Google Antitrust Probe Finally Over?

By Chris Crum

Google has reached a settlement with the European Union to end a three-year antitrust investigation. The EU announced this morning that it has obtained “an improved commitments proposal” from the company.

In the proposal, Google guarantees that whenever it promotes its own specialized search services (products, hotels, restaurants, etc.), the services of three rivals “selected through an objective method” will also be displayed in “a way that is clearly visible to users and comparable to the way in which Google displays its own services”. This will apply to existing search features as well as any future ones.

Here are some before/after examples:

Before

After

Before

After

“My mission is to protect competition to the benefit of consumers, not competitors,” said EU competition chief Joaquin Almunia. “I believe that the new proposal obtained from Google after long and difficult talks can now address the Commission’s concerns. Without preventing Google from improving its own services, it provides users with real choice between competing services presented in a comparable way; it is then up to them to choose the best alternative. This way, both Google and its rivals will be able and encouraged to innovate and improve their offerings. Turning this proposal into a legally binding obligation for Google would ensure that competitive conditions are both restored quickly and maintained over the next years.”

By ending this probe with a settlement, Google avoids having to pay a $5 billion fine.

As the EU notes, Google had already made “significant” concessions regarding other concerns, like giving content providers an opt-out from the use of their content in Google’s specialized search services without being penalized by the search engine, removing exclusivity requirements related to ads, and removing restrictions on the ability for search ad campaigns to be run on competing platforms.

The commitments are to be supervised by an independent monitoring trustee for five years.

Still, it doesn’t appear that competitors are pleased with the outcome. We haven’t seen an official statement from the FairSearch Coalition regarding the news yet, but it has been tweeting some things indicating it’s less than enthusiastic about the settlement:

. @AlmuniaJoaquin describes #Google proposals as a “significant improvement”. From what I see I don’t think rivals will agree #antitrust

— Jennifer Baker (@BrusselsGeek) February 5, 2014

#Almunia completely ignores the responses by consumer organisations to the #Google case. Some explanation needed

— kostas rossoglou (@kostasrossoglou) February 5, 2014

FairSearch had previously urged the EU to conduct a market test of the latest proposal, like it had done with previous incarnations.

It would appear that the EU is finally satisfied. The proposal offers a lot more than what competitors are getting here in the U.S., and will surely lead to plenty more traffic for rivals like Yelp.

The Commission says it will be informing complainants of the reasons it believes Google’s offer is sound. They’ll then have a chance to make their views known before it makes a final decision on whether or not the commitments are legally binding.

Images via EU

Source: WebPro News 2

Google Antitrust Probe Finally Over?

Content, Creativity, and the Role of Habit

By Jason Konopinski

If you want to produce better, more effective, and more inspired content, refining your creative habits is one of the most valuable things you can do.

Cultivating a creative habit is fundamental to becoming a more productive creative professional.

Process is Personal

We’re all wired differently, so trying to deconstruct process isn’t all that useful.

Process — carefully lining up the perfectly sharpened pencils, turning on the right music, finding the right “place” in which to create — is intensely personal.

I used to spend a lot of time probing the biographies of writers I admired, trying to figure out what made them tick and why their process worked for them.

I actually believed for a time in my youth that if I just did that (that being the process of the latest writer to capture my fancy), then I would somehow unlock the secrets of their brain. Silly, right?

• Ernest Hemingway wrote at least 500 words each day, waking early to beat the oppressive African heat. More often than not, the entire day’s writing was thrown away because it didn’t cut the mustard for Papa.


• Philip Roth paces while thinking, claiming to walk at least half a mile for every page he’s written. He literally locks himself away from the “ordinary” parts of his life to focus on his writing.


• James Joyce famously labored over every single word, sentence, and punctuation mark. It was a process that took days. In an oft-repeated story, Joyce encountered a friend on the street who asked him if he’d had a productive writing day, to which he happily replied, “Yes, I wrote three sentences today.”

The best writing ritual is the one you keep, and feeding the creative habit is where it all starts.

