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How AdWords position preference works
2007-01-24 16:39:05
eWhisper picked up on a Webmaster World thread clarifying how the AdWord s position preference works under certain circumstances. "For example, if there are 10 people with position preference turned on, and their top position is all 4, then if Google followed that ad serving, there would be 0 ads as no one wanted the top 3 spots.I think in this case, its more important to inform than complain. If I were Google, in this instance, I?d do the same thing - serve the ads - don?t just serve a blank page."
More About: Work , Words , Adwords , Works

Yahoo Search Marketing introduce Quality Score
2007-01-24 16:39:05
Yahoo! Search Market ing have confirmed that they will be introducing a quality score algorithm into calculating how they rank ads on February 5th. In my opinion this is a necessary change for Yahoo! to help them compete with Google AdWords by improving the relevancy of paid search results. This will also help advertisers with quality websites to benefit from the system by paying a fair CPC while irrelevant or low quality websites will be penalised with increased bids.Here's a summary of the ad quality changes from Search Engine Roundtable's New Yahoo Sponsored Listings Ranking Model post:"* Both bid amount and ad quality will determine an ad's rank in search results beginning February 5, 2007. * This will replace the current method, in which ads in search results are ranked by bid amount only (bid-to-position). * This is designed to allow you to focus less on competitive bidding practices and more on the quality of your ads. * By improving the quality of your ads and making them ...
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Google Groups new layout out of Beta
2007-01-24 04:38:05
While searching Google Group s today I noticed a new design being used for posts, with additional updates to the layout of the homepage, as pictured below, and the Google Groups search results.Google Blogoscoped posted about the new Google Groups beta layout back in October, with some complaints about the confusion caused by the inconsistency of layouts when searching across groups and searching a single group, this seems to have remained the same now it's out of beta."The relaunch looks like a good start at first, but browse around a bit and you?ll see there are still many design problems. In particular, the page layout changes around way too much depending on which ?mode? you?re in. E.g. there?s an unnecessary design change when you do a search within a single group vs a usenet wide search (not even the logo remains the same ? see screenshots). At other times, the group name is broken up into crumb trails with blue clickable sub-parts, at other times it?s black without underlines....
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Excluding sites from Google AdWords
2007-01-24 04:38:05
The Inside AdWord s blog have announced that you can now exlude unlimited sites from the Google AdWords content network. This sounds like a sensible decision and a step in the right direction to improving the quality of traffic from AdSense publishers.The next logical step would be to allow users to exclude sites from the search network. Graywolf posted a couple of days ago about how his ad appeared on MySpace when bidding for his own name on the AdWords search network. In this case the quality of traffic was very poor meaning that it wasn't cost effective to run ads on the search network, if Google instead offered an option to opt out of individual sites such as MySpace the ads could still be displayed on the other search network sites such as Ask.com and AOL. The problem from Google's point of view would be that while users would benefit from increased quality of traffic (although MySpace traffic may convert well for some advertisers) Google would lose ad revenue from the exclude...
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Yahoo Panama Video
2007-01-22 16:37:02
Here is a video from WebProNews in which Mona Elesseily from PageZero talks about the new Yahoo ! Search Marketing platform Panam a .
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Miva swaps Yahoo for Google
2007-01-05 04:25:10
Search Engine Watch have reported that Miva are changing their search provider to Google at the end of the month, this replaces a partnership with Yahoo ! which started in 2001.
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Google Drops Blog Tips
2007-01-05 04:25:10
Techcrunch have reported that the Googl e blog tips have been pulled. This follows recent controversy about Google becoming evil after promoting their own products (Blog ger and Google Calendar) above the normal search listings.A Google search for blog no longer displays the tip, where before it was displayed for any query containing the word blog.
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How quickly does Google find new server location?
