International SEM

Yahoo Japan Sponsored search Platform launch pushed till October

September 9, 2011 By Craig 9ine

Yahoo! Japan which has been using the Yahoo! Inc platform Panama will finally migrate to a new system come mid October Yahoo Sponsored Search version 3. The technology backend is a modified version of Google’s own Adwords system but tweaked for Yahoo! Japan’s own requirements. The two company are not merged & will still be competitors in the Japanese market.

Yahoo Japan still dominates the search market but Google is not really far behind. Google Japan has been playing catchup & will carve it’s own niche in future markets especially Youtube, DSP, & Android technology. One problem for Google Japan was that it was often seen in Japan as a non Customer Support company but this year even by visiting the Google office myself I saw they are stepping up adding staff to help smaller companies. This is vital for Japan because Yahoo! Japan has had sales teams coordinating with smaller companies for years. I think this may have been the inspiration for them to launch the みんなのビジネスオンライン service that I discovered by accident.

The New platform will of course have a few changes such as

4 match types instead of 2
Account daily spending cap will be eliminated
For mobile you may not target each carrier individually.
Agencies will have one login for all accounts.
Yahoo’s Keyword Suggestion Tool will be updated to include mobile stats

Yahoo! Japan will try to make the migration as simple as possible & will alert customers if there are any issues. Expect not to be able to upload new campaigns, keywords, or copy for about two weeks during the migration.

Google Japan’s みんなのビジネスオンライン Service Screenshots

September 8, 2011 By Craig 9ine

The Mina no Biz online story deepens. We recently found actual screenshots of the new Google Japan service!!!

Here’s screenshots from Google’s new service. This was the only page I was able to access.
The site will be at www.minbiz.jp which seems to be coming soon but for some reason it was actually fully indexed by Google.

Looks like a good campaign site targeting small business’ in Japan. As someone who runs paid search for clients if Google extends service & support to smaller business in Japan they can increase revenue. Looking forward to the launch.

****** Update Google has pulled the site completely.
I guess they are only human & didn’t realize their own search engine quickly indexed & cached the site because of the sitemap.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:novjNJdADOQJ:www.minbiz.jp/success-story/207269+%22%E3%81%BF%E3%82%93%E3%81%AA%E3%81%AE%E3%83%93%E3%82%B8%E3%83%8D%E3%82%B9%E3%82%AA%E3%83%B3%E3%83%A9%E3%82%A4%E3%83%B3%22&cd=4&hl=ja&ct=clnk&gl=jp

: Screenshot of Google’s みんなのビジネスオンライン

Filed Under: Google, Google Japan Tagged With: adwords, みんなのビジネスオンライン

Google Adwords Editor goes IDN Domain friendly

September 7, 2011 By Craig 9ine

Google recently updated Adwords editor to version to 9.5.1

One of the greatest change to the appplication is now it allows you to input IDN Domains for the Display URL. If you are unfamiliar with IDN Domains it’s internationalized domain names in native language.

I haven’t tested extensively but I think domains like

海外ホテル.com (international Hotel)
should command a higher CTR which should increase actual conversions to client’s sites.

You still have to comply with Google Adwords policy & the domain & the landing page must match. Some of my clients are testing & using IDN domains based on research I’ve provide for SEO throughout the last 5 years. Now clients will be able to test campaign sites with IDN domains that cater to a specific target. The display URL can be native Japan, Chinese, Russian, Arabic etc but the destination URL must use the punycode version.

Looking forward to seeing good results from this Google, thanx for this.

Filed Under: Google, Google Japan Tagged With: Adwords Editor

Google Japan’s Mina No Biz Online – みんなのビジネスオンライン

August 31, 2011 By Craig 9ine

Google registered a few new domains last month all of the domains refer to the phrase Mina No Biz Online みんなのビジネスオンライン (Everyone’s Business Online).

Perhaps the service will be similar to the US campaign Get Your Business Online. Google has been ramping up staff lately in their still new office in Roppongi Hills. We have no feedback yet on how the GYBO went in the States or other countries.

Filed Under: Google, Google Japan Tagged With: みんなのビジネスオンライン, Get Your Business Online, Google, GYBO

Google adds time stamp to organic search results

July 27, 2011 By Craig 9ine

I’ve just noticed that Google has started to add time stamps for article updates to the organic search results. They seem to have visually revamped a lot lately & this seems like a potentially positive change to the natural SERPs.

For users that are searching for new info it’s great to see that the article was written this month or last month, instead of an article that was written about two or more years ago.

Good going Google as I update this site more hoping to see how these changes affect my search referals.

Here’s a screenshot.

Google Adds timestamp

Filed Under: Featured, Google Tagged With: Google, Natural, Organic, SERP

I saw a white Unicorn – An adwords ad with ALL UPPERCASE Display URL

July 24, 2011 By Craig 9ine

A few months ago Google sent out a notice that there would be a change concerning the display URL on adwords. The notice stated that there would no long be any custom formatting of the display URL on Google Adwords text ads. This was actually the 2nd biggest change I can remember that happened concerning the display URL on Adwords. The first was the final landing page & the domain in the ad had to match.

I can understand the direction Google went with this in terms of quality assurance. For example
You see an ad with a display URL of www.PayPaI.com at quick gland it looks like Paypal but it isn’t it’s paypai.