Feed and Care of the Creative Habit

Have A System: Capture ideas with the tools that work for you. The fatal flaw of many creative people is disorganization. I have a Moleskine obsession — there’s one on my desk, one in my messenger bag, and yet another in the car. You just never know when an idea might pop into your head, so be prepared to capture it as soon as it does.

Chase Down Inspiration: You’ve heard this one before, but it’s really just this simple: If you’re serious about writing, you have to write. Free writing is a technique that I call on frequently to get the creative juices flowing. Set a timer for 15 – 20 minutes and put pen to paper (or fingers to keys, if that’s easier). Write spontaneously. Don’t think too much about what’s coming out — just that it is. The idea here is prime the pump and get the words out.

Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within is a great resource of exercises and theory on the concept of free writing that I recommend highly.

Play: Chaining yourself to your desk and laptop until you start hearing colors isn’t conducive to doing really good creative work. When I work too long and too late, the ideas go on strike. Go for a walk, watch silly cat videos, or make yourself a snack. The important thing is just giving your brain a much needed break.

Read: Immerse yourself in great writing, especially works of fiction and poetry. A close and careful study of your favorite authors gives you an opportunity to explore their language, tone, and syntax on a more serious level than pure entertainment.

Why are those strings of words so powerful? Why does that one word resonate so?

In the end, there are no secret rites of initiation into the world of writing. You just need to show up, develop the habit, and do the work.

Related Stories

• Make The Web a Better Place with Better Content


• Content: Guided by Voices


• Content Marketing: Fix Your Crummy Content

Source: Feedblitz

Content, Creativity, and the Role of Habit

How Msn Travel Handles Its Content Marketing

By Bas van den Beld

How can we create fresh, exhilarating, sharable content that really stands out? In a market where consumers demand ever more quality content, how can brands and content creators collaborate together? And what sort of content will see success in the future?

For the Travel 360 E-book we launched yesterday with Linkdex we talked to many brands, including MSN Travel, about how they approach this. Below you can find an extract of the chapter of the e-book which was written up after an interview with Gian Caprini and Jade Conroy from MSN Travel. They explain how SEO’s and content creators can work together to inspire online content.

How does MSN work with different types of authors?

This is an area we are very keen on at MSN Travel and we actively engage with travel bloggers and maintain an interaction with them. MSN created a ‘Guide to Outreach & Pitching Content Creators’:

Who

Find the authors that inspire, or resonate with your brand. Study their online profile, what does he/she like?

How

Which social platforms is he/she active on? Is he/she following your brand on Twitter? Can you DM them asking for their email?

What

Is your content engaging enough? Can you provide exclusive stories or informative data?

We help them in ensuring their content is promoted across various channels, and they provide us with their creative input and content ideas.

A properly designed profile page can make a considerable difference for an authors online presence, and ensuring the correct links, tags and meta data are utilised can go a long way in helping search engines recognise who the author of a piece of content is, and what level of authority they have got.

From a technical point of view, the correct implementation of code and sharing buttons, and the overall integration of social, or sharing networks is essential in building and establishing a social media presence around your content.

“There is a need to interact with the niche bloggers and to establish better communities.”

Certain changes in the pipeline for automated rank based approaches to search algorithms are also things that will come into play in the near future. Writers and travel bloggers will be able to write across many different platforms and be recognised as the specific author for a certain topic across several different platforms. In the next few years this will become even more influential not only within travel but across many different sectors.

Brands should really be helping writers to become more established. Search consultants can help traditional writers, journalists, and travel writers with good reputations and a body of content to take full advantage of the online presences.

Ownership & Occupation of the Travel Ecosystem

There is growing a trend, in the online travel space, in which major brands, with strong market shares have established so centralised a position that they effectively monopolise or ‘own’ a particular segment of the market. This space can be clearly distinguished as a stage in the consumer journey.

For example, in the UK, ‘package holiday space’, is mainly owned by Thomas Cook and Thomson, fulfilling the ‘planning’ and ‘booking’ stage of the consumer journey. ‘Flights and booking systems’ which cater solely for the booking of flights or hotels will also be occupied by a number of well-known and established websites, such as Skyscanner, Kayak and Expedia.

