Global Search Engine Marketing & Social Media News And Analysis » Brazil

Here’s How Google Allocates Its Own Global PPC Ad Spend

Kerin Foster — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 13:00:19 +0000

Needless to say, Google is a global phenomenon that has taken the world by storm. Although search remains its core offering, the Mountain-View, California-based behemoth has gone well beyond search over the past decade and evolved into an internet services provider whose wide-reaching product portfolio is matched by few. With so many services to offer, how does Google allocate its global PPC ad spend? Are the services they push through PPC ads largely the same across countries, or does it differ from country to country?

With this as the starting point, the following should hopefully help shed some light into Google’s international strategy.

Global Spend

Initially in taking a look at google.com as an entire entity, it is immediately obvious that Google is placing the majority of their ad spend on Ads Keywords within the United States (approximately 780.5 thousand to be a bit more precise), and have the rest of their expenditure spread rather evenly for the remainder of the worldwide databases covered by SEMrush:

Country-by-Country Analysis

In the United States database, the top keywords entail:

google.com
google chrome
games
google docs
chrome
youtube music
google analytics
android market
google mail

The highest amount of budget costs, approximately 12%, are going to google.com and google chrome, which can lead us to the conclusion that within the United States market, a top push for them is Google Chrome, and most keywords result in a corresponding URL and ad text. However, other databases confirm dissimilar and interesting results.

Contrary to the United States, Google is placing 84% of their budget on the keyword gmail (which also generates 51% of traffic and directs users to the Gmail site), and the remaining 9 keywords — google, play, google chrome, googlemail, google mail, gmail.com, chrome, goog, angry birds – are quite even.

Canada

In Canada, with 75.6 thousand Ads Keywords, the keyword with the highest budget allocation is google calendar with approximately 12%, so the Google Calendar for business purposes is one of the many concentrations for Google in Canada.

Russia – Chrome is the primary gateway to search glory

The highest costs, accounting for 32% of PPC country budget in Russia, go to the keyword Google, and the remainder of the top keywords are overwhelmingly focused around Chrome, even with the top keyword Google directing to the landing page www.google.com/chrome, as displayed:

Therefore, the keyword that Google is utilizing isn’t always directly related to the resulting URL. And more importantly, it becomes abundantly clear that Google sees Russian user adoption of Chrome as its best shot at tearing down Yandex’s search stronghold in the vast country.

Germany – Android focus and competitor keyword targeting

It appears the company is placing greater emphasis on its Android OS in Germany – specifically its Google Play Store, with android market leading to the URL play.google.com (and the corresponding ad text promoting Android apps). Interestingly, internet explorer makes up one of the top keywords and takes the searcher to the Chrome homepage.

France, Spain, Italy, Brazil, and Australia

In France, Google is devoting 19 thousand Ads Keywords that are mostly focused on Google Chrome. Spain, however, has an unlike outcome and more ads with approximately 43 thousand. Top keywords for Google.com have a majority movie focus with peliculas online (online movies), peliculas (movies,)google earth, gmail iniciar session (gmail login),descargar peliculas (download movies), android market, peliculas online gratis (free online movies), adsense, google docs, and google play. While many keywords have a movie-esque focus, historical ads for the domain google.com in Spain’s database show that many of the keywords and ads are directed to Google Play.

Top keywords in Italy (11.7 thousand Ads Keywords) have a primary focus on Google mail and its homepage. Brazil has a great deal more keywords with 69.1 thousand, and a major focus on sending users to the AdWords Brasil landing page. 57% of the Google budget in Brazil is being sent to the keyword Google and the resulting URL for AdWords Brasil (keyword mapas (maps) leads to this URL as well.) Other keywords such as musicas (songs) direct to Google Aovivo.

Finally, Australia also has a large 68 thousand keywords that have a diverse focus on Chrome, Apps, Adwords, and Gmail – all within the top 10 keywords. The one that seemed the most noteworthy, or perhaps unique, was the keyword book depository, leading to the Google Play/books section of the site.

The picture largely the same on Bing

While researching a portion of Google’s ad expenditure and promotion efforts globally, curiosity sparked as far as if they are doing any sort of advertising on Bing. So why not take a look into Bing’s dashboard for Google.com:

Again, there are similarities with the distribution of ad spend globally, as well as the first few keywords – and of course, a focus on Google Mail, Chrome, and Play.

Conclusion

As the PPC data indicates, Google is taking a diversified yet consistent approach when it comes to its international ad spends: a prime emphasis is being placed on a few main aspects of their service globally: Chrome, Mail, and Play. They are using distinctive, attractive keywords and ad texts to entice attention and result in clicks to the areas that they are honing in on, with only a few exceptions such as Canada and the Google Calendar and in Brazil where Google is promoting AdWords a bit more. Nevertheless, Google seemingly has all of their ducks in a row for the most part when it comes to their international PPC tactics, at least for now.

