After the 2009 Super Bowl, I and reported back on how well the brands did at ensuring visibility in organic search results. It didn’t go so well. The primary problems were:
Microsites – Microsites aren’t inherently a bad idea, but too many of them can cause brand confusion, external link dilution, and require that all search-related relevance and authority build from scratch with each new microsite.
Display issues – Many of the advertising brands last year ranked well, but due to technical issues had poor titles and descriptions in the search results.
Lack of consistency - In some cases, the brand bought AdWords for commercial taglines, but then didn’t display that tagline in the ad. Searchers likely skipped right past those ads as they were looking for a match to the phrase they typed in.
Have things gotten any better in 2010? Generally, yes they have. The use of microsites was greatly reduced this year, with most brands opting to simply display their primary domain name. This made ranking much more straightforward. However, overall there was less integration between the commercials and the web. GoDaddy was one of the few advertisers that encouraged viewers to visit their web site (which surely viewers did, to see the “too hot for TV” commercial sequels).
Why does this matter? 57 percent of us are sometimes , and that often translates into searches. A found that 32 percent of those surveyed planned to be online during the game — 14 percent to watch commercials and 13 percent to visit advertiser web sites. Not surprisingly, for several advertisers during and after the game.
So, could the estimated 13 million viewers (13 percent of looking for advertiser web sites find them? Let’s take a look.Normally, I recommend against hiding text like this because it’s and can get a site penalized, but in this case, I’d recommend against it because they’re not really even doing it right. They repeat the same text about all cars on every car page. It looks like they may have originally done it to get around AJAX issues (the ranking page 302 redirects to a a URL that includes a #), but this is a prime example of why showing things differently to search engines and visitors can cause problems with diagnosing what’s gone wrong with search visibility.As I noted last year, advertisers likely expect that if they display a URL in their ad, viewers will type that URL in their browser address bar. But often, viewers search for the URL (or portions of it or the brand name) instead, so it’s important to rank well for anything you’re advertising to maximize the ad’s effectiveness.Bridgestone ranks number one for both [bridgestone] and [bridgestone tire]. Unfortunately, the domain that ranks isn’t the one advertised. The advertised domain does a great job of engaging Super Bowl viewers. But how many of those viewers found it?You can see that Bridgestone did buy AdWords for the correct URL, but that domain appears nowhere in the organic top ten, as it’s crowded out by other Bridgestone properties. This situation can be difficult to fix, as the umbrella brand (Bridgestone) includes many sub-brands (including Bridgestone Tire), and each is likely managed separately. But even excluding SEO concerns, the current structure is likely causing consumer confusion. And it’s undoubtedly hindered the effectiveness of the Super Bowl ads. The domain that ranks first (bridgestone.com) could at the very least include a large call to action that leads visitors to the correct site. In the graphic below, you can see the site that ranks on the left and the site Bridgestone would like visitors to go to on the right (which includes Twitter and Facebook engagement, along with videos of the ads). As a sidenote, the twirly graphics that require you to chase them around with your mouse to go anywhere on the page on the left isn’t necessarily the more enjoyable experience for a bunch of people who may be a bit tipsy from Super Bowl refreshments.
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