It’s the holidays, and we at WebRanking have spent a little time recently reflecting and appreciating what 2011 has brought us. From our great colleagues, both new and old, to our great clients, both new and old, we feel incredibly blessed to work in this amazing industry and eagerly look forward to what 2012 has in store.

But just because we are happy with 2011, it doesn’t mean we are getting complacent. With that, we bring you the 2011 SEM Wish List!

This year’s search engine marketing wish list contains almost 200 wishes, wants, desires and must-haves from over 30 esteemed search marketing professionals. SEM topics covered range from SEO and PPC, to Web Analytics and Social Media. Some of our SEM’s biggest wishes were regarding AdWords Ad Extensions and Search Partners, greater adCenter Admin and UI improvements, and of course, for Google to give search marketers back their (not provided) keyword data!

We hope you enjoy!

Wish List Topics

Search Engine Marketing (13)
Social Media (5)
Pay Per Click (9)
Google AdWords (100)
Microsoft adCenter (31)
Google Analytics (24)
Holiday Extras (7)

I’m sure there are plenty of you who are too excited for the NFL Kickoff 2011 to notice any small changes over at Bing.com. Or maybe you are celebrating the new football season by playing some Tecmo Super Bowl (I highly recommend this one).

Well we’ll have none of those fun and games here at WebRanking. Only serious business for us, and today I’m here to write about Bing, and the subtle new changes to their homepage. This may or may not just be in preparation for their expected HTML 5 homepage, either way, it’s a nice change. Especially for those of you who didn’t know there was a way to actually find out what the image you were looking at actually was. Oh yes, there certainly was.

Bing.com Refreshes Homepage, Launches New Layout

A new Google AdWords combination headline has started to show up in recent PPC text ads for select queries. This new ad headline format is an even longer version of the extended headlines that include the ad’s first description line, and also contain the text ads display URL (domain name).

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Google AdWords Extended Text Ad Headlines with Display URL Domains (click to enlarge)

Google is either seeing a significant increase in clicks for ads in the top 3 positions with these new longer ad formats, or, depending on your conspiracy theory views, this is another step towards disguising their pay per click to look more like organic listings:)

Pay-Per-Click managers know that creating or converting keywords into BMM versions for Google AdWords can be a major pain in the @$$. You typically would have to either edit each keyword by hand or use a one of the existing keyword modifier tools. These tools would require you to copy your search term list into an excel spreadsheet or web-based form that would help to perform the modifications, then you would have to copy them back into AdWords or AdWords Editor. These are handy and have a couple of interesting features, but I’ve never found one that is as easy to use as the process I discovered almost by accident.

The new Google AdWords “Communication Ad Extensions” have started to appear in search results for limited queries and searchers. These new extensions provide additional options for searchers to contact the advertiser that go beyond the click. Surfers now have the option to Request Call or Request Email. Communication Extensions are intended to be a simple lead generation solution that helps connect potential clients and customers (searchers) with businesses (advertisers) right from the search engine result pages.

Google AdWords "Communication Ad Extensions"

Request Call “Leads”

In a progressive and highly tactical move, Bing has added a small and significant Social feature to their home page: the Facebook “Like” button.

Bing.com gets social, adds the Facebook Like button to the home page

Bing is the first search engine to add the Like feature to their home page. In truth this is probably not even something that Google could do as they do not have any featured daily or consistently changing content that an audience would engage with. However, since Google and Bing have repeatedly tried to mimic the others features, it would not surprise me if Google did copy this implementation and use it for their occasional holiday and event homepage doodle logos.

Why is this Significant?

Today’s post is day 8 of the 31 day Bing Challenge, where I’ve completely cut myself off from Google, to focus on Bing, for the entire month of March, 2011. Since I’m examining Bing’s search tools, features and options this week, I decided to spend today taking a look at the “Narrow By Date” search tool. So far, 8 days down and only 23 more to go.

 
Day 8: Narrow By Date – Tuesday, March 8th

Often when I am researching a trending topic, I will use a search feature like Bing’s Narrow By Date filter options to find content that is more current. This helps save time in reviewing posts and articles that may contain info that is no longer accurate.

This is not a search tool that is unique to Bing, but it has a few aspects that make different.

Today I completed the 7th day of the Bing Challenge. No Google searching for the entire month of March in order to focus on Bing. This week I’m looking into Bing’s search tools, features and options and today I’m examining their “More Info Box” feature that provides additional linking information. So far, 7 days down and only 24 more to go.

 
Day 7: More Info Box Search Listing Enhancements – Monday, March 7th

Search engine result pages have changed greatly over the years. Most of the engines in the early days only contained a few things: Linked Page Title, Text Description, Page URL, and maybe a Cache Date and Link if the engine cached the page.

Today’s search engine pages are much different and often contain a mixture of Images, Videos, News Headlines, Maps & Local Listings, Rich Snippets, and Social features such as latest Tweets.

In case you missed it, I gave myself a challenge and completely cut myself off from Google to focus on Bing on March 1st, 2011. So as of now, I have been Bing Only and Google Free for over 5 straight days. A small, but significant achievement for a search engine marketer. My goal here is simple: gain a deeper understanding of Bing. I figured that the best way to accomplish this was if I could commit, and stick to, only searching with Bing for a whole month. 5 days down and only 26 more to go.

Last week I spent my time getting to know more about Bing, working through Indexing issues and becoming familiar with Bing Webmaster Tools. This week I am planning on being more organized and will be examining some of their search engine tools and features.

Day 6: “Popular Now” Trending Search Features – Sunday, March 6th

Yesterday, while I was researching our WebRanking Profile in Bing Webmaster Tools, I was served the following alternate header and top navigation format for Bing’s search engine results pages.

Alternate Test Top Header for Bing Search Engine Results Pages.