Google introduced ‘Account Activity’ to give you more insight into your Google Account!

Google has launched a new ‘Account Activity’ dashboard that allows people to ‘step back and review’ their online activity. This tool requires users to sign up for it and keeps a log of user activity performed on all Google’s products. In a blog post Google explained that this tool will provide users with a password-protected monthly report of their activity.

Google said, “Knowing more about your own account activity also can help you take steps to protect your Google Account. For example, if you notice sign-ins from countries where you haven’t been or devices you’ve never owned, you can change your password immediately and sign up for the extra level of security provided by 2-step verification.”

With this tool, users can know the number of emails they have been sending and receiving and with whom. Their search queries as well as the time they spend logged in from different devices. The dashboard has Gmail, Latitude and search but more services- notable Google+ will be incorporated soon.

Google’s new platform for AdWords advertisers!

Last month, Google introduced the AdWords Community, a new platform for AdWords advertisers to exchange ideas, advice and stories (upgraded from Google’s old Help Forum).

The Community is now a month old and filled with even more helpful content, including the AdWords Wiki (http://goo.gl/mVlP2)—articles written by professionals on topics like how to start with AdWords and how to optimize your account.

If you haven't checked out the new Community yet, You can do so by visiting:  http://www.en.adwords-community.com/t5/AdWords-Community/ct-p/AdWords

Google : ‘unblocking’ is necessary to allow Google to crawl better and to judge your site better!!

Google's Matt Cutts posted a video asking site owners, webmasters and search engine optimization professionals to ‘not’ block the GoogleBot from accessing their CSS and JavaScript files.

As per Matt Cutts, this ‘unblocking’ is necessary to allow Google to crawl better and to judge your site better. This will eventually help them show better search results to the user.

  

Google’s new research on Organic search results and their impact on search ads!!

Even when brands’ organic terms are ranked number one, they get 50% more clicks, on average, when there’s an accompanying paid search ad.

“It is a very surprising result, and, I think in some ways, it runs counter to what people would think but the data speaks for itself,” David Chan, Google’s lead researcher for this study.

The study found that 82% of ad clicks are incremental when the associated organic result is ranked between 2 and 4, and 96% of clicks are incremental when the brand’s organic result was 5 or below.

Chan noted that there was a lot of variability from advertiser to advertiser and term to term, so he encouraged advertisers to do their own experimentation.

 

Google will be seeing billions in mobile revenue!!

The rapid adoption of smart mobile devices, such as the iPhone and the iPad, is changing how consumers interact with search engines, and advertisers are paying attention.

Marin Software has released a white paper titled “The State of Mobile Search Advertising.” It outlines the key mobile trends, projections and optimization strategies for advertisers seeking to get the most from their mobile paid-search campaigns.

It also provides more evidence of how the search and paid-search markets are being profoundly affected by mobile devices. In almost every category there’s triple-digit growth according to the report, which projects that smartphones and tablets will combine to generate 25 percent of all Google’s paid search clicks in the US by the end of this year.

Marin also estimates that nearly one-quarter (23 percent) of “Google’s US paid-search spends [by December 2012] will come from mobile campaigns.” These are remarkable statements, and it means that Google will be seeing billions in mobile revenue accordingly.

Google releasing a new set of Social reports within Google Analytics!

While social networks have grown incredibly for the last 3-4 years and consequently began driving meaningful amount of referral traffic to websites, tools for analyzing and measuring effectively those social media visitors still remained behind.

Google has announced that over the upcoming weeks it is adding to its site’s traffic analysis tool, Analytics, new set of social media reports which will assist website owners to track and to understand better their social networking activity and integration with their site.

Google AdSense announced enhanced services to give publishers more control!

Google AdSense announced enhanced services intended to give publishers more control over the ads Google delivers to their websites.

In a post, product manager Dan Stokeley wrote on the AdSense blog, the updates are in the ad review center. Publisher users can now see ads delivered to their sites via all available types of targeting and review them before they go live.

While the ad review center used to group together certain ads for the publisher’s once-over, now they’re broken down on an ad-by-ad level. If you’ve specified types of ads you might want to block, those ads will appear highlighted in the review center, Stokeley explained. The process of selecting ads to block is now just a click-and-drag one.

Google Adwords new addition: Hover Action!

Google AdWords announced a new quick way to check the status of your ads. You can now hover over the speech bubble near the keyword to see the status of the ads.

After you hover over the icon, it opens a little window showing you the status of the ads.

You can even edit the ad location targets and retest the ad right in the hover window.

For more details on this small but significant change see the AdWords help section.

Google giving display its own tab within AdWords!

Google announced changes to AdWords, which the company says will simplify the way advertisers buy and run display ads through AdWords.

“For nine years, AdWords customers have been buying display campaigns through an interface designed for search,” says Google’s AdWords team in a blog post. “This is like trying to run in glass slippers — it might work, but it’d be a lot more effective with the right running shoes. So we’re giving display its own tab within AdWords.”

The tab will roll out over the next few weeks.

In addition to the tab, Google announced a new contextual engine (the system that matches ads to pages based on keywords) update for AdWords, which the company calls the “biggest enhancement ever”. The company uploaded the following video of Director of Product Management for Display, Brad Bender, talking about both the tab and the updated engine:

Google says the update give the engine the ability to combine the reach of display with the “precision” of search using “next-gen” keyword targeting.

 

 

Google HTTP Referer Change !!

This week Google posted an update on the Google Webmaster blog titled Upcoming changes in Google’s HTTP Referrer.

It said, “Starting in April, for browsers with the appropriate support, we will be using the "referrer" meta tag to automatically simplify the referring URL that is sent by the browser when visiting a page linked from an organic search result. This results in a faster time to result and more streamlined experience for the user.”

(1) This only currently impacts browsers that can support the HTTP referer, which is only the latest version of Chrome.

(2) Google Analytics will automatically adjust to make sure this traffic is not labeled as direct traffic but rather search traffic.

(3) Google will communicate to other Analytics companies about the change in hope they adjust their software as well.