PPC Without Pity

With the Yahoo/Bing integration just around the corner, there’s no better time to brush up on your MSN AdCenter optimization skills. In this next installment of Adjusting Campaign Settings Like A Pro, we’re going to walk through the best practices of MSN AdCenter settings.

To access your campaign settings, follow these steps:

1. Log in to your MSN AdCenter account, and navigate to the “Campaigns” tab on the menu bar:

2. Select the campaign that you would like to edit settings for.
3. Next to the campaign name, you’ll see a link that says “Change Settings.” Click it.

Follow these steps, and you’re in!

MSN doesn’t have many options for campaign settings, but there are still some useful tweaks you can make.

Campaign Settings

Here, you can edit the name of the campaign. Pick something that will help you remember the contents of the campaign, and it’s intended purpose (lead generation, e-commerce, etc.). I also like to tag new campaigns with a date code (i.e. 07-04-10) to let me know when the campaign started.

You can also toggle conversion tracking on and off via checkbox. You should always be using conversion tracking in PPC campaigns, so make sure this box is checked. You still have to install conversion code, though – you won’t get any statistics until that task is completed, even if you do check the box in your settings.

Budget Settings

Here, you can set your campaign budget. MSN offers two options, setting budget by month or by day. Setting it by day is good if you need to test out budget points when you’re not yet sure how much traffic you’re going to get. Once you figure out an average daily spend, you can set your budget to monthly.

There are two very important options here as well. You can choose to divide your budget across the month, or spend it until it’s depleted. If you’re on a limited budget, you may want to divide it across the month. This will ensure that your ads get even coverage throughout the month, even if you have a spike in click traffic one day that could potentially eat up your monthly budget. You might lose short-term clicks, but at least you’ll have ad coverage for the entire month. If you’re not so concerned about how much money you spend, then “spend until depleted” is the way to go. This ensures that you get maximum ad coverage, since MSN won’t be worrying about how to ration out your ad impressions to stay within your budget.

Campaign Targeting

In this section, you can change your targeting options for ad display. You can target by location, day of week, time of day, gender/age, and device.

In MSN, you can set your geotargeting settings to target countries, states, metro areas, or cities. Unfortunately, you can’t do custom targets or radii from a specific location. Hopefully they’ll change this after the search partnership goes through, and they can catch up to what Google has been doing for years now.

Time settings can be useful if you know that your target audience is only active at certain hours or on certain days. If you’re targeting business decision makers, 9-5 on Monday through Friday might be a good choice. Think about when your target audience is likely to be online, and then adjust your settings accordingly.

I’ve already explained why web demographics suck before, so I’ll just say use gender and age targeting at your own risk. Device targeting is a lot more straightforward, though. With this option, you can target your ads to computers, smartphones, or both. This is great if you want to make a mobile-targeted campaign, or if you want to eliminate traffic from busy mobile users who aren’t likely to convert on your multi-step widescreen conversion process.

Campaign Exclusions

This is where you put your negative keywords for the campaign, and your negative sites if you’re running a campaign with content network distribution. Look over your search query reports and placement reports carefully for sources of bad traffic. Once you figure out the search queries and/or placements that are costing you money without generating revenue, put them here so that your ads won’t show up on them ever again.

And there you have it. MSN doesn’t have many campaign setting options now, but perhaps we’ll see some interesting changes after the Microsoft/Yahoo search alliance goes through.

When creating a new PPC campaign or ad group, there’s an important choice to make with your text ads. Should you set text ads to rotate evenly, or optimize their distribution according to what the search engine thinks is best? Before you choose, you should think about how each distribution is calculated, and how it will affect your data collection for optimization purposes.

First off, you should always be running two to three text ads per ad group. That way, you can test different value propositions in your ads to see which one works best. After a month or two goes by, you can then compare the total conversions, conversion rate, and click-through rates of your ads to find the top performer. If your ad groups tend to get a lot of traffic, run three ads to test multiple factors at once. If your ad groups are low-traffic niche groups, you may need to run only two ads at a time to ensure you collect enough data for a reliable sample.

Choosing rotated or optimized ads will also affect your data collection. Rotating ads is pretty straightforward – each ad gets equal exposure. Optimized ad serving is where it gets a little trickier. By setting your ads to optimized serving, you allow the search engines to choose which ad gets the most exposure, since they will choose the “best” ad after a certain amount of data is gathered, then allow that ad to run the majority of the time.

