Tag Archive for google adwords

Get Google Offers Live in Australia

Posted on March 29, 2012 by Get Google Offers Live in Australia

I noticed today that on a limited number of specific search terms around webhosting that LiquidWeb are running the new Google Offers ad extensions. These ads appeared at the top in the yellow box but also at the right side as shown in the screenshot.

What is most disturbing about these “get offers” ads is that Google extracts your loggedin email address and adds it automatically into the first field. I can see the next stage when AdWords pre-populates both of these fields with your personal information based on your Google account details.

Nice clear sign that Google is concerned about user privacy and is so willing to share this data with publishers.

No comments Posted in marketing

Google-ACCC article puts focus on Journalism standards

Posted on September 25, 2011 by

A recent post published by ITNews has managed to again raise a level of concern about the quality of Technology journalism online and but also highlights the danger of being quoted out of context to support a poorly research article.  When you read the quote from “Truman Hoyle” below you will see that you risk the danger of appearing like you have no idea about online marketing and one might wonder why you were quoted in the first place. The IT News article has pissed me as it was recently written around the recent judgement against the Trading Post which they were successfully sued by the ACCC over engaging in misleading and deceptive conduct in relation to Google AdWords campaigns but the article tries to link the decision back to SEO on some level. The article screenshot is included below because I have no interest in linking to mis-information.

Google-ACCC case puts focus on SEO

The case was about Sponsored Links

In what could amount to lazy journalism combined with failing to actually read a court judgement one of their journalists decided to pick an alternative viewpoint on how the case outcome had put focus onto SEO.  The mention of links does not automatically mean the story is about SEO, there is a large difference between SEO & SEM and the case is very clear that it’s about “sponsored links” as that term is mentioned 39 times during the case judgement.  If you check you will find that SEO is not mentioned once during the whole judgement  and the judge actually highlights that there is a clear difference between “organic results” and “sponsored links” just in case you took the time to read the judgement.  Part of the ACCC case was trying to force the judge to accept that users might not be able to easily identify between Organic and Paid results but the judgement focuses around Google AdWords and does not entertain the idea of SEO.  To re-enforce the flimsy nature of the article and how it is lacking support there is also no mention of any variation of SEO such as “search engine optimisation” to further re-inforce the point that this journalists failed to take the care the due diligence before writing this sub-standard post!

The journalist fails to make any real supporting links between the article theme about SEO and the actual court judgement, and gets a random quote from a lawyer at Truman Hoyle who weren’t even involved in the case.  The statement by Bridget Edghill doesn’t even really fit within the context of the judgement and could have even been taken out of context in reference to the actual court judgement.

Suggest you retract your quote

If I was Truman Hoyle Lawyers I would at least get my comment retracted as it does not put forward an image of a law firm that has an understanding of the difference between Google AdWords (case theme) and SEO (not discussed). I don’t see any way the judgement implied or suggested there was a link between the case and placing SEO users on notice as the case was about Google AdWords not Google Organic results, so any link between the two is fanciful.  There is a clear statement that there is no defamation implied or directed towards Truman Hoyle as it is clearly the journalist who has written a poorly researched article and added a law firm to try and add some credibility to his mis-informed article.

Journalists have to answer for fact checking

It is no wonder that business struggles to make the identification between how Google AdWords (Paid results) and SEO (organic results) actually differs. The journalist obviously found the word “link” in the judgement and choose to ignore the entire theme of the judgement along with the heavy use of “sponsored” links throughout the reasons for the judgement.  There is a very big difference in the context of the word “link” and it’s use for Google AdWords and some basic fact checking would have ensured this post actually added some value around the judgement instead of mis-informing the readers of ITNews.

Google AdWords is NOT part of SEO

Just to re-enforce the point while longer term there might be a case where SEO might place a website in front of a judge currently it’s just in the minds of fanciful journalists who don’t take the time to research articles before posting them! Feel free to respond with nasty and unsupported anonymous comments below or you can reach out to the the journalists who wrote the mis-informed post on twitter.

2 comments Posted in search industry

Google Certified Ad Networks List

Posted on September 6, 2010 by

The Google Certified Ad Networks continue to grow and are starting to feature a number of well-known marketing agencies and bid management platforms. As they expand their Certified Ad Network platform you can expect the criteria to change and they also reserve the right to offer your Adsense inventory to the Certified Ad Network based on many different criteria and quality factors.

Some of the bigger ad networks that have started serving their ads through the Google Adsense platform include: Advertise.com, AOL,Chitika,Forbes.com,Linkedin,Omnicom,ValueClick,Teracent

