Some people on their hunt for the perfect partner go to extreme lengths and even draw up a checklist that they can use to assess and compare their prospective partners with their ideal image. Singles columns are full to the brim with coded language to help attract that perfect someone, with GSOH (Good Sense of Humor) being top of the list.

What about if you are on the hunt for the perfect Google AdWords Consultant? Do you have a checklist? Do you know what qualities you should be looking for? Do you know where to look for the Google AdWords Mr. or Mrs. Right?

When people find it difficult to find a partner in their personal lives, it is sometimes just down to the fact that they aren’t looking in the right places.

For instance, they’re looking for someone who likes to read lots and snuggle down with DVDs every night, but they’re looking for them in the biggest nightclubs in the city on the weekends. Doesn’t this just sound like a little bit of a wasted effort? The same applies to a Google AdWords Consultant. You need to know where to look.

Below is a list of effective ways to find that perfect Google AdWords Consultant

1.  Place a Lonely Heart Advertiser’s Ad (these can be successfully posted all over social networking sites, particularly when you narrow them down and you select groups or pages where lonely Google AdWords Consultants are likely to be hanging out).

2. Find out where your neighbor, friend, competitor, work associate got their Google AdWords Consultant from (there’s nothing better than having the recommendation of someone in the flesh, even if you don’t end up following through with their recommendations).

3. Search through some online directories that can be trusted professionally (for example, have a look at who the Better Business Bureau considers to be the best in the Google AdWords Consulting business at present and this might help you sift out the diamond in the rough).

Guidelines For Must-Have Qualities The Best Google AdWords Consultants Have

You need to know what you’re looking for. You need to know what qualities your Google AdWords Consultant should have before you start the search and most definitely before you decide to tie the pay-per-click knot.

1.  Qualifications

Find a Google AdWords Consultant who is Google AdWords Qualified. It is not a prerequisite to be qualified, but without these qualifications a consultant might only be able to offer a mediocre service.

2.  Work Ethic

Generally, the people who live, eat and breathe pay per click are the best at it. If you call your potential Google AdWords Consultant, or email them, in the middle of the night and they respond within half and hour, that means they were probably still working away at someone’s campaign. Wouldn’t it be great to have a consultant on your team who just didn’t stop working for you and your pay-per-click success, despite their own lives and personal health? (witty reading tone is needed here)

3.  Personal Qualities

A GSOH might be the kind of thing that you need from the perfect partner that you’re searching for on a single’s internet site, but is it really that important in a Google AdWords Consultant? Well, actually… maybe so! Pay-per-click management can be a very frustrating and tiresome job at times and you’re going to need someone who can remain on top of things, but who isn’t going to shout down at you on the phone when you admit for the 54th time that you really don’t understand why a 50% increase in conversions is such a cause for happiness.

4.  The X Factor

Google AdWords Consultants can be found all over the place and so you can afford to be picky. The thing to consider at length, in order to select the Google AdWords Prince from the many, many Paupers, is the X-Factor.

While this is not an advert for Simon Cowell, nor an opportunity for anyone to spontaneously launch into their own rendition of “Ben” by Michael Jackson, the X-Factor can teach us something about how to select the perfect Google AdWords Consultant… follow your instincts.

We’ve heard many a time on the X-Factor TV show … “You just don’t do it for me, son” and that’s the end of what might have been a beautiful career in the music industry for a distraught 14 year old with nothing else planned in his life careerwise. But it’s the same with the Google AdWords Consultant.

Some that you come across are going to inspire you with confidence and others aren’t. Follow your instincts and trust in your general impressions. We do the same when we finally meet that special someone. We just “know” that they are the one. Let’s use our sensory radars to employ the best in AdWords Consulting too.

In Summary

Forget about managing on your own and all that malarkey. Start searching for your Google AdWords Consultant with a GSOH in the places suggested above. Throw away that over-extended and useless checklist that you once had and just focus on qualifications, work ethic and personality. If your potential Google AdWords Consultant passes these first three hurdles with flying colors, just ask yourself one last thing…

Have they got the X-Factor for you and your company?

David Chapman is an expert in Google AdWords Advertising, and he provides useful tips on a number of areas of Paid Search Advertising via the Webrageous Blog.

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Synopsis — Although you may often wish for more traffic to come to your site and consequently more clicks on your pay-per-click ads to bring them there, it makes little sense to bring a lot of traffic that has no intention to convert via a purchase of a product or service. It’s important not to lose sight of the fact that your primary goal is “quality” traffic, without which you may wind up having a lot of visitors but going bankrupt in the bargain.

