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Citisearch clickfraud revealed - click fraud activity of city search revealed

Written by Search Engine Genie @ 11:55 AM permanent link on Friday, May 30, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

Citisearch has been sued for not responding to clickfraud in their PPC results. Kabateck Brown Kellner, LLP filed a lawsuit today against Citisearch company for abusing their own system by Click fraud.

"Citysearch, part of IAC/InterActiveCorp, which is headed by Barry Diller, pays commissions to its salespeople based on the number of clicks their customers' ads receive, providing an incentive for click fraud, according to the lawsuit. Furthermore, the suit contends, contrary to Citysearch's own representations to its advertisers, it takes no real steps to prevent click fraud. And when customers become victims of click fraud, Citysearch fails to adequately advise them that they have been victimized or refund the money paid to Citysearch for that fraudulent activity.


The lawsuit seeks to represent all people or entities in the United States who paid money for pay-per-click advertising through Citysearch.com. "


Kabateck is a well known attorney in PPC industry. He recently won a Multi million dollar lawsuit against Yahoo and was part of a 90$ million dollar lawsuit against Google. So i am sure he will make City Search pay for it too.

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First letter of Ads in Lowercase Vs UpperCase in adwords

Written by Search Engine Genie @ 1:39 PM permanent link on Thursday, May 29, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

Many have a problem with ads whether to make the first letter caps or not. From my experience it doesn't matter whether the first character in any word is caps or now there won't be any difference in conversions.

Say if you have 2 Ads with same keywords one saying Perfume and other perfume Google Adwords will treat both these versions in a different way. Both ads will split the impressions and clicks between them. Eventually only one Ad will be shown.

Splitting the impressions and clicks just for 1st letter change is IMO insane i recommend testing both versions for sometime install good conversion tracking see which one converts better and drop the other version all together.

thanks,
SEG

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Fixed CPC - Yahoo search submit pro

Written by Search Engine Genie @ 1:35 PM permanent link on Wednesday, May 28, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

Yahoo Search Submit pro does offer an option where you can set a fixed CPC like 30 cents of something and use it for all the keywords in your campaign. Similarly i know exact seek does it. There are not many PPC search engines which offer this kind of stuff. I know Yahoo search submit does this since we do it for a particular client.

To qualify for Search Submit pro you need to have a budget spend of atleast 5000$ a month. Anything less than that will come under Search Submit Basic.

How it Works
You provide an XML feed of your URLs.
Your URLs are reviewed for quality and relevance. Approved URLs are then included in the index that powers algorithmic search results for Search Submit partner sites such as Yahoo! Search, AltaVista and AllTheWeb.
When Internet users visit the Search Submit Pro partner sites and enter keyword searches, your listings may appear within the search results based on their relevance to the user's search request.
Your content is kept up-to-date by frequent refreshes, typically every 48 hours. This ensures that potential customers view the latest offerings on your Web site.

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PPC strange question - how to get maximum traffic regardless of the industry

Written by Search Engine Genie @ 12:24 PM permanent link on Tuesday, May 27, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

Well I just saw this post and believe me it took me by surprise a member in digital point forums asks regardless of the amount he wants to get maximum visitors to his website. He wants more than 10,000 valid visitors in 24 hours. I feel people like him are the ones who make Google rich.

This is his post
"i dont mind content network/search networkwhich niche its easy to get clicks from adwords..i need around 10000 visitors per day..what keywords and max bids i choose?what niche but i need only usa canada uk aus traffic..anybody can help"

He had a very detailed follow up down the thread it says

"well other then adword where i can get 10000 visitors a day.. or 20000 visitors a dayahh not the PTC sites like bux.toi dont want to be a sucker all day doing seo freebies linkexchange etc.. only to see some 300-500$ month with no gurantee of future..i don't want to get 20000 visitors in like 30 days..i want to see this business as real business..according to my calculation20000 usa visitors clicks =$1000 (5cent per click) (not the adult niche)so if i can buy traffic cheap and get them to click .. (what ever niche it is what ever site they want . it can be copied from good ones or outsourced to build the one visitors looking for)Don't tell me i have to be a niche guru.. i can go to any good niche forum and get the highest viewed threads..and i can get the conent easily and be the next niche guru..Don't tell me how much i have to invest in advertising to get 20000 visitors per day.. and i will make big loss.. I have all sort of option to cut the cost to 60%i am not here to become a webmaster .. i am a businessman. I mean business.. and continous business.. I don't care what i have to invest..i have seen few pharma affiliates making 15k monthly with hired bulk mail servers and purchased online pharma buyers email list but i don't want to start anything illegal.. or spam..so many years and you guys even dont know what niche can get billions or millions of visitors per day? what keywords get billions or millions of visitors per dayinternet marketing gets 10000 visitors easy? i think this is 100% scam.. webmasters are not even 600 000 in total.. and most are dead.. and engaged in other stuff then webmastering..or is it just the todays top news keywords only gets billions of visitors per day and mostly from utube bbc and other news site? what i want to do ispush 20000 traffic per day to 1 website (from a good adnetwork not bux.to)600 000 traffic in 30 days..reduce the cost of advertising via blackhat methods..burn my bank balance..and see how much i made in 30 dayshow much affiliate commission how much in pay per click ads.. how much pay per play how much pay per signup how much pay per sale etc etc.."

