'Net Features : covario

Author Rank Concerns and Other POVs

Amberly Dressler — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 17:39:00 GMT

Author Rank is all the buzz in SEO communities, because it helps companies achieve better online visibility.

With that in mind, Covario, a search-marketing agency, released a point of view (POV) on Google Author Rank and how best to leverage it for SEO. The POV details: what author rank is and why it matters, how to prepare for author rank, author rank concerns and actionable insights.

Let’s look at author rank concerns, as provided by Covario:

Selling an Authorship Account – Google’s Matt Cutts’s response to this is that there is FTC legislation against what he dubbed a “sock puppet” account and that Google has checks and balances to make sure ghost postings aren’t allowed under an authority account.

Author Leaves the Company – Company posts should also include a rel publisher tag to the company’s Google+ account as protection against this event. The article will still carry weight of the author’s authority and could only benefit as the author expands his or her influence in new endeavors.

Author Rank for Bing – Bing relies more on its data relationships with Facebook and Twitter, while also pulling in the enhanced data provided by microformat implementation according to Schema.org.

Comments and Author Rank – Google is looking to align authorship and comments in its weighting of those factors toward Author Rank, so be careful on politically sensitive comments associated by an author of a company.

The rest of the POV on Google Author Rank can be downloaded free from Covario’s website.

Paid Search Spend Recommendations, Findings

Amberly Dressler — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 20:15:00 GMT

2012 has come and gone, but its global paid search spend deserves some attention in the New Year.

Covario, an independent search-marketing agency, recently released its Global Paid Search Spend Analysis for Q4 and 2012 as a whole, along with some recommended budgeting by region for 2013.

In 2013, Covario recommends advertisers budget for an increase of 18-20 percent in paid search spending, emphasizing Latin America as the biggest opportunity for growth. The report also states the Americas budget should have 83 percent of spend allocated to Google, with roughly 15 percent going to Yahoo-Bing. Additionally, secondary search engines should account for about 2 percent of spend overall in the region.

In the European zone, however, Alex Funk, the author of the quarterly report and Covario’s director of performance media, recommends a more modest 10 percent budget increase in that region. In the dynamic Asia/Pacific, he suggests that advertisers plan for incremental PPC spending in the 30-40 percent range.

Web workers can nab many other valuable takeaways from Covario’s report, which is available as a free download from the Covario website at www.covario.com.

Speaking of valuable, Google continued to dominate in 2012. The search giant controlled 86.5 percent market share in spend, as well as 93 percent in impressions and 67.7 percent in clicks. See how Baidu, Yahoo-Bing and other search engines compared in the image below.

Maximizing Online Development and Marketing Spend in Russia

Administrator — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 15:00:00 GMT

Russia’s volatile, yet rapidly expanding e-commerce market is raising eyebrows in the global marketplace. With Europe’s largest online audience, Russia still has lots of room to grow.

Unlike the highly saturated Internet markets in Germany (83 percent) or the United Kingdom (84 percent), Otkritie Capital Research reports that Russia’s online penetration rate is still around 50 percent with a projected increase of 30 percent by 2015.

Combined with rising e-commerce rates and increasing monetization of existing Russian Internet (RUNET) users, these numbers offer significant opportunities for businesses looking to expand their global presence.

Moving into the Russian market requires a carefully customized online strategy. Having followed key global trends, such as rising mobile and social engagement, Russia has managed to remain local and establish unique rules for success in online marketing. Consider these three important opportunity drivers when developing a strategy for entering the Russian market.

1. Be Social

User engagement rates in Russia continue to rise. Given Russia’s history with government control and censorship, many of today’s consumers choose word-of-mouth and peer-to-peer recommendations over information from formal institutions or official news sources. Social media and mostly local social networks have become vital sources of information for brand and product decisions. According to comScore, Russia is in the top three most engaged social networking audiences worldwide with visitors spending an average of 10.4 hours on social networking sites per month. Compared to 6.9 hours per person in the U.S. (which did not rank within the top-10 countries for social networking), Russia’s level of consumer engagement is a marketer’s dream.