2007-01-02 04:23:04
When moving servers last week I was interested in finding how long Google takes to find a new server location?In this particular case I was looking to find how long it would take for pages to start getting added to the Google UK index, following this site being transferred to a UK based server. I was also keen on learning the speed of which they would start ranking for competitive terms on Google.co.uk using the UK filter as all pages were previously absent.As of date, 2 days after the site was moved, 4 pages have been indexed by Google.co.uk using the UK filter. All pages are from the blog as this is indexed more frequently and the blog homepage is now ranking for search terms such as SEO blog, PPC blog and Google AdWords blog.This is good to know and confirms that as soon as the Googlebot revisits a page and updates it's cache it also picks up the new server location and starts adding the pages into the relevant local index.
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Happy New Year 2007
2007-01-02 04:23:04
Happy New Year to everyone for 2007, here's Google's logo for today. I celebrated by watching the spectacular New Years Eve fireworks display in Sydney.
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Google Ad Scoring Flowchart
2007-01-02 04:23:04
SEO by the Sea have posted a Google ad scoring flowchart, below, showing information about Google ad configurations, quality scores and ad types."Advertising through a search engine is a little more complicated than just ?highest bidder wins.? A recent Google patent application, a video from one of its inventors, and a couple of older patent applications that he co-authored show some of the complexities that an advertiser may face when wanting to advertise through a system like Adwords."
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UK Online Advertising Growth Higher than US
2006-12-05 04:06:01
The New York Times yesterday reported about the rapid growth of online advertising in the UK in their article the future of web ads in Britain."Online advertising is racing ahead in Britain, growing at a roughly 40 percent annual rate, and is expected to account for as much as 14 percent of overall ad spending this year, according to media buying agencies. That is the highest level in the world, and more than double the percentage in the United States."One of the main reasons for the increase is:"British media are nearly all aimed nationwide in contrast to the United States newspaper and television markets, where local and regional markets are big players. These local markets in the United States have, so far, been slow to move ad money online."Tags: Online Advertising , PPC, Pay Per Click
More About: Online Advertising , Growth , Sing

Pay Per Percentage of Impressions Advertising
2006-12-03 10:03:02
Bill Slawski has posted on the SEO by the Sea blog about a new pay per percentage patent filed by Microsoft. This follows Bill's Search Engine Watch post from earlier this year about Ending Click Fraud with Pay-Per-Percentage. Maybe Microsoft adCent er will be the first to test the new pricing model in an attempt to combat click fraud? "A new patent application from Microsoft, and Joshua Goodman, covers the same topic as the paper, Pay-Per-Percentage of Impressions: An Advert ising Method that is Highly Robust to Fraud (pdf), but goes into more detail on how such a system could be implemented." Tags: Microsoft adCenter, PPC, Pay Per Click
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Google AdWords Editor geo-tageting bug
2006-12-02 16:02:19
Search Engine Land have now started posting following the move for many editors from Search Engine Watch. One post from Barry Schwartz yesterday highlighted a major problem as Google AdWord s Editor doesn't always transfer geo-targeting data with reports of some campaigns geo-targeting being reset to All Countries and Territories automatically. Google have confirmed they are aware of this issue saying: "Currently within AdWords Editor, campaigns using regional targeting may revert to targeting "All Countries and Territories" upon being transferred from one account to another... I understand you were unaware of this feature..." Personally I don't use Google AdWords Editor to manage my accounts but I can see why many users might choose to use this, especially as it gives offline access to your campaigns. Tags: Google AdWords, PPC, Pay Per Click
More About: Google Adwords , Adwords

Click-to-call ads figures
2006-12-02 16:02:19
Search Engine Journal have posted some figures to measure the early success of click-to-call ads, based upon Google Maps and Windows Live Local stats, to answer the question do people use click-to-call?"Among the chief findings were that 84 percent of users said they were ?more likely? to contact a business with click to call than one without the service, while 80 percent indicated the service enhanced their IYP experience. IYP visitors are using click to call for a number of reasons:14 percent used it to make a purchase;28 percent to schedule an appointment or reservation;33 percent used click to call to get more information about a product or service."Google have been testing AdWords click-to-call in beta but this is yet to be released.Tags: Google AdWords, PPC, Pay Per Clic k
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Google AdWords geo-targeted ads accuracy
2006-12-02 16:02:19
Guillaume from the SEOmoz blog today talked about a very common problem with geo-targeted ads, the accuracy of user assigned IP addresses, in the post Google is losing hundreds of thousands of advertising dollars in Canada. There have been many cases where a users IP address appears as a different region, sometimes hundreds of miles apart as I found when my IP address while in Brisbane was located in Melbourne! This is more of an issue in the UK where the geographical location of counties are obviously a lot smaller than a US state, leaving a narrower margin of error. The country of the IP address is far less of a problem as this is generally correct the majority of the time. But in this particular case the location is Montreal in Canada, with the problem being: "Ads not showing in Google-sponsored links because the IP is resolved in Ontario. This is caused because many Bell/Sympatico ISP servers delivering the Internet connection to Quebec residents are located in Ottawa and Toro...