SEO In Australia Affected By Google’s Rank Modifying Spamming Algorithm

John Vlasakakis — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 03:45:37 +0000

Many SEO’s would have heard the news of Google creating a patent known as the rank modifying spamming algorithm.

For those who do not know what this is, it’s a modification in the algorithm which will intend to identify those people who are employing SEO tactics in order to gain a higher position by manipulating the results with certain tactics.

The algorithm will detect unusual activity on a web page for example, understand why this has occurred, and what it’s end result is, and instead lower the rankings of the website for a period of time (shown in diagram), an SEO who might try undo any of those changes thinking that it has worked negatively will be identified and performing a rank spamming tactic.

It is an easy way for Google and other search engines to identify any sort 0f spam, most webmasters will panic if they see rankings drop, and this is easy for the search engines to identify spam has occurred.

Techniques such as keyword stuffing, the implementation of small text and also unnatural inbound links are many factors which can trigger this to occur.

One major thing which is noticeable is the volatility of search results when this occurs, and it has become clear that SEO consultants are making amendments and are getting caught out by this.

The volatility of search results can occur as frequently as every 30 minutes, sending many people in SEO working on websites into crisis mode, one keyword in the Internet Marketing space has changed up to 10 times in a day, eventually stabilising after many shake ups, clearly this keyword is of high value and there have been many tactics employed which could be seen as grey hat SEO.

Many people in SEO when they make on page changes just add the keyword in the title tag, description, and a few times in the content, this obviously is a method of keyword stuffing even though not done excessively, it is imperative when on-page changes are made that there is extra content or even a full section of new content added across the page.

The Rank Modifying Spamming Algorithm is for the good of all involved in SEO, and it will force many in the industry to employ more white hat SEO techniques.

(image courtesy of Search Engine Land)

Facebook Takes Lead In Brazil: Global Domination Continues

Gemma Birch — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:29:23 +0000

Data released by comScore has shown that Facebook is now the leading social network in Brazil, with a staggering 192% increase in the number of visitors in the past year. Brazil is the fifth biggest user of social networks globally, yet Facebook has until now struggled to compete with the popularity of Google owned Orkut, which had a strong presence in the South American country.

The figures are quite astonishing. In December 2010, Facebook had 12 million Brazilian users, compared to 32 million for Orkut, yet 12 months later Facebook has reached 36 million users, while Orkut only grew to 34 million. As well as increasing visitor numbers, user engagement on the site has also increased, with more time being spent on the site and more pages being accessed on each visit.

The comScore data doesn’t take into account visits from public computers and mobile devices so the exact numbers may be slightly different, and the growth rate of 5% for Orkut shows that it is far from finished in Brazil. However, this is a major win for Facebook, which is now the leading social network in all but 6 countries around the world.

Japan, China, Russia, South Korea, Vietnam and Poland still favour local social networks to the global leader. In a session at the upcoming International Search Summit @ SMX West, Michael Bonfils will lead a session on these major markets and provide insights into their leading networks, including Qzone, Vkontake and Cyworld.

WPP in Shopping Spree Buys 2 Companies in Brazil

Marcelo Sant'Iago — Thu, 13 May 2010 21:05:33 +0000

Sir Martin´s WPP acquired online full service agency Midia Digital and search agency i-Cherry, both based out of Curitiba, south of Brazil.

i-Cherry top executive is brazilian search pioneer Alexandre Kavinski.

Here´s the official press release.

Facebook Hiring in Brazil

Marcelo Sant'Iago — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 18:09:52 +0000

Social Networks are very popular in Brazil and Facebook decided to take advantage of that.

Looking to expand its user base and searching for brand awareness opportunities, Facebook is hiring a Growth Manager.

The opening is posted on FB´s website and it is a 6-12 months engagement, so we cannot say if they will have a full staff soon. But it is a start.

They are also hiring in Russia and India, thus BRIC is a priority now.

Naspers acquired Buscapé, leading comparison shopping search engine in Brazil and LatAm

Marcelo Sant'Iago — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:18:52 +0000

South African media company Naspers announced today the acquisition of 91% of the share capital of Brazilian e-commerce group BuscaPé.com Inc. for an amount of US$342m.

Buscapé, which started as comparison shopping ten years ago, currently is Latin America’s top such network for new and used goods and one of the region’s best-known internet brands. It is the exclusive provider of comparison shopping solutions to more than 100 portals and websites in Latin America, including Microsoft, Globo and Abril, with over 10 million products and over 320 000 online and offline stores.

In recent years BuscaPé acquired a competitor, Bondfaro. It also expanded with QueBarato, the leading free-classifieds network in Latin America. Electronic payments can be done with Pagamento Digital. In addition it has an affiliate advertising network named Lomadee, an e-commerce research business, eBit, and a fraud risk assessment service, FControl.