Leveraging this social powerhouse can result in a long-term relationship with Russian consumers, who typically form a very strong connection to a brand. However, running a successful social branding campaign is as much an opportunity as it is a challenge. In order to become true advocates for a brand, Russians expect a lot in return. New market entrants would need to supply fresh, relevant and quality content to accommodate the growing information appetites of target customers, while beginning to establishing longer-term relationships with future prospects. Consequently, corporate tweets and social networking profiles are now visible via Russia’s preeminent search engine Yandex, which has recently shifted its search ranking priorities to accommodate such new factors as freshness and relevance of content.

2. Don't Forget Location

Localizing international content for Russia is highly encouraged and welcome at almost every level of the user/buyer engagement process. And while understanding the local intricacies requires considerable physical resources, the ROI of establishing early competitive advantage and brand recognition in Russia can be significant.

The rule of thumb for localizing in Russia is following the market. Several marketing channels offer specific tools and incentives to help geo-target and localize content. For example, Russia’s largest online portal and search engine Yandex shows different search results for geo-dependent queries in more than 1,250 Russian regions.

Yandex places a lot of emphasis on perfecting its local search technology and offers a number of tools supporting geo-targeting and SEO localization. Webmasters can register their sites with tools like Yandex.Catalog, Yandex.Webmaster and Yandex.Spravochnik to assign relevant regions to geo-dependent content. Another noteworthy set of criteria to help localize global content is Yandex’s newly released guidelines for commercial subjects. Businesses are encouraged to provide quality content, in addition to easy and secure access to product pages.

Russia is one of the countries that demands translation for most English-language terminology. Content marketers need to remember that most service/product attributes, such as colors, features, descriptors, and calls-to-action, have to be translated to capture traffic and secure conversions. In some cases, Russian translation or transliteration of a brand name shows comparable volumes to usage rates for the originals.

3. Don’t Fear the ROPO

The early development stage of Russian e-commerce is evident from the discrepancy of researching online and purchasing offline (the ROPO effect). While offline shopping is still the most common and dominant purchase method across major tech product categories, it’s important to remember that e-shops and online information websites serve as powerful inspiration tools. The high information needs of Russian shoppers leap ahead of the quality content supply for a number of business verticals. This information void means marketers are presented with a tangible opportunity to influence offline conversion rates in Russia.

Creating awareness and helping users navigate to relevant online resources should be the primary focus for initial and intensive research stages of the global brand discovery process. Consider creating a branded program that offers quality content to educate your audience during these crucial stages of user engagement.

The increasing significance of RUNET has revealed the vast business potential of the Russian marketplace. Leveraging Russia’s e-commerce opportunities requires early entrants to personalize strategy and invest in building a long-term relationship with the growing number of Russian consumers. Businesses looking to succeed in Europe’s leading Internet market stand to benefit greatly by adopting a holistic approach in marketing and creating content for the Russian Internet user.

About the Author: Elena MacGurn is a Senior SEO Specialist at COVARIO, an award-winning search marketing agency.

Blame it on Rio – Your New SEO Success, That is

Linc Wonham — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 01:00:00 GMT

Search marketing agency Covario has released a new business unit aimed at growing the market for its present SEO and social media software tools.

Rio SEO will focus on serving the automation needs of in-house SEO managers extending from large to mid-size companies, as well as search marketing practitioners at digital agencies that provide SEO and social media services to their clients.

A suite of organic search marketing and social media software tools for content marketing, auditing, reporting and competitive analysis highlight the launch. Rio SEO will provide technology applications designed to help marketers and retailers that generate huge amounts of content optimize their Web pages with minimal IT support, as well as build corresponding mobile sites optimized for devices like smartphones and tablets.

At launch, Rio SEO is also offering the first of several application-specific SEO and social media modules to come.