I still doubt whether he is really looking for visitors or just fishing around for information

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Adwords multiple clicks from same IP - can it be prevented

Written by Search Engine Genie @ 12:48 PM permanent link on Monday, May 26, 2008 | Post a Comment | 2 comments

I heard a forum member ask this following question

"I notice that sometimes the same user will hit the same ad multiple times within seconds of each other,

here's a recent one:3:02:55pm 2:58:55pm 2:58:22pm Doesn't look like a bot, perhaps a confused user? So two questions1) Does Google Adwords charge me for each time this guy hits the ad in this span of time?2) If Google does, is there a way to prevent this person from seeing my ad after say the 2nd time they viewed it (Probably not)"

The answer for this Yes Google does detect multiple click from same IP in a short period of time. In order for Google to detect fraud clicks the clicks should be above a particular threshold level. if its just 2 or 3 clicks Google will mostly ignore it unless it happens regularly from the same IP or IP range.

To prevent this

1. You can just block that particular IP in your adwords control panel.
2. Report to Google about the fraud activity from that IP
3. Turn off your adwords account for sometime and see what happens.

If Google detects any fraud activity they mostly refund the amount charged for fraud clicks. I feel there is nothing to worry about this issue.

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problems with yahoo PPC - webmasterworld member

Written by Search Engine Genie @ 11:27 AM permanent link on Sunday, May 25, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

A webmaster world member tells the frustration he faces with yahoo search marketing and his PPC campaign with yahoo.

He says

"I've been away for a bit but decided to get my fellow members input on something that just pisses me off to NO END.

I advertise with Yahoo Search Marketing and have for a while now and I noticed last week that my account wasn't performing right. Low conversions, high impressions, low click through rates...around 0.70 when I usually experience about 2.00.

My rep is a GREAT GUY and has really helped me in the past and told me it was probably market fluctuation and try to wait a few days....I did what I was told and notice yesterday that my click through rates have plummeted even further...conversions were horrible and impressions were through the ROOF...about 170,000 impressions as of 2pm cst when in a normal day I would get 40 - 50,000 TOPS. I started digging and noticed that some of the keywords were INCREDIBLY OBSCURE and stuck out like a sore thumb...naturally I disabled them...about 20 or so...I'm talking some of these keywords would have 30 or 40,000 impressions....keywords that normally get minimal impressions.

What happened?

It did what it set out to do...my traffic was slaughtered b/c over the few days these false impressions gave the overall impression my account was performing poorly therefore lowering my ad placement and giving more weight to other ads with better click through...giving these ads higher placement with lower costs and driving down the competition.

I initially talked to yahoo about this and was told there was nothing that could be done other than shutting off the keywords...WHICH I DID. BUT, the damage is done...I sent an email to my rep trying to get management involved to solve this problem...it just SUCKS they do not have measures in place to protect us loyal advertisers from THIEVES.

"

I can understand his frustration we did face similar problems with yahoo but not anymore our clients accounts are running smoothly.

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Pay per click ad script - some pay per click ad scripts

Written by Search Engine Genie @ 10:49 AM permanent link on | Post a Comment | 0 comments

Many of us would like to have Pay per click ad serving scripts. There are some pretty good ad serving scripts available in market some of them are pretty popular.

We do have some open source ad servers too best of them is www.openx.org. its an amazing ad serving server which can be installed pretty easily. The scripts behind openx is easy to run.

Some paid scripts are Pay Per click Ad serving Script,
Inclick PPC ad server
AJ PPC ad serving script etc.

We will be adding more to this link keep checking this post

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Sudden hit with bad quality score in Google Adwords.

Written by Search Engine Genie @ 11:40 AM permanent link on Saturday, May 24, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

Recently one of our client account was badly hit with lower Quality score. It was difficult to figure out what the possible reason is. Quality score of some 200 keywords suddenly went poor which is not health for our campaign. We researched a bit and found in some forums people facing similar problems. Most probable reason most of the advertisers guess is the problem with the landing page.
If the Adwords Bot visits the site when the website is down Google adwords slap the account and relevant keywords with a Poor quality score. We do agree with this point since the site we are working on was down for about 2 days due to hosting problems and since it was a weekend we didn't pause the campaign and it resulted in bad quality score. But the status returned back to Good when the site was live back again.
So be careful when your site goes down its important to pause the campaign is something like this happens.

