Posts Tagged ‘Google Adwords’

Google Links AdWords Express to Google+

Tuesday, February 5th, 2013

A recent update has been noticed for Google’s AdWords Express. An advertisement now appears on Google+ to bring people into the circle of a brand. One of the features of the new advertising units is to promote a brand’s local Google page as the landing page. Besides the new integration with Google+ there are some other new features to AdWords Express.

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Photo by methodshop.com

This is all an attempt to revamp AdWords express to appeal to brands new to advertising. It seems unlikely a digital marketing agency would consult this new advertising feature; in fact, it seems to be Google’s attempt to keep brands from consulting an agency for outside assistance. The digital marketing agency then needs to keep track on the program to better compete against it. The social media agency could counter the ease of the new service by bundling its services together and touting a service which creates a homepage and then uses as an advertising platform as a superior product to AdWords Express which does not require the advertiser to have a web page.

Google Promoting AdWords Express In Google+ As Way “To Get More Followers”

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Posted in Digital Marketing, advertising, google | No Comments »

Adwords Updates Its Interface

Tuesday, November 20th, 2012

A problem with AdWords is the millions of available keywords available. Measuring the success of those keywords is a cumbersome task and that is assuming the ‘no referrer data’ problem did not exist. It does exist outside the Google ecosystem, so it is a benefit that AdWords has now updated its interface to allow advertisers better access to keyword success rates.

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The new report, it is actually a new column within the reports, shows which keywords triggered the impression of the ad. It does not yet show which keywords triggered an ad that was not clicked on. It seems likely that AdWords will one day provide that data as well. For now though, this is a boon for the social media agency when it comes to finessing keywords and ad bidding processes.

Another update to AdWords’ interface is in impression share reporting. Search and display impressions are now shown separately and the advertiser is now able to segment the data into time of day, as well as other factors. This new data can then be directly applied into the rules governing ad groups.

Part of the reason paid searching is s productive as an investment is because of the increasing targeting ability. Google’s refinements only make that more likely. The value of social media notwithstanding, the social media agency needs to make sure it retains competency with paid search marketing.

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Posted in Business Social Networking, Internet Advertising, advertising | No Comments »

New Rules for SEO After Penguin

Monday, October 29th, 2012

Google’s latest update, Penguin, implemented some new tricks for search engine optimization. Google has not been forthcoming about what the new algorithm favors, but there is speculation. Konstantin Kreouzis has a new essay where he lists five unknown factors that might have an impact. The essay does not provide any data to prove these rules matter, but Kreouzis hints that there might be some validation informing the essay.

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The first unknown rule is a mixture of anchor texts. The more variety in the anchor text then the more authentic the links appear to Google. The bots that spread links everywhere tend to use the same anchor text, so Google uses that as a way to determine quality. Another rule to variety of links deals with spread across a website. If links point to low level pages and the top level page equally, then Google counts that as inauthentic. The top page should have the most links and they should become increasingly rare the deeper into a website Google goes. Links should also be coming in from more then .com domains. The more variety in the type of domains then the more credible Google scores a website.

The next rule is one that needs some evidence, but the explanation makes sense. Programs that spin content tend to have uniformity in the size of words. They tend to be very long or very short. Varying the size of words helps increase credibility rating in Google’s estimation. The average word length for an article should be 5.5 words.


Google is also now measuring the time people spend on a website. The way this is done is by measuring the time after search engine results are presented to the time when the user returns for another search. There are obviously problems with this measure, but there is some data to suggest a quick turn around tells Google the quality of the results is not as good as if the user returns to searching in a long time.

While the social media agency might like to stop dealing with search results altogether, for now it still represents the best investment to be made for driving traffic. Google’s Penguin update was a way to stop the gaming of the system and to move to quality as a determinant of ranking. Hopefully these rules help the agency know some of what Google is looking for.

