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5 Years of Product and Customer Data Gone

Is your website backed up regularly? Do you have a contingency plan in place if your website is infected with malware (malicious software) or hacked? If not, you’re playing with fire, and it is all but guaranteed that eventually your website will be attacked, resulting in potentially catastrophic data loss.

Recently, one of our clients who hosts an e-commerce store on GoDaddy contacted me to see if I could help figure out why their site was down. So, I looked into it, and discovered that their database had been completely wiped out. That’s over 1,000 products and 5 years of customer data gone, just like that, and they had not been backing up their database.

GoDaddy Will Have a Backup, Right?

I proceeded to contact GoDaddy, and was told that for $150 they could restore the database, and that it would take 7-10 days. That’s good news, but I wanted to know how this happened, so it could be prevented in the future. They couldn’t give me an answer. They just said nothing had been done on their end that would have caused removal of the data. Translation, “It’s not our problem.”

Upon further investigation, GoDaddy realized they actually did not have any backups of this database, and proceeded to remind me that the customer is responsible for maintaining all backups per their Terms of Service. Whoops! Now, the $150 GoDaddy restore was no longer an option.

The result? This client will now have to rebuild their e-commerce store from scratch.

While I’m extremely dissatisfied with GoDaddy’s lack of support regarding this issue (though the customer support reps I spoke with were very nice), this could have happened with any hosting provider. The only way our client could have prevented this was by maintaining regular backups.

Bottom Line

The bottom line is if your site is ever compromised, regardless of the reason, it will be your responsibility to fix it. Without backups, fixing may mean rebuilding. Your website is an investment, and performing regular backups is a cheap insurance policy.

If you haven’t backed your site up lately, I recommend starting now.

On June 27th, Google announced the new beta release of AdWords Review Extensions, which will now allow businesses to include a snippet of a testimonial or review from a third party right on their search ad. This new extension could be very beneficial to businesses looking to increase their credibility within their search ads.

Review Extensions Details

As shown in the provided image above, businesses will have the opportunity to submit either a direct quotation of the review or a summary of the main point of the review. The review snippet will be placed on the bottom of the search ad followed by the name of the source publication, which will be linked to the publication’s website. This is where the destination URL can be set to the page where the full review is showcased. Clicks on the this link will not be counted as chargeable by Google.

The review snippets will be limited to 67 characters, including the number of characters in the source publication name, and all review snippets must be of high-quality and from a reputable third party source.

All reviews must be pre-approved for use by the source publication and must comply with standard AdWords policies. To prevent abuse from spammers and questionable businesses, and to help ensure policy compliance, Google has put in place automated and human-based systems to review and validate all review extensions.

Leverage Digital Media is a Tampa PPC Company. Please call us at (866) 611-6267 or submit our contact request form for more information regarding our AdWords campaign management services.

eMarketer estimates in its latest forecast that Google continues to dominate the search advertising market with 74% of total U.S. search ad market share. In 2012, Google was reported earning an estimated $12.79 billion in ad revenues, and is expected to reach $14.39 billion in 2013.

Microsoft earned an estimated 660 million dollars in net U.S. search ad revenues in 2012 and is expected to reach 890 million dollars in 2013, accounting for 4.6% of total U.S. search ad revenues in 2013. Based on an assessment of Microsoft’s decreasing traffic acquisition costs (TAC), eMarketer originally estimated their earnings to reach $1.41 billion in 2012 and $1.84 billion in 2013, but new data shows that despite the decreases in TAC, according to eMarketer, initial costs of acquiring search traffic were far higher than expected. This new information led to the downward revision of Microsoft’s estimated ad revenues.

Yahoo! continues to take second place behind Google in U.S. search ad market share, and is expected to earn $1.27 billion this year, and account for 6.5% of total U.S. search ad revenues.

eMarketer estimates that advertisers will spend almost $19.49 billion on search marketing in 2013, a 12.4% increase over 2012.

Interested in search marketing? Leverage Digital Media is a professional SEO company in Tampa. Call us today at (866) 611-6267 or submit our contact request form to see how we can help your business.

In their 2nd Annual U.S. Mobile Path to Purchase Study, xAd and Telmetrics concluded that consumers are reaching for their smartphones and tablets earlier and more often in their search for local goods and services. They also found that key factors like local relevancy and promotions highly influenced consumers’ purchase decisions.

Mobile Used Early & Often

The study reports 45% of consumers that are searching for local products and services will reach for their mobile device first when starting a search, and 49% will use a desktop device. However, when it comes to the mobile user, 54% of all mobile users will look to an additional media source at some point in their purchasing process, while the remaining 46% will use their mobile device as their sole primary search tool.

Additionally, it was found that half of mobile users will use their device at the start of the search process with 1 out of 3 using their mobile device throughout the entire process.

Mobile Conversions Impacted by Device and Location

Local relevancy was a top motivator for consumer purchase selection, as 1 in 3 smartphone users and 1 in 4 tablet users utilized their devices to search specifically for contact information such as an address, phone number, or driving directions. The study also concluded that 60% of mobile users expect businesses to be within walking distance or a 5 mile driving radius.

Mobile users who participated in this study were found to have high purchase intent with 60% of smartphone users and 53% of tablet users completing purchases related to their mobile search. 74% of smartphone users completed transactions offline or in-store, while 54% of tablet related purchases were made online through a mobile device or PC, and 22% of mobile users completed transactions directly through their mobile device.

Leverage Digital Media is a SEO company in Tampa that specializes in mobile search and design. If you would like more information on how we can help you increase mobile traffic and conversions, please call us at (866) 611-6267 or submit our contact request form.

