What Information Have the Engines Provided About the Canonical URL Tag?

Google:

Is rel="canonical" a hint or a directive?
It's a hint that we honor strongly. We'll take your preference into account, in conjunction with other signals, when calculating the most relevant page to display in search results.


Can I use a relative path to specify the canonical, such as ?
Yes, relative paths are recognized as expected with the tag. Also, if you include a link in your document, relative paths will resolve according to the base URL.

Is it okay if the canonical is not an exact duplicate of the content?
We allow slight differences, e.g., in the sort order of a table of products. We also recognize that we may crawl the canonical and the duplicate pages at different points in time, so we may occasionally see different versions of your content. All of that is okay with us.


What if the rel="canonical" returns a 404?
We'll continue to index your content and use a heuristic to find a canonical, but we recommend that you specify existent URLs as canonicals.

What if the rel="canonical" hasn't yet been indexed?
Like all public content on the web, we strive to discover and crawl a designated canonical URL quickly. As soon as we index it, we'll immediately reconsider the rel="canonical" hint.

Can rel="canonical" be a redirect?
Yes, you can specify a URL that redirects as a canonical URL. Google will then process the redirect as usual and try to index it.


What if I have contradictory rel="canonical" designations?
Our algorithm is lenient: We can follow canonical chains, but we strongly recommend that you update links to point to a single canonical page to ensure optimal canonicalization results.



Yahoo!:

The URL paths in the tag can be absolute or relative, though we recommend using absolute paths to avoid any chance of errors.

A tag can only point to a canonical URL form within the same domain and not across domains. For example, a tag on http://test.example.com can point to a URL on http://www.example.com but not on http://yahoo.com or any other domain.

The tag will be treated similarly to a 301 redirect, in terms of transferring link references and other effects to the canonical form of the page.

We will use the tag information as provided, but we’ll also use algorithmic mechanisms to avoid situations where we think the tag was not used as intended. For example, if the canonical form is non-existent, returns an error or a 404, or if the content on the source and target was substantially distinct and unique, the canonical link may be considered erroneous and deferred.

The tag is transitive. That is, if URL A marks B as canonical, and B marks C as canonical, we’ll treat C as canonical for both A and B, though we will break infinite chains and other issues.


Live/MSN:

This tag will be interpreted as a hint by Live Search, not as a command. We'll evaluate this in the context of all the other information we know about the website and try and make the best determination of the canonical URL. This will help us handle any potential implementation errors or abuse of this tag.

You can use relative or absolute URLs in the “href” attribute of the link tag.

The page and the URL in the “href” attribute must be on the same domain. For example, if the page is found on “http://mysite.com/default.aspx”, and the ”href” attribute in the link tag points to “http://mysite2.com”, the tag will be invalid and ignored.
o However, the “href” attribute can point to a different subdomain. For example, if the page is found on “http://mysite.com/default.aspx” and the “href” attribute in the link tag points to “http://www.mysite.com”, the tag will be considered valid.

Live Search expects to implement support for this feature sometime in the near future.

As we know, micro blogging or Twitter is one of the fastest growing social media. But are we making enough use of this?
Twitter couldn’t find out yet how they can make money out of it. But others are making use of it. E.g. Dell.
There was some news that the revenue of Dell has been increased tremendously after them trying to market products through Twitter.
How can we make use of Twitter in PPC, or Search Engine Marketing? The main advantage of Twitter from a Search Engine Marketing point of view is that we can easily identify what is happening in the market. What people are talking about our brand? What people are talking about our competitors?
We can find out who is talking about our brands on Twitter, know the influence level of our brand and competitors brand on them
Then just analyze the influence and reputation level of twittees. This will help us to make a campaign strategy.

Now how to search in Twitter? Its easy.
Just go to Twitter Search and type the keyword you would like to know about. Thats it...

Hello everyone... Posting something after a long time...

I had this doubt in mind. Since I was more into PPC, this was disturbing me or rather confusing me. I just posted this in Linkedin and got some truly amazing responses...
Here are those for you...

My Question Was
What is the future of Pay Per Click?

The avg CPC of keywords are increasing every year... Might be after 5-10 years advertisers will not get the leads/sales at an acceptable CPL/CPA.
Then how will PPC be profitable? If they start other channels like Social networking, shouldn't it affect PPC? Your thoughts...