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Posted in SEO, Technology, google | No Comments »

Recovering The Data Not Provided In AdWords

Monday, October 22nd, 2012

Months ago Google announced its new secure login, which would turn much of the data social media agencies see in their AdWords campaigns into “Not Provided”. In advance of this change Google announced it would have a single digit percentage point hit on the data, however some sites are reporting as much as 40% of the data being lost. This is a significant issue because agencies spend a lot of time weighing the keywords and moving in on ideal actions. Losing any of the data about how people are coming to a website means there might be efficiencies being lost.

Carrie Hill, the dircetor of marketing at KeyRelevance, LLC, has an essay where she discovers a way to recapture some of that normally lost data. Using a series of custom filters in the AdWords dashboard, allows the social media agency to uncover the last web page the user was on before landing in a website. It is not a complete reversal of the Google change, but it does help uncover some information that would otherwise be lost.

How To Turn (Not Provided) into Useful, Actionable Data

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Posted in Branding, advertising, google | No Comments »

Google Merchant Updates Tools

Friday, October 5th, 2012

Sometime this month the last bit of traffic to Google Shopping partners that are not paying for the service will taper off. This change was announced months ago. In preparation for this change, Google is planning to roll out some new tools for the merchants on the service.

One of the immediate tasks before the social media agency with clients using Google Shopping is the adoption of the auction. It is similar to the model used on AdWords, but there are differences and the agency and the business will need to figure out which parameters work best for them. Not only will the new auction need testing, but keeping up with Google will be a challenge. Google is constantly testing new ad types and units, so figuring out which ones are most effective for their particular circumstance will require effort.

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Between the final conversion to a for-pay service and the holiday season the digital marketing agency can expect many changes to come from Google. Keeping daily tabs on the Merchant Center will be necessary to make sure clients are receiving the best possible product for their money.

http://searchengineland.com/google-merchant-tools-product-data-the-focus-for-google-shopping-in-q4-134844

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Posted in Digital Marketing, google, new tools | No Comments »

AdWords for Video Now Open To All

Thursday, May 3rd, 2012

Google’s AdWords for Video is the service that brings video ads to brands. Until recently, however the service was available only to large brands, but now Google has opened the service up to anyone and is particularly interested in finding small businesses to begin advertising with the service.

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YouTube offers advertisers two methods of payment. One is that the advertiser only pays if the ad is watched. Viewers are given an opportunity to opt out of an ad after a certain amount of time has ben reached. The second charging option for advertisers is to be charged only if the viewer watches at least 30 seconds of the video.

AdWords is also updating its service to help brands, especially the smaller ones that are not as experienced with the new formats. AdWords will offer an estimate of views given a certain set of advertisement parameters. The platform has also been updated to look more like the normal AdWords platform, so there is less confusion when adopting the new service. The final update is an ability to see what the viewer does after the ad is seen. If the user moves on to the brand’s channel and subscribes, then that is reported.

All of these changes will help the social media agency. Video is an increasingly effective and lucrative form of advertising. The new changes not only open up the service to many social media agencies but also allow brands to see what other actions of value might be related to individual videos.

Google AdWords for video is now open to small and medium size businesses

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Posted in Internet Advertising, advertising, google | No Comments »

AdWords Now Matches Misspellings

Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012

The social media agency has for a long time now been composing AdWords ads that account for misspellings and plurals in search queries. An update allows AdWords to now automatically match keywords in ads for misspellings and plurals, but advertisers will be able to opt out of the new changes.

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There are five areas the new changes will take effect within: misspellings, plurals, stemming (“single serve” to “single serving”), accent marks, abbreviations and acronyms. Google says these differences affect almost 7% of all searches. After a trial period with some advertisers, Google says there has been a noticeable gain in search clicks. The gain has been almost 3%.

The new format will take a few months to completely rollout, so advertisers have some time to figure out if they want to opt out of the new system. It will be the rare advertiser that does opt out of this update. This is good news for the social media agency not only because it may represent a 3% boost in search clicks, but it also means less work is needed when composing search ad campaigns. No longer will the agency need to anticipate errors in customer searches and instead the agency can focus on what customers want when searching.