The initial tool is called Rio SEO Change Tracker, an application module that will help SEO managers and digital agencies discover, diagnose and address website changes – often emanating inadvertently from other areas of an organization, such as IT, marketing, e-commerce and website design – which can cause numerous SEO performance problems if not caught quickly and fixed right away.

Global Paid Search Spend Climbs 22 Percent

Linc Wonham — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 18:00:00 GMT

Covario has released its quarterly Global Paid Search Spend Analysis, which found that paid search advertising spending in the first quarter of 2012 by technology and consumer electronics companies was up more than 22 percent over the same quarter last year, and 1 percent higher than a strong fourth quarter of 2011.

On a regional basis, year-on-year PPC (pay-per-click) ad spending for the quarter was up 15 percent in the Americas and nearly 88 percent in the Asia Pacific region. This was balanced by Europe, which experienced a decline of almost 2 percent due to ongoing macroeconomic pressures.

All regions had relatively flat quarter-on-quarter growth of between 0 and 2 percent from the typically robust fourth-quarter holiday season.

In the continuation of a development first seen late last year, global CPC (cost-per-click) rates declined for the second quarter in a row – down 3 percent from the fourth quarter of 2011. The study’s author, Charles Gaylord, research analyst at Covario, attributed the deflation in keyword prices primarily to search engine algorithm changes. He believes it will stabilize in the second half of 2012.

Looking ahead, Gaylord said he expects sequential paid search spending growth on a global basis to be in the 1 to 4 percent range for the second quarter, and then resume its double-digit growth momentum in the third and fourth quarters.

“Advertisers are expected to benefit from such drivers as the Summer Olympics, the U.S. presidential elections, and the European Football Championships,” Gaylord said. “The PC industry, in particular, is poised for enormous marketing pushes on behalf of Windows 8 and a flurry of new laptops and ultrabooks.”

Gaylord said current trends are largely in line with expectations and that Covario is still forecasting annual PPC spending growth of 18 to 22 percent in 2012 for global tech companies. This includes 18 to 20 percent growth in the Americas, 15 to 18 percent in the Euro zone, and more than 40 percent growth in Asia Pacific.

Among the search engines globally, spending by tech advertisers on Google was up 23 percent in the first quarter compared to the same period last year. Global paid search ad spending with the Yahoo-Bing alliance was down 20 percent year-over-year, but up 2 percent from the fourth quarter of 2011.

Google continues to command 76 percent of the global paid search market share, while the Yahoo-Bing alliance holds a combined 13 percent global market share among tech advertisers.

Baidu, which has 80 percent of the market in China, grew 4 percent quarter-on-quarter and 142 percent year-on-year. Baidu now accounts for 9 percent of all paid search spending globally.

Poor SEO Health for the Pharmaceutical Industry

Michael Garrity — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 18:55:00 GMT

It looks like the pharmaceutical industry could use a new SEO prescription; that is, at least, according to a recent study by Covario, which details exactly how Big Pharma is providing the perfect blueprint for what not-to-do when it comes to SEO.

Covario looked at 16 of the largest pharmaceutical advertisers in the world and compared them using their patented SEO Audit Score to determine just how well their websites were optimized for the highest volume keywords common to both consumers and medical professionals searching for drug-related information on Google, Bing and various other search engines.

"For decades pharmaceutical companies have been effective at using traditional advertising to target their largest brand advocatse -- doctors. The results of this study show that pharma advertisers have leveraged this expertise and applied it to SEO as a branding channel directed at medical practitioners," says Russ Mann, Covario CEO. "Having said that, pharmaceutical marketers have yet to translate their decades-old success in direct-to-consumer advertising in traditional channels like television into the Web-based organic search channel."

The study showed pharma giant Pfizer coming in first, largely because it has been able to effectively optimize its website properties around the word "pharmaceutical," a point that Covario found critical for brand recognition among medical professionals.

Trailing behind Pfizer was Johnson & Johnson, and then a three-way tied for fifth place among Eli Lilly, Novartis and Bayer.

