Gazelle Interactive Blog

Adwords Editor 7.0 has been released without any new release.  I happened to stumble upon the release yesterday.   Below are the release updates from Google’s site:

Tags: Adwords Editor, Adwords Editor 7.0, Google Adwords

Google recenlty added to it’s alchohol policy by adding hard liquor as allowed adwords keywords and ad copy.

The Googleblog illustrates the difference between the beer and hard alcohol/liqueur policy thus:

Under the hard alcohol and liqueurs policy, you might market to individuals searching for helpful and relevant alcohol-related information by promoting holiday cocktail ideas or the caloric content of popular spiked beverages. Under the beer policy, you might state a specific sales promotion for a great winter ale.

These regulations currently only apply to the US. The updated alcohol policy will go live, based on local regulations, in other countries as the weeks progress.

Tags: Google Adwords Alchohol Policy, Google Hard Liquor Policy

I have implemented Google Friend Connect on my home page.  We are still trying to figure out the usefulness of it.  If you register for it on my site, try to send me a message so we can figure out how this social media tool is supposed to rival a facebook, etc.   If anyone has feedback as to the usefulness of this tool please reply to this post.

Thanks

Tags: Google Friend Connect

Google is releasing automatic matching for their Adwords platform.   Buyer beweare.   Automatic matching is something to tread very carefully with.  From what we have observed it has been matching your ads with keywords.

With this AdWords feature, Google automatically uses an advertiser’s excess budget to post ads against keywords other than those the advertiser is actually bidding on. Not all advertisers have been invited to test this new feature, but from what I have read not many may want to. According to Google:

Automatic matching shows your ads on relevant search queries not already captured by your keywords. It works by analyzing the content of the landing pages, ads, and keywords in your ad group. It then shows your ads on search queries relevant to this information. The system will continually monitor your performance on these queries and adjust its matches accordingly. Automatic matching aims to show your ads only on queries that yield a high clickthrough rate (CTR) and a cost-per-click (CPC) comparable to or lower than your ad group’s current average CPC. This way, your ads receive additional targeted traffic at a similar cost to your current traffic. Automatic matching won’t allow your spend to exceed your budget, and it also won’t affect the traffic you’re currently receiving. In addition, automatic matching will have no impact if your campaigns already capture the majority of relevant traffic.

Tags: Adwords Automatic Matching

Google has offered us a keyword tool for years that has made great improvements periodically.  This particular tool seems to weed out the unnecessary fluff that we never wanted in the first place such as all the extraneous long tail keywords.

It’s main difference is that instead of taking your suggested words, Google will now go look at your website and provide suggested keywords based on its content.

Some of the newest features are:

1. A magnifying glass icon takes you straight to Google Insights for that term.

2. Ad/Search Share tells you how your ad is showing up for that search term

3. We can filter the results by search volume, competition and suggested bid.

I am disappointed that the search volume numbers are apparently from the broad match search volume - not nearly as useful as the existing keyword tool that allows you to change that to exact match for more accuracy.  I also feel that I get a much larger and comprehensive list when I use the Google Keyword Tool.  However, if we are looking for a single term or set of terms, this tool lets us narrow things down quite a bit and may help uncover some valuable new keywords.

Tags: Adwords Keyword Tool, Google Adwords, Keyword Tool, Search Based Keyword Tool

Pay Per Click companies are ones that exist solely to manage and implement new and existing pay per click campaigns on a multitude of platforms such as Google Adwords, Yahoo PPC and Microsoft adCenter.  Pioneered by Google, the pay per click model is the most targeted form of online advertising.  Coupled with the scalablility and no limit on budget, the model makes for a great way to drive targeted business.  This needs to be done right though.  People need to find the right Pay Per Click company that fits their needs.   A larger company may not pay too much attention to your account while a smaller boutique agency like www.gazelleinteractive.com may cost more but you can be assured that you have quality Search Managers on your account.  Effecitvely, you have to put your money where it fits most, and that fit is with quality Pay Per Click Managers.  Contact us if you would like us to explain more.  We give an objective opinion and will be honest in our approach.  We don’t accept every business that comes our way, only the right kind of business.

Tags: Google Adwords, Pay Per Click, Pay Per Click Companies, Pay Per Click Management

Is Google Adwords redefining the way that traditional agencies are modeled?  I believe so.  Prior to this past year or two you really needed a full service agency to get your PPC, SEO, Creatives dones, Media buys for print, radio, tv and online.  As of late, the traditional Advertising Agency has downsized due to the fact that within the Google Adwords interface you can accomplish all of the above.  You can upload televison commericals and purchase medai times slots.  You can design static and dynamic banner ads and serve them on hundreds of thousands of websites, in strategic spots, ie. the banner ad model.   You can purchase publication and paper spots on any of the major newspapers.  You can even purchase radio time on over 1400 stations.   In this state of the economy, it makes me happy to know that I’m at least on this side of the Adwords interface.  Thank you Mr. Google!