This may sound good on the surface, but you also need to keep in mind that the search engines will choose the “best” ad based on their own criteria. This probably means that they will choose the ad with the highest click-through rate, since more clicks equals more money for Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft. This may not be in your best interest. The ad with the highest CTR may also have the lowest conversion rate. You could be racking up click costs without seeing conversion results if you trust search engines to “optimize” your ad distribution.

Of course, this is not always the case. Sometimes optimization is on the mark, and you can have a decent performing ad group without the hassle of constantly rotating ads yourself. For advertisers that just want a “set it and forget it” solution, you’ll probably be okay with optimized ad serving. But, if you are a serious PPC marketer, you will need to run evenly-rotated ads for two reasons. First, having even rotation ensures that you will have a valid statistical sample at the end of your text ad experiment, since all ads in the group will have an equal chance to succeed. And second, choosing not to rely on the search engines lets you choose your own success metric. If you want to optimize for conversion rate, you can do that. If you want to optimize for CTR, that’s okay too. You don’t have to rely on a third party to tell you what your “best” ad is, since you will have a much better idea of what is successful for your own business.

Most of the time, I choose to set my new ad groups to rotate evenly. But then again, I’m a huge PPC geek who loves to split-test things. Think carefully about what optimizing or rotating your text ads means for your business before you make a commitment. Don’t blindly rely on a search engine to automatically do your PPC campaign optimization for you.

This just in from the “I thought they had this already” department: Microsoft announces full HTML mobile device targeting for their AdCenter PPC marketing platform. Sure, Microsoft AdCenter has been in the mobile ad game for a while now, but did it really take them this long to work it out so that you can specifically target smartphone devices with full web browsers like the iPhone, Google’s Nexus One, or any number of other Palm and Android phones? Actually, they did have this capability previously, but you had to individually target each type of mobile device. At least now you can target to the general category of mobile devices, which should save you a lot of time.

Regardless of my snarky commentary, this is great news for any advertiser trying to make mobile-targeted PPC campaigns in 2010. Clearly, Google and MSN are betting big on mobile PPC marketing in 2010. Yahoo, not so much. I’m not aware of any ways to target mobile devices in Yahoo (feel free to prove me wrong in the comments!), but we’ve seen a lot of developments lately from Google and Microsoft. I’m still not totally convinced that users are going to be on board with mobile PPC just yet. I don’t think that people are ready to be advertised to on their mobile devices – it seems like a little too intimate of a medium to me. We’ll see if my cynicism is justified by the end of the year.

Either way, now would be a good time to make sure you have mobile-specific landing pages, and optimize a mobile version of your homepage for tiny smartphone screens. Whether you’re ready or not, people are going to start looking for information about your company on their mobile phones. It’s better to have a mobile version of your site ready to go and no one using it than having to scramble to make one once you see your mobile traffic take off in your web analytics program.

If your company is large enough and popular enough, your company name and trademark may suddenly become valuable pay per click search terms not only for yourself, but for your competitors as well. In some cases, your competitors may find that by bidding on keywords related to your company they can reach out to customers who originally intended to purchase from you. Obviously, this is a situation most of us would like to avoid. Unfortunately, most PPC companies do not explicitly ban the use of trademarked terms in PPC keyword lists. And why should they? The more keywords they make available for bidding, the more money they make. If you are having an issue with competitor use of your branded terms, you will need to resolve the issue yourself.

If you see your competitors running pay per click ads with your branded terms, the first step you should take is to contact the advertiser directly. That way, you can ensure that your key terms are removed from all advertising campaigns instead of just one PPC account. Be firm, but polite. There is no need to threaten legal action, but you should be clear that if they do not comply to your request you will register a complaint with the PPC advertising services, and their account will be affected. If your request is acknowledged, you may be able to resolve the issue quickly and easily with no need for intervention by the search engines.

However, if the offending competitor chooses to not take down the ads that are in violation, you may need to lodge a trademark complaint with the search engines. While it is not against the rules to bid on a competitor’s trademarked keywords, there are some restrictions on using trademarked terms in text ads. Be aware of this before you lodge a complaint. You can’t stop a competitor from running ads when users search for your branded or trademarked terms, but you might be able to prevent those competitors from using the terms in their text ads.

If you see some text ads running with your branded terms (and reaching out to the advertiser directly doesn’t help), you may need to issue a trademark complaint. This is about as effective as lodging a complaint with any other major company (that is, it’s kind of a crapshoot), but it may be worth your time if you really think that it is negatively affecting your business.