More About: Word , Words , Google Adwords , Adwords

Tracking Google AdSense clicks
2006-12-02 16:02:19
A common question I'm asked about is how to track Google AdSense clicks? Where the users come from, the click-through rates, which ads were clicked, total amount of earnings, earnings per click etc... I've previously used Google Analytics and StatCounter to monitor website traffic but until now I've been unable to find this type of reporting. But last week SEOBook posted instructions about how to track Google AdSense clicks via Google Analytics. Another option is to use Crazy Egg, which also offers this functionality. I plan on testing both of these during the next couple of weeks, at the moment I'm unsure on how accurate or detailed either of these will be for finding the AdSense conversion rates from different types of traffic (including PPC) but I'm interested in seeing the results, I'll add an update soon on how this goes. Tags: Google AdSense, Google AdWords, PPC, Pay Per Click
More About: Adsense , Google Adsense

Subscribe to RSS feed
2006-12-02 16:02:19
As an attempt to boost my subscription numbers I thought I'd make sure all users know that you can receive all PPC blog updates via RSS and email.I personally find using RSS an excellent method of receiving the latest news from my favourite blogs without having to check them all individually. I use Feed reader to download each update from subscribed feeds to my desktop but you can use websites such as Bloglines which will also notify you of any new information.Tags: RSS, Blog, SEOptimise
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More Google AdWords landing page quality score news
2006-12-02 16:02:19
The Inside AdWord s blog have followed up their post about Google AdWords landing page quality score with part two answering some further questions. "Does your content Quality Score impact your search Quality Score? Since this is especially important, we want to make sure that everyone sees the answer to this question, and that answer is 'No.' Performance on the content network will not impact your search Quality Score, and vice versa. Are you applying landing page quality to publisher sites in the content network? No, this change is focused on improving the quality of ads (and their landing pages) that we serve across the content network. If an advertiser is not providing a high quality user experience on the page to which their ad links, then their ads may stop showing on sites in our content network." Tags: Google AdWords, PPC, Pay Per Click
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Nick Fox of Google answers quality score questions
2006-12-02 16:02:19
Andrew Goldman of Traffick has posted an interview with Google 's Senior Product Manager for Ads Quality, Nick Fox, about the latest Google AdWords landing page quality score update. "Traffick: To make this as clear as possible, I'm trying to get a sense of whether a number of the "other relevancy factors" you look at for AdWords actually affect ad rank, or whether you're still letting CTR history and minimum bid decide together where ads are ranked on the page, with the other factors coming into play only with regard to setting minimum bids? NF: This is where it gets complicated. Actually, there are two quality scores. The first is for setting minimum bids. It's less accurate. [Traffick: Thus, we assume, predictive where limited data is available on CTR History.] It takes into account landing page quality. The information we use for ranking ads is much more specific. Traffick followup: So, I'll assume a whole range of factors are involved indeciding ad rank but that along wit...