In her article, “Pursuing Quality Over Quantity In Google AdWords Traffic,” Kim Clinkunbroomer explores this very dilemma and offers five crucial tips to help you identify areas in your Google AdWords account where you can trim and modify to bring about greater overall success. Kim provides screenshots to illustrate her points and make it simple for readers to implement the best practices she suggests.

The complete article follows …

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A supermarket aisle is, essentially, like a real-life search engine results page, full of organic search listings and paid search advertisements, waiting to be clicked on or “lifted from the shelf and put in the basket” as it were. The similarity extends further — just as sometimes in the supermarket we put a product in our basket, but replace it with something else or ditch it completely before we go through the checkout, an Internet user may click on an advertisement but doesn’t always go all the way through to conversion. Taking this further, we may even return a few days later to the supermarket with the sole intention of buying the product that we dumped prior to the checkout now that we have had more time to think about it. This is, of course, pay-per-click remarketing. Genius!

The point is that we need to learn how the supermarket environment can help us to write more effective PPC advertisements that encourage internet users to click on our advertisements (pick the product up from the shelf) and then follow the entire process through to conversion (buy that product before leaving the store).

The following tips are designed to explain how we can use the supermarket experience to write effective PPC advertisement text:

1. Recognizing the basics of form and structure

The first parallel to take into account between PPC advertisements on a SERP and products in a supermarket aisle is that both the advertisement and the product use headlines, slogans, keywords and calls-to-action to attract the internet user/supermarket shopper enough that they click/put the product into their basket.

In addition, there are many different brands available in the supermarket aisle, just as there are many different companies fighting to grab the attention of the internet user performing a Google search, for instance.

Both the product and the pay per click advertisement need to make use of keywords and writing style to try and beat the other companies to the post. This is when appealing to the consumer’s needs, wants, desires or ideals becomes important when selling in the supermarket or writing advertisement text for PPC advertising campaigns.

2. Recognizing the ways in which different customers/internet users are targeted

Let’s take the classic washing powder product as an example for analysis. There are supermarket aisles full of different washing powder brands and washing powder types that are all trying to appeal to a particular type of supermarket shopper. Take a look at the list below which outlines some of the many washing powder ideas and who they might be targeting to get a better idea of where we are going with this idea:

1. Washing powder that claims to be “soft” = appealing to mothers who are concerned about looking after their young children and taking care of their soft skin.

2. Washing powder that claims to be sweet smelling like a meadow = appealing to people who are forced to live in dingy apartments and who are constantly craving to sense the freshness of the outdoors in their lives.

3. Washing powder that claims to be tough on stains = appealing to people who play lots of sports outside or who work in the construction industry and need to get tough on their clothes.

4. The cheapest washing powder = appealing to those people who are on a tight budget for whatever reason.

5. Luxury washing powder = appealing to those people who believe that quality is important and must always be considered before anything else, including price.

6. Organic washing powder = appealing to those people who care about the environment and want to do their bit for their planet.

7. NEW IMPROVED washing powder by a recognized brand = appealing to those consumers who hate change and who are very loyal to products that they know and trust, but who are willing to be romanced by the idea of something a little different.

The list could be endless. In subtle ways, the manufacturers in the washing powder industry are using your ideals, desires and interests to appeal to you in any way possible in order to get you to buy their washing powder and carry it all the way to the checkout counter.

PPC advertisements on the Google SERP work in exactly the same way. Each advertisement is trying to attract the internet user and beat the other PPC advertisements on the page. If you want to improve the quality of the PPC advertisements that you write, you need to start pulling on the interests, desires, needs and ideals of your particular target audience.

This is the key to writing effective PPC advertisement text. Who would have thought that supermarket aisles could be the key to effective PPC advertising?

Learn just how to put things successfully into action below…

3. Using this analysis to better market our PPC advertisements by targeting internet users via their interests, dreams and ideals

There are a few things that you should take from the supermarket aisle and put into your advertisement text if you want to write advertisement text that is more effective in general. These include:

1. Never write your advertisement text by thinking about what it is you are advertising. Always think about who it is you are advertising to first.

2. Be very, very clear who this audience is too. “Women” is too vague, for example. Really narrow things down and look at the kind of woman you are targeting.