  1. [X+1]
  2. AccountNow, Inc.
  3. Acxiom Corporation
  4. Ad Pepper
  5. Ad Perium NL
  6. Adchemy
  7. Adconion Media Group
  8. Adconion S.L.
  9. AdConion UK
  10. AdJug UK
  11. AdKnife
  12. Adlantic
  13. Adnetik Spain
  14. Adnetik US
  15. Adpepper Germany
  16. AdReady
  17. Adtegrity.com
  18. Advertise.com
  19. Alcance Media Group
  20. Announce Media
  21. AOL Inc
  22. AppNexus
  23. Atrinsic
  24. AudienceScience Inc.
  25. Bid Alpha
  26. Bizo
  27. Brand.net
  28. BrightRoll
  29. Burst Media
  30. Chitika
  31. ClickDistrict NL
  32. Collective Media
  33. Cossette Communications
  34. CPM Advisors, Inc
  35. Criteo Europe
  36. Criteo UK
  37. Criteo US
  38. Cyberplex, Inc
  39. Dapper Inc.
  40. DataXu
  41. Datran Media
  42. Dedicated Media
  43. Didit
  44. DKK Agency
  45. Dotomi
  46. DQ&A
  47. DSNR
  48. EchoSearch
  49. Efficient Frontier, Inc.
  50. Epic Advertising
  51. Exponential
  52. FetchBack
  53. Forbes.com
  54. Goodway Group
  55. Google Bidder Testing (AdWords Campaign Experiments?)
  56. Google Display Network (Spare Network Spot)
  57. HTTPool
  58. Hurra Germany
  59. ID Media
  60. IDG Tech
  61. Imagini Europe Ltd.
  62. Infectious Media
  63. Innovation Interactive
  64. Interactive Media Sales
  65. InterCLICK
  66. Internet Brands
  67. Invite Media
  68. iPonWeb
  69. Jumpstart Digital Marketing Inc
  70. LeadClick
  71. LinkedIn
  72. Lotame Solutions, Inc.
  73. LucidMedia
  74. MaxPoint Interactive
  75. Media Innovation Group
  76. Media6Degrees
  77. MediaMath
  78. Mediaplex
  79. Mexad
  80. Mixpo
  81. Mpire
  82. My Media Buyer
  83. MyThingsMedia UK
  84. NetSeer Inc.
  85. Next Performance
  86. Next Premium
  87. Next Step Media Online Inc
  88. NextAction
  89. Omnicom Media Group NL
  90. Omnicom Trading Desk
  91. OpenX Technologies
  92. OpinMind
  93. OwnerIQ, Inc.
  94. Pennyweb, Inc. (DBA Ybrant Digital)
  95. People Media, Inc
  96. Performance Advertising
  97. Permuto, Inc.
  98. Pinnacle Dream Media
  99. Pulse 360
  100. Quantcast Corporation
  101. QuinStreet, Inc.
  102. Radius Marketing Inc.
  103. Red Aril, Inc.
  104. Redux Media Inc.
  105. Reply! Inc.
  106. ReTargeter
  107. Return Media BV
  108. RichRelevance, Inc.
  109. Rocket Fuel Inc.
  110. Schnaeppchenjagd GmbH
  111. Semantic Sugar, Inc.
  112. ShareThis, Inc.
  113. Simplifi Holdings Inc.
  114. SinnerSchrader Deutschland GmbH
  115. SoMR Networks
  116. Sooth Software Corporation (dba AdBuyer.com)
  117. Specific Media
  118. Specific Media France SAS
  119. Specific Media Germany GmbH
  120. Specific Media UK Limited
  121. Spongecell
  122. Struq Limited
  123. Techconnect B.V.
  124. TellApart
  125. Teracent Corporation
  126. The Exchange Lab
  127. Traffic Marketplace
  128. TravelClick
  129. Tribal Fusion UK
  130. Triggit
  131. TubeMogul
  132. Turn
  133. Underdog Media
  134. UpValue GmbH
  135. ValueClick International Ltd
  136. ValueClick, Inc.
  137. VCCP Digital Ltd
  138. Veremedia
  139. Veruta
  140. VivaKi
  141. WinBuyer Ltd
  142. WPromote
  143. Xtend Global Media LTD
  144. Zillow

Will the Certified Ad Network appear in reporting?
Currently impressions, clicks, and earnings generated from the Google certified ad networks will appear in your Adsense reports in the same way these stats appear for AdWords ads. Google may in the future offer more detailed reporting options.

Can the certified ad network use the impression data from my site for ad targeting later?
No, the Google certified ad networks and those advertisers who use it are not allowed to collect data from your site for the purpose of subsequent re-targeting. This should allow you to benefit with increased revenue and you won’t need to offer your own site’s data for subsequent re-targeting.

Can I block all future Google certified ad networks?
Yes you can automatically block any new Google certified ad networks that are added and changes will take effect within 1-2 hours.

Can I request a specific Certified ad network for my ads?
You may allow and block specific ad networks, but you cannot request the addition of a specific ad network that is not yet certified by Google. Just because you allow a specific ad network doesn’t guarantee that they will target your site.

How are Certified ad networks selected by Google?
Currently the Google Adsense team has focused on their partners & vendors that have already been requested by the publishers in the network. The certification process is thorough and requires that the third-party ad platform complies with user privacy, latency, compliance with Google’s creative policies and accuracy of measurement.

How does Google certified ad networks work?
The Adsense platform now has yield management incorporated into the platform powered by DoubleClick Ad Exchange which means all the networks listed above can now compete for your ad units and drives up the revenue generated from each click in an open exchange.

No comments Posted in adsense

Google mortgage rates add up

Posted on September 3, 2010 by

Rodrigo Stockebrand noticed earlier today that his search queries for the generic term “mortgage rates” had started to show a new style AdWord’s result at the top of the organic results and it seems to be more than just a small test group.  It was covered briefly in a quick post at SEL by Barry Schwartz, but I thought there was more to explore around the new comparison ads and evaluate their longer term impact for advertisers and business.

It seems that the early Google’s AdWords comparison ad experiment has been expanded to cover home loan and mortgage products but has also taken place at the top of the search results in a 4th sponsored link.  The issue is that Google websites have an artificially inflated Google Quality score which guarantees any of their products top placement and potentially inflates the costs of advertising on that keyword, and the additional box is clearly a separate module as you can see thin white line between it and the standard AdWords modules.  Below is a screenshot of the new Google AdWords product which is exclusive to Google’s own comparison products, it’s not clear if it was manually placed for certain search queries to guarantee it would show just below the search bar.  But other advertisers should be able to check in their AdWords account under average position on if its showing even thou they are shown as top position.

Google Comparison Mortgage AdsLess space for organic results

One of the bigger concerns is that it doesn’t just affect competitors who are buying traffic with AdWords it compounds the problems for those trying to rank organically, there is more paid space and more Google products and less room for natural listings.  While this extra Google comparison ad has obviously pushed down the other ads, on my 1920×1080 resolution monitor it was less dramatic, but a majority of users don’t have a monitor so large so I dived into my visitor information contained in my Google Analytics accounts to find a baseline monitor size.  Looking at the average website visitors from my Google Analytics data around 48-54% of people have a screen resolution of between 1024×768 to 1280×1024 so I thought I would test the 3 smaller monitor sizes as to how it impacts the competitive landscape.

1920×1080 Resolution Monitor

Google Ads on 1920x1080 Monitor

Analysis: You can see that there is actually now only 5 organic results showing above the fold (visible without scrolling down) and the 6th result just creeps in.  The problem for organic rankings is that unless you are in the top 5 you are now going to miss out on a majority of the clicks, where in the past top 7 rankings still keep you above the fold.  Dynamic AdWords like these will also continue to change Google users behaviour and may have a dramatic long-term effect on the perceived importance of the organic results and further increase the market share of Google’s own products.

1280×1024 Resolution Monitor

Google Ads on 1280x1024 Monitor

Analysis: You can see that with the 1280×1024 resolution SXGA monitor but you can see that with the new Google Comparison Ads that showing below the 5th result on the first page will mean that you miss a majority of the potential clicks. Its hard enough for some clients to get to the 1st page on Google now it’s a case depending on your typically visitors you have to be in the top 5.

1280×768 Resolution Monitor

Google Ads on 1280x768 Monitor

Analysis: By shrinking the monitor size down slightly more to 1280×768 resolution it even cuts out the Google News results and also now only 7 AdWords ads are showing, decreasing the number of advertisers who are able to be seen.  It also reduces the organic results down to 3 which further increases your reliability on buying traffic from AdWords or from the new Google Comparison Ads.