PPC blog team

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Comscore latest press release Google up 2 %

Written by Search Engine Genie @ 11:21 AM permanent link on Friday, May 23, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments



Comscore released their latest data on Search Engine Market share. As usual Google is way ahead of their competitors. Currently Google is No.1 with 61% market share according to Comscore. Yahoo is trailing behind with around 23% and MSN 3rd.



Comscore released their latest data on Search Engine Market share. As usual Google is way ahead of their competitors. Currently Google is No.1 with 61% market share according to Comscore. Yahoo is trailing behind with around 23% and MSN 3rd.



















































comScore Core Search Report*

April 2008 vs. March 2008

Total U.S. â€" Home/Work/University Locations

Source: comScore qSearch 2.0



Core Search Entity



Share
of Searches (%)



Mar-08



Apr-08



Point
Change


Apr-08
vs. Mar-08



Total Core Search



100.0%



100.0%



0.0



Google Sites



59.8%



61.6%



1.8



Yahoo! Sites



21.3%



20.4%



-0.9



Microsoft Sites



9.4%



9.1%



-0.3



AOL LLC



4.8%



4.6%



-0.2



Ask Network



4.7%



4.3%



-0.4



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Google conversation tracking for dynamic websites

Written by Search Engine Genie @ 1:37 PM permanent link on Thursday, May 22, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

I cant find a better tool than Google analytics conversation tracking tracking visitors on their navigation to a website. We use conversion tracking for all the dynamic websites we optimize and it works great. Especially installing the code on correct pages like the checkout page or the cart page etc will show where you loose the users where they get stuck, what are the problems they are facing etc.
For example one particular client gets 1000s of visitors per but his conversation was very low he contacted us to find out the problem. Initially everything looked pretty fine and it was very difficult for us to find out the problem. Later we used Google analytics conversion tracking code on important pages like the shipping page, cart page, checkout page etc. After 2 or 3 days of monitoring we were able to identify that the users get stuck on the checkout page since for some browsers the checkout button javascript throws an error and redirects to the cart page again. Even after multiple clicks the potential customers were unable to go beyond the page on certain older version of IE and Mozilla browsers. Since our client and we use IE 7.0 we didnt find any problem but the conversion code showed us the problem since users were unable to go beyond the checkout page.

Immediately we checked with older version of the browsers identified the problem and were able to fix it. So I recommend when you have a dynamic site make sure you use conversion tracking its available in adwords too and also helps track Adwords conversions.

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Microsoft Live Search Offers Cashback

Written by Search Engine Genie @ 12:56 PM permanent link on Wednesday, May 21, 2008 | Post a Comment | 6 comments

Microsoft live search is now offering cashback for searching using their search engine and buying products. Currently cash back option is available for US residence above 18 years only. Microsoft is inventing all possible ways to compete with Google which is definitely a great strategy,

What is Live Search Cashback?
"Microsoft Live Search cashback is "The Search That Pays You Back". Find great deals on millions of products from hundreds of brand name stores that you know and trust. You will be able to earn cashback savings based on a percentage of the product price. Your savings will be paid to you via your choice of a deposit to your PayPal account, direct deposit to your bank account, or a check in the mail. It's that simple! "

Microsoft live search product URL www.search.live.com/cashback/

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Some yahoo coupons posted in digitalpoint

Written by Search Engine Genie @ 1:00 PM permanent link on Tuesday, May 20, 2008 | Post a Comment | 1 comments

Craigslist counter sues ebay Inc, Ebay gets fired back by craigslist

Written by Search Engine Genie @ 2:00 PM permanent link on Monday, May 19, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

Ebay recently had a lawsuit against craigslist now craigslist has counter sued ebay,

Lawsuit by craigslist and its claims

I am on Craigslist side. I love craigslist and hope they come out of this crisis soon,

Craigslist official blog post

"We filed a complaint in California today, charging eBay with unlawful and unfair competition, misappropriation of proprietary information, deceptive passing-off, business interference, false advertising, phishing attacks, free-riding, trademark infringement, trademark dilution, and breaches of fiduciary duty.
We respectfully ask the Superior Court in San Francisco to enjoin this conduct and order eBay to (1) make full restitution to craigslist, (2) disgorge their related profits (3) restore to craigslist all shares of the company acquired by means of, or for the purpose of unfair competition, and (4) pay punitive damages for their malicious behavior."