3. Ask yourself what kinds of desires and ambitions your woman has, what she believes in, what makes her happy and what she considers to be worth spending her money on.

4. Then choose your keywords and arm your advertisement text to attract “that” woman in particular. Make it an advertisement “for her,” that will really make her feel that the advertisement itself was “made for her and her alone.”

This is the key to writing effective PPC advertisement text and this is why strolling around your local supermarket for a few hours one day might just give you the inspiration that your PPC advertising campaign has been calling out for.

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© 2011 WordStream – a certified AdWords partner.

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Unfortunately, many brands fall victim to extremes: either they completely remove themselves from the PPC equation or they become overly involved in the minutiae of choosing keywords and changing bids by penny increments. Both approaches can have negative outcomes for your business and can ultimately damage the effectiveness of your PPC campaigns.

For most companies, outsourced PPC is an effective optimization tactic for digital spend. But to ensure desired outcomes, you’ll need to understand strategy and other issues that are essential to your relationship with your PPC agency.

The way that happens is through must-have conversations that address the key ingredients in a successful, outsourced PPC relationship.

•  Business Drivers. From the outset, it’s important for the agency to have a solid grasp of your company’s core business drivers. By gaining insights about the specifics products or services that deliver for your business, your PPC agency has the information they need to allocate time and resources for maximum ROI.

• Seasonal Trends. If your business experiences seasonal peaks or cycles, it’s important for your PPC agency to know about them. Even the timing of major industry events can be leveraged to help your company achieve targeted wins in search marketing.

• Jargon. The process of researching industry and brand jargon can be extremely time-consuming, especially if your company is situated in the B2B sector. You can streamline the process by providing your agency with a list of insider terms and jargon, which can then be leveraged to improve PPC outcomes.

• Short-Term Strategy. As a PPC client, you’ll need to understand the short-term strategies and quick wins your provider hopes to achieve. Working on a one-month time horizon, clarify the learnings, PPC adjustments and outcomes that your agency expects to see in the short-term.

• Long-Term Strategy. Although optimization is a never-ending process, it’s important to discuss long-term goals and objectives with your PPC agency. Part of this conversation should include coverage of the tools and tactics that will be deployed to evaluate your progress

All of these conversations are important to the success and continuity of your brand’s PPC campaign. But the most critical conversation is one that must take place at the beginning of the engagement: “How will we define success?”

Many businesses assume that success will be automatically be determined by ROI or revenue. Yet savvy PPC specialists know that conversions alone may not be the best measurements of PPC success. Talk with your agency to identify common ground around metrics that are tailored to your search marketing goals and business objectives.

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Watch for John Fairley’s article “5 Reasons To Consolidate Paid & Organic Search Efforts” in the upcoming Winter issue of Search Marketing Standard. Subscribe now to receive this issue!

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This post is the first in an ongoing series beginning on the Search Marketing Standard website. The series is aimed primarily at those just beginning to learn about marketing online, but also will serve as a refresher course for others and an introduction to some aspects that even experienced marketers may not have delved into. Sit back and prepare to go “Back 2 Basics” …

Google AdWords Keyword Types

Google AdWords is the most popular pay-per-click advertising program on the Internet. It’s fairly simple to use but can accommodate anything from a one-ad-one-product setup to a complex arrangement of multiple products with multiple ads targeting different geographic regions, different times of the day, different times of the week, different languages, and various other factors.

One of the basics of the AdWords system is choosing keywords for your ads, since these dictate when your ad will be shown. If a searcher enters a keyword you have chosen, your ad may then be shown in the sponsored ad position on the search engine results page. Therefore, choosing appropriate keywords is of primary importance. To understand how your choice of keywords can affect when your ads will be shown to searchers, you need to know a little about the different keyword match types that Google uses.

There are four basic keyword match types used in Google AdWords. As you explore the various keywords that you want to use as triggers to show your pay-per-click ads on Google, you need to keep these four options in mind to get the most out of your choices and ensure that you don’t waste your bidding dollars on keyword combinations that will not be as effective as you need. We’ll show some examples with each definition, to illustrate how each type can be used most efficiently.

1.  Broad Match

Broad match is the default option for keywords in Google AdWords. It will be assumed that you wish all of your keywords to be assigned the broad match type. What exactly is “broad match”? Basically, it means that your ads may be shown when searchers enter any of the keywords you have chosen, in any order, and potentially if your keyword is part of the search phrase. Ads may also appear when searchers use other variations on your keywords, such as plurals and synonyms.