1024×768 Resolution Monitor

Google Ads on 1024x768 Monitor

Analysis: The final screenshot is actually based on 1024×768 which is a 19inch monitor far larger than most laptop screens and still if you view the same result on a netbook you can actually only see the first organic result because of the 4 AdWords results showing at the top. Again Google News results are gone and there is 1 less Google AdWords spot on the right hand side.

Advice: If you are in this vertical start to examine in your web analytics solution the screen resolution of your typically visitors who just visit and those who generate a lead or revenue.  It will start to provide you a guideline as to if you are trying to increase your paid traffic what position you should try to bid for and from an organic ranking where you should be aiming if you want more clicks.  You want to break it down by those who just browse and those who actually generate a lead or revenue for your company.

Google’s potential audience?

The potential audience which is now able to see these new comparison ads is huge and its likely that the CTR from the other ads will plummet, which will likely impact their quality scores and lead to them having to pay more to bid for the same positions.  By Google offering a better quality Ad they are changing the behaviour of how people will select what ads to engage with but are also limiting other advertisers clicks as consumers are draw to the new style ad box.  The traffic volume based on the single generic keyword “mortgage rates” has estimated 1,000,000 monthly searches in the US with an average CPC rate of $14.88, according to Google’s own Google AdWords tool which is a massive audience to test the impact of its platform.  The question is how much cheaper is it to buy the lead directly from Google compared to fighting with other advertisers in the AdWords market?

Google’s invasive ad box

While its interesting to see how Google is experimenting with new Ad types, I have discovered that there is also a second ad that Google is running which offers a bit more interactivity for users with a drop down menu for the approximate home value for quicker rate comparisons.

Google Refinance Ads

As you can see in the screenshot below, the bigger issue is that when consumers actually interact with the ad it blocks a majority of the competitors advertising message and also close to half of the first 2 organic results.  This type of ad seems to lack any aspects of tact by how it impacts and overrides the competitors presence on the page.  These types of ads show that Google is testing the ads for different markets where you might want to compare two pricing points before visiting the website.  Obviously Google is tracking all the interactions and may start to refine the pricing points as it gathers more data on users, so those who are based in a lower economic area may start to see slightly different approximate home values or even APRs….

Google Refinance Mortgage Dropdown AdThe CTR between the two ads modules being tested would be quite interesting as if users with different motivation or at a different stage of the buying cycle.  Obviously to further understand the mortgage market Google is bidding on search traffic for its comparison ads around a number of keywords, but I’ve select the top 20 related keywords based on estimated monthly search volumes, but it’s also interesting what keywords they are choosing not to bid on.

Google is also bidding on the following keywords

  • mortgage loan rates
  • mortgage loan interest rates
  • home loan interest rates
  • mortgage interest rates
  • current mortgage interest rate
  • best mortgage interest rates
  • current mortgage rates
  • home mortgage rates
  • home mortgage interest rates
  • refinance mortgage rates
  • refinancing mortgage rates
  • mortgage rate calculator
  • current home mortgage rates

Analysis: obviously most of these keywords are very high volume but are also closely related to “mortgage” but you notice that “home loan” is also featured which shows they might be testing language for different markets such as the UK or Australia.

Advice: Look at the ROI around these terms and if you are not already bidding on them, I would advise doing a trial with their own campaign and own budgets.  Remember Google buys search traffic with AdWords for branding and for testing so you should look at buying the same traffic but for testing.

Google is not bidding on the following

  • compare fixed mortgage rates ($0.05/cpc)
  • bad credit mortgage rates ($35.72/cpc)
  • home mortgage loan rate ($18.72/cpc)
  • best mortgage loan rate ($36.37/cpc)
  • current mortgage rates canada ($4.61/cpc)

Analysis: Obviously the product is US focused so any terms that focus outside the country such as “current mortgage rates canada” are likely to be ignored. The keyword that The Google AdWords tool said has the most traffic “compare fixed mortgage rates” is likely a bug or very low quality traffic. It’s likely that Google is avoiding some of the very expensive terms because the ROI doesn’t match with their comparison ad business model or they are just overpriced.

Advice: Best look at what other keywords Google is not bidding on and if you are take a closer look at the ROI and KPIs around those terms as they have been ignored for a good reason.

Google protects its mortgage leads

The screen shot below shows you a sample of the Google mortgage comparison page, where you can filter out and compare mortgages with a few clicks.  The comparison mortgage is generic enough to be expanded to feature an entire comparison shopping site as the URL structure also hints at future products can easily be added google.com/comparisonads/mortgages.

Google Mortgage Results

Google doesn’t want to miss out on a single dollar of commission or miss a single conversion if possible and have built a fairly idiot proof contact system that can be automatically tracked and optimised.  When you visit the comparison mortgage page you will see there is 3 contact options available for each lender: phone, call back and email.  Call back and email appear to be exactly the same contact form but are coded slightly differently for tracking purposes which will affect future AdWords bidding strategies.

Google Tracking Leads

Google is actually fairly smart in how their built the platform as the number listed above is a special Google phone number that will forward your call to the lender, but it can also be used to track the lead generated.  If you fill out the request a call or email lender contact form Google provides the lender with another special Google phone number that will forward to you which they can also track as a lead. Any details that you enter such as Street Address or Zip codes are just passed onto IntelliReal that has partnered with Google.

Will Comparison Ads expand to other verticals?

I say yes, based on how Google is growing its maps & technology platforms its only a matter of time before it expands its product to include other verticals. It’s easy to see Google expanding its comparison ads to include Real Estate & Hotels as they already offer a simple search function within Google Maps as shown below. You have already seen one comparison ad that featured a drop down box which shows they have the technology to place other interactive items into their text ads now.

Search for New York hotels directly from within Google Maps

New York Hotels

Search for New York real estate from within Google Maps

New York Real Estate

It’s likely that Google has a number of options to increase its revenue by competing for direct leads and sales and cutting out resellers and affiliates but the question is how quickly they will risk upsetting their advertisers or how much money they can make on the comparison ad platform.  Do you take the path to doing more of the work generating leads and hope the reduced revenue from your advertisers doesn’t drop quicker than you can grow your comparison shopping products?

Google Comparison Ads expanding internationally?
If you want to know when Google Comparison Ads might be expanded to your country I suggest keep an eye out for any new financial licensee such as when Google registered Google Payment Australia back in 2007, in what was thought to be part of Google Checkout Australia.   Google Payment Australia Pty Ltd was supposed to be setup for local Checkout services and has a Australian Financial Services licence (No. 318755). Google Australia holds the licence under which it is authorised to offer Google Checkout as a “non-cash payment product”. The Google company is not licensed as a bank or deposit-taking institution in Australia and does not provide banking services but might allow it to soon offer a similar comparison ad platform in Australia soon.