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Yahoo Publisher Network Still US only

Written by Search Engine Genie @ 11:14 AM permanent link on Sunday, May 18, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

Yahoo Publisher network a programme similar to Google Adsense where Yahoo allows webmasters and siteowners to publish ads on their website which gives them an option to monetize their websites. The problem with YPN is its US only still , its been almost 3 years since the programme has been launched but they are not willing to expand the program for other country webmasters.

This is Bad on Yahoo's part. They are not doing any favor to anyone by not expanding. Also they are missing out huge audience base since most of the countries now are active in internet and there are millions of websites run by people other than US. I seriously wish yahoo expands his program since this is getting too long a wait.

Only way they can compete with Adsense is by increasing YPN reach to a bigger audience than the audience base they currently have.

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Automatic matching in expanded beta

Written by Search Engine Genie @ 10:56 AM permanent link on Saturday, May 17, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

In webmaster world shorebreak an active member says

"I've heard of at least two people who in the last 24-36 hours have received emails from Google stating that Automatic Match will go 'Production' as of May 20th, and that the checkbox for it will be pre-checked; that most likely means it will be an opt-out feature, not the opt-in feature that one would have assumed would be the case.
I'll go out on a limb and say that this is one of the 3-4 most profound changes to AdWords and the entire paid search industry that have ever occurred, right up there with Quality Score, Broad Match and AdSense.
While those of us who live and breathe SEM will no doubt monitor this closely and make ROI-based decisions as to whether to use Automatic Match or not, IMO the majority of AdWords advertisers will start paying a massive surcharge as of next Tuesday. "


I see immediately Adwords Advisor dismisses his claim saying this post is wrong and Google has nothing like this active now, Following is Adwords Advisor reply

"I almost never post on the weekends, however - with today being the exception that proves the rule. I felt I had to jump in briefly to say that the headline of this thread and text of the post quoted above are simply not correct. Rumors that take on a life of their own trouble me, actually, and I don't want to see that happen here.
What is happening: Automatic Matching has been in beta for some time as regular readers of this forum will know - and starting on May 20th the beta will be expanded somewhat. Even with the expansion of the beta, the number of advertisers who will see this beta option in their account is truly tiny.
Again, to be very clear Automatic Matching goes not go live 5/20.
I'll gather some more details when I get back to work on Monday, and post again.
AWA "

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How to view Yahoo Sponsored results for US outside US

Written by Search Engine Genie @ 2:02 PM permanent link on Friday, May 16, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

I have seen many people ask this question often in forums how to view yahoo sponsored results that serves US people outside US. Well we have tried various methods to do this we mange some Search Marketing Campaigns for our US clients and to check the results we use web proxies.

US Web proxies are proxies on the web that allows you to view a website by masking your Identity. These proxy also help see what US people see when they visit a site. So we use this option to view results of search engines and their sponsored results.

Some prominent proxies are
megaproxy.com
clickgo.info
californiaproxy.com
proxyweb.net

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Adwords bidding what is real with Adwords

Written by Search Engine Genie @ 7:45 PM permanent link on Thursday, May 15, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

In webmasterworld a member asks

"I figure only someone from Google like AdWordsAdvisor can answer this, but I'm curious.

I appreciate that ordinarily bidding is converted to $USD and it's pretty much real-time and at regular interchange rates, and there is no advantage from using one currency or another.another
My question concerns the maximum bid of $US100. In other currencies, the maximum bid is roughly equivalent to $US100, but is rounded. So instead of it being £51.445622 today, it is probably something like £50.00.

This figure seems to only get updated every month or so.

So, if the maximum £GBP bid of £50 equals $97.19, does someone bidding the maximum allowable in $USD ($US100) have an advantage over someone in bidding the maximum allowable in £GBP (£50.00/$97.19)? "


and Adwords Advisor replies

"I think I have spent somewhere in the neigborhood of 16,500 hours (I just did the math) working with AdWords and AdWords advertisers, and this is the first time I've ever heard this question. :)

I'm not saying that it's not a good question. Just that it's one that I have never thought about - nor have I had occasion to research it. And yes, this is a longish way of saying that I don't know the answer. ;)

And, in a sense it's a bit academic since one's postion does not depend on Max bid alone - and all the factors are constantly in motion, rather than at a standstill. It's worth remembering that the advertiser 'A' who is in position 'X' might actually be paying less than the advertiser 'B' below them - if advertiser 'A's quality is better.