All of these brands will produce their own content relevant to their own specific products. Some may whitelabel their content offering, such as in the case of booking.com and Lonely Planet, but all will be active in the production and publishing of travel content.

To produce content which serves the same space means competing for visibility with these large brands. This is by nature a difficult task, as these brands invariably have large amounts of consumer data (browsing habits, preferences, and click- through rates for example) that enable them to gain the edge in creating strong and effective content.

In reality there are many different strategies and a lot of players, but overall it is clear that different parts of the ecosystem are now ‘owned’ by particular brands.

Embracing the Niche

One interesting direction for growth is in the serving of unique, or niche content for travellers who are looking to travel off the beaten path in the inspiration phase of their journey, and ultimately, on the travel experience itself.

“When the content and ideas are strong, there are not many things as social as travel.” – Gian Caprini

There has been a rise in smaller brands that cater to specific niche markets. Luxury travel blogs are becoming increasing popular, and there has been an emergence of more niche platforms such as Triptease, which offer a TripAdvisor type service but for a more specific and niche market. These sites serve travellers that are not interested in big brand hotel chains or tried and established holiday experiences, but prefer more creative or culturally diverse, unique experiences.

Whilst it may not achieve the same page targets as more evergreen content, niche content is important to cater for. An occasional piece on designer hotels, or alternative things to do in Paris helps distinguish the content offering.

Want to read the entire chapter? You can download the entire e-book below and find out how MSN Travel, Expedia, Tripadvisor and others handle digital!

Download the Travel 360 report

Leave your name and e-mail and get the Travel 360 report and the insights on the online travel industry for 2014 for free!

You will receive a link to the document in your e-mail.

• Name*
  
  FirstLast
  

  
  
  
  


• Email*
  
  
  


• Keep me posted!
  
  
  

  • Inform me about new updates, whitepapers and offers
  
  
  • Subscribe me to the Daily Updates as well
  
  
  • Subscribe me to the newsletter as well
  
  
  
  
  Your details will not be shared with others than State of Digital and Linkdex. Find an overview of Linkdex’ privacy policy here: http://www.linkdex.com/about/about-linkdex/privacy-policy/
  
  


• Comments
  
  
  
  This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
  
  

Post from Bas van den Beld on State of Digital
How MSN Travel handles its Content Marketing

Source: State of Digital

How Msn Travel Handles Its Content Marketing

Meet the New Seochat

By Ann Smarty

We are exciting to launch a new, clean look today. Please browse around and let us know what you think!

Basically, here are the main changes you’ll notice:

• A new calmer color scheme


• Cleaner way to lay out forums


• The shoutbox is moved on top of the home page (say hi!)


• More beautiful user profile pages and larger photos


• Social media icons below your avatar within the forums


• Faster and less distracting experience

If you were too used to our old look, you’ll be able to switch back (scroll down to any home page to find the theme drop down). Your choice will remain consistent whenever you login.

Please provide your feedback and bugs in this thread

Join the forum!

Check out new forum sections too!

• 
  

  Twitter: Join us to discuss Twitter marketing case studies and best tactics

  
  


• 
  

  Facebook: Facebook for business and content marketing discussions go here!

  
  


• 
  

  Google Plus: Everything from Google Authorship to building your brand at Google Plus!

  
  

We are constantly looking for new voices and active users. We’ll be adding more feature to make SEOchat ROCK this year! Join the board!

The post Meet the New SEOchat appeared first on SEO Chat.

Source: SEO Chat

Meet the New Seochat

How to Analyse, Optimise & Automate Multi-channel Roi Calculations

By Polly Pospelova

As marketing tactics become more and more complex, the needs of marketing managers and executives to understand and monitor Cost Per Conversion (and ROI) from every channel are increasing. With so many different areas of marketing, marketing services are commonly provided by multiple agencies, resulting in marketing managers and executives receiving numerous disjointed reports, and crucially, no universal view across all channels.

Marketing analysts spend days producing, manipulating and syndicating information from different reports into a single view. An ever increasing variety of these activities adds further pressure for executives all while increasing costs for businesses, all just to have a universal view of their overall marketing spend.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could automate production of universal reports and spend the money saved from this automation on developing business?