One comment Posted in Adwords, search industry

Top 1000 websites incorrect

Posted on September 3, 2010 by
Google Adplanner LogoGoogle has released their July 2010 stats from the 1000 largest websites worldwide.  The stats are based on unique visitors using the same data advertisers can measure and research in their Ad Planner platform.  The websites listed feature only top-level domains and exclude adult sites, other ad networks, certain Google sites or those sites who dont have publicly visible content. The other point is that a majority of those websites listed as having advertising available are using Google Adsense or Doubleclick Ads to serve their on site advertising.  Looking at the list in detail it apparently around 12% of the world’s top 1000 websites don’t have advertising which did seem a little strange so I thought I would explore this in some more detail.

Google Chart

The first site I wanted to explore was ESPN which is one of the world’s top sports networks and ranked #99 in the world’s top 1000 sites as listed by Google with around 21,000,000 unique visitors in July and was listed as having no advertising.  I would be very surprised if ESPN didn’t have any advertising if you have such a large audience and perfect demographics for beer & liquor advertisers.  It did take a little time when the website to notice where the content was due to the 2 huge Miller Lite banners occupying around 2/3 of the homepage, but maybe this didn’t count as advertising? Ok so the website doesn’t use DoubleClick or Google Adsense to serve ads but it’s still features advertising just not currently served by Google.

ESPN Go Ads

Looking at Twitter.com which is ranked #15 in the world’s top 1000 sites as listed by Google with around 96,000,000 unique visitors in July was also listed as not having advertising.  Twitter has long had its small definition ads as shown below “Twitter for Android” which are clearly advertising as are the Promoted tweets and the more powerful promoted trends which was heavily used by Disney to promote Toy Story 3. While these require the ads to be purchase direct from Twitter and cannot currently be purchase through any of Google’s marketplaces it does show that the list isn’t accurate.

Twitter Promoted TweetsLet’s look at a more mainstream website that is not in a social media or consumer focused, so Whitepages.com was ranked #305 with around 9,700,000 unique visitors in July 2010 and was also listed as having no advertising.  You can see that there is advertising on the home page but once again it’s not served by Google Doubleclick or Google Adsense so that is why it was likely listed as not having any advertising.

Whitepages Ads

Whitepages.com being a fairly aggressive website when it comes to monetisation, you can see that they have a number of different ad platforms competing for the same space, so this must clearly show that there is no place you can buy space on the site. With one single click on their Find Locations feature its clear that this top 1000 list is once again not accurate as I have seen Whitepages.com are serving Google Ads shown in the screenshot below just underneath the Bing Maps business locations.  To make it easier to spot the Google Adsense ads i’ve market them out with a large red box and a red arrow and so its clear that you can buy space with Google Advertising tools and shows their has no advertising list needs to checked again, just because the ads aren’t on the homepage doesn’t mean the site doesn’t accept advertising by Google.

Whitepages Google Ads

PlentyofFish is listed as #874 on the top 1000 list but is also listed as not having advertising, which is strange as that is how the site makes its revenue.  The dating site is free and relies completely on advertising revenue for its profits and it only took a few clicks to see a Google Adsense banner.  The top 1000 list seems to almost punish websites that don’t show their Google Adsense or Doubleclick ads on the homepage by listing them as not having advertising.  It’s clear that once again the list is not accurate as the screenshot below shows “Ads by Google” so its even serving Ads on the Google content network.

Plenty of Fish

I was looking for a high-profile site that is revenue focused so I picked Boston Globe’s Boston.com, which was my first pick.  The first thing you can see is that there are a number of advertising banners available that you are able to buy advertising space with and the top banner actually is running on ads served by the DoubleClick platform.  This is a another example to show that the July list is not accurate if you are using it as your sole resource to decide what websites you should be targeting in your media planning.

Boston.com Ads

The best option is to use the actual DoubleClick Ad Planner platform and build your own list specific to your region or industry, as taking short cuts and using out of data information like the July 2010 list will lead to poor decisions and may mean that you miss opportunities. The July list is incorrect but it seems that the listings on the ad planner platform are correct and upto date.

No comments Posted in google

Facebook improves advertising just…

Posted on August 4, 2010 by
Facebook LogoThe good news was sent out via Facebook’s Ad newsletter that finally some of the features advertisers take for granted on other platforms such as Microsoft adCentre or Google AdWords are slowly being rolled out on Facebook Ads. The first is allowing multiple users to access your Facebook ads account via the permission tool you can give the ability for others to manage your account on your behalf.  The general user can accomplish tasks such as improving quality of campaigns and performance of your ads or just monitoring the results of your ad campaign via the reports only setting. The add user setting is fairly easy to find but still requires a little digging to find, shown below.
Facebook User Permissions
  1. Go to your Settings page of your Ads Manager
  2. Click the “Add User” button
  3. Enter the name or email address of the person you want to add
  4. Choose the user access level. “General User” will allow full control, whereas “Reports Only” will allow for monitoring results but not editing campaigns.
  5. Done
The benefits to advertisers is they can now provide access without the user having access to your personal account, profile details, messages, or notifications. The new user system actually has 3 access level for users now with the original account owner being the admin.
Facebook Ad Permissions
  • Admin User - The admin is the only person that can provide new users with access to their account and only one administrator can be attached to an account.  They can do everything including add and remove credit cards and export ad reports.
  • General User - The general user can create, edit and delete ads and any past or present campaign, access all reports but only view and cannot change billing details.
  • Reports Only User - The base level user is the reports only user who can only access campaign and ad reports.
Facebook User Limitations
Facebook only allows you to provide access permissions to existing Facebook users, which you can search for by name if you are friends with them already or enter their email address associated with their Facebook account.  Facebook has followed Google’s lead in forcing members to create a Google account before it will allow access which means an increased number of accounts created that will boost overall member numbers.
One key factor that shows only a limited number businesses are advertising with Facebook, they have limited user access to up to 25 different ad accounts. The only issue is as shown below you can only create additional users one at a time, but it looks like it there is room for more users but has been disabled for some reason.  These limitations seem to show their Ad system is not yet scalable for Reseller models that target SMEs allowing Google AdWords to continue its domination of that market.
Facebook Ad Users
Facebook offers easier ad creation
To speed up the process and bring their platform closer to the mass market the have released a suggested ad tool.  So if you’re looking for some inspiration when creating your new Facebook Ads, try their “Suggest an Ad”, which they refer to as one-click ad creation.
  1. Go to your Ads Manager
  2. Click on “Create an Ad”
  3. Enter the URL of the website you want the ad to link to in the “Destination URL” field
  4. Click on “Suggest an Ad”
  5. Wait
  6. Confirm
As shown in the image below, you can use the copy as I have from the existing advert or enter the new destination URL and click suggest an Ad button and build a whole new fresh ad.
Facebook Ads Suggestions
As shown in the example below, the new Facebook ad system should automatically suggest an ad title, body and image based on the Destination URL. From this step, you can further modify the creative title, body text or image found, or chose to move on to the step that allows you to target your ad.
Facebook suggested ads

