Last week Google announced a number of changes, initiatives, and features that impact webmaster and marketers’ thinking for both paid and organic search. The world of search moves at dizzying speed. Here’s a summary of Google’s announcements, some of which already are having a significant impact on SERPs (search engine results pages) this morning.
Paid: Google’s New Preferred Bidding Option
Google AdWords announced a new bidding option enabling advertisers to an to stipulate an average  CPC or CPM bid. Previously the only option was to specify a maximum CPC or CPM campaign bid, requiring third party software to manage bid-to-placement through the API.
Google does not guarantee the exact placement or cost of ads. However selecting the new CPC/CPM option means your bids will likely fall around the price-point you chose. Now advertisers have more control of campaigns within the Google AdWords platform and manual adjustment of maximum bid may be less necessary. The announcement of Google’s new AdWords Preferred Cost Bidding may signal impending obsolescence for paid search bid management software packages like Atlas, Dynamic Software, Omniture, KeyWordMax.
Organic: Google Search History is Now Web History
Google switched on search “history” for many account holders in February triggering an intense debate over the pros and cons of personalized search and privacy. Now in a provocative move Google has expanded search history to “web history.” Tracking user behavior has expanded to archive where Google users go and what they do as while surfing the web. In making this gigantic move Google has again sparked important concerns over privacy. While previously personalized search was impacted only by a user’s search history, now the SERPs are impacted by web surfing history.
Google’s Profit & Revenue Rises 63% in Quarter 1
What a surprise…Last week (in their ongoing quest to fully dominate planet earth) Google announced revenue for the first quarter 2007 of $3.66 billion. This is an increase of 63% from quarter one in 2006 representing an increase of 69%. Click here to view financial tables for the first quarter of 2007.Organic: Google News Results Mix with Web Search Results
The way Google mixes Google News results with the usual web search results will change. Web pages and news results will be blended if your search is relevant to current events. Previously news links were displayed in a OneBox.
Anchor Text Reporting in WebMaster Central
Google has continued it’s rapid advancement of link reporting in their best-of-breed suite of webmaster tools. Inbound links from “authority sites” are a major factor in attaining organic prominence in search engines so having access to Google’s database of links and anchor text phrases can be quite beneficial to organic prominence efforts. Earlier this year Google added more definitive link reporting for verified sites. Last month Google added anchor text reporting. Danny Sullivan then published an article requesting enhanced features. Some of his wishes have now come true in addition to other changes.
Webmaster Central’s Vanessa Fox of Google announced the anchor text reporting upgrades which include phrase variations and an increase of the number of reported text anchors.
