Some obvious examples of negative keywords are terms such as “cheap” or “free.” Jurina also shares how someone that sells shoes could use terms such as “snowshoes” or “horseshoes.”

Epiar provides an approach to negative keywords that is different from most other offerings. As Jurina explains, they look at the query performance report from a Google AdWords campaign and then use their own keyword research application to do further research on hundreds and thousands of keywords. In the end, they produce a prioritized list of the top 10,000 negative keywords.

On average, Epiar has seen savings of 10-40 percent on ad spend. One company in particular, Consult Sales, saved $27,000 monthly on AdWords spend.

If you would like to find out more about what Epiar offers, visit their site.

Epiar’s negative keyword tool is an online tool that allows users to answer a short set of online questions and then instantly produces a list of the top 2,500 negative keywords. The list is prioritized with the best ones on top making it easier for users since Yahoo and Microsoft have tighter limitations on the number of negative/excluded keywords within an ad campaign.

Epiar’s tool will be coming out of beta in March. It reportedly saves 5-15 percent on PPC spending, while at the same time, maintaining and even increasing sales. Ken says that the automated keyword lists are specifically geared for people conducting broad match and phrase match PPC campaigns.

So, how do you win a free negative keyword list? Ken and the Epiar gang set up a website specifically for this promotion: www.negative-keywords.com. Go to the site and enter one of the following codes into the comment field of the contact form: “SMX Beta Test” or “SMX West,” as stated in the video.

The contest runs through the end of February. The winners will be notified by email once the promotion is over.

Negative keywords are used in keyword advertising to hinder ads from being shown when a search term contains the negative keywords.

As Google clarifies, negative keywords aren’t for everyone. People are accustomed to using keywords to drive traffic to their site, but as everyone knows, not all traffic is good traffic. This is where negative keywords come into the game.

If you are a retail company and want specific, targeted traffic, a negative keyword ad campaign is something you might want to consider. For instance, if you’re a company that only sells women’s clothing, you could put “men’s clothing” as a negative keyword.

Each of the search engines are different when it comes to their allotment of negative keywords. Google allows a maximum of 10,000 terms or phrases. Yahoo! allows 250 maximum terms or phrases. The total character count for all negative keywords for Microsoft cannot surpass 1,022 and no single keyword can go beyond 100 characters.

Being very specific and targeted is key to a successful negative keyword ad campaign. There are several tools available to help you in this effort. Google offers several tools such as Google Keyword Tool, Google Suggest, and Google Product Search. WordTracker is another tool that helps you to filter that unwanted traffic. Ken Jurina (as seen in the above WPN video from PubCon 2008) and the Epiar crew recently announced a new negative keyword service that uses their proprietary keyword research application to generate a prioritized negative keyword list.

Ken Jurina explained to us how their key word research application works. It allows them to sort through hundreds of thousands of key phrases at an overwhelming rate of speed. Epiar’s ability to accomplish this has given them, as well as their clients, a competitive advantage. With all these applications and developments, Epiar is able to provide organic optimization of websites.

Up to this point, Epiar’s work has been organic, but very successful. Many people wonder why they do not deal with paid searches since they spend their money on managing key words, tracking conversions, and things such as that. According to Damian Finlay, Epiar is looking into paid searches since other companies are planning on outsourcing to them. With all the thousands of key phrases plus the collection of costs-per-click, the budgets are too appealing not to consider paid searches.

Marketing for the year 2007 requires both online and offline aspects including strategy building, maintaining inventories, and all sorts other day-to-day business affairs. According to Curtis Dueck, search needs to be incorporated into a marketing mix. Marketing includes having effective research and having knowledge of what the market is looking for, but these factors are also important when adding search to the mix.

In other developments, Epiar has involved posting their market research results onto blogs. They have also added a variety of journalists who embed market research into their stories. As a result, Epiar has a lot more exposure. Epiar’s success is based on hard work, and they endeavor to continue their hard work and build on their success.

“It looks like an MTV pimped out van, it just doesn’t have the hydraulics.”

When the party was all said and done, everyone seemed to enjoy it… actually, maybe a little too much.

According to Dueck, “We have the ability to put our finger on the pulse of history in the year 2006: What people want… just by the way that they’re entering stuff into search engines.” Closely following the ebb and flow of search trends equips us with a window on political opinion, popular culture and the current view on any other topic we wish. “It’s mind boggling.”

With this power, market research has been turned on its head. Jurina adds, “[This is the] largest sample size you could ever want.. the biggest focus group… and the information is unbiased as no one even knows they’re really being watched… Instead of having to look through a small sample of phrases, we’re usually looking at eighty thousand, a hundred thousand or multiple hundred thousands of phrases. So as a result you are collecting some good information that can provde some great business direction and trending information.”

Many traditionalists are having trouble coming to grips with this new capacity for knowledge. Yet, previously where few pursued such marketing angles, many are now beginning to realize its potential.

Dueck mused, “The evolution within the mainstream industry has been really interesting. We’re showing just the tip of the iceburg… and people’s jaws are dropping.”

It’s certainly exciting for marketers to dwell on the notion of such a vast pool of information, yet the best is yet to come. As search data collection continues, this set gets larger and the data gets richer. Jurina commented, “[Marketers need] to identify the long tail phrases versus the short one or two word phrases which are much more difficult to determine the intention of what the person is looking for. Is there a likelyhood that they are going to be converting? …This is where the real opportunity to conversion is.”