To lodge a trademark complaint with Google, first read their trademark policy here. If you still think that the advertiser is violating Google’s terms, you can send them a complaint by filling out their Trademark Complaint Form. If your complaint is valid, then your brand terms will be added to Google’s blacklisted terms, and future ads containing the keywords will be rejected through Google’s automated editorial process.

For trademark complaints about Yahoo ads, read their editorial guidelines here. If you would like to report a violation, you can send an email to trademarkconcern-ysm@yahoo-inc.com. Be sure to include the following information in your email:

1. The search term(s) that caused the ad in question to appear.
2. The trademark on which your claim is based.
3. The registration number of the trademark you own (if it is registered at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office).
4. Evidence of consumer confusion arising from the offending ad.
5. A copy of any communication you have had with the offending advertiser about the matter.

If you have a complaint about an ad on Bing or another Microsoft network property, you can read their guidelines on intellectual property at this link. To lodge a complaint, you can fill out their trademark complaint form.

Keep in mind that all search engines explicitly state in their terms of service that they are not responsible for mediating trademark disputes. However, if you have a compelling case and the offending advertiser is clearly in the wrong, the search engines can be a great help in standing up for your intellectual property rights. Just be civil, communicate with the advertiser directly first, and use complaint forms as a last resort. As long as you remain respectful in your request, you’ll find that protecting your brand in the PPC marketplace is simple and effective.

Now that we’re firmly planted in 2010, I think it’s time for a few predictions for the coming year. And, since this blog is quite obviously concerned with pay per click marketing, I’m going to stick with what I know. Here are what I think the big three developments for PPC will be in 2010:

1. Yahoo and Bing will join forces, but still won’t match Google for PPC marketshare.

In July 2009, Yahoo and Microsoft announced a deal that would eliminate Yahoo search and replace it with Bing. Of course, as in all major business transactions, this deal has taken quite a while to materialize. Yahoo and Microsoft just finalized their deal in December 2009, and are anticipating a rollout of the new functionality in early 2010.

This is obviously big news for the PPC world. With Yahoo Search Marketing leaving the market space, that only leaves two major PPC providers – Google and Microsoft. With billion-dollar budgets at their disposal, this is sure to be a corporate slugfest for the ages.

However, I’m convinced that Google is still going to come out on top on this one. Let’s crunch some numbers. An August 2009 study by Search Engine Watch indicates that Google gets about 65% of total searches, Yahoo gets 15%, and MSN/Bing gets about 10%. Looking exclusively at PPC market share, a Rimm-Kaufmann group blog in March 2009 shows that Google dominates with 80% of PPC market share, while Yahoo gets about 15% and MSN/Bing lags with only about 5%. Even after Yahoo and Bing join forces, they will only get about 25% of web searches and 20% of the PPC money out there. I’m optimistic about Bing, since it has showed some great momentum since it’s launch, but I think we need to be realistic here. Google will dominate PPC spending for quite some time, since their company name is synonymous with web searching in a lot of web users’ minds. Microsoft is going to have to do a lot more than just take over Yahoo’s search market share if they want to put a dent in Google’s profits. This won’t happen any time soon, and certainly not in 2010.

2. Mobile PPC spending and use will continue to increase.

This is a pretty obvious one. More smartphones are being purchased with every passing year, and with that comes an increase in mobile internet use. Google made a big bet on the mobile ad market in late 2009 when they announced the acquisition of mobile ad provider AdMob. Google has also made significant improvements this year to mobile ad tracking in their Google Analytics platform. Yahoo offers a robust mobile advertising platform for display advertising, and Microsoft inked a deal to be the exclusive search and advertising provider for Verizon mobile phones. With the big three making such big pushes into the mobile advertising space, we’re sure to see some interesting developments in the coming year. The only question that remains is how will users of smartphones react to the encroachment of advertising on their mobile experience?

3. Social network PPC advertising rises, then falls flat.

Social networking has definitely been on everyone’s mind in 2009. With the explosive growth of Facebook and Twitter in the last year, advertisers have been wondering how to capitalize on the user bases of these extremely popular sites. To better monetize their products, both Facebook and MySpace have created advertising platforms to businesses who want to reach out to their users.