See the replies I got in Linkedin

Benin Brown
Co-Founder, Pamoja Media, Inc.

I think that with the economic challenges faced by the world's most developed economies right now the one thing that seems to be the biggest driver of online ads or advertising period is ROI.

With that being said I think that any of the cost per action models-CPC included are all here to stay. Perhaps they will undergo many more changes in the future to meet future demand. But in my opinion they are priced correctly, it is only that more companies are looking towards the direct marketing model as a way to quickly boost sales and as a result the price overshoots the supply of clicks available and hence is reflected in the pricing.


Chetna Khanna
Regional Head,
Sales and Marketing (West) at Banyan Netfaqs Pvt Ltd (www.afaqs.com)

The PPC, PPL, PPA models gained importance when organisations began to look at ROMI. While PPL and PPA are both effective when the campaign wishes to drive sales, there are not real measures in place to judge the effectiveness of brand campaigns. In such a scenario, the only real measure of a brand campaign aimed at grabbing mind share is a PPC model. A click on a creative gives to some extent a measure of the involvement of the surfer with the brand.

Thus, as long as there is a pressure on marketers measure their returns on marketing investments on campaign that do not initiate a direct response from the surfers, a PPC model would be the only measure of effectiveness of the campaign and will thus remain popular.

Brett Nicholson
Digital Marketing & Media Analyst at Next Digital

Hey Justine,

I find that for for the big brands to succeed on social environments, and sites outside of search there is a big component many fail to see. The focus on the 'click' (although we are miles behind in Australia with CPM dominating) will fade dramatically and success will be focused on engagement.

What happened when users saw the content - did they forward it on, watch, act, join, talk about, did it increase brand recall? These are all factors which the current CPC metric doesn't take into account.

Yes CPC will become more competitive if demand starts to out-wiegh supply, but it all seems cyclical in one way or another to me.


Hendrik van Slooten
Marketing & Development Manager Jr. at CameraNU.nl

Well there are already portals (which send people through with a CPC-model) who can actually see how much revenue "their" customers are creating, so even after those customers found you and closed the portal, it's still possible for them to see how much sales you really got, from these customers, on you own website. Seeing the amount of portals grow rapidly, makes me believe that the buyers (which pay for the clicks) will have more and more leverage to force portals only to charge valuable (read: REALLY BUYING) customers. This leverage is caused by the fact that if you have a non-cooperating portal, you just go to another one. Of course this isn't always possible, but I believe it will become more and more..

Steve Bottomley
Director of Broadcast Strategy at ITV plc

Hi Justine,

PPC is a pure method of payment for results but market CPMs will be set by the balance of supply and demand and demand is made up of advertisers who can afford very different customer acquisition costs. If a channel is effective for high margin product campaigns the market price will tend to increase making the channel expensive for low margin sectors. As markets mature there will be market price cycles driven by the demand profile.

As Brett says the purity of CPC pricing misses the value delivered (or not?) by previous ad views by the same customer which may have contributed to the decision to click/purchase. This branding value will be variable depending on the product, channel, creative etc. but it is the stuff thata drives the relatively high cpms of TV, Press etc. If content producers/channels rely on CPC models only they will probably deliver a lower RoI on their investment than if they use CPM models. IN my experience of TV I have never seen a pay per response TV campaign that produced anything like the same revenue as a 'normal' CPM (CPT) campaign. DRTV campaigns tend to run at the periphery of the schedule as a result.

So, I see advertisers pushing for CPC and media owners/channels pushing for CPM. Buyers have their own business dynamics which mean they must balance the need to produce results for their clients while adopting the trading method that produces a profit for them.

As online content develops further I would expect to see an amalgam of pricing models that reflect the differing levels of engagement, response delivery and measurability offered by differing channel types e.g. information websites, social sites, portals, media rich sites, blogs etc.

The onlne market has the potential to be as complex as all other media markets combined and more so. So, individual marketing campaigns will need to plan for, adapt to and cope with varying response levels, pricing models and value metrics.

As the market develops we will probably see many boom cycles and bubbles within it.