I have had much less time to post on this forum recently, and have not made it a point to get an answer to this question due to that (bordering on severe) lack of time. That said, I will try to run down an answer - but, to set reasonable expectations, I can not speak to how soon that will happen. ;)"

Though the question is not too important its something different and worth while to hear

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MSN adcenter exam like adwords professional or yahoo ambassador

Written by Search Engine Genie @ 2:00 PM permanent link on Wednesday, May 14, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

MSN adcenter has a similar program like yahoo ambassador or Google advertising professional. Its the adexcellence exam. Please check out the URL "www.adexcellence.com". All materials are free to read. Minimum requirement is to hold a MSN adcenter account for atleast 30 days before taking exam you can take exam as many times you like.

Yahoo recently closed their Ambassador program more news here . I hope MSN doesnt do it that way before they are upto it take your exams and qualify as a adcenter professional.

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A good writeup on adwords quality score

Written by Search Engine Genie @ 1:28 PM permanent link on Tuesday, May 13, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

Jeremy of PPC discussions has a very good write up on Frequently asked questions about Google adwords quality score.

Some of the questions answered:

Question 1 - How can I improve my quality score?

Question 2 - How many quality scores are there?

Question 3 - Will changing to a different keyword match type, for example from broad match to exact match, give me a better quality score?

Question 4 - I have been told (and read lots of places) that when I first start a new AdWords campaign I should bid really high so my ad is higher on the page. That will give me a higher click through rate and that means I will have a better quality score. Is that good advice?

Question 5 - Having Flash on your landing page is bad for your quality score right?

Question 6 - I get a lot of clicks from the Google Search Network. Does that help improve my quality score?

Question 7 - Does using dynamic keyword insertion help my quality score?

Question 8 - Does turning off the content network help improve my quality score? My CTR is always a lot lower on the content network so I assume turning it off will help my quality score improve.

Question 9 - How can I find out what my quality score is?

Question 10 - I am the only person bidding on a certain keyword but my minimum bid is higher than I think it should be. If I'm the only one bidding how come my minimum bid isn't $0.01? My quality score is "OK".

Question 11 - I just a made a lot of changes to my AdWords campaigns and to my landing pages to try and improve my quality score. How soon should I expect to see quality score changes in my account?

Question 12 - I just added a bunch of new keywords to my account and almost 1/2 of them received a poor quality score and minimum bid of $5.00 right away before I ever received a single impression. How the hell can Google say I have a poor quality score before my ad even gets a chance to run?

Question 13 - It seems like no matter what I do or try my quality score is always poor. Are there certain types of sites that just don't work well with AdWords?

Question 14 - Is there a site or something I can sign up to find out in advance about quality score updates before they happen?

Head over to his blog to read detailed answers to about questions

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How to track keywords triggering broadmatch

Written by Search Engine Genie @ 12:48 PM permanent link on Monday, May 12, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

I have seen many people ask this question how to track keywords triggering broad match. Well there is no definite solution for this. Google doesn't provide a way to see which keywords trigger broad match. But one thing is for sure broad match is mostly triggered if you set a high enough bid and don't have any restrictions on the keyword. Restrictions like geo-targeting, low max bid will stop the keyword from being triggered by a broad match.
Also if the broad match option is disabled it will not show broad match. As Fast as i know there is no definite solution for find broad match keywords.

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Yahoo Search Marketing Exam suspended until further Notice

Written by Search Engine Genie @ 1:35 PM permanent link on Sunday, May 11, 2008 | Post a Comment | 1 comments

Yahoo Search Marketing was conducting exams to qualify Agencies, PPC management companies and individuals as Yahoo Search PPC ambassadors. It seems yahoo has suspended the program now.

I don't see any official report from yahoo but when i go to sign up page i get the following messages "Yahoo will no longer be accepting new Ambassador applications until further notice."

Yahoo will no longer be accepting new Ambassador applications until further notice. - So yahoo has stopped accepting Ambassador applications is this a temporary one from yahoo or they wont be accepting any more applications. Our company just tried to sign up but we are unable to. Anyone else having similar experience?
This is the URL for registering for Yahoo Search marketing Ambassador exam.

https://approval.myaffiliateprogram.
com/ambassador_signup.asp

You can see following message
"
Yahoo will no longer be accepting new Ambassador applications until further notice.
Welcome. To register for the Yahoo!® Search Marketing Ambassador program including access to the online learning modules and the Ambassador test, there is a one-time, non-refundable fee of $50, which is only payable by credit card. Please note the Yahoo!® Search Marketing Ambassador program is only open to businesses operating in the United States or Canada at this time."