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AdWords cookie credits conversions for 30 days
2006-12-02 16:02:19
An interesting question was raised on the Search Engine Watch forums which is does AdWord s credit conversions for returning visitors? The official answer to this question from Google's help centre article how does Google use cookies in conversion tracking is: "The cookie that Google adds to a user's computer when he/she clicks on an ad expires in 30 days. This measure, and the fact that Google uses separate servers for conversion tracking and search results, protects the user's privacy.Users who do not wish to participate in tracking activities can easily not accept this cookie by setting their Internet browser user preferences. These users will simply not be included in your conversion tracking statistics."Tags: Google AdWords , PPC, Pay Per Click
More About: Credit , Adwords , Edit

Yahoo Search Marketing bid management interface changes
2006-12-02 16:02:19
The Yahoo Search Market ing blog has posted about changes to it's bid management interface which will now replace the position, cost and top 5 max bids columns with estimated average position and bid range for top postions, as shown in the screenshots below:"What is Changing?In early December some of the information you?re used to seeing on the Manage Bids page will no longer be available. The ?Top 5 Max Bids,? ?Position? and ?Your Cost? columns will be removed from the current account interface. The View Bids tool will also no longer be available.Instead, you?ll see two new columns on the Sponsored Search Manage Bids page:1. Estimated Average PositionThis column provides an estimate of the average position in which your ad may be displayed on the results page, based on your max bid and the bids of other advertisers.2. Bid Range for Top PositionsThis column displays the bids for the positions at the top of the search results page for each of your keywords."Tags: Yahoo Search Marketi...
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Google Radio Audio Ads pictures
2006-12-02 16:02:19
Donna Bogatin, from Digitial Micro-Markets, has posted some Google Radio Audi o Ads pictures. The images show how Google plan to serve Google Audio Ads, which is due to be released before the end of the year.For example the image below shows how Google brings advertisers and stations together: "National and local advertisers and agencies can gain fast, customized access to thousands of stations through Google's digital, automated platform and receive real-time information as campaigns air."Tags: Google AdWords, PPC, Pay Per Click
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PPC ad & landing page site reviews
2006-12-02 16:02:19
Jeff and Jane from SEOmoz have posted a detailed and very informative review of WebmasterWorld PubCon 2006. The majority of this was talked about SEO, which is definitely worth a read, but it also included an overview of the "Ad and Landing Page Site Review s " presentation:"Starting with a Google search for a company's chosen keyword, the panelists first reviewed the company's paid advertisement, then clicked through to their landing page to see what was on the other side of Google's pay-per-click curtain.First up was a company bidding on the phrase "car audio." The panel's advice was to rewrite the ad in regards to an entirely numerical 1877 number they had included in the text. The ad's writers should either make the number more memorable (1877 CAR AUDIO) or remove it altogether. Also, a banner on the landing page looked too much like an advertisement when it was actually an important part of the page.Language Courses Abroad are a British organization and they were u...
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Google Maps triggers AdWords ad location to be displayed
2006-12-02 16:02:19
I've just tried searching for my home town Abingdon (in the UK) and I'm seeing an Oxfordshire advert with Abingdon displayed as the location underneath. I'm currently in Sydney which shows that the ad location is geo-targeted by a local query as well as the users geographical location.One thing I did find interesting after looking into this further, with some more UK specific queries, is that it appears the location is being added to adverts for websites who have Google Maps listings, for example OxNews and Heavenly Bodies Day Spa which both appear for Oxford searches.I've added a screenshot of the Google SERPs below in case this cannot be replicated, with a full screen picture if you click the image.Tags: Google AdWord s, PPC, Pay Per Click
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UK Microsoft adCenter promo codes
2006-12-02 16:02:19
I've just tried registering for Microsoft adCent er using the $200 voucher but this isn't accepted because I have a UK credit card (despite selecting a US dollar currency account set-up). It appears that so far there aren't any UK MSN adCenter promotion codes available, with all current vouchers only valid for US users, if I find any UK codes I'll post them here. Tags: Microsoft adCenter, MSN, PPC, Pay Per Click
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Best time to schedule PPC ads?