This is a really tempting proposition. Social networks have access to an unparalleled amount of demographic data that allows for hyper-specific targeting. On the surface, this seems like a great deal, and I think it’s going to attract a lot of advertising dollars in the coming year from businesses who don’t understand social media, and are looking for a shortcut to get presence on these sites. However, from my personal experience (and a few other folks I’ve talked to), social media ads tend to get really terrible results. You can already target MySpace, YouTube, and a few other social sites through Google’s content network, and let me tell you that the results aren’t pretty. You certainly get a lot of impressions due to the massive amounts of users, but you’ll also get a lot of errant clicks. What you probably won’t get, though, are conversions.

People go to social network sites to be social – they’re not there to buy things, fill out lead forms, or learn more about companies. This is the inherent flaw in any social network PPC campaign. Sure, you can pick up some good brand recognition through clever banner ads, but I wouldn’t expect anything good from text ads. The reach is good, the demographic targeting is good, but the user intent just isn’t there.

So here’s what I think will happen in 2010: businesses will get sucked in by the promises of awesome demographic targeting, and consultants telling them they need to get into “the social media thing.” Then, after a few months of mediocre results, they’ll realize that the ROI just isn’t there and they will pull the plug on their social network PPC campaigns. 2010 will be the year of boom and bust in the social media PPC space, unless Facebook and MySpace can figure out how to make ads more engaging to their user base, and more profitable for their advertisers.

There you have it – three PPC predictions for the coming year. We’ll see if I’m right this time next year. Got some predictions of your own? Let’s hear them in the comments.

If you’re in love with search query reports as much as I am, I’ve got some good news for you. As part of their Fall 2009 upgrade, MSN has (finally) added search query report functionality to their pay per click advertising platform. Sure, you’ve probably been using something like a detailed search query report in Google Analytics to get this information, but it certainly couldn’t hurt to get the data straight from the source.

Running the report is super easy. Just go to to your “Reports” tab in MSN AdCenter and create a new report. Under the “Report:” drop-down, you’ll see a new option for “Search Query Performance.” Choose this option, and customize the rest of your report as necessary. Once you run it, you’ll get data on the exact search queries your MSN users are typing in when they see your PPC ads. You can then use this data to pick out negative keywords to filter out bad traffic, as well as get some insights into some keywords you might not be using already. I find that search query reports are a great way to get insight into your target customer’s heads with minimal effort on your part. This is especially important in a search engine like MSN/Bing, where it’s tough to get a lot of traffic, since Google and Yahoo tend to monopolize the search engine audience. You can leverage your search query report data to figure out new keywords that will effectively drive more traffic to your landing pages.

I know MSN is a little late to the game on this, but I give them points for trying. Yahoo still hides their search query reports behind the wall of their account reps, so you can’t even get this information without a huge hassle from them. Now if only MSN would freely offer up search query data within the campaign screens like Google does, we might start to see MSN competing on equal terms with the big boys.

When managing a pay per click advertising account, it helps to have a lot of software tools to help you manage your account, discover new keywords, track success, and perform split-tests for you. There are a lot of people out there who would love to sell you an expensive software package to accomplish these tasks. But, in my experience, everything you need to do in a PPC account can be accomplished through free tools that are easily available online. Read on for my choices of the six best free PPC tools:

6. Google Insights For Search – This tool gives you access to the vast amount of data that Google has collected on keyword searches and internet traffic trends. Simply type in the search terms you want to learn more about, select the time frame and geographic area you want to analyze, and you can view trends and relative popularity of any search term that has enough search volume to matter. This is great for discovering how popular your PPC keywords could be, as well as getting a look at likely seasonal trends before they happen.

5. MSN AdCenter Desktop – MSN AdCenter usually has the lowest traffic of the big three PPC providers, but this will soon change once Yahoo’s web properties switch to Bing search. If you’re doing PPC on either Yahoo or Bing right now, you’d better learn MSN’s tools now before your traffic increases drastically. Fortunately, MSN has recently released a desktop editor for their MSN platform, although it is still in beta. If your account meets the right requirements, you could be eligible to download it – see the above link for the steps you need to take. This desktop editor can help you make mass changes to your MSN AdCenter account, like adding multiple keywords, creating text ads in bulk, or other mass campaign/ad group changes. It certainly makes managing an MSN account a lot faster, since you don’t have to wait for multiple pages to load and re-load like in the web interface.

4. SEO Book Keyword Tool – There are lots of good keyword tools out there on the web, most of which are provided by the search engines themselves. But who wants to go back and forth between multiple keyword tools to make a single keyword list? SEO Book has a really awesome aggregator that pulls keyword data from multiple keyword tools like Google, Yahoo, and WordTracker. It’s one-stop shopping for all your keyword research needs. This tool does require that you have an SEO Book account, but registration is free. You also get access to a lot of other SEO Book resources, so it’s a pretty good deal.