Tags: Agency, Google Adwords, Traditional Agency

Quick question:  Should you outsource your search engine marketing campaigns?  Why not?  You need to find a good company with Account Managers that you will always be able to get in touch with.   Bigger SEM firms I would recommend to stay away from because they tend to not pay to much attention to your campaign.  Instead of throwing money into the wind, do your research.  It may be worth paying a little more for a company that actually cares about your goals and your initiatives.  I have been through both types of companies and this is spoken from personal experience.   Why hire someone in house when you can pay a fraction of the cost to get a team of actual professionals on your account, not some college intern.

Tags: Google Adwords, Outsourcing your Search Engine Marketing, SEM Companies

Google has launched its Gmail video chat plugnin today.  It’s clearer than skype!  Download it here.   http://mail.google.com/videochat

Tags: Gmail video chat plugin, http://mail.google.com/videochat

Beware of receiveing any emails from what seems to be Google.  They are fraudulent emails linking you to a site that emulates Google Adwords.  It asks you to input your username and password.  DO NOT DO THIS!  Your account will be hijacked!   Always make sure it is a valid Google url, ie. adwords.google.com.   If you have any questions as to whether it is fraudlent, contact and Adwords representative.

There are many factors that go into Quality Score.   Most recently, we have found a correlation of keyword to keyword insertion in ad copy and exact keyword on landing page has been increasing our quality score and thus lowering our cost per click.  We’ve also figured out ways to decrease pageload time.   We’ve found that the quicker the page loads, the higher our quality score gets.   Don’t want to give away the farm.

There are many Pay Per Click search engines to choose from both small and large concerning general and specific topics of interest. There are so many search engines some setup purely for shopping related websites others for business, travel, hobby related and practically any other topic of user interest.

However, if you are interested in making money online the Adwords tip of the day is don’t go past Google. Their Adwords program is without doubt the most sophisticated advertising platform obtainable today. Others are also there, but if you can work with Adwords you can work within any platform.

Adwords offers may features and benefits that place them at number one on the search engine list. They have an extremely efficient system that will bring in hordes of highly targeted traffic to your product or service. You can select highly specific keywords, make complex changes to your ad copy and sales presentation, research test and track your campaigns quickly. With the right Adwords tips it is a terrific method to generate huge sums of money and profit online.

Tags: adwords tips

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a real science of sorts that would enable you to ensure a favorably prominent position for your website in search engine results pages (SERPs). And since 80% of your traffic would come from the search engines, SEO methods take on a critical importance in the success of your online endeavor.

There are two kinds of SEO, on page and off page.

Off page SEO is all about the things you could to get a high page rank (PR) for your website after it has already gone live. These are the things which you actually execute outside the pages of your website, hence the name of this type of SEO.

What are these steps?

Well, all of them are concerned with building your link popularity. Your link popularity represents the number of back links your website has. To check you website’s current link popularity, head over to link popularity dot com and use the free tool that can be found there. The higher your link popularity, the higher your PR will be.

Building your link popularity involves increasing the number of websites that will link to yours. This is easier said than done. It’s not a matter of getting reciprocal links like “you link to me and I’ll link to yours.” Google, in particular, despise reciprocal linking. You have to get unilateral links to your website.

The best way to do this is by ensuring that you have unique, highly informative content. Really, this is the number one strategy to invite websites to link to yours. But your content in the realm of on page SEO, and it is assumed that you have made all efforts to ensure great content.

What are the other ways by which you could build your link popularity? Try the following techniques:

Article marketing. There are thousands of article directories on the Internet. You could submit articles to these websites. For every submission, you will be allotted a resource box where you could introduce yourself and share a link to your website. Now, some of these article directories have high page ranks. If your articles are accepted, they will be included in their pages. Having a website with high PR linking to yours would go a long way in increasing your own page rank. Additionally, if you will submit just one article to a thousand directories, you’d have a thousand pages linking to your website! Sounds like a daunting task? There are article directory submission services available. Seek them out. For as low as $25, they could submit your articles to as many as 200 directories.

Forum marketing. There are online communities dedicated to the subject that your website is serving. Seek them out, then join them. You’d be allotted a signature box, which would appear in your every post. In your signature box, you could leave a link to your website. Then post as many significant messages as you could. For every post you will make, you’d have a page linking to your website.

Advertise at craigslist dot com. Now here’s a novel strategy. The website is a well known classifieds website with a PR7 score. A PR7 score is rarely high! To have a link in a website like this would give a tremendous boost to your own website. Simply go to that site and choose the category that your pages belong to, then post your advertisement, with your link of course. It doesn’t matter that no one would get to read it. What matters is that the search engine spiders would find your website as they would come from a PR7 site.