Now, thanks to Google Apps Script, it’s easier than ever to integrate data from services that provide data over an API. Services such as Google Analytics or Google AdWords can now integrate with Google Docs, dramatically decreasing the time spent on report creation. You can perform extensive data manipulation, calculations, create charts and have data automatically updated.

I am fortunate enough to work in a forward-thinking agency where automation of time consuming tasks is an integral part of the agency process. There are many ways to syndicate data and create universal reports, but recently at Delete we have started using Google Apps Script, Google Analytics, Google Docs and Google Sites to our advantage. Together, these web services allow us to build easy to read, syndicated reports that update automatically for clients, providing them with a single view of CPC from all of their marketing activities.

In this post I will show you how to create a report with data from Google Analytics. This report will perform some basic cost calculations to output CPA for every marketing channel, all of which is updated automatically. The process I am going to describe is simple to understand and does not require involvement of a developer.

1. Setting up the Google Script

The first step is to create a new Google spreadsheet where you will export the data to.

• Create a new Google Spreadsheet to export data to.


• Go to Tools -> Script Gallery


• Type ‘Google Analytics Report Automation (magic)’ in the search box, find the script in the results and and click ‘Install’.

In this video, Nick Mihailovski of the Google Analytics team demos how to quickly install the script, create a Google Spreadsheet and connect it to Google Analytics.

2. Importing data into your Google Spreadsheet

For this example I am going to configure the report to retrieve goal completions by source and medium, filter out email, Facebook, PPC and organic completions for the last 30 days and publish it in a sheet called ‘CPA’.

I will also retrieve the same data but for the last eight months and publish it on a sheet called ‘CPA trend’ (we will need it later).

• Run the report. Go to Google Analytics -> Get Data and wait for the report to finished.
  
  Output will look like this:

4. Manipulating the data in your Google Spreadsheet

As you can see on the previous screen grab, there are many sources with the same type of medium.

• Now it’s time for some manual data entry. Create another worksheet where you will count goal completions by unique source/medium. This table groups goal completions by marketing channel using a simple SUMIF() function. Add marketing spend for each channel during the relevant period of time and calculate Cost Per Conversion using a simple formula CPC = spend / number of goals:

You can quickly see that Paid Search brings conversions at a better cost compared with Facebook advertising and email marketing is cheaper per conversion than both paid search and Facebook advertising.

• Create a graph to visualize the result.

• Now let’s take the data retrieved for the past eight months published on the sheet called ‘CPA trend’ and calculate CPA in the same way:

• And then plot the results on a graph.

This trend graph shows that the marketing strategy and spend has not been optimal on some channels.

Cost per conversion from Facebook advertising kept increasing for six months, which means that Facebook campaigns need to be looked at very closely. Email marketing performed well every month except September, so campaigns done during that month need to be reviewed and lessons learned.

This trend also help optimise distribution of spent between different channels. If paid search advertising brings cheaper conversions, it may be beneficial to redirect funds from Facebook advertising into paid search advertising. Conversions from organic search are by far the cheapest, so it may be worth directing more funds into this channel also.

5. Automate your updates

To make reporting automated you need to set up the trigger to export data. For daily automation, go to Tools -> Script Editor. Then go to Resources -> All your triggers. Choose the getData function, select Time-driven, specify your preferred timer and save your changes.

6. Moving tables and charts into Google Sites

You are now ready to create a pretty and universal view of your tables and charts in Google Sites.

• Go to Google sites https://sites.google.com and create a new site using the following instructions:


• On a new page, click Edit page in the top right corner


• Go to Insert -> Chart

All available Google Documents will then be displayed. Choose the document where you created the tables and charts, select the table or chart you wish to insert and save changes.

The beauty of using Google Docs and Google Sites is that you can share your reports with anyone by simply sending them a link and defining the levels of access you want them to have.

Summary

If done right, you will be pleasantly surprised how well this way of syndicating reports and analysing marketing spent by channel will be received by a client. It will show the client how every penny is being spent, helping you to optimise or re-prioritise marketing funds where possible.

So, next time you panic about the overwhelming number of disjointed reports and lack of clear picture of what works and what doesn’t, try to syndicate your data following the instructions in this post and automate the process to save yourself time and money.