This is a feature that should have been included much earlier but its great to see that it is now available and does a much better job of finding suitable images and streamlines the process for quick campaigns or when using unique campaign specific landing pages.
Keep up with The Sun?
No comments Posted in facebook

Google Funds PPC Agency

Posted on July 22, 2010 by

Trada LogoIt was announced by NYTimes and on Trada’s own blog that Google ventures has made an investment in the crowd sourced ppc agency Trada.com. Trada closed a US$5.75 million Series C round of financing led by Google Ventures and Foundry Group to increase its cash balances and working capital to continuing expanding its network of ppc specialists beyond 500.  The money raised in the latest funding round will be spent on international expansion to covers markets such as Canada, UK and Australia.  It will improve support for Trada campaigns in multiple time zones, currency support and banking details such as credit cards that currently make running some campaigns outside the US less efficient.

According to the press release, Trada plans to expand its platform to cover new types of advertising such as text ads on blogs, banner display, mobile and video ads.  The next expansion is planned around Facebook Ads but also what they can do with the Trada platform on other social platforms such as Twitter.

Does Trada get preferential treatment in Google?

The company argues that it will actually be under more scrutiny by Google because of the nature of their relationship, Google and Google Ventures are separate entities but still questions maybe asked by other technology platforms.  The obvious benefit of the Series C funding means Trada can scrap any plans or requests for what Google may consider grey areas of marketing.  The company will potentially slow the growth in some markets who are looking to bend or twist the search engines ppc rules. similar to the ITA Software purchase by Google recently it does place Trada in an interesting position with Microsoft/Bing. While Trada has plans to expand its platform it’s too early to see how the investment may change their business models if Google makes a decision to purchase more shares.

How does Trada work?
1) Setup client’s ppc campaigns in Trada, and request to add new campaigns on demand
2) Get the best ppc experts in the world to work on your campaigns
3) Complete control of your clients relationships and campaigns
4) PPC ads begin to run on Google & Bing
5) Conversions/Clicks are generated and shown on customised reports
Watch more about the Trada.com platform
4 comments Posted in Adwords

Bonobos fails Facebook Father’s day promotion

Posted on June 29, 2010 by

Bonobos LogoSorry to say for those who live in Argentina, Canada, United States, United Kingdom, Chile, France, Japan or the Netherlands, but your Father’s day was last weekend the 20th June. The reason for the confusion is that some advertisers may not have noticed or are trying to wring every last drop of value of the event.  It is fairly common to see campaigns that run past their due date over long holidays such as Christmas but it is not acceptable for business to continue to be so lazy.

Some advertisers or marketers may argue that there is a spill over after big events and they can capture this traffic now much cheaper because there is no competition.  While this is a fair argument for events like Mayday Sales, Black Friday or Boxing Day sales, you can see from the Google search trends data below that it’s almost zero.  So paying to expose your brand to zero search traffic usually means zero sales but if you have statistics please tell me I’m wrong!

Father's Day Search TrendsAfter 21st June there is almost zero web search interest in Father’s Day

I have updated the campaign tracking code to remind whoever is looking at the Google Analytics data that it’s no longer Father’s Day so feel free to click the image below to ensure there is enough traffic captured in the analytics reports. The new campaign they will be tracking from this page is “Not Fathers Day” which should set off some alarm bells if anyone is running their campaigns and actually checking the data.

Bonobos Facebook Ad

Please click the image above

While its wonderful to see a company like Bonobos running Facebook ads and also using Google Analytics campaign tagging on the URLs the issue is why wasn’t the extra step taken to ensure the campaign would stop running on Monday the 21st June? It can happen that not all the campaign budget is spent so agencies continue the campaign at the request of the client or on their on behalf but if they took just 30 seconds to add in a new creative I wouldn’t be writing this blog post.

Google AdWords

Just a note that this is not specific to Bonobos or Facebook, a simple search on Google for “Father’s Day” showed a number of ads for campaigns targeting the event.  It is possible that some of these domains might be still running on Google Grant money but they still should be ensuring they are getting value for their clicks and donations for their organisations.  It would be smarter to run a new campaign “Forget Father’s Day?” you can still make it up to him with a donation!

Google Father's Day Ads

Disclosure: Facebook and Google offer a feature to stop campaigns on a certain date as shown below

Facebook Ads Campaign Settings

Facebook Ads Calendar

Adwords Campaign Management Settings

Google Ads Calendar

Time Required: 30-45 seconds estimated including login time

So this is a reminder that it’s not really that hard to set up a campaign to run leading up to a specific event or day, but its even easier to stop that running once the day has passed and you won’t waste your money communicating to your audience that you are out of touch and don’t know what day of the week it is….

2 comments Posted in Adwords, facebook

Google AdWords fails offline signups

Posted on May 9, 2010 by

Google has reached further into Google AdWords reseller territories with their aggressive promotion of phone help for businesses wanting to create a new Google AdWords account.  The Google AdWords phone number 877-721-1735 is likely just setup for new accounts at this stage and does not extend to cover AdWords support or trouble shooting.  These issues are still referred mostly via email to the Google AdWords forum but often better support can be found with Google AdWords resellers who have higher level access and account managers within Google that are able to troubleshoot issues.

Google AdWords is not 24/7

The other interesting point is that although the internet is 24/7 the AdWords account phone support is only 9am-9pm ET (7am-7pm PDT) and just Monday to Friday.  Consider the reach of the new signup phone line covers all of north america with around 330,000,000 consumers, I would expect 24/7 signup support from such a large company such as Google and with more languages than just English.  Many of the large Google AdWords resellers are could almost operate 24/7 because of their office locations in US, Europe, India and Australia so why not the Google AdWords team?

Google is not tracking leads

The landing page is also not as advanced as possible as outside these business hours the number is still advertised where it would have made more sense to remove the number and it appears to be using a generic contact number and not a dynamic phone tracking number based on how the visitor found the page or if they are a returning visitor.  I would assume that Google would be taking more interest in tracking these metrics understanding how much it places the importance of tracking offline conversions to its advertisers and how much more data about new advertisers behaviour about what leads them to signup for Google AdWords.

