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It’s 10:00 pm, do you know where your AdWords are (pointing)? No, not another campaign ad, but a question that non-profits should be asking themselves in light of a new Google policy regard AdWords and redirects. According to their help center (emphasis mine),

Based on feedback from both our advertisers and users, and consistent with our efforts to present relevant results, we’ll no longer allow certain exceptions to our display URL policy. These include, but aren’t limited to, redirects and vanity URLs. In line with our existing policy, we’ll continue to require that your ad’s display URL matches its destination URL (the URL of your landing page). This policy will be strictly enforced for new ads, regardless of previous exceptions.

What this boils down to is that you can no longer send users to a different domain than the one you use in the display URL. This means, for users of many popular CRM systems, that you’ll have to display the name of your CRM instead of your organization in the your ad, if your donation or advocacy page is located there.

While it may be bad for non-profits, it’s overall a sensible policy. What likely happened is one too many ads pretended to be useful information like you’d find in organic search, only to turn around and be a business site. For example an ad for “XBox start on fire again?” with a display URL that says Microsoft would seem to be a public service announcement that would tell you what to do about it (hint: it involves a fire extinguisher). But what if that link went to Best Buy instead so you could buy a replacement? Google is doing what’s best for their users.

One way around this restriction is to send users to a landing page first instead of directly going to your advocacy or fundraising pages. This will also let you create a reinforcement of the text of your ad and help users get to the right page next. While you want to minimize the number of clicks to completion to minimize drop-off, a well written and formatted landing page can keep people from bouncing off and increase conversions.

The new AdWord rules are going to require some creative responses by non-profits and other marketers, but it’s worth examining carefully how you’ll build your ads. With the display URL comprising one quarter of your AdWord, you can’t afford not to have this vital reinforcement of your brand. I’ll be interested to see how major CRMs to help them make their ads effective. For more on the policy, and answers to your questions about it, check out the AdWords Google Group.

I love Hip-hop. Almost as much as I love Standards-compliant XHTML/CSS and its intersection with Search Engine Optimization. Mix the two together and you just can’t stop my head from bobbing. Enter The Poetic Prophet with “Design Coding”:

Happy Spamiversary! Fifteen years ago today, the term "spam" was coined by Joel Furr, referring to an accidental auto-posting of 200 messages to a Usenet group. Today, the term has become so common, it ranks as the second disambiguation on Wikipedia and is estimated to cost Americans more than $13 billion per year (That’s enough to fund the state of Utah).

While spam used to be confined to the world of email, spammers have recently branched out to new frontiers: blogs, social networks, and search engines. It seems that no online garden can stay a spam-free Eden forever (perhaps an inapt metaphor: the apple represented knowledge, not pharmaceuticals).

What all these techniques have in common is that they put practically the entire cost onto the recipient. While direct mail, junk faxes, and robocalls at least have a cost to the sender, all the methods of spam that I discuss here are pretty much free, once you have the system set up for delivery.

More on these new theatres of spam warfare below the fold:

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Google ads are just the latest front in the escalating online war fought between the campaigns this election season. While adwords were still maturing last cycle, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at how they’ve evolved in an era of search engine marketing consultants and near ubiquity of online advertising.

First, the ground rules: last month, Google posted on their policy blog about their guidelines for political ads:

• Editorial Guidelines. Like all AdWords ads, political ads must follow our editorial and content policies (including our trademark policies)…

• Fairness. We permit political advertisements regardless of the political views they represent, and apply our policies equally…
• No attacks on an individual’s personal life. Stating disagreement with or campaigning against a candidate[…] is generally permissible. However, political ads must not include accusations or attacks relating to an individual’s personal life, nor can they advocate against a protected group.
• Donations. If you’re soliciting political donations, your ad’s landing page must clearly state that the donations are non-tax-deductible.
• No misleading ads. As with all AdWords advertisements, political ads should not mislead users.

These policies seem remarkable even-minded and fair, as people have come to expect from Google. With these guidelines in mind, follow me below the fold for an analysis of the search engine marketing strategies of the 2008 presidential campaigns…

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Web video has exploded over the past few years. The perfect storm of YouTube (and other video sharing sites), cheap video camcorders, rapidly growing broadband adoption (pdf), and a seemingly endless number star-wars kids and dogs on skateboards has created a web where video is becoming ubiquitous. Even long-term internet staples, like The Onion and MLB.com have added video content. And while some ISPs are arguing (pdf) that their tubes can’t handle the bandwidth from online video (an argument that is, incidentally, specious (pdf)), there’s no way to put the genie back in the bottle with regard to online video.