Google will include misspellings automatically in AdWords keyword lists

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Posted in Digital Marketing, advertising, google | No Comments »

Google’s Trusted Store Badge

Thursday, April 26th, 2012

Google is rolling out a new icon on search results. Certain vendors will appear in search results with a medal immediately to the left of where the URL is. The medal icon is Google’s tip to the searcher that the site is a trusted store. A trusted store is supposed to make customers more at ease for ecommerce by demonstrating the site adheres to certain standards for customer protection including purchase protection.

Google Trusted Store Badge

To qualify for the status there is an application process. The business must then turn over a range of data to Google so the process is fair, not arbitrary and consistent among all the qualifying vendors. At the moment not all qualified stores are showing up with the badge, ostensibly so Google can test click results for the badges and not badged results. Google does say that participation in the program will not affect ad rankings in the AdWords process.

This is another good development for the social media agency. A small badge that can help users know firms have been transparent and satisfied certain criteria will helps users become more confident. As they have more and more beneficial experiences with ecommerce, then their overall willingness will also increase regardless of the ‘trusted store’ status of vendors. This is also not part of any new trend for unwilling vendors. The internet is increasingly making every business more transparent and this process should be encouraged. Overall it makes marketing in the internet more important, helping the social media agency.

Google Tests Trusted Store Program With AdWords

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Posted in Internet Advertising, Online Shopping, google | No Comments »

AdWords has Issues and Needs Supervision

Tuesday, February 28th, 2012

Google AdWords has had issues in the past, most famously was the posting of illegal pharmacy ads that required a $500million settlement. However, Valentine’s Day highlighted another issue with AdWords. For some of the day on Valentine’s Day ads were rendered for Proflowers that said a competitor was sold out of flowers. The competitor eventually realized what was being posted and called Google on it. The ads in question were ceased, but not before some people were exposed to them.

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The problem was not false advertising on the part of Proflowers but rather a flaw with Google’s Keyword Insertion program. For advanced users a keyword can be put into the advertisement. In this case people searching for ‘Chez Bloom’ were given a Proflowers ad that was supposed to say they were sold out for Valentine’s Day but were able to accept orders for later, except the keyword insertion of ‘Chez Bloom’ into the ad made it seem Chez Bloom was sold out instead.

It was a honest mistake, but highlights an important lesson for the digital firm. Brands need to keep tabs on their advertisements to make sure they are being implemented correctly and efficiently. Brands also need to keep an eye on their competitor’s ads. Even though Google has a policy of reviewing ads before they are sent out, errors can slip through, assuming Google even knows what constitutes an error in some cases.

Advertising Failure

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Posted in Digital Marketing, google | No Comments »

Delicious Organizes Your Favorite Websites

Friday, November 6th, 2009

Social bookmarking site Delicious.com helps you keep track of all the sites you want to remember. It’s free and easy to use.

Simply register for a Delicious account and upload the “Tag” button to your browser. This will make it quicker and easier to bookmark pages you find interesting.

Suppose you’re trying to find information on Google Ad Words. You search the Internet and find a page you like. Tag the site, and a window will open asking for new information. This is where you can input relevant keywords, or tags, that will allow you to return to this specific Web site link after you’ve accrued different Web site links

Say you tag one article as “Fundamentals,” because it’s a useful site about getting started with Google Ad Words.

Delicious Organizes Your Favorite Websites

A few weeks pass and you accumulate more links.

Let’s say you want to return to the introduction to Ad Words article, the one tagged “Fundamentals.” Click the tag on the right-hand sidebar that says “Fundamentals,” and immediately, your list will consolidate to show just the links you tagged with “Fundamentals.”

Now lets see why Delicious is “social bookmarking.”

There are lots of other marketers and advertisers using Ad Words, and they’ve probably come across some useful sites that you’ve missed. Delicious’ bookmarks are made public. This means peers can see your bookmarks and use your tags; your bookmarks can benefit other people.

Delicious takes the most-clicked on article from that keyword and shifts it to the top. So the most applicable and trustworthy site is the first one users can select. Because they’re all public, everyone discovers new and relevant information. Together, this creates a steady stream of useful Web sites, all linked together by tags.

The lesson is that social bookmarking takes a world of chaos and make it orderly and helpful for other people.

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Posted in Business Social Networking | 2 Comments »