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Adwords campaign can show active and still cannot show ads

Written by Search Engine Genie @ 1:22 PM permanent link on Saturday, May 10, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

This is news for me. I haven't seen this happening in campaigns i manage. When i was going through Adwords discussion group in Google groups i can see adwords pro reply for a users problem. he says

"Please know that when a campaign or ad group is marked as 'active' it means only that it is *not paused or deleted*. It is not meant as an indication that the campaign is currently delivering ads. In other words, a campaign or ad group can be 'active' (i.e. not paused or deleted) but still not actually running, for a variety of reasons. "\\

So an adgroup can be active but still cannot ads so if you face similar problem check for other issues other than the status of Ad group.

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Landing page load time now part of Quality Score in Google Adwords

Written by Search Engine Genie @ 1:06 PM permanent link on | Post a Comment | 0 comments

After a long wait Google has enhanced their quality scoring algorithm to take Landing page load time into consideration.

Landing page load time now plays an important role. Starting mid of June Load time of html of a page will be important for better Quality Score. Good quality score is important for any campaign. If you have a limited budget its important to take Quality score seriously since it reduces the cost of advertising significantly. Ads will show up higher if the Quality score is higher for a particular advertiser even if the bid for that keyword is less than that of his competitors.

"How is landing page load time evaluated?

Landing page load time is determined by:

I. The domain of your ad group's landing pages

A keyword's load time grade is based on the average load time of the landing pages in the ad group and of any landing pages in the rest of the account with the same domain. If multiple ad groups have landing pages with the same domain, therefore, the keywords in all these ad groups will have identical load time grades.

Two things to note:

When determining load time grade, the AdWords system follows destination URLs at both the ad and keyword level and evaluates the final landing page.
If your ad group contains landing pages with different domains, the keywords' load time grades will be based on the domain with the slowest load time. All the keywords in an ad group will always have the same load time grade.
Let's look at an example:

Say your account has four ad groups, and each ad group uses a different landing page: example.com/apple, example.com/orange, example.com/pear, and

your-company-site.com. The first three share the same domain: example.com. Keywords in the first three ad groups will all have the same landing page load time grade, which will be based on the average load time of example.com/apple, example.com/orange, and example.com/pear.

II. Your server's geographic region

We evaluate your load time relative to the average in your server's geographic region. If your website is hosted on a server in India, for example, your landing page load time will be compared to the average load time in that region of India. This is true even if your website is intended for an audience in the United States.

III. Your page's HTML

Currently, landing page load time measures the time it takes to download the HTML content of your landing page. However, in the future, the load time of images, flash, video, JavaScript, and other components will be considered as well. We therefore recommend that you optimize all components of your page for the quickest possible load time.

IV. Multiple readings

To ensure accuracy, we take several load time measurements, drop the worst, and average those remaining. If your landing page is down for one of these readings, therefore, it won't affect your load time grade.

"

www.adwords.google.com/support
/bin/answer.py?answer=93113

I recommend make sure the page is perfect HTML without much errors that way it gives an opportunity to get better Quality score

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Blog hacking with Hidden links injection

Written by Search Engine Genie @ 1:13 PM permanent link on Thursday, May 8, 2008 0 comments

Lately lot of vulnerable blogs are compromised and hidden links are added to the blog. Some of the hidden links are pointing to porn sites or some of them are so vulnerable that when the page loads those links will call some malicious scumware or malware.

Especially word press older versions had these problems . Latest word press versions are well patched and dont have these vulnerabilities. Google's automated detection has a built in notification system where if a vulnerability for a site is detected the site owner is notified to the email listed on their site. Also in certain cases Google will remove the pages from search engine index for 30 days and the site owner needs to clean the website and submit for reinclusion.

So i recommend keep checking your blogs often and don't leave it unattended it will look to your site being totally removed from search engine results.

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keyword research without online tools an interesting discussion

Written by Search Engine Genie @ 1:17 PM permanent link on Wednesday, May 7, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

Webmaster world has an interesting discussion on how to do a keyword research without Online tools. This is a very interesting topic today there are not many online keyword research tools available. Only tool is word tracker which is a paid keyword research tool. Some people don't like using paid research tools we used to have overture keyword suggestion tool but after yahoo acquired Overture the keyword research tool slowly disappeared and now its not working at all.

So without the facility to do free online keyword research how can we come up with a targeted keyword list.

