Avoid legal traps with your AdWords!

Buying AdWords is an effective way to ensure your business makes easy money from online ads. They're a sure-fire way to bring in new business as long as you use the right words.

 But last week, eyewear retailer Specsavers found itself in court against a Canadian firm, accusing Coastal Contacts of engaging in misleading or deceptive conduct after the company allegedly ran advertisements on results pages where users searched for the words "contacts" and "SpecSavers".

You need to be extremely careful with your AdWords. You can encroach on others' territory and find yourself in some real legal trouble.

Try and make as much money as you can, but be careful not to step on any other business's toes, especially when using another company's name.

AdWords Display Ad Builder could be a very valuable resource in expanding your accounts!

Google’s Display Network can be a great place to generate some additional traffic, leads, and branded exposure. While text ads go a long way in garnering attention, sometimes an image ad can grab searchers’ attention more quickly, especially considering the fact that you can tailor your image ads specifically to match a page’s content.

Google has made it easy for you to build your own image ads very simply in AdWords’ Display Ad builder feature. It could be a very valuable resource to you in expanding your accounts.

Google has made this process even easier. You can create an image ad from any of your existing text ads in AdWords. In the Ads tab in the AdWords user interface, click on the ad you want to use to create your image ad and go to “More actions…” then “Generate display ad…”  Once you click to generate a display ad, Google will create suggested ad layouts using the text from your text ad: click the “Show More” button to get more generated suggestions.

In using your existing ads to create image ads you not only save yourself time, but you can also base your image ads off text ads that have proven to be successful. Plus, you can customize any of Google’s suggested ads to refine their look/layout. This is a really handy feature that could very quickly and easily expand your presence on Google’s Display network.

AdWords-style auction is expected to have wide-ranging effects to sell mobile inventory!

Google’s recent move to sell mobile inventory via an AdWords-style auction is expected to have wide-ranging effects, with some forecasting it will become the industry standard way to sell mobile display ads.

Sources have indicated that the recent price cuts by Apple and Google, announced last week, have already resulted in a slight shift in pricing offered by rival ad networks .

The drop in prices comes as Facebook is expected to announce the launch of mobile ad formats at a US event later this month. Facebook ads can similarly bought via a self-service auction model.

Google has effectively dropped its minimum bid stipulation for AdMob inventory, which is said to have prompted Apple changing how it sells iAds, in a move that has been welcomed by media planners. However, some have questioned whether this will lead to publishers seeking alternative routes to market

Mobile search: Americans searched for restaurants the most, followed by gas stations!

A report by local-mobile ad network xAd has shown some very promising numbers for the mobile search and ad market. The US based Q4-2011 data has been collected from mobile sites and apps that run the ads of xAd as well as the related user behavior taken into account.

xAd reported high performance for the ads it served, including click-through rates of seven percent for search and .6 percent for display. Breaking it down even further, 37 percent of mobile-local searchers and five percent of mobile-display users took secondary actions, which are post-click activities such as calling businesses and accessing driving directions.

The report has revealed that the Americans searched for restaurants the most, followed by gas stations. Bars and clubs make the rear of the search preferences graph in Q4:

Google, Mobile Search & Valentine’s Day!

Google released some data on mobile search and Valentine’s Day. The company said, “A whopping 62 percent of total searches for popular national chain restaurants [in the US] on Valentine’s Day occurred on high end mobile devices or tablets.”

Google focused on national restaurant chains because it could disambiguate and identify them as such. It could well be that the 62 percent figure extends across the entire restaurant category.

Google also reported last-minute searches for flower-related terms grew 227 percent during the same week leading up to Valentine’s Day. On the day itself “Consumers were 560% more likely to click to make a call week over week.  And mobile clicks to get directions increased 514% over the same period as people were scrambling to find a nearby florist.”

Google also graphed click to call actions hour by hour on V-Day itself (w/in California), with an early peak at 8:30 am(ish) and another one during the lunch hour.

Google also saw tablet queries rise on the weekend before Valentine’s Day. That’s consistent with tablet usage patterns, which are heavier on the weekends and during the evening. Last-minute searches went to PCs and smartphones.

Google uses the data to make the valid point that if your business (florist, restaurant, etc.) wasn’t optimized for mobile you might have missed out on some meaningful revenue opportunities.