For a company who spends time tracking what colour blue gets the best user response, to not test or measure more elements on an extension to a product that produces 97% of their revenue seems to be a slight misjudgment and large oversight.  It would not take Google much to setup a time based redirect that uses a different phone number based on if you visit during business hours, or based on your traffic source as they do this for a number of their other products.

Google AdWords Number

Google advise that the new AdWords phone signup offers the following benefits

  • Individual one-on-one consultation and help for your first campaign (limits on how long will they spend per call)
  • Google will not currently charge for this service (minimum spend levels)
  • Individually discuss advertising goals (likely against a template of pre-set questions)
  • The support is only offered to english speaking clients (ignoring around 1 in 5 advertisers)

What is the level of AdWords support offered?

Google AdWords Campaigns can be fairly intensive to setup and time consuming but much of this extra support is likely not to be offered by Google on this phone number for new accounts, so you should consider using a Search Agency such as The Lost Agency. In the past Google only offered signups via phone if you used a reseller or were a very large advertiser but this change is likely to worry a number of Google AdWords resellers as they have had almost an exclusive right to these AdWords phone setups.

2 comments Posted in Adwords, google

Google Maps adds place markers

Posted on May 9, 2010 by

Just a few weeks ago Google announced it was sunsetting its Google Local Business center and replacing it with the more consumer friendly Google Places, but it also appears to be rolling out a number of updates to its Streetview interface that rely on the previous patent that allowed for virtual placement of markers. This also seems to be a response to Everyscape who offer a similar virtual placement combined with Google Maps free service to businesses to have upto date photos of their store and interior.

The initial results seem to be focused around the free Google Places listings but its possible that some of these might be tied to Google AdWords as it expands. The listings make use a Google generated clickable icons that that enable the viewer to quickly get the businesses contact details, but it is not yet defined in Google Places business listings what portion of your impressions or clicks related to Streetview so it is too early to judge the direct benefit of this feature.

Google Maps local AdsGoogle Maps Ads "School of the Future"The two examples do show how the markers can be useful when looking for a business location and not having to scan sideways to see the name of the business and you don’t have to go back to the Google Maps view to confirm thats the right business address you found.  The only issue that can be flagged is now the importance of correct business details and Google Maps updating its map index more than once every 3-4 weeks as it can actually affect the user experience if the data is outdated and never corrected.   The next example shows how big business and franchise can benefit with store locations no longer hidden by parked cars or passing trucks such as the USPS truck covering the Barnes & Nobel storefront.

Google Maps Listing

A side benefit for consumers, tourists and visitors is that the transport options such as Subway lines were previously hidden can now be accurately displayed in relation to the business location.  The feedback point is that as shown below there is no ability currently to apply more layers as you can with Google Maps or Google Earth such as transit layers in Google StreetView so the numbers of listings added maybe limited.

Show Google Map Layers

The new Google streetview place markers don’t seem to be tied to any particular set of criteria as they show for the following types of listings:

  • Public transport
  • Big business (Best Buy/Barns & Nobel)
  • Owner verified businesses
  • Not yet verified by owner businesses

To show that this is not yet a feature that business may have any control over, it appears that  a number of the results that we found were for business listings that were still unverified by the business owner, so likely less susceptible to spam.  The first result for Restoration Hardware shows that the business has not yet been claimed by the business owner, as with the second result School of the Future High School so are likely sourced direct from Yellowpages listings. But other results such as Gramercy Park Hotel did have a Streetview placemarker but had an owner verified listing so its not just for unverified business locations or big business such as BestBuy or Barnes & Nobel who can get a virtual marker. This types of points we noted in our article around how SEO for Hotels is getting harder with some of the new features that Google is rolling out in the form of paid placement and preferred Google properties showing in the search results.

School of the Future High School

To see if this was a relevance listing such only those who were listed as the #1 in Google Maps local listings or those who showed up #1 in organic or paid results, we have included the local listing result for a geographic query for each in the screenshots shown below. It would be local from an search optimisation perspective to reward those who are able to rank highly for local or generic queries but this would encourage local seo to likely take advantage of the Google Streetview listings for their clients.

Google Maps Listing Restoration Hardware

Google Maps Listing School of the Future

So while the first result showed that Restoration Hardware was #1 in the search results, School of the Future was #7 in the second results but in a test conducted today was no longer a featured in the local business results.  So this could indicate that the StreetView may not even be based on an algorithm yet and might just be using Google Map data.

So this seems to be a very strange test that doesn’t seem to depend on any measurable or known selection criteria which makes it harder for agencies and marketers to assist their clients with achieving a virtual page marker in Google Streetview outside having a placemarker on Google Maps as shown above. Have you found any issues getting listed or traffic benefits for your clients with these Streetview placemarkers?

No comments Posted in local seo

How Geocities benefits Yahoo SEO

Posted on April 11, 2010 by

Yahoo closed down Geocities October 2009 and now uses the page to advertise its other properties and given them a benefit with better search rankings. The amount of monthly visitors dropped significantly since the community was closed from a height of around 10-15 million each month down to around 731,000 unique visitors each month and continues to decline.

While the aspect of the closure has upset a number of people including some link brokers who lost old and trusted websites used to influence search rankings, it seems that Yahoo still continues to receive seo benefit by maintaining the domain as passing the trust to its other properties. According to SEOmoz top 500 list, the Japanese Geocities domain still ranks #369 in the world for link value.

So what is the value of the geocities domain?

  • 80,341 known and trusted backlinks from around 15,496 domains
  • 55,396 pages mentions in Wikipedia
  • 33,325 listings in Yahoo Directory
  • 72 DMOZ listings

The following 8 yahoo properties receive a large search boost because of the strength of the Geocities domain.

  • Yahoo Mail
  • News
  • Sport
  • Finance
  • Web Hosting
  • Games
  • Movies
  • Maps

The estimated total number of searches Yahoo will receive each month based on having the same results in all Bing,Yahoo & Google.

  • “eMail – 9,888,900 searches a month
  • “Mail”-  22,015,000 searches a month
  • “News”-  17,969,000 searches a month
  • “Sport”-  8,092,000 searches a month
  • “Finance”-  3,617,000 searches a month
  • “Web Hosting”-  595,000 searches a month
  • “Games”-  49,266,000 searches a month
  • “Movies”-  22,015,000 searches a month
  • “Maps”-  8,092,000 searches a month

Yahoo saving millions not buying traffic just around these generic terms each month on AdWords priced per click?

