Hummm. It is Friday afternoon so I guess this falls in line with the timing of most of Google’s tests and new feature roll outs, like when they tested their left side search tool on Friday, April 2nd that was Officially Launched on Thursday, May 6th or when they Tested Olympic Logos in Search Pages on Friday, February 19th.

The following screen shot indicates that Google is testing a new “Related to” pay per click text ad segmentation format in the search results pages. While, IMO, these look a little out of place, they may actually function better for users to help identify ad groupings that may interest them.

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Yes! It finally happened. Earlier this week, on July 14th, Google AdWords rolled out their new Broad Match Modifier (BMM) keyword matching option to all of their advertisers in the United States. Since BMM had previously only been available to AdWords advertisers in the UK and Canada, it’s release to US campaigns is something that has been eagerly awaited.

When AdWords first announced the new modified broad keyword matching, they released an infographic to help marketers visually understand how BMM works and relates to existing match types. The infographic shows a very small set of examples of keyword matches that you can expect to have your text ads displayed for.

New Pay Per Click Keyword Match Types

After spending a month running and analyzing modified broad match keywords in a few Canadian AdWords campaigns, we developed a few matching techniques and initial bidding strategies that are represented in the following infograph. We feel that this is a better representation of the tiered levels of match type bidding, traffic potential and keyword matching. In particular we have expanded upon the new BMM match types with 3 possible levels of matching that we call: “Anchor Modified Broad Match“, “Dual Anchor Modified Broad Match“, and “Fully Modified Broad Match“.

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First off, before I get into praising _(below) the new Google AdWords’ Broad Match Modifier (BMM), let me state for the record that I have HATED, H.A.T.E.D., Ha-Ha-Hated Google’s “Expanded Broad Match” since it’s inception!

Why?

Well, when Google AdWords first changed their normal Broad Match keyword targeting to this Expanded Matching option, I half jokingly referred to it as their new Pay Per Click “Money Algorithm”. This term seemed to fit very well because this “Mo-gorithm” took perfectly good broad keywords and corrupted their individual intent by algorithmically matching them to many different words for the sake of displaying higher bidded terms over many queries, thus inflating competition for search impressions and causing AdWords advertisers to lose a substantial amount of control of their targeting capabilities.

Here is an example of the loss of control and “Expanded Targeting” that Google’s current broad match triggers:

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On September 13th 2009 Owen Matthew (a.k.a The Lil’ Dictator) was born and life as I knew it changed forever. You see I had become a father for the first time in my life and this momentous occasion spurred a huge change and maturation in me personally, forcing me to reprioritize my life, focus on my career and reduce the hours spent at the local brew pubs.

I’ve only been a Dad now for a little over 9 months, but through this crash course called parenthood I’ve managed to pick up some solid life lessons that are applicable not only to fatherhood, but also to my day job as a social media marketer (and addict). With Father’s Day right around the corner, I thought I’d share the 4 things that Fatherhood has taught me about being successful in Social Media.

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The Red & Black Café is a worker owned, collectively managed, anarchist friendly, vegan coffee shop and restaurant located here in Portland, Oregon. A curiosity in some parts of the country, but here in the Northwest just another place to get a vegan meal and a cup of coffee… unless that is; you’re a Portland Police officer.

Recently the Red & Black café made national news when they asked a uniformed Officer to leave the premises because his presence reportedly made some of the other patrons uncomfortable. See, the Red & Black has a Safer Space policy, and according to reports, one of the “owners” asked the officer to leave (after they sold him his cup of coffee) because a good number of their patrons don’t feel safe around the police.

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There has been a lot of discussion as of late regarding Facebook and their new “Your Information is not as private as you might have thought it was” privacy policy. While I really don’t have anything new to add directly to this conversation that hasn’t already been said, it does lead to a discussion about the importance of filtering your social media presence for both your personal and professional personas.

By keeping the following simple guidelines in mind you can hopefully avoid those awkward “I can’t believe my Mom now knows I party like that” moments.