Look for partners who are willing to include your list in their pages.

Try triangular linking. Google despises reciprocal linking, but triangular linking is one way of going around this limitation. Look for two or more webmasters who are willing to give it a shot. Webmaster A could post a link to Webmaster B’s website in his own pages. Webmaster B can post a link to Webmaster C’s website in his own pages. And webmaster C can post a link to Webmaster A’s website in his own pages. It may enforce the same principle as reciprocal linking, but the search engine spiders are not programmed to figure this out yet.

Tags: off page, on page, search engine optimization, seo

A Google Groups thread reports issues with using the Google AdWords Verify Code option. The verify code tool seems to have been removed.

Why? AdWordsPro.Steph said it was removed because it came with the PPA (Pay Per Action) options. Google dropped the PPA program back in July and slowly phased out the Verify Code tool in September. Steph said:

The ‘Verify Code’ option was one of the features that came with PPA ads, which AdWords started to phase out this September. Along with this sunset, the ability to ‘verify’ your conversion tracking code using the verification tool will be disabled this week. Moving forward, you’ll need to check conversions the old way - by completing a test conversion and checking your reports.

Hopefully this helps some advertisers that are looking for the tool.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Tags: conversion tracking, Google Adwords

Happy Halloween, everyone.  As beer enthusiasts should know, this is the perfect day to enjoy a nice bottle of pumpkin ale, and thanks to a recent policy change at Google, advertisers are much more likely to point the fact out.  The search giant, you see, is now permitting beer, champagne, and wine ads.

The ads - which have been given a “Non-FamilySafe status” - are popping up all over related results pages.  Ads for hard alcohol and liqueurs are not - they’re still banned.

Wine Ads On Google

Still, the policy adjustment is a rather huge step.  It comes not long after Google began allowing gambling ads in the UK, and so it seems that a new air of permissiveness is making its way through the corporation.

Or a touch of greed, at least.  It’s almost hard to imagine how many advertisers have been wanting to promote these products and services, and with the economy getting tough, Google might be relaxing its standards.

Anyway, a hat tip goes to Taylor Pratt, and we’ll keep an eye out for more policy changes.  Lastly, good luck if you haven’t yet located any pumpkin ale.

Tags: google alchohol policy

Google is letting Yahoo go it alone.

Bowing to federal regulators’ antitrust concerns, Google pulled the plug on a search-ad partnership with Yahoo that would have given the latter major new revenue.

“After four months of review, including discussions of various possible changes to the agreement, it’s clear that government regulators and some advertisers continue to have concerns about the agreement,” David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer, said in a blog post Wednesday.

The 10-year deal would have placed Google ads on some Yahoo search results, and the companies would have shared resulting revenue. The deal would have let Yahoo show ads on pages where its own technology, called Panama, wasn’t able to provide results, the company said.

In some ways, the Justice Department’s decision was not terribly surprising. Over the past two or three weeks, federal antitrust regulators became increasingly wary of the agreement and, in particular, tested Google’s resolve to remain in the deal, according to sources. Over the past few weeks, the give-and-take of negotiations between the parties began to falter as government regulators became increasingly unyielding in their demands.

Regulators, at one point two or three weeks ago, told Google that if the government pursued a lawsuit to block the deal, it would consider adding a monopolization count against Google to the complaint, which in essence would allege the search giant of using monopoly power in a relevant market. Apparently that hit a nerve with the search giant, noted a source, and it became evident to regulators that Google’s resolve to fight a legal battle was wavering when faced with the prospect of a monopolist label and all the regulatory oversight that could come with it.

Now that Google has given Yahoo the boot, is Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang getting eager to make a deal? Yang appears to be leaving the door very much open for an old suitor: Microsoft.

During a moderated “conversation” at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco, Yang said late Wednesday, “To this day, I have to say that the best thing for Microsoft to do is to buy Yahoo. I don’t think that is a bad idea at all…”

Tags: Google Yahoo Deal

Google has announced two major changes to its Adwords algorithm that are designed to improve quality.

The firm revealed that it has enhanced its quality score calculation to now take into account ad position when calculating an ad’s click-through rate, which will result in a more accurate quality score.

Google said that this change will help better evaluate the precise quality of consumers’ ads regardless of their position on a page.

The second change Google has enacted is in the criteria for top paid search listings which now means that if an ad meets the quality threshold, it can be shown in a prominent position irrespective of overall rank.

Previously an ad in a lower position could not overtake another in a higher position to be featured in paid listings or the on the top yellow bar on the search results page.

Google maintained that this change “ensures that quality plays an even more important role in determining the ads that show in those prominent positions”.

Tags: Google Adwords, quality score, quality score change