Let’s look at an example of how broad match basically works. If you are selling premium dog biscuits, you obviously will want your ad to be shown when dog owners search for those products, so the broad match keyword you first choose may be, in fact, “premium dog biscuits.” Because broad match is …. well …. broad, here are some of the search terms that may result in your ad being shown:

• premium
• dog
• biscuits
• make premium dog biscuits
• dog biscuit recipes
• dog cookies
• pet treats

Some of these options may be perfectly acceptable to you, and will help bring in searchers who use other words to describe the same product as you are selling, but others may wind up showing your ad in inappropriate search results (e.g., when someone is looking for a premium cookie for a special afternoon tea they are planning for a human group). There can be a lot of strategy involved with using broad match, and we’ll delve into some of that in another post in this series, together with pluses and minuses and some practical tips.

2.  Exact Match

The Exact Match keyword type is just what it sounds like — your ads may appear when a searcher enters the exact keyword you choose to bid on. If your keyword has more than one word in it, the searcher must have entered those exact words in that exact order. Let’s see how this would work.

• premium dog biscuits — ads will only show if searcher enters this entire phrase with the words in this order.
• buy premium dog biscuits — your ad will not be shown because the searcher added the word “buy” to their search phrase.
• premium dog biscuit — your ad will not be shown because the searcher used the singular of the word “biscuits”
• dog biscuits — your ad will not be shown because the searcher used just part of the keyword phrase

3.  Phrase Match

With Phrase Match, your ad may appear when searchers enter the entire phrase, with the words in the order indicated. If the searcher has additional words in their search text, your ad may appear if that text has the keyword phrase as part of it. Using our example, let’s see how this works.

• premium dog biscuits — your keyword/phrase
• buy premium dog biscuits — will appear since the keyword/phrase is exact and in order
• carob premium dog biscuits — also will appear
• premium dog biscuits container — also will appear
• premium biscuits for dogs — won’t show because the words are out of order
• premium dog biscuit — won’t show because “biscuit” is singular
• homemade dog biscuits — won’t show because one of the words (“premium”) has been replaced (by “homemade”)

4.  Negative Match

Negative keywords can be added to your keyword list. They represent words that your ads should not appear for. If a searcher has one of the negative keywords you have chosen as part of their search text, your ad will not be shown on the accompanying search engine results page. Negative match keywords can be helpful in controlling costs of advertising, since they limit the chances of irrelevant words triggering a showing of your ad and resultant clicks that have no chance of resulting in a sale. Some examples of possible negative keywords for “premium dog biscuits” might be:

• organic — you would likely add this negative match keyword if your product cannot be called “organic”
• homemade — add this negative match keyword if your product is mass-produced

Concluding Thoughts

Of course, there is a lot more strategy to keyword choices than just the match types and knowing when to use each. But that’s for another lesson, as is a longer explanation of broad match. For now, don’t forget that sometimes it makes sense to go “Back 2 Basics”!

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In his article, “Bring PPC Success One Click Closer With Keyword Research Tools,” David Rodnitzky discusses the general purposes of keyword tools for pay-per-click advertising campaigns and identifies unique features of six of the top keyword tools currently on the market. Examining the source of data used by keyword research tools, David provides further information on how to evaluate tools and the cost you can expect to incur.

The complete article follows …

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Google’s own research (in its Mobile Movement Study published earlier this year) found that a quarter of mobile internet users happily purchased via their Smartphone, some after physically visiting the store.  More than half also said that they have made a purchase after using mobile internet to perform a web search.

With such a synergy between mobile, internet and web sales, it’s worth investing a little extra time in mobile marketing. It’s so easy to use the medium to draw targeted traffic through to a mobile or traditional site – one way to approach it is to think of using a text message in the same way as you’d use an email marketing campaign to encourage the recipient to click and visit your site. A SMS can work in exactly the same way as it arrives at the Smartphone and can be used to push that traffic through the mobile web to your own site or, specific conversion goal.

Here’s a few ideas to get you started integrating text marketing with your mobile website…

1.  Upgrades: If you sell a product that is upgraded at certain intervals, for example if you sell laptops or flat screen TVs, an SMS text when the latest version of the product is added to the site may drive those interested in having a newer model through to the site to make a purchase.