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Saturday, May 22nd, 2010 marks the 30 year anniversary of when the Pac-Man video game was released. To celebrate this phenominal interactive computing milestone, Google has changed their homepage logo to an interactive one that you can play the Pacman game live, online and right from Google.com. Pretty Cool!

 
Watch a video of me wasting time playing Field Testing this interactive search engine feature:

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The recent Local University marketing workshop held here in the Twin Cities had a line up of local search marketing speakers that was by far and away the most proficient local SEM panel ever assembled. Ever. Being a search engine marketer myself, whom works on many local and small business campaigns, I thought I would share some of the little local gems and actionable items that I took away from the event.

Disclaimer: The following is not intended to supplement or replace the information that can be gathered by attending a Local U workshop in person. It is only a small sampling of what can be gained from this event. If you are an SEO/SEM and not currently enrolled in an upcoming Local U seminar, you are here by advised to do so at the earliest opportunity.

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WebRanking has 2 tickets to the morning session of the Twin Cities Local University Workshop on Thursday, May 13th in Edina, Minnesota that we are giving away in a contest. If you are interested, just fill out the entry form below for your chance to win.

All entries must be in by Tuesday, May 11th at Noon (12:00pm CST)

The free ticket contest is now closed. Thanks for all the submissions! And the winner is…

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It’s official! Google has officially launched their new search engine result pages (SERPs) format and also an updated and cleaner looking logo.

We first noticed Google testing their new SERPs format back in April.

Since then we have been left to wonder if and when the new search page layout would go live ad if there were any changes that would be made to their format as well.

It appears that the only thing missing from the early tests is the “Not Entirely Unlike” section.

From “Not Entirely Unlike” to “Something Different”

Test SERP: Not Entirely Unlike

New SERPs: Something Different

Google Logos – Then and Now

Google's Original TM Logo

New Cleaner Looking Google Logo

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The Internet ads have been spotted, etailers have posted their shopping guides, social trends are getting hot, and search queries are rising sharply.

It’s official, Mother’s Day Marketing Season is in full bloom along with the tulips!

Bing.com Shopping Promo for Mother's Day 2010 Bing.com Homepage Text Ad to Mother's Day Gift Guide »»»   Yahoo Homepage Ad

With interest and search volume on the rise (and still rising), and time running out, you will need to consider moving quickly to tap into the remaining Mother’s Day season for SEO, PPC and Social Media.

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Ask.com went down this morning for at least an hour with what appears to be a server DNS Failure.

Maybe Ask decided to observe Earth Day by shutting down their website for an hour to save energy. I wonder how many searches were lost saved as a result?

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Yelp has been getting a lot of attention recently and none of it is for being funny, useful or cool. With multiple lawsuits in the works, and claims of extortion and review manipulation being bantered around daily, the integrity of Yelp’s has been up for debate. In an attempt to quell those complaints and add more transparency to the process of how reviews are filtered, Yelp announced today on their official blog two major changes to the way they do business.

The first change, and one that has been requested by reviewers and business owners alike, is the ability to see the reviews that get caught in the oh so secretive review algorithm. That’s right, all of those reviews deemed to be from disgruntled ex employees, revenge seeking former lovers, unethical competitors, robots, the business owner’s family and the solicited 5 star customer are now available for all to see.

Want to discover reviews for your favorite restaurant or even your own business that didn’t make the cut to prime time? Here’s how you do it:

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Kudos to Paul Kragthorpe for spotting what is either a Good Friday (long weekend) test or a limited/controlled release of a new format for Google’s search engine result pages (SERP’s).

 

Always a clever one to notice similarities, Paul remarks seem to be on point:

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This is the third and final part of my interview with Luther Lowe, Business Outreach Manager at Yelp.

In the first part we discussed what it means to be Yelp’s Business Outreach Manger, the recent class action lawsuit brought against their company and how Yelp is a transactional social media website. While part two covered why Yelp frowns on review solicitation, how they protect businesses from fraudulent reviews and the do’s and don’ts on interacting with customers who have posted negative reviews about your business.

Today we will discuss the free and paid tools that are available to businesses, the possibility of opting out of Yelp reviews and a new webinar series designed exclusively for small businesses.

Following is the final piece of my three part interview with Luther:

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