Covario states that the big takeaway from this study is the poor returns in organic search results for "more consumer-focused, high-volume keywords like 'medicine,' 'drugs,' and 'healthcare.'" The sites that do show up high in the results for these terms are WebMD, Drugstore.com and a variety of universities, hospitals and medical establishments.

"The good news is that there are a number of clear opportunities for pharmas to distinguish their brands by using SEO as a direct-to-consumer branding mechanism," says Mann. "It's clear that consumers are increasingly going to the Internet for information related to their medication needs."

Other brands included in the study were GlaxoSmithKline, Abbot Laboratories, Bristol Meyers Squibb, Allergan, Amgen, Biogen Idec, Mylan, Gilead and Genzyme.

Massive Increases in Global Paid Search Spending

Michael Garrity — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 15:45:00 GMT

Independent search marketing agency (and software solutions provider) Covario released its third quarter Global Search Advertising Spend Analysis last week. The whitepaper included information showing that paid search spending by technology and consumer electronics companies improved greatly from its less-than-stellar second quarter.

Global pay-per-click (PPC) advertising in the third quarter of 2011 was up a whole 26 percent from the preceding quarter and 24 percent from quarter three of 2010. This growth is seen as a result of strong numbers in back-to-school shopping and an increase in investments in the Asia-Pacific region.

According to the Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Covario, Craig Macdonald, "Technology and consumer electronics advertisers are upping their budgets for Asia-Pacific and are now looking at search spend growth for the full year in APAC to be in the 40-plus range."

Cost-per-click (CPC) advertising, which is the average transaction cost for purchasing search engine advertisements, has consistently seen 2 percent quarter-on-quarter price inflation because of an increase in competition for search engine auctions; this is, in large part, a result of "robust growth" in search marketing spending in Asia-Pacific.

Macdonald believes that the technology sector will increase global paid search spending by approximately 20 percent for 2011.

Of course, APAC wasn't the only region that increased its paid search spending. In North America, it grew by 21 percent; in the same quarter last year it only increased by 7 percent. In Europe, there was a 23 percent increase from the second quarter and a 24 percent increase from Q3 2010.

"We do, however, see growth slowing in Europe," cautioned Macdonald.

Covario seemed intent on pointing out that "major growth opportunities for global advertisers are in Asia-Pacific, where quarter on quarter growth was at 45 percent and year on year paid search spend was up more than 100 percent." The biggest boom areas for PPC investment in the area are Japan, China, India, Australia and New Zealand.

Other important findings by Covario include:

- 75 percent of paid search technology clients see paid media spending on Facebook being a key part of annual budgeting in the upcoming year.

- Overall growth in paid search spending for 2012 should be in the 18-22 percent range. In North America, it will be 18-20; in Europe it will fall between 15-20; and it should land between 30-25 in Asia-Pacific.

- Google does, and will continue to, control the majority of the spending, as it has a 75 percent share of the global paid search market. Yahoo-Bing take about 15 percent, and Baidu is set to grow to 8 percent.

- Predictions state that mobile search marketing will only command about 3-5 percent of overall paid search marketing. The real money in mobile search strategies right now is in SEO and Web development.

Friday 15 for Web Pros

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 20:00:00 GMT

Friday is the perfect opportunity to take a moment and look back at the most important and interesting business and technology developments of the week – those that will influence you in the future and likely are impacting some aspect of your Web enterprise right now. This week, let’s look at 15 key developments in the world of Web business.

- The Open Commerce Ecosystem of Ebay Arrives
Ebay has been the talk of the Web this week with its X.commerce effort, which aims to connect developers with merchants to create a complete commerce operating system. A few of the integrations announced at the Innovate Developer Conference include those with Facebook (integrating Open Graph functionality through Magento and GSI), Adobe (integrating its digital marketing platform), Kenshoo (which automates digital marketing campaigns) and online bookkeeping tool Outright.

- The Value of Real-Time Search Data
URL shortener bit.ly played its trump card this week – an immense set of real-time data. The company released a reputation monitoring service for enterprise customers based on its search technology which weighs results by cross-platform social engagement. Bit.ly joins several other vendors in the real-time search and analytics space including Topsy and Google.

