Happy New Year!
Happy New Year to everyone, I hope you had a safe and happy holiday season.
I know I was very busy as most marketers are in the last part of the year.
Remember to make your post holiday paid search bid corrections, and plan those budgets for a highly competitive online year!
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Plural Forms of Nouns in AdWords
This is a good article to keep in mind when working with keywords.
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=19527
Technorati Tags: Search, Paid, Marketing, PPC, SEW, Ironvine
Microsoft adCenter Updates Sept 2007
Last Friday MSN adCenter updated their interface to include several new features including faster editorial reviews, a hew home page dashboard, and faster ways to copy and edit keywords and create campaigns. You can review the update notice below.
Microsoft adCenter will upgrade on Friday, September 7. The tools and functionality in this upgrade will include significant improvements in editorial efficiency, campaign creation, and campaign management.
During this upgrade, adCenter will be temporarily unavailable for up to 8 hours on Friday, starting at 6:00 P.M. Pacific Time. Your ads and keywords will remain live and continue to run as usual, during this time.
After this upgrade, reporting will be delayed for up to 72 hours. To see when your data was last updated, check the timestamp on the bottom of adCenter Reporting tab.
Upgrade highlights:
Save time with fast and thorough editorial reviews for new ad groups.
Create campaigns with ease by quickly importing campaigns directly from other paid search programs or by copying existing ad groups within adCenter to a new campaign.
Instantly navigate to specific accounts, campaigns, or ad groups with the new adCenter home page dashboard, a one-stop-shop for all of your daily campaign management tasks.
Update keyword bids in bulk and view keyword performance on the same page.
Visualize your campaigns' targeting settings with Microsoft Virtual EarthTM map integration for geographical targeting.
For details on how to use these adCenter improvements view the Feature Release Guide. In addition, the adCenter Blog will highlight detailed feature reviews after the upgrade occurs.If you have any questions, please contact our adCenter Support Team.
Sincerely,
The Microsoft adCenter Team
Technorati Tags: MSN, Microsoft, adCenter, PPC, Paid Search, Online Marketing, Ironvine
SES San Jose ’07
SES was a pretty good conference. The event hall was pretty well staffed with vendors including Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Ask, iProspect, and many more. There were lots of Search companies, link building companies, and various other web companies.
My conference was highlighted by the Google invite only Agency Lunch and the Google Dance at the Google Campus in Mountain View.
The Google Lunch was a small group of invite only agency people. I sat at a table with the CEO and a few other people from advertising.com. The presentation was basically all about the new Google offerings in addition to search, Print, TV, Radio, etc. Print as well possibly. I'm sure some of our clients already do radio ads and could be pretty easy to migrate over. The nice thing is that Google offers ways to track the performance, like dedicated phone numbers which they offer for free or by using dedicated trackable entry points.
Google Dance 2007 was a huge bash at the Google campus in Mountain Home.
You can see more pics from Google on picasa: http://picasaweb.google.com/gdance2007/GoogleDance2007WeRockedIt
There were lots of product demos on all the Google applications, Meet the Developers, food, drinks, a huge dance party in the rec hall, green screen karaoke, and my favorite the Candy Bar.
All in all it was a great trip. Met lots of people in the event hall and the sessions had some decent information. Next time I hope to get into some of the other sessions to see what they are about.
Technorati Tags: SES, San Jose, Search Engine Stratagies, Search, Paid Search, Marketing, Advertising, Ironvine, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo
AdWords Ad Preview Tool Update
The Improved Ad Preview tool is now easier to use!
» We've recently updated the Ad Preview tool to include easy drop-down menus to select different locations and languages. This improvement will make performing a test search that much easier.
As a refresher: The Ad Preview tool enables you to view ads and search results as they would appear on a regular Google search results page. With the Ad Preview tool, you can also adjust the location to see locally targeted ads--no matter where you are located. Plus, you won't accrue extra impressions!
Visit the Ad Preview Tool to give it a try.
