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Last week the big discussion across the PPC world was on Google’s decision to make close variants mandatory for Exact Match keywords.

Hanapin Marketing Associate Director, Sam Owen, wrote about The Real Impact of AdWords Close Variant Changes. While the team at Hanapin also did a round table on the different thoughts around the company on Google’s big change. Matt Umbro wrote on what he thought about Google’s decision in this post:

Close Variants Thoughts

  • Google may not care about the opinions of people in the industry on this matter. However, Bing responded to people with the same thoughts as Senior Account Manager, Matt Umbro, as Bing launched a close variants test for users, but with an option to opt out [Search Engine Land].
  • Google also launched App Promotions on Google Search and YouTube last week [Wordstream].
  • The response from Bing on this launch? They have had similar features since March, and will continue investing in Windows App Linking [Search Engine Land].
  • Google also added a feature allowing users to optimize leads based on higher valued conversions this past week [PPC Hero].
  • It is always impressive when a person can switch from using one language to using another on a dime. Google’s Search App now has the ability to easily switch languages when detecting voices in it’s voice search feature [Search Engine Watch].
  • Bing is trying to play catch-up with their map features. As they added street side and 3D view for more than 100 cities. [Search Engine Watch].
  • Speaking of all this competition between Bing and Google, they might both be in trouble. As Amazon is making a push to compete in the Paid Ad field [Wall Street Journal].
  • In an attempt to outperform Google Ads, Amazon will use shopping data to help deliver relevant ads to users. [Venture Beat].

This has the PPC world buzzing about a more competitive landscape in Paid Search.

Sam Owen TweetPPC Competition Tweet (Luke Alley)

  • To add to the push, Amazon has bought a video service platform, Twitch, some say in hopes that they can eventually compete with YouTube [Ad Age].

Look at the price Amazon is willing to pay in order to get into the video market:

Amazon Buys Twitch Tweet

One thing is for certain the competition in the Paid Search industry is heating up, and this competition should help advertisers get their products out to targeted customers.

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