- Google+ Closes in on Twitter
The Google+ network/platform has surpassed the 40 million user mark, inching ever closer to the 100 million active users of Twitter but still quite a distance from Facebook's 800 million users. Revenue was up 33 percent year-over-year, and quarter revenues were just short of $10 billion for Google, but questions remain about its ability to foster social communities.

- Can Anyone Save Yahoo? Comscore Search Data
Comscore reported that Google’s share of the search market increased a half percentage at the expense of Yahoo – which fell to its lowest search volume levels ever. Perhaps an Alibaba acquisition isn’t such a bad idea, after all. While Yahoo! has a strong foothold in the display advertising market, the network might have seen better days.

- Let’s Take it Offline
Mobile payments company Square, which offers apps that allow merchants to process and manage credit card transaction with a swiping device that plugs in to the headset/microphone jack, announced that it is now processing 2$ billion in payments volume per year. Square also announced that it is dropping several requirements for new Swype merchants.

- Jumping on the KickStarter Bandwagon
Crowdfunding service Kickstarter has seen 1 million people sign up and offer financial support for projects listed on its site. Kickstarter also indicated that of those who have backed projects 89% of them have supported at least one idea that was successful.

- Search Ad Spend Rebounds
SEM and software provider Covario released its global spend search ad spend analysis which indicated that PPC spending was up 26 percent from the previous quarter and 24 percent versus the same period last year.

- A Local Vibe from MapQuest
MapQuest unveiled Vibe this week, a local search/mapping tool which identifies neighborhood-level hot spots. MapQuest Vibe profiles more than 50,000 neighborhoods, 27,000 cities and 50,000 hotspots in the U.S., reaching 98 percent of the population.

- Ad Boosters from GreyStripe
Mobile advertising network GreyStripe released several new industry-focused and social ad units this week dubbed Ad Boosters. The customizable “boosters” allows advertisers to direct users to take specific actions. A retail booster, for example, could include a “Find Store” button, a coupon or buy now button. This is somewhat similar to the way that Google has introduced the +1 button on its display ads.

- Foursquare Gets Real with Radar Notifications
It seems as if the hottest new trend on the Web is in real-time data retrieval, and now location-based social media service Foursquare is hopping on the bandwagon. Earlier this week they announced Radar, a new real-time feature that will sends notifications to users when they're close to businesses that fit into their "to-do lists", or any other Foursquare lists to which they've subscribed. This tool will be especially useful for driving relevant customers to local businesses when they're in a city or area that they're not familiar with.

-Location-based Marketing with Hootsuite
HootSuite acquired location-based marketing tool Geotoko this week. This geo-aggregation tool collects audience information from check-in tools like Facebook Places and Foursquare. The integration of this tool with HootSuite will especially help multiple location brick and mortar businesses better understand audiences, based on data such as location, sentiment and demographic. With this data, businesses will be able to reach out to consumers with specific offers, promotions and campaign adjustments.

- Google Commerce Goes Mobile
Just two years after Google Commerce was launched, this week Google announced Google Commerce Search for mobile. According to Google, the launch of Google Commerce Search for mobile came about after consistently finding an increasing number of shopping queries from mobile phones. Timberland is one of the first Google Commerce for Search customers, and claims that since its mobile-optimized website launched, mobile sales have grown 20 times faster than desktop sales.

- LinkedIn Acquires IndexTank

Linked acquired hosted search service IndexTank this week, which will integrate its technology with LinkedIn’s search. IndexTank’s real-time search technology already powers many searches, such as Reddit.com, Twitvid and Spoke. Currently, LinkedIn claims that it will release key components of IndexTank as open source software, which will allow others to run the IndexTank API.

- Microsoft and Skype Seal the Deal
Microsoft finally made it official with video/chat software application provider Skype after being in talks to buy the company since May. The software giant finally closed the deal and purchased Skype for $8.5 billion. For now, Skype will operate as an independent division, with their offices and employees remaining and over time it will be integrated into Microsoft products like Xbox Live and Windows Live.