Technorati Tags: Google, AdWords, Paid Search, PPC, Search, Marketing, Ironvine
Google Experimental
Check out some of the new features in development over at Mountain Home.
http://www.google.com/experimental/
Some of the new features include:
Timeline and map views
Keyboard Shortcuts
Left-hand search navigation
Right-hand contextual search navigation
Ask.com Contextual Advertising Launches June 11
Ads are automatically defaulted in unless you opt out (Brutal!)…. You may start spending more on Ask.com advertising if you don't pay attention!
The Ask Sponsored Listings Team is pleased to announce that contextual targeting is now available. With contextual targeting, you can seamlessly extend your pay-per-click search campaigns to the web sites in our content network.
There's no need to do anything to take advantage of this new targeting capability.
Ads that are currently live will automatically be opted-in to run across the Ask Sponsored Listings (ASL) content network. If you would prefer not to run your ads on the content network, it's easy to opt-out at any time. Simply log into your account, select the ad(s) you'd like to opt-out and deselect "Contextual" on the campaign detail page; you may also opt-out through the bulk upload tool. For assistance managing contextual targeting via the ASL API, please send inquiries to APISupport@ask.com.
Ads will start running on the ASL content network on June 11th.
To learn more, please watch the ASL contextual targeting webinar. The webinar will be posted to the ASL website (http://sponsoredlistings.ask.com). Once the webinar is posted, a notification will be sent out.
If you have any questions about ASL contextual targeting, please contact client services.
Thank you,
The Ask Sponsored Listings Team
Technorati Tags: Ask.com, Ask, Advertising, Sponsored, Ads, Marketing, Online, Paid Search, Ironvine
New Google Analytics Release
Some happy news this morning for those who do any reporting with Google Analytics. Google has released a new version of Analytics that will be rolled out to users. You can see immediately some of the changes right from the dashboard design.
This is the first major update to the Google Analytics program in some time, and the first I believe since the program went public and out of beta.
Technorati Tags: Google, Analytics, Reporting, Search, Marketing, SEO, Ironvine
AdWords Editor 3.5 Released
Google has released a new version of AdWords Editor (3.5) for windows. As usual it will be delayed a few weeks for the Mac version.
The new version includes support for image ads, campaign targeting by region and city, and a drag-and-drop feature that makes it easier to move items from one location to another.
You can download it for free at Google AdWords Editor.
Technorati Tags: Google, AdWords, AdWords Editor, PPC, Online Marketing, Marketing, Search Marketing
Tech Talk
I was reading a bit today about communication between marketers and clients, as well as between marketers, directors, and management. There are so many times where mis-communication happens that can seriously affect the production as a whole, while the skills and techniques may be implemented perfectly.
It is extremely important that the language used between parties be the same. I don't mean a language like English but the understanding of what is being said. What you want ultimately is a document or some sort of common reference where people can look and have a clear understanding of what is happening.
Unfortunately even with such a set plan it may not work yet. There may need to be some "education" necessary to explain details or processes even in a general way.
With all this it is extremely important for things to run right with correct communication and expressions of what needs to get accomplished at the end of the day.
Technorati Tags: SEO, SEM, Search MArketing, Marketing, PPC, Paid Search, Ironvine, Business
AdWords Editor 3.0 Now Available
AdWords Editor 3.0 is now available for free download for PC users.
If you already have AdWords Editor, it will automatically update next time you run the program.
Here are a few of the changes in version 3.0.
- Add or edit site-targeted campaigns
- Add or edit negative sites for keyword- and site-targeted campaigns
- Edit another account while posting or checking your changes
- Pause or resume individual ads, keywords, and sites
- See the number of rows you've selected in the data view
Technorati Tags: Google, Google AdWords, AdWords, PPC, Online Marketing, Paid Search, Search Marketing, Ironvine
Important Google AdWords Quality Score Updates
Here is an important update from Inside AdWords (Google).
It looks like they are changing the Quality Score importance in a big way. They are adding new reporting data with Quality Score information like "Great, OK, or Poor".
