. Companies are starting to utilize this medium to post competitions and to draw the market to their product.

In South Africa we have under 5 million people connected to the internet currently and less than a million broadband users. Hopefully this number will increase as Google is working hard in trying to lower broadband costs. So we can start looking forward to SA going from the most expensive to one of the cheapest in terms of connectivity and they would like to see this at the end of 2010 and have between 12 and 17 million people connected.

Google is clearly bringing the world to us click by click, be it information, other users, video, advertising, maps and up to the minute news reporting. It’s out there – so you might as well use it.

As of 18 June, Google is incorporating the page load time factor into your keywords’ Quality Scores.

“Keywords with landing pages that load slowly may get lower Quality Scores (and thus higher minimum bids). Conversely, keywords with landing pages that load very quickly may get higher Quality Scores and lower minimum bids.”

Google is doing this for two reasons:

1. First, they want consumers to have the best experience when clicking on a Ad (they don’t want consumers to wait a long time for landing pages to load) and;
2. Second, they want to help you improve your conversion rate (slow loading pages are more likely to abandoned and will hurt your conversion rate)

The inclusion of the load time factor by Google will most certainly help you improve conversion rates on your active Ads, but more important, it provides you with the opportunity to offer consumers the best possible experience when interacting with your brand or product.

How do you improve your page load time?
Google Adwords is able to re-evaluate your page load time on a regular basis and should you make significant improvements to your landing page’s load time, you should see a better Quality Score and lower minimum cost-per-click (CPC) bids.

To find out more, go to the AdWords Help Center to learn more about load time and landing page quality.

Now called the Site and Category Exclusion tool, and it allows you to exclude certain categories of webpages from your content network campaigns in addition to excluding individual sites.

This change should make it easier for advertisers to keep their ads out of sites where conversions remain low. You don’t have to repeatedly exclude sites from the same category any longer.

Head on over to the Inside AdWords blog, for the latest on Category exclusion.

To keep it short, here is the basic gist of the session:

Why advertise online? (UK stats)
60% of UK households have internet
10% growth in Internet households in last 3 years

• users spend +- 2 hours to shop online

• changing face of advertising: from outdoor > press > radio > tv > online display > seach ads > blogs
• from generic push to personalised pull
• 25 million Google search customers
• Google advertising network is the biggest advertising network in the UK – 1 million daily ad exposures
• you have full control over your ads
• you can target geographic locations
• relevant ads gain higher rankings
• key principle
  quality score = relevance
  higher ranked ads get more clicks
  Ranking = Max CPC x Quality score
• Good quality score leads to a low Minimum CPC
• the stronger the quality score, the more clicks for less
• when clicks count as most relevant, quality score goes up – the more relevant the ads, the more users will click and continue to click
• include strong call to action – book now fro instance.