Market and Statistics
– In 2007, U.S. advertisers spent US $24.6 billion on search engine marketing.
– Google (73.7%) and the Yahoo/Bing (26.3%) partnership accounted for almost 100% of U.S. search engine spend in Q2 2015.
– SEM was growing faster than traditional advertising and other online marketing channels in 2006.
– Google leads the global search engine market with a market share of 89.3% as of October 2016, followed by Bing (4.36%), Yahoo (3.3%), and Baidu (0.68%).
– The State of Search Engine Marketing 2006. Search Engine Land.
– Does SEM = SEO + CPC Still Add Up?. searchengineland.com.
– IAB: Search Was 50% Of US Digital Ad Spend In 2014, Desktop Still Bigger Than Mobile.
– Elliott, Stuart (March 14, 2006). More Agencies Investing in Marketing With a Click.
– Top 5 Desktop Tables and Console Search Engine Market Share. statcounter.com.
History
– Search engines started appearing in the mid-to-late 1990s to help people find information quickly.
– Pay-per-click programs, such as Open Text (1996) and Goto.com (1998), were developed to finance search engine services.
– Google introduced advertisements on search results pages through the Google AdWords program in 2000.
– Yahoo! and Microsoft formed an alliance in 2009 to compete with Google.
– The term ‘search engine marketing’ was popularized by Danny Sullivan in 2001 to cover various activities related to SEO and online marketing.
Methods and Metrics
– Keyword research and analysis involve ensuring the site can be indexed, finding relevant keywords, and using them effectively.
– Website saturation and popularity can be analyzed through the number of indexed pages and backlinks.
– Back end tools like web analytics and HTML validators provide data on website performance and visitor behavior.
– Whois tools reveal website owners and provide information on copyright and trademark issues.
– Google Mobile-Friendly Website Checker analyzes if a page has a mobile-friendly design.
Paid Inclusion
– Paid inclusion involves search engine companies charging fees for website inclusion in search results.
– Paid inclusion products are provided by most search engine companies in the main results or as separate advertising areas.
– The fee structure acts as a filter against unnecessary submissions and generates revenue for search engine companies.
– Typically, the fee covers an annual subscription for one webpage.
– Paid inclusion is also known as sponsored listings.
Benefits, Challenges, and Ethical Questions
– SEM can help organizations optimize marketing, gather more audience, and generate more customers.
– Advertisers bid on keywords or phrases to ensure their ads appear in search engine results.
– The price of PPC advertising increases with competition.
– PPC campaigns must consider return on investment to ensure the cost-per-click remains below the profit margin.
– Limited budgets make it challenging for advertisers to maintain high rankings in the competitive search market.
– Paid search advertising has faced controversy and scrutiny.
– The issue of disclosure of paid advertising on search engines has been studied.
– Trademark infringement has been a source of ethical debate.
– Google changed its policy on bidding on competitors’ brand names in 2009.
– The Google Penguin update penalized companies buying links for ranking purposes.
Note: The content does not provide enough information to create a comprehensive fifth group.
Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of Internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) primarily through paid advertising. SEM may incorporate search engine optimization (SEO), which adjusts or rewrites website content and site architecture to achieve a higher ranking in search engine results pages to enhance pay per click (PPC) listings and increase the Call to action (CTA) on the website.