This can work for all types of industries – a boutique bed and breakfast hotel or B and B for example could message when rooms are renovated or a restaurant or neighborhood bar, when a new menu debuts, serving to encourage recipients to load up their mobile browser and make a reservation.

2.  Returning customers: The same client database you use for email marketing can be put to work messaging those customers that you haven’t heard from for a while, providing you capture cell phone number when you gather email addresses. If you separate out your client lists into those who have made recent purchases and those who haven’t ordered anything in the last 12 months, you can SMS this second group with an incentive to return. This could be something as simple as ‘have you seen our 200 new products’ or something as promotional as 10% if you come back to us’.

3.  Request for Reviews: Reviews are a solid sales tools and there is no more powerful brand advocate than a happy customer. With Google pulling all non-Google reviews from its Places function, now is a great time to encourage clients past and present to leave a review. While you may not want to incorporate this message into your email marketing campaigns, it’s succinct enough to be placed on an SMS marketing message. What’s more, you can include a link to your Places page so they can go straight from message to review in a matter of seconds. Chances are, if the recipient has a few minutes to read the text, they’ll also have a minute or two to write a brief review, perhaps will commuting to work or waiting for a meeting to start.

4.  Special offers: No form of marketing would be complete without a special offer promotion every now and again. Due to the immediacy of mobile marketing, you can offer very limited time offers such as 10% off if you order before 5.00pm today or, free shipping with every order placed in the next hour. Offers can also be more tailored to the medium – consider things like free iPad case with the first 50 orders made via the mobile site or, free Bluetooth headset to the first 20 people placing an order for X product quoting code ‘mobile’. There are so many possibilities that you can be extremely creative, playing on the immediacy and portability of the medium.

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The best place to start, however, is directly at the source – Google. Google has provided an incredible amount of information and training material on AdWords, most of which is free for anyone to access and use. There is no need to have an active account to start learning about the program, and you can explore the variety of possibilities and features to judge its usefulness to your situation without having to commit a dime in actual budget.

Here are five different types of training and information on AdWords that Google supplies for those interested in finding out more about how AdWords works, and to help those already signed up for the program in tweaking and perfecting their advertising campaigns. These are in addition to a robust help center and forum where one can browse around and discuss the program with other users.

1.  AdWords Beginner’s Guide  (http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=guide.cs&guide=21899)

This guide is the best place for those new to AdWords to spend time at if they are looking for information on the basics of the program. Each step in the process is laid out with explanations of what the various terminology means and what action is required, and links to other areas of the guide that provide more information on related topics. At the end of each step a link is provided to the area in the Google Help Center that deals with the topic should you have questions not covered here. The data provided is extremely comprehensive, but you may wish to open another instance of your browser so you can look at screenshots of the items being described and explained in your actual AdWords account. As a reminder, you do not need to have an active AdWords account going in order to access the program or experiment with the settings.

2.  AdWords Glossary  (http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/topic.py?hl=en&topic=15464)

In any program as complex and full-featured as AdWords is, there is a lot of terminology. For those who are new to the program or just considering whether or not it may work for them, it’s worth keeping the link to this comprehensive glossary handy. Organized into a basic section and an “all terms” section, the glossary covers more than 100 terms, and since some of the definitions are complex and specific to AdWords itself, program users need to understand their meaning and implications to take full advantage of the program’s features.

3.  Google AdWords Online Classroom  (http://www.google.com/adwords/onlineclassroom/)

This is a good place to start if you like video instruction, are new to AdWords, or want to find out some more information about some topics to help you make the most of your online efforts. The videos are comprehensive and range in length from a few minutes to 20 minutes or longer. Most are targeted to the beginner, so even pure amateurs will find them understandable and informative. The main areas covered are (1) Getting Started; (2) Tips for making your ads better; (3) How to measure success; (4) Beyond the basics; and (5) Specifically for agencies.

4.  Google AdWords Optimization Center  (http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=guide.cs&guide=21804&from=21804&rd=1)

The Optimization Center is an area where AdWords users can find tips and help on ways to attract more customers to their business. Each account feature (ads, keywords, targeting, bidding/budgeting, and account structure) has a number of tips associated with it, and the data can also be organized by level of expertise or by advertising goal. For example, if you are looking for ideas on how to improve your ad position, you can access the optimization center’s tips related solely to this topic.