  • eMail ($2.25)
  • Mail ($3.10)
  • News ($1.65)
  • Sport ($0.92)
  • Finance ($10.90)
  • Web Hosting ($14.06)
  • Games ($0.95)
  • Movies ($0.94)
  • Maps ($3.04)

If Yahoo was to buy the same amount of traffic using Google AdWords as it gets currently from Organic results each month on just Google.

  • eMail ($22,250,025)
  • Mail ($68,246,500)
  • News ($29,648,850)
  • Sport ($7,444,640)
  • Finance ($39,431,840)
  • Web Hosting ($8365,700)
  • Games ($61,089,840)
  • Movies ($31,041,150)
  • Maps ($10,519,600)

Note: To make the task more transparent we using Google.com as the source and Google AdWords as the ppc solution for the statistics, so Yahoo should not have preferential treatment in search results but still manages to rank better than some of the more well known websites in each area.

You can see in the above image that all these properties have been linked with keyword friendly text to be ranked highly for the generic term, if you can get ranked for a generic term this is a smart idea.  If Yahoo failed seo following how many businesses do seo they would have used the following text for the backlinks.

  • Yahoo Mail
  • Yahoo News
  • Yahoo Sport
  • Yahoo Finance
  • Yahoo Small Web Hosting
  • Yahoo Games
  • Yahoo Movies
  • Yahoo Maps

All of these are the actual Yahoo product names but they still are focused around a keyword friendly name.  Yahoo has made the decision long ago to not complicate the issue and call their finance product “Fuzzy Ducks” or their news product “Reading Material”.  Yahoo is a great example of how you can extend your brand and benefit from the spill over traffic between generic keywords and brand searches.

The point is that Yahoo has enough trust, content and link weight to be ranked highly for generic terms, but a number of smaller websites need to look a picking terms that relate to their brands,trademarks or business name.  Once they have secured #1 results for these they can then branch out to cover related terms, and continue to expand as they reach targets.  Among a number of internal and external activities such as sponsorship and PR activities Yahoo also spends millions of content development, online partnerships which help build and encourage backlinks.

What about being ranked #1 for just a single keyword?

There is no point spending all your resources to try and be ranked #1 for a single generic keyword unless you have the resources to support a large seo and link building project.  Another perspective is to change away from a vanity view of trying to be ranked #1 for the keyword “seats” when a majority of searches use multiple keywords and you only sell Holden car seats. Also if you are going down the process of link building you need to ensure that you don’t start spamming the search engines by having all your links screaming a single keyword or phrase “matt cutts rank me higher!”

Why can Yahoo rank highly for generic terms?

Yahoo is able to avoid a number of the typical rules around choice of keyword based on competitors because of its strong online presence, but you will notice there are a number of other generic terms such as Jobs or Travel that Yahoo has made a business decision to not yet challenge for #1. Its not all black hat as Yahoo has the benefit of trusted domains, rich content websites and a very large network of relevant and trusted websites.

7 comments Posted in search industry

Is Google selling sponsored banners inside AdSense?

Posted on February 10, 2010 by

I often see little quirks and sometimes bugs when setting up clients campaigns or researching their competitors but this latest issue seems to have a commercial benefit for both Google & Webprofits.  The issue arises when setting up your Google Adsense ads and you select to preview the AdSense unit. The standard preview is shown below to the right and is a clear example/test window with no working AdSense.

These preview units are match to you colour palette preferences, unit size and other settings such as custom font type.  What is interesting is that these preview windows are actually being reloaded to display live Google AdSense banners for companies such as Webprofits. There are 3 different types of ad unit you can choose but the Webprofit ads only show when it is image ads only or both text and image.

This would indicate that it is more than just a simple bug in the code and something targeted and possibly controllable by AdWords advertisers.  We decided to examine the code and discovered there was actually two different ad urls being displayed, the first is the 2 text link window shown to the right and the second is from the image at the bottom of this article.

The preview window ads links should contain the following code

http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/ads?client=ca-google-asfe&format=234x60_as&output=html&h=60&w=234&ad_type=text_image&adtest=on”

Webprofits Ads

The other ad urls are what is shown when the image ad shown below is displayed inside Adsense or on an external website using Google Adsense, notice the similarities with a real AdSense url.

Webprofits ads showing inside Adsense contain http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/aclk?sa=l&ai=

Url is similar to what is shown on a external website showing Google Adsense http://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/aclk?sa=l&ai=

It is also happening for multiple banner sizes so is it a new channel you can target within your Google AdWords campaigns or just a bug in the system that is giving massive exposure to a few of Google’s heavy advertisers? Since it is a live ad and likely generating clicks the advertisers must know that it is happening, but are they actively targeting the AdSense settings pages or is it part of Google’s automatic placement?

No comments Posted in adsense

Google Patents the Future of Advertising

Posted on February 5, 2010 by

Mediapost has once again take the time to draw together several key updates to Google’s January patents and what it means for future “targeting” of ads makes for a very interesting opportunity for online marketing and how well it can target you.

The Google engineers appear to have had a very productive Christmas with several updates to their patents filed in January but there are several patents that appear to be of interest for further expanding and improving their advertising products:

  1. a method to deliver ad targeting and measuring tools over networks
  2. simultaneous ascending price auction to allocate advertising inventory to bidders
  3. video ad overlay advertisement creator
  4. wireless network-based location approximation
  5. an ability to generate and serve tiles in a digital mapping system
  6. an ability to claim real estate in a panoramic 3d map environment for advertising

So lets review the new patents and which products would they offer the most likely fit and benefit to and even how they could further expand the product to be a category killer.

1) The main point around this patent is that it is also using geographic targeting which can further refine and measure response rates to ads and assist with profiling.  The issue about this patent which is of concern is the abstract which reads “the advertisement based upon profiling of users and networks” and it shows the true potential of the product to be a category killer.  The reason is that better delivered ads gain higher click-thru-rates, better conversion rates for advertisers and offer a better user experience for searchers, but this can depend on the intentions of advertisers when using such powerful targeting.

Google advises that one of the purpose of the patent is to reduce the effects of banner blindness where users begin to ignore ads, and also reduce duplication but still reach the largest possible target audience.  It will also assist by changing ads displayed if users continue to ignore them, to something more relevant to their search or websites they have previously visited.