3. Google Website Optimizer – Have you heard about how awesome split-testing and multivariate testing are, but the thought of doing all those statistics makes your head spin? Well, you’re in luck. With Google’s Website Optimizer tool, all you need to do is create a few variant pages, cut and paste some javascript code snippets, and the tool does the rest. It even crunches the numbers at the end to tell you conclusively which of your variant pages performed the best. And, with it’s multivariate testing feature, you can choose a set of elements (buttons, images, blocks of text, etc.), and the tool will automatically mix them up in different combinations to see which is the most effective. Split testing your landing pages couldn’t be easier.

2. Google AdWords Editor – After managing accounts with AdWords Editor, I can’t imagine doing it any other way. In fact, I hardly ever use Google’s web interface to work with PPC accounts anymore. This desktop application lets you download your account info, make whatever changes you need, then upload the changes to the web interface. It’s easy to copy and paste any element, from campaigns down to keywords. You can even select multiple keywords and change bids by percentage or dollar amount. I could do a dozen posts about all the features that it has, so it’s probably better to just read Google’s own documentation about this product. And, of course, it’s 100% free. Probably one of the best bargains on this list, considering the wide range of functionality it has.

1. Google Analytics – If you’re going to run a PPC account effectively, you must have a reliable web analytics system in place. Period. You need to be able to keep track of your web traffic, monitor how your organic and paid site traffic is interacting, and look at what keywords people are using to find your site. Google Analytics does all of this for free, and is incredibly easy to implement – just cut and paste a javascript snippet on to every page of your site, and you’re done. What’s more, there are infinite filters and segmentation formulas to allow you to customize your data. You can even set up alerts to let you know when key metrics are rising or falling. With all of this functionality, you’d probably expect to pay a hefty monthly fee for the privilege. But, unlike a lot of similar web analytics packages, this one is 100% free.

Got any more great free PPC tools? Let’s hear about them in the comments.

So you’ve done your keyword research, and you think you have a pretty good, relevant set to run with. But you still have a few choices to make. For starters, what type of keyword match type should you use? Here’s a breakdown of all the PPC keyword match types, and the kinds of situations they are useful for:

• Broad Match: The default match type for the search engines, and for good reason: they generate a lot of clicks, which means a lot of money for the search engines. Having keywords set at broad match means that the search engines will make a rough approximation of what they think is relevant to your chosen keyword. And they will probably make a very liberal interpretation of what is relevant. I’ve pored through search query reports and seen broad match furniture keywords show ads under a search query for housewife porno. Do you really want your ads showing up for everything? Stay away from broad match if you’re on a tight budget and can’t afford any extra wasted clicks.
  
  Broad match does have it’s uses, though. If you’ve got a large enough budget and can afford to waste a little of it in the name of research, broad match can be a fantastic keyword research tool. Since it picks up everything, including those super-obscure long tail keywords that you probably wouldn’t think of targeting, you can run a set of broad match keywords for 30 days or so and then analyze your search query reports to see what you missed in your initial keyword set. Then, you can add those missed keywords in, change everything to a more specific match type, and run a more efficient campaign.




• Phrase Match: Phrase match is a good middle-of-the-road solution to the match type problem. Under phrase match, a user’s search query must match the keywords you specified (including word order), although your ads will also show if they add more keywords before or after the keyword(s) you specified. For example, if you were bidding on “pizza delivery,” your users would see your ads if they typed in “pizza delivery in austin,” but they wouldn’t see your ad if they typed in “delivery pizza” or “pizza fast delivery.”
  
  Phrase match is good because it filters out a lot of that weird, marginally-relevant traffic that broad match brings in, but it still allows you some leeway to overlook some terms that a user could type in. It’s a good idea to start out new campaigns with phrase match, and then switch later to either broad or exact match if you decide that you need more or less traffic to your site.




• Exact Match: If you’re having a lot of trouble with unqualified traffic, exact match is the way to go. Keywords set to exact match will show ads when the user types in a search query that matches your keyword, and nothing more. You’re going to block out a lot of traffic with this setup, but if you see a lot of junk traffic coming through in your search query reports, sometimes you need to take drastic measures to keep your cost down.




• Negative Matches If you see a few troublesome search queries in your reports, but don’t want to take a measure as drastic as setting everything to exact match, then some creative use of negative keywords may be in order. Negative keywords prevent ads from showing whenever a search query contains a keyword listed in your negatives. You can also set negative keyword match types for more precise targeting – negative match types have the same effect as the ones mentioned above.