Post from Polly Pospelova on State of Digital
How to Analyse, Optimise & Automate Multi-Channel ROI Calculations

Source: State of Digital

How to Analyse, Optimise & Automate Multi-channel Roi Calculations

Join Zuckerberg in Reflecting on Your Time on Facebook As It Turns 10

By Chris Crum

Today marks Facebook’s tenth anniversary. Mark Zuckerberg has posted some thoughts on the last ten years, which began with going out for pizza with some friends, and sharing how excited he was about launching the product.

There’s no mention of Facemash.

Unfortunately, there’s no mention of any Winklevii either.

Post by Mark Zuckerberg.

Just for fun, we might as well reflect on another fun scene from The Social Network:

The company has also launched a fun little personalized video tool to help you reflect on your time on Facebook too. It’s called “A Look Back,” and you can watch it here. Here’s an example of what your’e in for:

The video recalls the personalized “year in review” Timeline they offer users.

Image via Facebook

Source: WebPro News 1

Join Zuckerberg in Reflecting on Your Time on Facebook As It Turns 10

My Adwords Wish List for 2014

By Haukur Jarl

I put together the top 5 features I’d want to be able to use either in AdWords or the AdWords editor. These features, in my opinion, could save time on tasks like implementation or give extra value with additional data that would help us account managers become better. Here’s my list (hope you’re reading Google);

1. More control over search partners

I hate wasting money on bad clicks and bad leads as much as the next person. The way you allocate your budget can be a make or break for your campaigns success. Be it AdWords, Bing Ads, Facebook ads or Twitter ads: the more control we have over our spend the likelier we are to kick ass. Having said that; I really want to be able to see results by each individual search partner and on top of that be able to control on what search partners my ads are displayed on and vice versa as opposed to the current “take it or leave it” option. Here’s how I’ve pictured it

• A Search partners button could be included under the Settings buttons

• When you click on the search partners button you would see something similar to the Locations report; same data and (of course) the ability to make bid adjustments for each partner from -100% to +300%.

2. Search impressions share by location

We strive to make precise, data driven decisions. When I make bid adjustments in campaigns that include more than one location (be it zip codes, cities or countries) and I notice that my search impression share has gone down I want to know if the decrease is central to one location or more, that way I can make better decisions and more accurate tweaks in the next steps. We are able to view overall statistics but sometimes that’s not enough and I believe this additional data could make things easier. Here’s a mockup of how I’ve imagined it.

3. Give us back control over Tablets!

Even though it’s been some time since Google fully released the enhanced update and we’ve all been coping, I’m still frustrated. I just don’t understand why we can’t have full control when it comes to device preferences, as an account manager I want to be able to influence every detail; no matter how miniscule it might seem (not that this is miniscule). Remember this?

The most common argument I’ve heard regarding these changes is that user behaviour on desktops/laptops & tablets are the same and while that’s all good and well I still want the option of making bid adjustments for tablets, after all; it’s my clients budget. Below is a screenshot that illustrates results from one of my clients, notice that tablet CPA is 27% higher than the results from Desktop/Laptop devices. Tablet users were less likely to convert and, unfortunately, this is not a rare sight. Instead of making bid adjustments specifically for tablets, I have to bid everything down and risk the current Desktop/Laptop performance.

4. More extensions in AdWords editor

The majority of the changes I make to my campaigns happen in the AdWords editor. The editor is, in my opinion, incomplete because there are still so many important features missing. Features like call, review and social extensions. I feel these additions would be a step forward in creating a more centralized management solution and help make our lives easier. Mockup below:

5. Labels in the AdWords editor

In addition to the aforementioned extra extensions I’d very much like to be able to manage labels in the editor as well. I’m addicted to labels; they make my day-to-day account management a lot smoother and more comfortable and I know that this addition would be a big time saver.

That’s my list, at least the top 5 things I’ve been thinking the most about for the past weeks. I’m sure you have more to add to this, if you do please comment below!

Post from Haukur Jarl on State of Digital
My AdWords wish list for 2014

Source: State of Digital

My Adwords Wish List for 2014