All details on Naspers’ press realease.

Google Dominates not only search, but the Internet Landscape in Brazil

Marcelo Sant'Iago — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 21:31:43 +0000

According to the latest comScore report “in Brazil, Google Sites accounts for 89.5 percent of all searches conducted, while Google Orkut has a dominant position in social networking (96.0 percent of time spent), as does Google Maps in the maps category (70.9 percent of time spent) and Google-owned YouTube in the multimedia category (91.6 percent)”.

You can check the full worldwide data reading comScore’s press release.

ComScore Reveals Google Share by Market

Andy Atkins-Krüger — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 17:39:39 +0000

Via Adage, ComScore has revealed the Google share by market showing the Google domination in many markets alongside discrepancies such as Korea where Google has a dismal share of the market. Western Europe has stronger Google shares than the US but the Mountain View monolith is most powerful in Brazil, Turkey and Italy.

Unfortunately, with China and Russia missing – the picture is somewhat one-sided.

Google Share by Market – ComScore

MySpace will close operations in Brazil

Marcelo Sant'Iago — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:18:47 +0000

As part of its efforts to revamp the international operations, internal sources from MySpace Brazil already confirmed that the office will remain open only until June 30th. MySpace opened its local office 2 years ago.

Still remains a mistery what will happen with the current campaigns and partnerships ( last week mySpace announced a big deal with a leading content portal in Brazil).

No official communication from MySpace Brazil yet.

SMX Sao Paulo 2009: Keynotes announced

Marcelo Sant'Iago — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 18:55:46 +0000

SMX will arrive in Brazil for its second show on August 4th.

Key notes were announced last week: Danny Sullivan, Erica Schmidt (Isobar) and SEMPO’s President Sara Houlobek are some of the international speakers.

Unlike 2008, this year’s SMX SP (possible hashtag on Twitter?) will take place in a single day, not two.

The full agenda should go out soon, stay tuned.

Google expands new trademark policy – but sidesteps Europe

Andy Atkins-Krüger — Thu, 07 May 2009 22:12:38 +0000

Following the expansion of their trademark policy to the UK last year, Google has widened its looser trademark policy which basically allows all-comers to bid on trademark keywords increasing the cost of trademark advertising via the number one search engine and allowing competitors to aggressively buy each others ‘marks. The new change expands the ‘we won’t intervene’ approach to a total of 190 countries. The change comes into force on June 4th.

However, Google has sidestepped the key European countries with the strongest legal rules and where cases have cost Google most in fines (see list below). From calculations, the removal of protection for trademarked terms increases advertiser costs by as much as 80% – as well as taking revenue from additional advertisers on those terms. The policy, therefore, enables Google to increase its adverising take from advertisers. The approach also affects major global brands most significantly – because they generally spend proportionately more on advertising their brands because it is those brands – and the associated products – which have made them global.

Google has long struggled to persuade blue chip advertisers to move more of their advertising budgets to Google Adwords – this is step which leaves them with no choice. However, it is a dangerous move as it could also contribute to tipping the ROI see-saw towards other newer forms of promotion such as social media and Twitter.

Having received no significant kick-back from its UK change of a year ago – it’s no surprise that this is being rolled out now. Probably, another year will pass before more countries – especially European ones – are added. I predict that France, where the courts have levied the largest fines against Google, will be the last to go.

So the following countries (European Union countries in bold) will not see the change – at least yet. Via Search Engine Land

Austria

Belgium

Bulgaria

Czech Republic

Cyprus

Denmark

Finland

France

Greece

Germany

Hungary

Italy

Lithuania

Luxembourg

Netherlands

Poland

Portugal

Romania

Slovakia

Slovenia

Spain

Sweden

Australia
Bahamas
Brazil
China
Iceland
Macau
New Zealand
Norway
South Korea
Switzerland
Taiwan

Ask.com messing up in Brazil

Marcelo Sant'Iago — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 18:51:10 +0000

This is for those of you fans of international PPC: Ask.com is running a PPC campaign in Brazil trying to drive more users to its search engine.

But when you do a search on Google for restaurante São Paulo (restaurant São Paulo) you get an ad poorly written using the dynamic keyword insertion tool.

Ad copy in Portuguese says: “find restaurant in Sao Paulo on Ask Restaurant in Sao Paulo on Ask now!”

But things get really messy when you do the same search on Ask’s brazilian website. Check the results on the right side of the page.

Weird.

Nielsen report: Brazil leads the world in social network websites

Marcelo Sant'Iago — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:33:23 +0000

According to a new Nielsen report Brazil is the country with more people using social networks websites. Brazilian users are also leading on time spent.