.Chameleon makes an interesting post in this thread

". If I might add a little flavor to the soup.. ;)
Word-stemming has become severely important to ranking well for selected keywords/phrases.
Some time back, Marcia (former moderator of Google search News) posted a few links to the Google patents.
They are well worth reading.
At first blush, one would think that a good start to discovering what Google might be looking for re: related words/phrases would be to examine No's 1,2,3,4, & 5 in the desired SERP's, click on "Similar Pages" below each, and see what's there.
Alas - not very reliable. Why, I can't say; But after months of trial & error... I made some pretty useful discoveries.
Re: A website that is 95% about "blue widgets", and 5% about "purple thingys" - the purple thingy pages would often out-rank websites that were 100% about blue widgets, for the "purple thingy" term...
Why? Because the few pages in the 95%/5% website had good internal links to adjacent pages full of related words/phrases.
Wikipedia (if applicable) was a good place to discover related terms
Google seems to be extremely smart about related terms.
E.G. A website about "telephones" is well served to include words/phrases such as 'DTMF' / 'dial tone' / 'handset' / 'cords' and other such words/phases that aren't in the typical layman's "telephone vocabulary".
Keyword-based File-naming gets tremendous mileage form Google for rankings. Again, it wasn't unusual to see a website with a PR of 3, out-rank a website with a PR of 4 or 5, simply because the site with lesser PR, had file names like "blue-widgets-for-dohickeys.htm" and the higher PR sites did not. {** Google likes dashes between the keywords much better than underscores, as well}
A web page about "purple thingys" MUST have these words, and preferably (1) related term in both the <-title-> and <-description-> tags. Old school for sure, but careful research shows this is still worth its weight in platinum.
Again - seemingly old-school, but Gbot absolutely loved pages with keyword-rich menus.
Websites that had redundant key phrases, that appeared in the same place in multiple pages, that differentiated the redundant pharses with an individual font-color or font-family from the main copy, fared far better than those that did not.
To supplement this, may I also mention:
Enclosing the redundant phrases in <-h2-> and <-h1-> heading tags did nothing whatsoever.. in fact, often it seemed to have negative value.
Having the redundant text at the top of the page, and related words/phrases at the bottom, both carrying the same differentiation from the main copy, was also effective
A web page that couldn't logically or aesthetically have good internal links to pages with related words/phrases could do almost as well with a clickable pop-up window included somewhere in the page containing word-stemming;
Moreover, Google would often list this pop-up page, (provided it was a full-flavored HTML page with good copy but with it's size trimmed by the pop-up command's dimensions) as the 2nd most important page in the site "about" the key phrase -
However, the pop-up page needed different <-title-> and <-description-> text; Again, using word-stemming.
A good question is: What's all this worth?
After many months, and following the above somewhat didactical policies, I drove three different websites from <50 to Top 5 spots in the desired SERP's.. and some of these SERP's had dozens of relevant competitors, with better PR! "

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Looking to promote your prom dresses website in PPC?

Written by Search Engine Genie @ 1:49 PM permanent link on Tuesday, May 6, 2008 0 comments

"Are you looking to promote your prom dress selling website or are you already an advertiser. Yahoo Search Marketing Blog offers some valuable tips on areas you need to target and improve to get maximum exposure, sales and traffic through Yahoo Sponsored results.


Some valuable tips:


1. Separate Campaigns

Targeting different type of customers for different theme is very important. YSM blog suggests creating separating campaigns if you are running a gift card sale as well as a prom dress sale.

2. Promotional language

Ofcourse i agree with Yahoo on this one, Promotional language is very important people love to hear words like gifts, coupons, sale, discount, offers etc. So make sure you add proper promotional campaign in the ads.


3. Keyword/creative conflict

Make sure that your titles and descriptions don't clash with their associated keywords. Even when the keyword appears in the creative, searchers may skip the ad if the main focus appears to be on something else.

4. Keyword insertion and Alt Text

Our Keyword Insertion tool helps make sure that the user's search term always appears in your ads, and Alt Text helps the ad appear the way you want it.

5. Customization helps

Greeting card sites that offer customizable cards should be sure to mention that in their ads, as it likely will resonate with searchers.

6. Scope of offerings

Searches using general terms shouldn't lead to an ad for a very specific item. For example, people searching with terms like "prom dress" usually want to be able to browse a variety of styles and colors, and may not click on an ad that promotes a "red floor-length strapless prom dress."

You may not still remember everything about your prom night or graduation, but if you remember these few important tips, you can make your ads the "class" of '08.

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Anabolic steroids - nutritional supplement sites blocked in Google Adwords

Written by Search Engine Genie @ 8:39 AM permanent link on Monday, May 5, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

Google AdWords has started blocking Ads related to Nutritional supplements and vitamin supplements from their AdWords sponsored results. Google's new policy is very tough on sites promoting Nutritional supplements they say sites promoting Anabolic steroids , muscle enhances, muscle stacking products are banned from their AdWords advertising. Though this sounds like a good option for end users Google will be looking millions of dollars in revenue since these sites spend a lot of money for online advertising.