Yahoo Search Marketing has some special match types, since they don’t use the broad/phrase/exact standard that Google and MSN adhere to. Here are the Yahoo match types:

• Standard: Standard match functions almost like the aforementioned exact match type, but allows for plurals. For example, if you were bidding on the keyword “lamp,” a user that typed in “lamps” would not see your ad under the exact match type, but would see it under the “standard” match type.




• Advanced: Advanced match type works like the broad match type. Your ads will show if a user misspells their search query or appends additional words before, after, or in between the keyword phrase you’re bidding on.

As with any pay per click marketing strategy, it’s important to test out different match types to see which one works best for each campaign. These instructions should give you a good starting point, but don’t forget to analyze those search query reports to make sure your keywords are driving the kind of quality traffic you need.

By now, you’ve probably heard about the Yahoo/Microsoft online advertising deal. Yahoo search is history, replaced by Bing. Yahoo PPC accounts will be merged into MSN AdCenter, except for display and content advertising, which will remain independent to each company.

So what does this mean to us PPC folks? Obviously, the usual online advertising triumvirate of Google, Yahoo, and MSN PPC advertising accounts is gone. Those of us who bothered to deal with MSN AdCenter are rejoicing, since we might actually start to get traffic in our accounts. Also, I get to stop complaining about how much Yahoo search marketing’s user interface sucks.

All kidding aside, this is a huge development. Google is still going to be the king of paid search, but combining Yahoo search traffic with Bing search traffic (which seems to be picking up, thanks to Microsoft’s PR blitz for their new tool) will offer a bigger chunk of the search market than we’ve seen with the respective traffic numbers of Yahoo or Bing alone. This could mean a big influx of advertisers to the MSN AdCenter platform. It also could be the end of good cost-per-conversion in your MSN account, now that there might actually be some serious advertiser competition on there.

This deal also benefits advertisers thanks to MSN’s superior account management tools, like their AdCenter desktop client. I’ve been promised a Yahoo desktop app for at least a year now, but I’ve yet to see it. Obviously, that’s out the window entirely. With AdCenter benefiting from the influx of Yahoo traffic, and Yahoo accounts getting the benefit of decent account management tools, it’s going to be easier to manage larger accounts in the new, combined platform. This means increased competition, but potentially better results from your Yahoo traffic.

What I’m most concerned about is how users will react to this. Are there really any true fans of Yahoo search out there? Will they be disgusted with the merger and make the switch to Google search? Or will there be a smooth migration of Yahoo traffic over to Bing? We have until early 2010 until the deal really goes into effect, so that’s a lot of time for Microsoft to ramp up their Bing PR campaign, and a lot of time for us marketers to mull over how this will affect our accounts.

It’s been almost a month since Microsoft launched their new search/decision engine, Bing. Initial reviews have been pretty positive, and traffic data seems to indicate that it’s a close contender for the #2 search engine spot currently occupied by Yahoo. But is it really possible to get people to start using a new search engine in a world where the word “Google” is synonymous with the term “search the internet?”

According to this article on TechCrunch, probably not. Here’s the rundown: according to a study by the Catalyst Group (a usability and design consulting firm), users prefer the layout and organization of Bing, and eye-tracking studies indicate that users spent 150% more time viewing the top-result ad on a test search on the Bing interface. However, users in their focus group indicated that both search engines delivered equally relevant results.

So is Bing really going to make people switch with their more appealing design? Probably not. The problem is that Google is so ingrained in our collective search engine psyche, that user’s won’t be changing their habits for a marginal advantage. Furthermore, Google has embedded their search bar on so many of our software solutions and web sites that actually going to a webpage to enter a search query seems somewhat antiquated. I have my Firefox search bar permanently tuned to the Google option, and it seems like I hardly ever go to Google.com anymore. I’m sure I’m not alone on this one.

The eye-tracking study does seem promising to advertisers, though. The difficulty of competing on the Google network seems to be increasing with each passing year, and Bing/MSN has been an increasingly appealing option to a lot of advertisers for ROI reasons alone. The problem is that no one can match the volume of Google’s lead-generating capacity, so all serious marketers are stuck using the platform for now. However, if Bing takes off as an e-commerce portal in the way Microsoft is branding it, you might see a major exodus of advertising dollars as sellers migrate to where their buyers are going. Then, Google might be the one playing catch-up.