Spring 2009 – Online Insights: Viewpoint

Making the Most of Your Search Data

By Mark Simon

If you’re running a search advertising campaign, make sure you’re fully utilizing your data.

Understanding which data to look at, how to interpret the numbers correctly and taking appropriate action based on those numbers can mean the difference between making the most of your search marketing campaign or simply collecting a bunch of expensive clicks.

Consider these three often-overlooked types of search data. They might give you powerful clues as to how you should be thinking about the numbers in your own search campaign, and how you could be getting more from the efforts you’re running now.

Think Beyond the Most Recent Action

Many shoppers—offline, as well as online—don’t buy right away. They arrive at a store, look around, and return to buy later. If you’re not careful, the phenomenon can cause real trouble for your channel attribution efforts.

For example, let’s say your customer discovers your site via search, likes what she sees, and bookmarks your homepage—with plans to return later. The next time she comes to your site, she returns via her new bookmark and makes a purchase.

Now, let’s say you’re attributing only the most recent action to every conversion. Your data will tell you that your most recent purchase is a direct visitor to your site, and not the search conversion it actually is. Multiply this mistake by the tens of thousands, and the result could be a serious error that vastly undervalues your entire search program.

The moral here: don’t forget to look at the whole picture. Use cookie data to follow lagged conversions, from start to finish.

Take Note of “Web Geography”

You’d be amazed how often a search ad will resonate with Yahoo searchers but not Google searchers, or vice-versa, or how a landing page will bring in conversions from Internet Explorer searchers, but not from Google Chrome users.

Because of these differences, you should pay attention to what I like to call “web geography”: the online locations from which a search originates. Browser and search engine are two such examples.

Remember That It’s Not Just Search

Don’t just use search data to learn about search. Remember that all of your marketing and PR efforts generate interest and that this interest translates into searches. Because that’s so, you should use your search data to get a fix on how well all of your marketing—online and offline—is doing. Follow which keywords gain the most traction, and whether there’s a spike in clicks on your search ads following any other marketing efforts (like your TV spots). Looking at those interactions will allow you to let your search data provide valuable guidance for all your marketing efforts.

Getting the data right is one of the most difficult tasks you can face as a search marketer, and one of the most critical. Have questions of your own about managing your search data? Feel free to reach out—you can contact me at mark.simon@didit.com.

Mark Simon is VP, industry relations at Didit, a digital advertising agency specializing in paid search. He can be reached at mark.simon@didit.com