Nielsen reports that 80% of online users in Brazil are registered on social networks, followed by Spain with 75%, Italy 73% and Japan 70%.

Facebook is the leading network in the world with more than 108 million unique users, but only 2% of brazilians are using the website. Undisputed leader is Google’s Orkut, with 70% reach, making it the world leader on domestic audience reach.

Brazil overcome UK on Social Network audience

Marcelo Sant'Iago — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 18:45:04 +0000

Social Networking is a very popular activity in Latin America and Brazil is making a serious point about it.

A comScore study involving all countries with more than 10 million internet users revealed that social networks reached 87% of Canadians and 85% of Brazilians during September 2008 (9.3 points increase when compare to last year), taking the second place from UK.

According to the same study, Orkut is still and by far the leading network in Brazil, with 21 million unique users last September, five times more than the second one.

Google is allowing advertising on Orkut again: text ads as part of the content network and banners on profile pages (CPM model).

SMX Brasil 2008: a good start

Marcelo Sant'Iago — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:49:10 +0000

There are always room for improvements, but my overall impression of SMX São Paulo 2008 was positive.

In order to avoid duplicated content I’m linking to Sara Holoubek’s post at DM News.

SMX arrives in Brazil next month

Marcelo Sant'Iago — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 18:23:01 +0000

SMX franchise will have its first edition in Brazil on August 7th and 8th.

Among the key speakers are Bill Hunt, Director of Global Search Strategy at Neo@Ogilvy; Erica Schimdt, Global Search Director at ISOBAR, and Sara Houlobek, Consultant, DMNews Columnist & SEMPO Board of Directors.

No MicroHoo: what’s the impact in Brazil? None.

Marcelo Sant'Iago — Wed, 07 May 2008 14:16:05 +0000

As everyone knows Microsoft had given up Yahoo (for now, I think).

In Brazil that means nothing, because here Yahoo and Microsoft are still operating together, as during the early days of Overture.

Therefore, the “Search duopoly” mentioned by Danny Sullivan in his AdAge article a couple of days before the deal went off, is already a reality in Brazil, where Google is still a dominant player and Yahoo (even combined with Microsoft) cannot face his leadership. And besides those two, there are very few relevant options for your search campaign.

Brazil most admired publishers: Google leads internet category

Marcelo Sant'Iago — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 19:36:39 +0000

For the 8th consecutive year Meio&Mensagem , the local “Ad Age”, published its Most Admired Publishers list. There are 6 categories: TV, paid TV, radio, newspaper, magazine, and internet.

Internet category was introduced only in 2004 and has being lead by UOL (Universo Online) since then. The hegemony ended this year, when Google ranked in first, seconded by UOL.

The other top ten publishers are, in order: Terra, Globo.com, MSN, Estadao.com, Abril.com, Yahoo, iG and Lancenet.

Yahoo! Go available in Brazil

Marcelo Sant'Iago — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 01:47:22 +0000

Yahoo launched a few weeks ago the Yahoo Go application for mobile in Brazil.

I have being using the 1.0 version in English for quite some time, but the new version keeps the same features, but now it’s avaiable in Brazilian portuguese (prior to that only portuguese from Portugal).

But it also still showing usability problems. For instance, you cannot hide the application on your Blackberry to check email or send SMS. Also, I cannot check all my Flickr albums.

Is anyone facing same problems? Would love to hear your comments.

Google webmaster tools starts to think international

Andy Atkins-Krüger — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 17:20:03 +0000

At least two major new features are arriving in Google’s webmaster tools console according to information from the SES San Jose conference and the official Google webmaster tools blog.

The latter has announced support for the Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) and a series of further enhancements are expected. IDNA enables webmasters to use domain names which exist outside the original 26 characters used for the English-language – but not for too many other languages since many have odd accented characters. Additionally, this brings greater support for asiatic and arabic character sets.

The other new development which is currently being looked at, according to a senior Google source, is the addition of a tool within webmaster tools whereby you can specify the country your site relates to. The countries will be listed in a drop down list – and you’ll almost certainly only be able to choose once country per site.

For a long time it has been a problem if you site was a .com site with no history of activity in a country for Google to pick out the right ‘bucket’ in which to list your site. For some this was an embarrasment – for others a major business hurdle. Matters were worse for those .coms hosted in a country other than the one they were targeting – perhaps for business political or content management system reasons. The result was you might be targeting France with a site hosted in Norway – but not end up appearing in the ‘Pages Francophones’ of Google.fr – even if the language of the site was French.

The simplest way of solving this problem has always been to have local country domains in which case – contrary to what one SES panelist advised in San Jose, the hosting location becomes irrelevant. For many, this isn’t practical – hence the reason why some have chosen to host locally to get around the problem.

These two developments combined will help international SEO specialists manage their projects with less frustration!