2006-12-02 16:02:19
The Wall Street Journal has published an article about which is the best time to display your PPC ads. The article concluded that the best days of the week are Monday and Tuesday, with the best time of day being between 11am and 5pm. In my experience Google AdWords doesn't generally convert as well over the weekend, especially Sunday's, but the ads are normally worth running throughout the week, with the schedule dependant on the amount of countries and time zones targeted. "ComScore analyzed online shopping trends in 2005 and found that Monday and Tuesday had the highest shares of consumer spending, each with 18% of total sales for the week; Wednesday had 17% of sales; Thursday 15% and Friday 16%. Sales fell off markedly on Saturday and Sunday, averaging 9% and 8% of a week?s total sales, respectively. The highest percentage of dollars spent online during a typical weekday occurs between 11 a.m. and noon, followed by 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. and then 3 p.m. to 4 p.m., comScore says....
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PPC Blog interviews Graywolf about AdWords quality score
2006-12-01 15:09:03
PPC Blog has posted an interview with Michael Gray aka Graywolf, answering many questions about the latest AdWord s quality score update.I found this part particularly interesting about how Google will charge full-price for keywords affected by increased minimum bids:"Having the landing page quality algo completely independent to the rest of the Quality Score that makes up ad rank provides Google completely separate control over their minimum bids. How do you feel this will continue to effect advertisers & shape the industry moving forward?It?s actually quite bizarre and frankly has some ridiculous outcomes. For example let?s say you get labelled as low quality and your bid gets raised to $5 or $10. Let?s say you are kind of crazy and decide to pay $5 or $10 what happens is you jump up to the #1 slot since everyone else is bidding $0.30 or $0.40 a keyword. Now the kicker is you get charged the full $5 or $10 not just a bit more than the bidder below you. The whole ?your ad is low qua...
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Google Display Advertising Network
2006-12-01 15:09:03
John Chow has posted about the Google display advertising network, this has been kept secret by Google and is an exclusive network (by invitation only) for Fortune 100 companies where ads are based upon high CPM (cost per thousand impressions) instead of CPC (cost per click). "The Google Display Advertising Network was created so Google can go after Fortune 1000 companies, which buy advertising to build a brand more than to sell a product. Google already dominates text and CPC ads so going after display and video ads is the next logical step. Google offers display and video ads to AdSense publishers on CPC and CPM format already. However, the formation of the Display Advertising Network is a clear signal that Google really want to push this forward. How do you join the Google Display Advertising Network? You can?t. Google won?t even acknowledge it exists. You won?t find anything written about it in any of Google?s web properties. The only way to get into the display network is if ...
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Microsoft adCenter dynamic keyword insertion
2006-12-01 15:09:03
The Microsoft adCent er blog yesterday posted about using dynamic text in adCenter with {keyword}, {param1}, {param2}, and {param3} instead of {KeyWord : Default Text} which the Google AdWords keyword insertion uses."There are many possibilities for using keyword insertion and dynamic text (parameters) in adCenter. This post will address the most common use of the different types of dynamic text insertion options.Keyword InsertionKeyword insertion helps make ads more relevant by inserting the search query term into the ad title or text.Tip: The keyword is inserted into the ad exactly how you enter it in the interface, so capitalize words where appropriate.Tip: Keywords have a maximum of 100 characters.Tip: If using {Keyword} insertion causes the ad title or text to be longer than allowed lengths (title: 25 characters, text: 70 characters), the ad will be rejected. As a solution to this, have a 2nd static ad that does not use {Keyword} insertion in the order as a default. When the keyw...
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PPC Company UK (England & Scotland)
2006-12-01 15:09:03
Being a PPC UK company, based in Oxford (although currently in Australia until April), I decided to research some of the popular local searches for pay per click advertising. The main regions to appear were UK, England , Scotland , Glasgow and London. Other popular queries featured Bradford, Cornwall, North West, Leeds, Kent, Chester, Bournemouth, Southampton, Hampshire, Dorset, Newcastle, Birmingham and Manchester. Using many variations of keywords such as PPC search engine marketing, PPC advertising services, PPC expert, PPC campaign management and PPC bid management. After previously researching the popularity of local Google AdWords searches I was surprised to find a much wider range of regions and variations for these searches with a higher volume of searches. Tags: PPC, Pay Per Click, Google AdWords
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