Steve

Dinesh Kulchandra
Sr. Manager Business Planning Communicate2

Search Advertising has been the mainstay of marketers looking at generating relevant eyeballs on their m-sites/acquiring leads. However important this medium might sound there is a general discomfort faced by advertisers owing to it's susceptibility. Misdirecting audience, for one had never been so dramatically convenient.
Somehow, contextual advertising is the next step in PPC considering that if my OOH audiences shift to CPC or CPL, with dynamic bidding models OR consider Print getting in contextual mode wherein if a SALE is happening aound my area is visible to a specific radius...
Best..
Dinesh

Taseer Rangrez
Business Development, Marketing, Sales Operations


PPC programs can deliver instant targeted visitors to your website in streaming amounts, but bear in mind the downsides of click fraud.

It has been estimated that up to 38% of all clicks through PPC advertising are fraudulent. Allegations have even been brought against the major search engines for not doing their part to control the click fraud issues, and critics are quick to point out the fact that search engine companies earn 99% of their income through this advertising method.

Industry analysis's predict a change in the next few years as PPC advertising shifts to CPA advertising with search engines. This will eliminate the click fraud issue, because advertisers will began to pay for actions instead of clicks. This form of advertising will become the most dominant form of online advertising.

properly managed PPC advertising campaign can still be the most effective online advertising method for a company. It IS still possible to achieve a great ROI for a particular product or service, and will continue to drive the most traffic, clicks, and sales for online advertising for years to come

Gianluigi Cuccureddu
Web Marketing Strategist Consultant @ Traffic4u

Hello Justine,

Competition will increase and be it by technology or ultra effective campaign management, outsmarting through targeting the right keywords at the right time at the right person will be the challenge.
Also the neverending increase of CPC's has its positive effect, at one point, the average advertisers will bail out due to price/competition and the price level will normalize.

Best regards,
Gianluigi Cuccureddu

When a user search for some products and the search result shows an ad is called search
When user is not searching but the ad appears related to the content of the sites is called content

Search
More reliable
Avg. CPC is higher than the Content
Easily Manageable; More control

Content
Reliability of leads is not guaranteed
Low Avg. CPC resulting low cost
Only bids are under control

Search Example


Content Example

First Page Bid

This is one of the new offerings from Google. First Page Bid, commonly known as FPB among the online experts, is purely based on your Quality Score

The first page bid estimate is the approximate maximum cost-per-click (CPC) bid it would take for your ad to reach the first page of Google search results when the search query matches your keyword exactly. The estimate is based on the Quality Score and current advertiser competition for the keyword.

This helps you to plan your bidding strategy.

But meeting the FPB will not guarantee a placement. As per Google your Ad Placement depends on Quality Score, your cost-per-click (CPC) bid, your budget and account settings, and user and advertiser behavior.

QS is no longer keyword static, but rather will vary by user query, geotargeting, etc.
Every time someone clicks on you ad, Google will recalculate your quality score.
Moreover now there will not be any Inactive KWs and minimum bids. You can bid as low as you want for your keyword, still it would be active.

In AdWords Editor, the first page bid estimates for your keywords are displayed on theKeywords tab, in the column labeled 'First Page Bid Est.'

Here's a list of factors that make up Quality Score, which in turn helps determine your keyword's first page bid:

1. Historical click through rate (CTR) of the keyword and the matched ad on Google
2. Your account history, which is measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account
3. The historical CTR of the display URLs in the ad group
4. The quality of your landing page
5. The relevance of the keyword to the ads in its ad group
6. our account's performance in the geographical region where the ad will be shown
7. Other relevance factors (Only Google and God know this)

Edit Organic Search Results

Now again something new from Google. It seems like Google is releasing something new every day.
Here we are talking about the new option to edit your search results in Organic search. Yeah… That’s true. Now you can promote (move the position up) delete or put comments on the search results
Here the results which speaks about Tata AIG is in the lower position. If you feel that it is more helpful for you than other results move it to the top

Now it is moved up.

You can post comments also for certain results. It will be another useful method in connected marketing

Yes! Another new tool from Google Search-based Keyword Tool (beta)
This is a tool for keyword generation. Right now most of the advertisers are using the keyword tool from Google which gives hundreds of keywords. The user has to decide which one will suit his service/product. So here you are going from the keyword to LP.