5.  Google AdWords Seminars  (http://services.google.com/ads_inquiry/awseminars)

To help AdWords advertisers and encourage others to try the program, Google offers periodic seminars in a variety of locations in the US, the UK, and Australia on various topics related to AdWords, Google Analytics, and Website Optimizer. Topics are divided into a 100, 200, and 300-level series (beginner, intermediate, and advanced) for each of the three major topic groups. The seminars are not free, and usually run 2-3 days in length. If you’re looking for seminar instruction of this kind, you can’t go wrong with this training – although the instructors are not affiliated with Google, they have been chosen with care and Google strives to include the latest changes/additions to the program in these training sessions to make sure the information provided is up-to-date.

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Here’s how it works, using a screenshot provided by Google.

Let’s take a look at how this may actually affect each one of the three parties affected — the searcher, the advertiser, and Google itself.

1.  The Searcher

In an ideal world, Instant Preview for ads will allow the searcher to judge quickly and easily if the advertiser’s landing page is likely to follow through on the promise of the ad. In reality, however, there are a few problems. First, it isn’t very clear how one activates the Instant Preview feature. The magnifying glass icon next to the ad’s linked title could just as easily be interpreted as a zoom of the ad itself. If one actually scrolls over it, the landing page preview will appear, but if one just views the ad, the functionality isn’t necessarily that intuitive. Second, given the limitations of space, the preview is not particularly helpful. It is too small to reveal a whole lot about the landing page in detail. However, it may help identify ads that are leading to undesirable or spammy pages or sites that are clearly not representative of the ad.

The presence of Instant Search for the ad listings on Google may serve to further the lack of differentiation between sponsored listings and organic listings for searchers. Many Internet searchers still remain somewhat ignorant of how the results on a search results page are divided into paid and organic listings. With the paid listings now have Instant Search results, just as the organic listings have for some time, there are even fewer differences between the two types of listings to cause an unsophisticated searcher to wonder what makes these listings different. The result may be more inadvertent clicks on ads.

2.  The Advertiser

The advertiser also is stuck in a win-lose setup with Instant Preview being added to the sponsored listings area of Google. On the plus side, if searchers see the landing page prior to clicking on the paid link, it may help ensure that those who do click through are more certain that the site they are going to is likely to have what they are looking for. This may reduce the number of clicks coming from those who are uncertain that the site offers what they seek, since they can gather a bit more info before taking the action of clicking. The reduced number of clicks means less expense for the advertiser, and the increased number of clicks coming from prospects who are more certain that the site offers what they are looking for, combine to reduce costs overall for the advertiser and increases searcher satisfaction. There may be fewer clickthroughs, but those clicks that do occur may be more motivated and thus more likely to lead to actual sales. The result? Lower click costs and higher conversions. Traffic may decrease from ads, but increased conversions and lower click costs should more than compensate.

One thing to remember, however, is that the availability of Instant Preview for PPC means that advertisers need to assess their landing pages to make sure that they are appealing to potential buyers, and find ways to differentiate themselves from their competitors in this arena as well. Once you have a prospect on your site, it may be possible to mitigate the initial impression of a bad landing page, but if it affects the decision to actually click through to the site, you’ve lost the chance totally. Advertisers may be forced to upgrade and improve their landing pages to remain competitive, thus increasing costs.

3.  Google

So what does Google have to gain from this? The complicating factor is that most of Google’s revenue comes from advertising — and pay-per-click advertising is a large part of this. If Instant Preview for ads reduces the number of clicks on ads, this means less direct revenue for Google, which would appear to not be a good thing. However, if the reduced clicks come as a result of searchers being more confident of finding relevant sites that fulfill their goal of finding the product/service they were searching for, they will be more likely to continue to use Google for future searches. The resulting increased traffic will attract more advertisers to Google, and if they in turn have increased ROI from PPC ads they place on Google, they will be likely to place more ads, resulting in more revenue for Google as well. For Google, it’s a win-win — they can claim a more relevant experience for searchers and a higher ROI for advertisers — a better product overall for everyone. A short-term loss in revenue from clicks for a long-term gain in relevancy and eventual increased advertising.

This may seem like a large conclusion to draw from such a seemingly small change in the feature set of the Google search function, be it organic or paid. However, it is representative of Google’s entire approach to the process. Small changes cascade upon each other to provide larger increases in the search experience that will ultimately lead to economic gains for the search giant. With so much happening in the areas of social media in particular, Google has to find ways to differentiate themselves and counter competitive advantages to protect their core income stream.

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