A Search Query Performance report shows performance data for the search queries that triggered the ads which appeared after receiving clicks. In other words, instead of just seeing the results of the keywords you entered in your campaign, you see the real queries the users typed to find your ads and your web site. A query is the exact word or set of words a user enters when searching on Google.com or one of Google’s search network sites.
This data can be used to gain a better understanding of how users are finding your ads and how they react to them. Moreover, they can be used to fine-tune your keywords, negative keywords and make more specific ads.

Click here for more information.

By Dave Evans, The ClickZ Network, Aug 29, 2007

When it comes to measurement, page views are a core metric (the easiest) for online marketers and publishers. Now this tends to change because basic request/response interaction changes due to new methods like AJAX for example (reloads are less frequent). As a consequence, people spend more time viewing pages. Thus to gain the most value out of your metrics, you have to distinguish between text pages and data-centric application [the rest of the article is dedicated to web site advices regarding user profile update etc].

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From the Google Agency Update newsletter.

As you may know, publisher-defined placements allow for the targeting of site-targeted ads to specific inventory on a site. With such Placements, instead of having ads appear across an entire site, when a publisher-defined placements is added to an ad group, the corresponding ads will then only appear in ad units specified by the publisher for that placement. Most publishers will continue to have both run-of-site and publisher-defined placements.

And the best news is that, starting this week, publisher-defined placements will be easier to find in the Site Tool. Now, instead of appearing throughout the results, all relevant placements for a given site will be grouped together beneath the site’s URL. Also, if users wish to view all publisher-defined placements created for a site, they can do so by clicking a “view all placements” link within the Site Tool.

Feel free to test out the Site Tool for yourself by following the directions here.

It seems that Google will launch soon a new service related to health care: “Google Health”. It would offer patients the opportunity to create a central repository for their health records, including medications, history, test results and allergies. Google’s Vice President of Engineering Adam Bosworth lobbies for the program for quite a while now (see his post here). Some screenshots are already available here.

Here’s an interesting article from Jeanne Jennings for people managing newsletters… (more here…)

Main idea:
Recent studies have shown over half of recipients use the sender line to decide whether to open and read an e-mail message. Use a sender line they recognize and trust, and you’ll get their attention; use one they don’t recognize or don’t trust, and you’ll be deleted with one click.

Personally, I start from my favourite search engine (Yahoo), and then I look for sites names that I recognize. I am clearly not alone: Prospectiv’s 2007 Pharmaceutical Marketing CPI poll reported that 75% of consumers trust the Internet above all other sources for information about illnesses and medications. Harris Interactive and the PEW Internet and American Life Project are two (of many) pollsters that report similar findings (at least among Americans: the focus of most survey data).

While this has been reported for years, what I find particularly interesting are the different angles, analyses and conclusions drawn from these studies. Prospectiv found that 54% of “cyberchondriacs”, as Harris so amusingly calls people the seek health information online, prefer general health sites, such as Health and Age. I wonder, though, upon what basis this “preference” is determined, since PEW reports that only 15% of online health seekers “always” check the sources and date of the information they read on the internet. Coupled with Harris’s observation that this more knowledgeable patient is changing the doctor-patient relationship, I realize that this change is not entirely a good thing, as some may make decisions based on misinformation. But I digress.

What had initially caught my attention on this topic was the tiny portion (4%) of online health information seekers that Prospectiv reported as going to pharma sites for this type of information. Following Cécile’s post yesterday, it got me thinking: where do I go for health information, and what would incite me to look at pharma site. I would go for drug information (however, I admit that I would compare what I saw there with third party sites). What third party sites though? I guess it depends on what Yahoo brings (and yes, I will click on paid links if I think that the sites behind them will tell me what I want to know).

The latest findings from Manhattan Research (Taking the Pulse® v7.0) reveal that 508,000 physicians are using online video today (for any reason); this is very important to know. However, it is more important to think about the larger shift from text and image-based content online to that of full-motion video content as a preferred format already used by the majority of physicians. Do you have digital assets that are relevant in a world where almost every physician is comfortable using video online today?

Another topic that frequently comes up when describing the Web 2.0 landscape is that of blogs. The latest findings from Manhattan Research (Taking the Pulse® v7.0) reveal that almost 300,000 physicians report using blogs for any reason today– and over 25,000 are actively using blogs with professional content. Again, knowing they are using and posting on blogs is not as important as knowing that these publishing forms and types of sites are being utilized by a growing segment of physicians. Perhaps even more interesting is the profile of the segment of physicians authoring blogs today–these are younger, savvier, online physicians, right? Wrong. Those with a voice online tend to be older with more professional experience–essentially representing the true “physician blogger” with something to say–while the younger audience may be more likely to listen and then perhaps join in the resulting conversation later.

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By Grant Crowell

Making a search campaign that’s been successful in English work in Spanish can be more difficult than simply translating the same words.

Given the changes in the search marketing landscape, especially the move toward quality-based bidding, the question on the minds of many SEMs is “Are bid management tools dead?”