Tonight I was a bit supprised going through my Gmail where the ads certainly come from Google’s Display Network.

There I saw it a white unicorn. Grazing on the side of my inbox. Just like most people who saw bigfoot by mistake I didn’t take a screen picture & opened another email.

What I did do is remember what the ad was for & copied the ad text from the company’s organic listing & emailed it to myself.
Then we have the white unicorn again….
AN ALL UPPERCASE DISPLAY URL IN AN ADWORDS AD.
Now all I want to know is “how the heck did they do it????”

ALL Caps Adwords Display URL

Filed Under: Google Tagged With: Display URL, GDN, Google, Google Display Network

WTF: No more URL formatting in Adwords

January 15, 2011 By Craig 9ine

Google has yet again announced to make one of those “Who thought of this?” changes to Adwords.
Coming soon to an Adwords account paid for by you Google will automatically start changing your uppercase display URLs to lowercase. There are companies that have in their guidelines the way to correctly write their URLs that this will affect.

This does accomplish a few things as noted on comments on other blogs.
1. Makes vanity domains useless
2. Makes the Display URL just harder to read for international viewers.
3. Makes me think that my prior post about “Google having a team of engineers that sit around thinking of which seemingly normal function can we take away to increase our profits”, just might be real.
4. Makes you realize that if they put changes in things that affects your freedom of choice & branding what will come next?

But I found a few still active & will try to get some UPPERCASE on my client’s display URLs in the coming weeks.

Filed Under: Google Tagged With: WTF

Google removing the reporting Tab

October 18, 2010 By Craig 9ine

For the life of me I’ve been wondering why Google has removed the “Report” tab as a function on the online system.

Maybe they have tested it with the amount of superior intelligent beings there. They have tested it & seen we don’t need a clear separation between what we want to see as a quick online Summary & the Reports we pull. I would though love to actually get to know some of the people who tested this & thought that after what only years of having this easy to use function such as a Reporting Tab SEM Professionals don’t need this.

For me personally it’s only made me consider more of as a standard using 3rd Party technology such as Decide DNA on every client’s campaign just to make sure Reporting can be done with ease. In Asia the plus is that we actually have to use at least 2 search Engines Google, Yahoo Japan, Naver, Daum, or Baidu. Decide DNA or other tools like it makes it easier.

Next year I see more SEM Agencies using third party tools as a standard from this one little change. I’m wondering what’s next for Google at the GooglePlex remove the “Men” & “Ladies” signs from the Restrooms? Why stop there? Just remove the reference that it’s a restroom all together…

I’m also wondering did they have a meeting at Google like this.

Team Leader: What can we do to mess up the productivity of people managing their own Adwords accounts. This way with messed up results we make more?

Engineer 1: Let’s hide stuff suddenly!!
Engineer 2: Why would we do that?
Engineer 1: Why not? Hide stuff over time so they have to take 5X more time to optimize & we profit from their mistakes
Team Leader: Great idea!!!
Engineer 2: What could we hide? Maybe some of the things in the Reporting Tab..
Engineer 1: No we just hide the whole damn Reporting Tab.. The whole thing.. Gone!!! Poof!!! First take out the most productive easy to use downloaded reports, then the rest, & just leave the Tab up there to make them think it might come back one day.
Team Leader: Fantastic, do you think it will work? Wait, dont I know you? Aren’t you the genius that…
Engineer 1 : (Smiling) Yeah Yeah, I’m the one that hid all of the great money saving Content Network optimization features that those dang SEM Agency folks finally got us to implement. Plus I put in those great Google money making auto opted in features like auto Display your PC Campaign on any device we feel we can make money off even though iPhone is technically a mobile device.
Team Leader: Engineer 2 be more like Engineer 1.

Filed Under: Google Tagged With: Google, Reporting

Yahoo Japan & Google after a week

August 7, 2010 By Craig 9ine

Ok it’s not a week yet but I got a chance to meet up with Yahoo reps this week twice. Since my job is paid search we got a chance to ask our team of reps that come by the office “Ok so what’s going on”.

You can be assured that the systems Yahoo & Google use for advertising will be separate.

Most likely on the outside things will look the same but the core technology backend for Yahoo will change.

The products & services sold by Yahoo & Google will remain seperate.

What exactly will change is not to be determined yet. Mobile search which was mainly built in Japan also has the potential to use the Google technology.

For those of us in Digital & Search Marketing in Tokyo. Most of us love the Yahoo Japan guys. We like Google too, but everyone knows that Yahoo Japan has a great team of diligent hardworking ladies & men that really support agencies to the fullest. With the companies both in Roppongi now people around town say that both teams might worry about each other selling the same product but the products & services offered are completely different. Google’s team can’t handle servicing the smaller & mid sized business’ in Japan. Yahoo Japan can. It’s just a fact.

Filed Under: Google, Google Japan, Japan, Yahoo, Yahoo Japan Tagged With: Google, Yahoo Japan

Breaking News Yahoo Japan to outsource Search to Google

July 27, 2010 By Craig 9ine

I have to admit I thought this was a media joke. After struggling using Yahoo’s technology for year’s Yahoo Japan made the announcement to switch search over to Google.

http://pr.yahoo.co.jp/release/2010/0727a.html

Filed Under: Google, Google Japan, Yahoo Japan Tagged With: Google, Yahoo Japan