2) This patent appears to be around optimising the value of popular ad spots and placements but also seeks to reduce the unsold stock currently available for markers by more efficient allocation and bidding, it is focused on improving Google’s content distribution networks.  The other element is that you are no longer just bidding and if you get the right price you get a place, you can now have a live auction environment that can dramatically inflate prices paid for advertising placement by advertisers.  The product seems suitable for Adsense which Google is aggressively promoting as it expands its content and affiliate networks, but this product can also relate to Radio & Television ads…

3) It appears at this stage that this is just an improved version of the current YouTube popup banners that are shown over each video, as it takes into account keyword and search behaviour when selecting what video to display.  What makes me think that this patent brings YouTube closer to competing with Hulu is part of sentence from patent claim 3 “video playback controls for simultaneously controlling playback of both the digital video and the video overlay advertisement”. It appears that this function could be similar to Hulu users do not have the ability to skip the video advertisement and the ad and video continue to be played but cannot be skipped.

4) This patent is one of the more interesting patents as it allows Google to get around mobilephone carriers who may charge or restrict access to users locations with a solution that calculates users geographic location by “observation/analysis of packets transmitted or received by the access point”.  This can also already be done with Skyhook Wireless by using the MAC addresses of nearby wireless access points and proprietary algorithms. This is very suitable for Google Maps, StreetView and the ability for Google to serve ads from business relevant to your current geographic location.

5) This patent seems mostly suited to Google Maps but primary for mobile devices who don’t always have access to the internet, and also appear to allow for overlaid items to be also shown when offline.  Being how devices such as the Verizon Droid or Google Nexus One can be heavy data users the offline storage or caching of map tiles has an advantage.

6)This product is perfect for Google Goggles and Google Maps StreetView, as it appears to have the ability to offer a augmented environment that can display property information, and add additional layers which may include one or more promotional features “ads” within the users view.  The overlaid information may contain a useful details such local landmarks like Circular Quay along with next Ferry times to Manly as it knows your Google calendar has your next meeting at Manly.  Where the product’s potential gets interesting is that the weather forecast maybe sponsored by Allianz Insurance or local businesses that match your preferences may be able to show sponsored notifications.

There are already companies working out how they can use augmented reality and clicking on the above image will take you to 35 excellent examples of awesome real-life examples of how companies are testing and encouraging virtual worlds.

The patent also appears to allow for the identification of features such as billboards or banners and replacing them with updated or new advertisements.  But this presents the problem TV broadcasters have battled for years when overlaying stadium sponsors with their broadcast partners, who is entitled to be shown? Imagine if you can now buy dynamic billboards in StreetView or that old bus shelter with the last years ad can be updated to show your new campaign.  There is also potential for guerrilla marketing where your competitors may buy sponsored placement outside your store or building.

Not to be left out it seems that even Yahoo’s Flickr is joining the augmented reality with a new patent that offers the ability to combine maps, photographs and notes with your captured photographs.

So how many of these patents will be fully utilised or is it a race to see who can invent the most patents to protect any possible future developments by competitors?

No comments Posted in google

AdWords offers Click-to-Call

Posted on January 9, 2010 by

Google sent out a email notification today that is advising of a new feature coming soon for AdWords advertisers who allow their adwords campaign to be shown on high end mobile devices such as iPhone, Droid, Nexus One and Palm WebOS. This AdWords click-to-call feature seems to be closely related to existing offerings by AdMob which Google purchased recently for $750 million.

The email sent out by their AdWords team is shown below:

Dear AdWords Advertiser,
We’re pleased to announce that beginning in January, your location-specific business phone number will display alongside your destination url in ads that appear on high-end mobile devices. Users will be able to click-to-call your business just as easily as they click to visit your website. You’ll be charged for clicks to call, same as you are for clicks to visit your website.
How will phone numbers appear in my ads?
Based on the customer’s geographic location, the phone number and closest business address will appear as a fifth line of ad text when the ad appears on mobile devices with full HTML browsers (e.g. iPhone, Android, Palm WebOS).
Where will I be able to see the results?
At launch, you’ll be able to view calls from your ads on your Campaign Summary page within AdWords from the “click type” segment option under the “Filter and Views” drop down.
How will I be charged for phone calls I get from my ad?
The cost of a click to call your business will be the same as the cost of a click to visit your website.
What actions should I take?
If you’d like your ads to show location-specific phone numbers when displayed on mobile devices, make sure that your campaign is targeting iPhones and other mobile devices with full HTML browsers, and that you have included phone numbers with your business addresses in the locations under your Campaign settings.

If you would prefer your ads not show phone numbers, simply remove the phone number from the business listings included in your campaigns targeting mobile devices.
We hope this new feature enables you to connect more easily with your potential customers.

A very Proactive move by Google

This is a very proactive step by Google to capture more mobile market share but also allows for business to gain more direct feedback about their campaign effectiveness in generating calls.  The interesting point is that Google has monetised what can already be done for free on organic listings and when a number is shown within a website.

The click-to-call is similar to a pay-per-call but enables this to be done for the cost of a single click, where pay-per-lead can be much more expensive.  This step can possibly reduce the requirements for business to use services such as ReachLocal who offer phone tracking via 1300,1800 numbers.

But where does this put popular toll numbers which have been used in the past to track phone calls? Searchengineland articles have discussed in the past the issues with using toll numbers as search engines seem to struggle to confirm and cross match your Name, Address and Phone if you have multiple contact numbers.  This is more likely too affect Local Search and regional SEO campaigns as you no longer have a constant local contact number listed.

It will be interesting to see how Google AdWords works with SMEs using Google Voice for their phone tracking solutions and if it will offer extra features unique to Google voice as it allows business to have local contact numbers for each region.

No comments Posted in Adwords

Campaign optimisation tips for Christmas

Posted on December 28, 2009 by

Leading up to Christmas can often mean a downturn in visitors to many business websites as companies wind down marketing and employees spend more time on eBay and Amazon than working. If you have noticed a drop in clicks it might be the time to examine how the content placement can compliment your existing campaigns.

The benefit of a content placement campaign is that you can reach many of these sites of interest visited by bored employees and can be very cost effective compared to traditional search campaigns. It might be also an idea to examine how a specific holiday campaign landing page can drive that extra boost in business leads and sales. Just because your competitors have wound down their marketing and given for 2009, there is no reason you should follow. If business has slowed down, we suggest setup a specific holiday campaign and landing page offering discounts for 2010 that are purchased before 31st December 2009.

The typical Christmas downturn also presents a massive opportunity for savvy business to use this time to review their existing campaigns with a more in-depth online marketing audit, we offer hourly web marekting support packages for specific online marketing assistance. Ensure that your campaign is up to date and covers any services you plan to introduce in 2010 and examine if you can add conversion tracking to get better campaign ROI. Starting your 2010 campaigns refreshed and organised can mean next year will ensure that you start ahead of your competition and ready!

No comments Posted in web marketing
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