- Facebook Friendly
Facebook, the reigning King of social media, recently acquireded the startup friend.ly, the company behind a popular social question-and-answer service featured on the social network. Friend.ly will still exist and operate as a standalone service on the site, while the company’s team will begin focusing on new projects at Facebook.

Covario, Adobe to Offer One-stop Search Solution

Linc Wonham — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 05:00:00 GMT

Covario has announced a new integration with Adobe SearchCenter+ that will provide marketers with a complete range of paid and organic search analytics in one easily accessible report. The two companies expect their combined offering to be available by the beginning of 2012.

The integration will bring SEO data from the Covario Organic Search Insight platform into Adobe’s popular paid search management solution. It is being built using Adobe Genesis, which automates the integration of partner solutions with the Adobe Online Marketing Suite.

The partnership was spurred by the double-digit growth of paid search spending by global enterprises, as well as strong marketer demand for one-stop SEO and paid search management solutions. In its most recent Global Search Spend Analysis of major technology and consumer electronics companies, Covario reaffirmed its projection for 15- to 20-percent annual growth in paid search spending for 2011.

“By working with Adobe, we are in an even stronger position to help our global marketing clients derive improved performance and greater ROI from both paid and organic search initiatives through integrated analytics,” says Covario CEO Russ Mann.

Covario, Kenshoo to Offer Combined Search Solution

Linc Wonham — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 15:00:00 GMT

Web industry leaders Covario and Kenshoo have announced a strategic agreement that includes software licensing and technology integration to deliver innovative search and social marketing solutions for enterprise advertisers.

Covario, the nation’s largest independent provider of search engine marketing and SEO (search engine optimization) software solutions, will utilize Kenshoo’s digital marketing software to enable scalable online media buying and optimization on behalf of several global enterprise clients for both paid search and paid social advertising. Additionally, the companies will co-develop a fully integrated paid and organic search solution for global digital marketers, leveraging Covario’s SEO technologies such as Covario Organic Search Insight and Covario Organic Search Optimizer together with Kenshoo products Kenshoo Enterprise, Kenshoo Local and Kenshoo Social.

The companies cited three factors driving their partnership: the double-digit growth of paid search spending by enterprise marketers globally, the rapidly growing budgets for Facebook advertising and other paid social media campaigns, and the proven benefits of holistic management of paid search and SEO.

In its quarterly Global Search Spend Analysis of major technology and consumer electronics companies issued in July 2011, Covario reaffirmed its projection for 15 to 20 percent annual growth in paid search spending in 2011. Meanwhile, analysts have reported that all roads lead to Facebook in social network advertising, with a forecast for 2012 that call for the mega social network to command $5.74 billion in ad revenues worldwide. Additionally, Forrester Research, in its 2011 Wave of U.S. Search Marketing Agencies, asserted its belief that integrating SEO and paid search efforts is easiest when done through a single partner.

Covario has begun the onboarding process with Kenshoo for a number of existing paid search clients. As for the integrated organic and paid search solution, a prototype will be unveiled in the months ahead.

Covario's Revenues, Reputation on the Move

Linc Wonham — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 13:00:00 GMT

Covario, Inc., one of the nation’s largest independent providers of search marketing software solutions and agency services for both search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search marketing, moved up two notches from No. 22 to No. 20 in the recently released Advertising Age magazine ranking of the Top U.S. Search Marketing Agencies.

Covario’s U.S. search revenues grew by 37.7 percent in 2010 – the highest growth rate among the top 20 search agencies in the ranking. The San Diego-based firm reported search revenue in terms of net revenue only, exclusive of paid search media fees and Web development work.

“As impressive as our U.S. growth was in 2010, international search marketing now represents more than 40 percent of our business and is growing at a faster rate than domestic campaigns,” said Russ Mann, Covario’s chief executive. “With our global revenue included we would have ranked even higher.”