That having been said, for all that online video can do - illustrate something better seen than read, empower users to create their own content, or destroy politicians with their own words - it has its weaknesses. In particular, video’s not great for skimming or sampling, it’s tough to reference, and can be tricky to pass around at the office or classroom (well, unless you’re our office - these three videos got quite a bit of play at Beaconfire last week). In addition, it can be tough to search a video library for a particular section - particularly if it’s an audio reference, searching may have to be done in real time.

MIT has found a way to mitigate this last problem, and they’re using their own video lectures as a guinea pig. From MIT’s technology review:

Announced last month, the MIT Lecture Browser website gives the general public detailed access to more than 200 lectures publicly available though the university’s OpenCourseWare initiative. The search engine leverages decades’ worth of speech-recognition research at MIT and other institutions to convert audio into text and make it searchable.

This is simply an amazing innovation. More on why this could mean an explosion for online video in the future below the fold.

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With only a few months until the Iowa Caucus, the annual marathon of political ads is almost upon us. This year, more than ever before, the air war is coming online as both sides trade web versions of TV ads, and some ads will inevitably pick up enough earned media buzz to reach more people than they would have in a paid context.

While this is not new (look back at President Johnson’s "Daisy" ad for ancient viral video), this may be the first cycle that a search engine ad created a furor.

Google recently created a stir when they rejected ads by Sen. Collins’s campaign that slammed MoveOn. Google rejected the ads, according to Policy Council Pablo Chavez, not because of their political content, but because of a trademark violation:

Under our trademark policy, a registered trademark owner may request that its mark not be used in the text of other parties’ ads. Some time ago, MoveOn.org submitted a request to Google that its trademark not be used in any ads…

This all seems perfectly reasonable, but what does it mean for your ads? Follow me below the fold for thoughts on what you can do to make sure your ad gets through…

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I fielded a call yesterday about Goodsearch — whether this program by Yahoo! would be worthwhile for an organization to spend time marketing to their constituents.

I fall on the side of extreme caution on these kinds of programs. I’d lump this in with Amazon’s merchant reseller program among hosts of other “make money while your constituents use our store/technology.” With very few exceptions, I have yet to see organizations make net income from these programs that is commensurate with the value of their brand they use to market these programs. When you factor in staff time, the opportunity cost of using an email/newsletter story/print pieces to promote the opportunity, and the brand value you give away for free to promote these … among other investments … organization’s don’t reap what they sow.

Is Goodsearch different? Could it break the model? Maybe because it is a daily experience and utility people truly need, find useful and it’s a quality experience for the constituent. But, to pay off, organizations are going to have to invest a lot in promoting it to convince people to switch from Google.

Is that really the business our organization’s marketing and fundraising departments should be in … convincing constituents to switch from Google to Yahoo!?

If you haven’t seen Google’s Accessibility Search you should stop what you’re doing right now and take a look at where your site stacks up against the rest in your industry. Please note that at the moment this search engine is concerned with accessibility to the visually impaired only. I’m sure others will follow.

If you don’t see your site at the top of the search results page don’t worry. It could be something as minor as the term you searched, which may not be a META Tag or META Element in your HTML. This happens more often than not.

But it could be something major like not enough use of CSS or just plain bad code. If this is the case you’ve probably had the same Web site design for years and are just about ready to redesign.

Only this time you’ll have a tool to help you make certain your site’s on top of accessibility.

Cheers!

Google must have a pretty awesome viral marketing strategy. Or at the very least they must be sending some subliminal message through their tools that is turning us all into Google zombies who send around "here is another cool Google beta tool" emails ever so often.

So, from the Google zombie land, here is another cool Google beta tool: Google SMS (Short Message Service).

You can text message the number 46645 (GOOGL) with your search term and a Google-bot (I presume) responds back with the results as one or more text messages. You can search for local business listings, driving directions, movie show times, and more (Full list is here: http://www.google.com/sms/).

Once you have mastered the typing intricacies of your phone, this is a really cool and useful text messaging service with an almost immediate response. Lynn and I text messaged our search for “Beaconfire Arlington VA” and were pretty thrilled by Google sending us our own office address (I agree - we do need a life!). As an added bonus, we also discovered from the result that Google had not updated our office address after our move. Of course, that meant we had to sign up for the free Google business service to request a correction.

The only issue I have is that if there are multiple results for a search term, each will be sent as a separate message. Imagine searching for “Pizza Arlington VA” as Google suggests on its SMS page. Google SMS itself is free, but most phone providers charge by the number of text messages you send/receive. So, unless you have unlimited text message option from your phone provider, this approach can add costs over time. But, despite that, this is pretty cool service or did I say that already?

Google Zombie Signing Off.