Next week they are launching improvements to the Quality score algorithm that sets minimum bids. What you are going to see is an increase in the minimum bids on low performing keywords, and who knows what else.
Expect to see higher costs come out of those keywords. For high performing keywords, the minimum bids may decrease.
Make sure your landing pages are tip-top, with relevant, direct content related to your keywords. That should help the Quality score.
At Google, one of our most important goals has always been to deliver high quality ads that provide value to our users. In August of 2005 we improved our quality evaluation with the introduction of the Quality Score, which sets minimum bids for your keywords. Since then, we've updated you on the inclusion of landing page quality into the Quality Score, and subsequent improvements to the landing page algorithm. Now, Avichal from the Ads Quality team, has an update on upcoming changes to the system.
As you may have heard us say before, we believe that ads provide valuable information when they are highly relevant and targeted to a user's query. In order to serve high quality ads to our users, we use the Quality Score to set minimum bids for keywords based on keyword clickthrough rate (CTR), ad text relevance, the historical performance of the keyword on Google, and the user experience on the ad's landing page. Keywords with a higher Quality Score are rewarded with a lower minimum bid, so it costs less for those ads to be eligible for display. Low quality keywords receive higher minimum bids, often making them inactive for search because their maximum CPC does not meet the minimum bid. In addition, since we also consider quality when we rank ads, higher quality ads benefit from higher placement on the page and a lower cost-per-click on average. So, high quality ads are not only more relevant for your potential customers, but can also help you improve your ROI by lowering your advertising costs.
We're constantly working on ways to improve our Quality Score evaluation and provide you with more information about the Quality Score for your keywords. Over the next week, we'll be releasing two changes focusing on transparency and quality, which I've outlined below:
Transparency - Later this week, we're releasing an optional Quality Score column that shows the minimum bid for all of the keywords within an ad group as well as a Great, OK, or Poor quality label for your keyword. You can select this column by clicking 'Customize Columns' in one of your ad groups (selecting this will also automatically populate the column for all other ad groups within that campaign). Use the quality label to get a quick overview of the quality of your keywords, or look at the minimum bid for a granular understanding of your Quality Score. Remember, the lower the minimum bid is for a keyword, the higher the Quality Score, and vice versa.
Quality - Next week, we're launching improvements to the Quality Score algorithm that sets minimum bids for keywords in order to improve the quality of ads that we serve to our users. These changes should make it easier for high quality ads to enter the auction while also discouraging low quality ads. First, we're improving the way that we set minimum bids for keywords where we have limited data. For example, if the system does not have any data on a keyword, we'll try to assign that keyword a lower initial minimum bid until we have enough data to make a more accurate assessment of the Quality Score for that keyword in your account. Second, we're improving the Quality Score algorithm to make it more accurate in predicting the quality of all ads. This will improve the overall quality of ads that we serve by lowering minimum bids for high quality ads and raising minimum bids for low quality ads. We expect that the higher minimum bids for low quality ads will reduce the number of low quality ads we show to our users.
So, what does this mean for you? As a result of this update, you may notice that the minimum bids increase for some of your keywords and decrease for others. To better understand the impact of this change, we suggest that you implement the Quality Score column. This will allow you to better monitor whether your minimum bids increase or decrease based on our changes. If you find that the minimum bids for any of your keywords increase, making your keyword inactive for search, please consider optimizing your campaign instead of raising your maximum CPC to the minimum bid. We recommend changes such as choosing a keyword that is more specific to the product or service that you offer or editing your ad text to make it more relevant to the keyword before you simply raise your minimum bid. By improving your quality we hope to provide the highest quality ads to our users while also providing you with the highest quality leads to maintain great ROI.
Stay tuned to the blog over the next few days as we'll post again to answer any questions that you may have.
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Posted By Inside AdWords crew to Inside AdWords at 2/14/2007 02:58:00 PM
Technorati Tags: Google, AdWords, PPC, Advertising, Online Marketing, Marketing, Bids, Ironvine