Covario was one of only five search marketing agencies to improve upon its position in the ranking from the previous year when the firm made its first appearance on the annual Ad Age list.

Founded in 2006, Covario was also featured for the first time in the 2011 Forrester Research Wave of U.S. Search Marketing Agencies, along with eight other firms from among some 100 agencies considered. In Forrester’s summary of the report, Covario was noted as “best for SEO.”

Instant Impact: Paid Search Spending Climbs

Linc Wonham — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 19:06:00 GMT

The latest Global Search Spending Analysis, released each quarter by search marketing software firm Covario, reveals some interesting trends since the September launch of Google Instant and the summer integration of the Yahoo and Bing platforms. Encompassing search spending on all of the major search engines by Covario’s technology and electronics client companies, the report provides a valuable snapshot of the paid search landscape.

Findings in the third-quarter report included the following:

•    Paid search advertising was up nearly 20 percent since the previous quarter, and an astounding 47 percent higher than the third quarter of 2009.
•    2010 paid search spending growth is headed for a 20-percent year-over-year increase
•    Google Instant has already led to 20 percent higher click-through rates on the Google engine, with the overall proportion of paid search clicks up by 4 percent at the expense of organic search
•    Paid search spending on Google was up nearly 18 percent from the second quarter, and 34 percent from the third quarter of 2009
•    Paid search budgets on the combined Yahoo-Bing platform increased by about 5 percent overall in the third quarter, and the combined global market share rose to more than 22 percent (27 percent in North America)
•    Bing had its first market increase since the fourth quarter of 2009

Covario is one of the largest independent SEM and SEO firms in the U.S., and the combined annual paid search advertising spending of the brands represented in the report exceeds $250 million. The analysis spans the first quarter of 2007 through the third quarter of 2010, and all of the data was compiled using the Covario paid Search Insight software solution.

Organic Search Insight

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 12 May 2009 13:15:00 GMT

Interactive marketing analytics provider Covario announced an upgrade to its Organic Search Insight solution to include Audit Score v2.0 – a measure of the alignment of an advertiser’s website with the methods used by search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN to display natural search results.

Audit Score v2.0 is based on proprietary data developed by Covario from audits conducted on over 500 different websites across its customer base. Covario belives Audit Score v2.0 is more accurate than Google Page Rank in predicting how effective an advertiser’s SEO investments are in driving measurable business improvements.

“Audit Score v2.0 is an important step for our customers as it elevates our ability to make specific recommendations, search engine by search engine, and drive key online marketing strategies that improve the ROI of SEO” says Dr. Matthias Blume, Chief Analytics Officer at Covario. “Each search engine treats websites very differently, and their treatment changes over time. Our analytics allow us to understand these differences and changes, and make recommendations that measure SEO effectiveness based on the uniqueness of each search engines’ algorithms.”

Audit Score v2.0 is available as part of the latest release of the Covario™ Marketing Action Platform, an enterprise software solution that helps large advertisers and their agencies increase the efficiency, lower operating costs and improve Return-On-Investment of paid search advertising and Search Engine Optimization programs.

Global Search Spend: The Good, Bad, & Ugly

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 15:00:00 GMT

Covario released its Global Search Spend Analysis for the first quarter of 2009.

Highlights from the report include:

- Growth in paid search spending for Covario customers contracted slightly, -1.4% in Q1’09 (compared to Q4’08). This is down from the same period last year when paid search advertising spending grew 2.4% from Q4’07 to Q1’08.

- The reduction in spend was localized to EMEA, where spending contracted by 15.9% from Q4’08. Spending in the Americas was up slightly, 0.8%, and in APAC spending was up 7.4%.

- Google has been most impacted by the cutback in EMEA due to their 95%+ market share in the region. For the first time, we saw a 6% decline in the growth rate on Google spending — again, largely due to the cutbacks in EMEA. Yahoo and MSN both posted big gains in spending and in share.

- CPCs rates continue to fall, as spending on paid search programs remains in flux.

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