This new tool travels in opposite direction. It starts with your pages and identifies keywords that potential customers are searching on to find your products or services. This new tool gives you keywords that are relevant to your site but are not part of your AdWords campaigns. This helps you take advantage of missed opportunities.

Now this tool is available for US and UK customers.
Want to try right away? Go to http://www.google.com/sktool

Google now added a voice and video chat feature to its Gmail email service. It is a free Web-based service that competes with the likes of eBay's Skype.
Gmail users can now choose to speak with friends on a video screen and simultaneously instant message them in a Google Chat box.
The video screen can be popped out of the chat box and moved around a user's computer screen. Users can also change the size of the screen and expand it to full-screen size.
The feature is available for both PC and Apple computer users.
A webcam and small web browser plug-in are required to use the video chat. Users who do not have a webcam will still be able to chat with friends by voice.

The first mobile phone to use Google Inc's Android mobile operating software will cost $199
The phone which has features like a slide-out keypad, is being manufactured by Taiwan's HTC Corp. This will be sold by Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile USA unit, They are planning to unveil the device at an event in New York on September 23.
The only U.S. operator selling Apple Inc's iPhone is AT&T Inc. They have set the price of the latest version at $199 in July and this became a benchmark for smartphones that can surf the Web, manage email and other multimedia features.

Google extended its lead in US Web Search to 63% share of the market in August. This is the biggest monthly gain in 5 months.
Yahoo Inc, (No. 2 player in the U.S. Web search market) has a drop of 0.9% to 19.6 from July while Microsoft, (No. 3 U.S), slipped 0.6% to 8.3 %, according to ComScore Inc.
IAC InterActiveCorp's Ask.com retained its 4th position with an increase of 0.3% percent while Time Warner Inc's AOL edged up 0.1 percent to 4.3 percent.
ComScore estimates that the number of searches performed by U.S. Web surfers on the five top search engines was virtually unchanged at 11.75 billion searches compared with July.

Google has announced the beta version of a new open source brouser Google Chrome.

The name is derived from the graphical user interface frame, or "chrome", of web browsers. Chromium is the name of the open source project behind Google Chrome, released under the BSD license.

 

Chrome periodically downloads updates of two blacklists (one for phishing and one for malware) and warns users when they attempt to visit a harmful site

 

Each tab in Chrome is sandboxed into its own process to "prevent malware from installing itself" or "using what happens in one tab to affect what happens in another". Following the principle of least privilege, each process is stripped of its rights and can compute but can not write files or read from sensitive areas (e.g. documents, desktop)—this is similar to "Protected Mode" that is used by Internet Explorer 7 on Windows Vista. The Sandbox Team is said to have "taken this existing process boundary and made it into a jail";for example malicious software running in one tab is unable to sniff credit card numbers, interact with the mouse or tell "Windows to run an executable on start-up" and will be terminated when the tab is closed. This enforces a simple computer security model whereby there are two levels of multilevel security (user andsandbox) and the sandbox can only respond to communication requests initiated by the user.

Plugins such as Adobe Flash Player are typically not standardised and as such cannot be sandboxed like tabs. These often need to run at or above the security level of the browser itself. To reduce exposure to attack, plugins are run in separate processes that communicate with the renderer, itself operating at "very low privileges" in dedicated per-tab processes. Plugins will need to be modified to operate within this software architecture while following the principle of least privilege.

 

Chrome supports the Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface (NPAPI) but does not support the embedding of ActiveXcontrols. Also, Chrome does not have an extension system such as Mozilla-compatible *.xpi cross-platform extension architecture and thus XPI-based extensions such as AdBlock and GreaseMonkey can not be adapted to Chrome.

A private browsing feature called Incognito mode is provided as well. It prevents the browser from storing any history information or cookies from the websites visited. This is similar to the private browsing feature available in the latest beta version of Internet Explorer 8

 

It has a simple and intuitive user interface and an entirely new architecture. According to Google it is designed for speed, security, and stability while browsing the Internet.

 

Google Chrome uses the same open source rendering engine as Apple's Safari browser (WebKit), so your landing pages and sites should appear in Google Chrome as they do in Apple Safari. The way users interact with ads and sites should be similar as well.

Source: Wikipedia