We run 2 or 3 campaigns in SEO for site promoting nutritional supplement products they are doing moderately well and gains good traffic and Business for those sites. There are people out there who want these products Google is just sacrificing their Business to maintain quality to their AdWords sponsored results it is a very good sign.

PPC management team,

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Zombie websites - Expired domains replaced with old content

Written by Search Engine Genie @ 8:10 AM permanent link on | Post a Comment | 0 comments

Zombie sites according to him are sites that are mostly expired domains which are replaced with its original content to make it look as if its the same site. Most of these sites completely loose their Google rankings since google has whois data which is updated internally and any major change to a whois of a particular site especially if the site changes hands google automatically imposes a penalty and makes sure all backlinks to that domain are banned and the site has to start gaining new backlinks.

So Google does its work but the sites that are expired still might get traffic from Backlinks they had previously the question of the main poster in this thread is why does Google allow sites that are like these to publish adsense ads. That is a Good question which only Google can respond.

My take on this Google don't have time to check each and every site whether it violates copyright or its using previous owners contents. if some one complains they can definitely look into it and if the person who complains have valid reason then definitely Google will take action against the site.
I personally feel automated means to detect these stuff is just a waste of resources which can be spent in a much better way. Final take Google can keep providing adsense ads as long as the ads are relevant to the site if a valid complain comes they can block ads from being published on this site.

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Which sites you filter in Adsense - Webmasterworld discussion

Written by Search Engine Genie @ 7:13 AM permanent link on | Post a Comment | 0 comments

After Google released AdSense it is become one of the primary source of income for site owners who monetize their website through good content. Apart from the good results from AdSense there are a lot of spam related issues with AdSense. Lots of MFA ( Made For AdSense ) sites started coming up and this has polluted both search results and user experience. Most of the people behind MFA sites are big time spammers and they are ready to do anything to get traffic to the site.

Good traffic will result in more click through from AdSense and this will result in more revenue for the website publisher. AdSense itself is a very useful way of monetizing a site i always like to stay away since its too much abused by spammers. I feel today most of the people who see AdSense ads all over the page will feel that the site is related to spam. Its all because of the major abuse AdSense has gone through. AdSense itself offers the option to run ads for MLM schemes, ring tone affiliates, spam parked domains, get rich quick scheme, email harvesters, crap toolbars, crap software without a decent option to uninstall , scam sites asking funds for charity etc.

For publishers Google has an option to block certain type of sites from being shown up on their sites. Publishers have the option to filter out unwanted sites. This is great since some users don't like sites showing certain type of Ads. For example a family friendly site don't want to see ads related to drugs stuff we have an option to filter this. A cool discussion in webmaster world discusses on what type of sites are being filtered from their sites.

Most common filtered sites as per discussion are MLM, drug related sites, ring tone sites, sites offering free stuff, Parked domains, Work-At-Home, E-mail harvesters etc.

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Google PPC TV Ads - Google offering TV Ads campaign Management

Written by Search Engine Genie @ 11:51 AM permanent link on Sunday, May 4, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

Recently Google Adwords Blog Announced the ability to manage TV ad campaigns through Google Adwords campaign. This is an exciting new feature from Google adwords team. To run TV ads through Google adwords you need to already have TV Ads ready. If you don't have the Ads Google also gives an option to find cheap ways to create ads. find experts through their Ad creation Marketplace

This is great and as predicted Google has entered the TV Ad market place.

Adwords alternatives a discussion in digitalpoint forums

Written by Search Engine Genie @ 12:35 PM permanent link on Friday, May 2, 2008 | Post a Comment | 0 comments

When i was going through digital point forums this particular thread caught my attention. It was a discussion about how a user is getting 18000 pageviews per day but make only 3$ with Adbrite. It looks a bit ridiculous problem .



Most probably the page views are caused by same people refreshing of visiting the site again or could be just some random bot trying to hit the site. Soon ill be posting a review about different alternatives based on interviews we conducted with various people. ill be posting them here very soon.

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Importing Campaigns / Ad groups from Adwords to YSM

Written by Search Engine Genie @ 12:01 PM permanent link on | Post a Comment | 2 comments

Many people have contacted us asking whether there is any easy way to import keywords, campaigns, ad groups from Google Adwords to Yahoo Search Marketing. From my experience currently there are no options for the end users but yahoo's inhouse YSM experts can add data imported from Google Adwords. But to qualify for this you need to be a privileged user .

To be a YSM privileged user you need to have a minimum Ad spend of 6000$. If you qualify then Yahoo's inhouse search marketing experts will add the campaigns imported from Adwords into the YSM control panel.

MSN adcenter already has an option for end users but Yahoo Search Marketing don't have such an option . So of you are thinking of importing data from adwords and adding it to YSM currently its not possible,

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