Morning Reads: Food Trucks on Twitter, Why Paid Search Is Struggling

Food trucks are using Twitter to update lunch-goers on their whereabouts. CNET describes how micro-communities of food lovers are using Twitter to track their favorite vendors, including Korean taco truck Kogi BBQ in L.A. and Koi Fusion in Portland, OR. On the East Coast, New York may be the locus of Twitter activity for mobile food vendors. For instance, many of the gourmet trucks of Coopers Square (at the Astor Place subway stop) are maintaining Twitter accounts, according to CNET’s coverage of the trend. Waffle seller Wafels and Dinges has nearly 1,300 followers and regularly uses the account to hand out passwords people can use to pick up savings on its Belgian treats.

Why is paid search traffic in the doldrums? Comscore noted in a blog post last week that paid search clicks are not growing as fast as queries are. The favored explanation for this: Google and other engines have sought to improve the search experience by serving fewer ads per query. Comscore calls out a secondary explanation: People are smarter searchers now, resulting in longer query strings. This could reduce the number of available ads per query “due to paid search advertising strategies that limit ad coverage, such as Exact Match, Negative Match, and bid management software campaign optimization.”