Volume of Searches for Popular Chain Restaurants in the US

Google AdWords Help Forum on a new platform!

Google has re-launched its AdWords Help Forum on a new platform and given it its own URL: www.en.adwords-community.com which redirects to a longer URL, where visitors are welcomed to “the official Google AdWords Community.”

Visitors to the old AdWords Help Forum are able to browse through the message archives, but Google has a big, yellow alert box at the top of the page pointing them to the new domain/forum.

While the old forum home page showed a list of “popular discussions,” the new community home page shows “Top Starred Contributions” and “Top Starred Authors.”

Google loves Wikipedia!

Google and Wikipedia are two most widely visited websites. There are no doubts that, Google is the reason why most of us visit Wikipedia. Google, co-founder, Sergey Brin believes that Wikipedia “one of the greatest triumphs of the Internet” and “an invaluable resource to anyone who is online”. It is not a hidden fact anymore that Google loves Wikipedia, whatever your Google search query is. There are 99% chances that, if Wikipedia has an article based on query, it will be shown on the first page.

Study shows that for 56% search queries Wikipedia is the top listed result on Google search result page. Further, Wikipedia ranks between 1 and 5 for almost 96% of the searches. Astonishingly, there were only 8 out of total 1,000 nouns, for which Wikipedia did not appear on the first page. Those are mail, news, trainers, national, sweets, wardrobe, phone and flight.

Reactions to this study have been mixed. Though it comes as good news for many, there are some who are not taking it nicely. Especially if they believe poorly written content on Wikipedia outranks quality websites offering same information. Wikipedia taking a first page position could mean one less place in the top ten for possible PPC paying corporations for some, while for others it means less searching.

 

 

Google’s new project: ‘Screenwise’!

You can get $5 gift card if you sign up for Google’s new project called ‘Screenwise‘. This project has the purpose to collect information on internet usage by regular people around the world. So to know every day browsing history, Google is planning to pay users who share their Search History.

All users have been told as of now, on a landing page with no sign up option, that they install a Chrome browser extension to allow data to be collected. This data will be paid for with gift coupons. The signing up payment is a $5 Amazon gift card, followed by an additional $5 gift card every three months until you max out your limit of $25.

As Google says, “Google is building a new panel to learn more about how everyday people use the Internet. The new project is called Screenwise. As a panelist, you'll add a browser extension that will share with Google the sites you visit and how you use them. What we learn from you, and others like you, will help us improve Google products and services and make a better online experience for everyone.”

Users who are 13 or older with a Google Account and willing to use the Google Chrome browser are eligible to join.

Google has stated this payment as their way of saying “thank you”.

Google launched Enhanced Ad Sitelinks for Adwords!

Google announced the launch of enhanced ad sitelinks, which the company calls its “strongest performing experiments.”

Google says that on average, clickthrough rates are 30% higher for ads with sitelinks, compared to ads without.

 “In testing, people reported that ads with enhanced sitelinks were more useful and relevant,” Google says. “And clickthrough rates were significantly higher than the same ad with traditional 2- and 3-line sitelinks.”

Only ads that show above Google results are eligible for this format. Also, the advertiser’s account must have active ads that are closely related to the sitelinks in the campaign.

Google Analytics: "Customize" button to tweak standard reporting to a more customized approach!

With a new "Customize" button in the action bar on all tabular standard reports, Google Analytics has allowed users to tweak standard reporting to a more customized approach. The Customize option will take Analytics users to a custom report builder that according to Google, can be used in certain cases as:

1. "New metrics, familiar reports – The best metrics are the ones that provide actionable insights into your business. Try adding different metric groups to your favorite reports to see if how it impacts your view of conversion rates.
2. Drill down into your data – Sometimes, the best route to a particular piece of data is a drilldown not found in any standard report. You could customize the Language report to drill into search terms for a language-by-language comparison of your organic search traffic.
3. Filter to find insights – Ad campaigns can span many networks. Try customizing the AdWords Campaigns report and applying a filter for Ad Distribution Network matches "Google Search" to see your performance on only Google Search." 

Google has also clarified that all standard reports cannot be turned into custom reports. In fact only the reports where you can spot the ‘Customize’ button can you turn the report. Google Analytics help center has more details on customizing a report.