Since her arrival as Chief Executive Officer to Yahoo, Inc. almost a year ago, Marissa Mayer has been struggling to end their 10 year search deal with Microsoft, which started in 2010, for a more lucrative partnership with search giant and former employer Google, but Microsoft has no intentions of letting Yahoo out of their deal.

Under the terms of their contract, Yahoo is obligated to utilize Microsoft’s Bing search engine for search Yahoo Bing search dealresults on Yahoo sites. Yahoo and Microsoft also have a revenue guarantee which expired and was extended for an additional 12 months (U.S. only) on March 31, 2013.

This arrangement allocates 12% of the revenue received from Yahoo’s search advertisements to Microsoft. In return, Microsoft guarantees Yahoo a set amount of revenue for every search query made on a Yahoo site. Although Microsoft’s revenue guarantee is worth $12-$15 million a quarter, according to the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo’s revenue per search has been its worst since they partnered with Microsoft.

In February, Mayer said the partnership between Yahoo and Microsoft was not delivering. “One of the points of the alliance is that we collectively want to grow share rather than just trading share with each other,” Mayer said at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco.

In a recent regulatory filing, Yahoo disclosed their desire to terminate their arrangement with Microsoft, but will either have to wait until 2015 (the halfway mark of the contract), the sale of Bing to another company by Microsoft, or revenue-per-search dipping below their agreed threshold to make any moves.

If Yahoo and Google do eventually partner, this partnership could have a tremendous impact on search as we know it.

Leverage Digital Media is a Tampa SEO company. If you would like more information on search engine optimization, please call us at (866) 611-6267 or submit our contact request form.

In Kenshoo’s recent Global Search Advertising Trends report, it was found that global paid search ad spending continues to rise. So much so, that year over year growth for global paid search ad spend in Q1 2013 reached 15%, and in the U.S. alone paid search ad spending grew 24%. A majority of the increases in paid search ad spending can be justified by the fact that consumers are increasingly looking to their smartphone or tablet for search and purchases instead of their laptop or desktop, which has forced marketers to invest a greater portion of their ad spending into mobile.

Kenshoo also found that in the U.S., there is a significant gap between paid search ad spending and distribution of clicks. In Q1 2013, tablets and smartphones accounted for 20% of paid search clicks but only accounted for 14% of total paid search ad spending. Smartphones in particular accounted for 9% of paid search clicks, but only made up 5% of total paid search ad spend.

In the U.S., desktop search still commanded the most ad spend and clicks by a healthy majority at 86% and 81%, respectively.

Leverage Digital Media is a PPC company in Tampa. For more information on paid search advertising, please call us at (866) 611-6267 or submit our contact request form.

Early last week, Facebook released their new targeted ad feature, “Partner Categories.” This new feature allows advertisers to zero in on a target audience based on their purchase behavior by utilizing information from large data companies including Acxiom, Blue Kai, Datalogix, and Epsilon. This new partnership has better positioned Facebook to offer advertisers the opportunity to fine tune their campaigns and get more relevant advertisements in front of the right audience.

With partner categories, Facebook is able to deliver highly targeted ads based not only on the information provided in users’ profiles, but also based on users’ online and offline buying habits.

For example, a local grocer wanting to promote a new line of cereal for children can now show ads to users who have shown to be likely buyers of children’s cereals.

This benefits both users and advertisers. For users, this presents a better experience because they are provided with ads that are highly relevant to both their interests and buying habits. For advertisers, this allows delivery of ads that are more targeted, and should theoretically provide a better return on investment.

Want to learn how to enhance your social media marketing efforts? Give us a call at (866) 611-6267 or submit our contact request form.

Bullish on Mobile

Mobile is growing so fast that analysts are having to revise their predictions. Why is this? The need for more convenience due to our busy, on-the-go lifestyles combined with increasing demand for instant access to information, products, and services.

In fact, because of the increases in mobile device usage, many U.S. businesses are feeling the pressure to step up their mobile advertising efforts, which in turn, has forced analysts to revise their original predictions only 4 months into the year. In December of 2012, eMarketer projected U.S. mobile ad spend to reach $4.4 billion in 2013, a far cry from their recently released projection of $7.29 billion. These numbers keep rising, and analysts have predicted that mobile ad spend will reach $27.17 billion by 2017.

What This Means to Your Business

Implementing a mobile marketing strategy is no longer an option for most businesses. It has become a necessity. If you have yet to adopt a mobile marketing strategy, here are three reasons why you’ll want to start now:

1. Low Cost

With relatively low costs, mobile advertising provides the opportunity to reach a highly targeted audience at a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising.

2. Large Audience

As of December of 2012, in a survey conducted by Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, it was found that nearly half of U.S. adults own a smartphone device and over 50% of them use it to access the Internet. According to BIA/Kelsey, mobile local search will surpass traditional local desktop search in 2015, which presents a huge opportunity for local businesses.

3. Competitive Advantage

Mobile advertising is still in its infancy, and has the potential to grow astronomically. If the above predictions come to fruition, the future of web usage will be dominated by the mobile industry. So instead of trying to play catch-up in a few years, investing in mobile advertising now will give your business an advantage over your competitors.

In sum, the mobile industry and the number of U.S. consumers that use mobile devices to conduct searches and make purchases is growing, and growing fast. With relatively low costs, the potential to attract a large, highly targeted audience, and the competitive advantage of getting in early, business owners and marketing professionals can no longer afford to ignore mobile.

Leverage Digital is a web design and SEO company in Tampa. If you would like more information on mobile web design or need help with your mobile marketing strategy, give us a call to speak with a digital marketing consultant at (866) 611-6267 or submit our contact request form.