When searching using Google, often a box drops down with alternate search suggestions. This predictive ability is called “NavSuggest,” and often it can be very helpful – it prevents misspellings, suggests related and refined ways to search, and can help direct you towards a more meaningful search experience.

The NavSuggest tool, however, can cannibalize a portion of your branded PPC clicks and reduce the ROI of your paid search campaigns. When you begin searching for “amazo…”, for example, Google will suggest “Amazon.com” directly beneath your search. Clicking on Google’s suggestion then takes the searcher directly to Amazon.com – skipping the search results page and the opportunity for the searcher to view or click on Amazon’s PPC ad.

At first glance, this actually looks like a win-win for Amazon. The company avoids the cost of searchers clicking on its own branded ads, while still acquiring these searchers and clicks for free. A deeper look into this situation revealed more troubling results.

When managing a paid search account to a target – whether it’s a cost-per-action or a return-on-investment goal – the portfolio approach allows the relatively larger ROI of brand terms to lift the entire account’s performance. When these branded clicks begin to disappear, it creates a situation where general terms and highly competitive keywords must be managed more conservatively to achieve the account’s target. As clicks and spend are decreased accordingly, an advertiser’s opportunity to capture leads, orders, and market share is also reduced.

Further analysis of the clicks that NavSuggest took from paid search revealed a more interesting scenario: the PPC clicks being lost to NavSuggest were converting searchers at half the rate. Clients were seeing fewer conversions as a result, and what was at first viewed as a cost savings was revealed to be a detriment to a company’s bottom line.

Rosetta notified Google of this trend, and based on the information provided and the fact that Google was also losing out on PPC ad revenue due to NavSuggest, it was expected that changes would be made to the NavSuggest feature.

Amazingly, a few weeks later Google contacted us with the decision that they had decided not to make any adjustments to NavSuggest and would forego the ad revenue they would receive from these paid clicks in an effort to “provide searchers with a better search experience.” 

In response to this negative impact on PPC performance, Rosetta has evolved its account management techniques to counteract the issue and positively-impact our clients’ bottom line. To find out more about how Rosetta adjusts its bid models and account management, or for general service information contact us.