Sudden hit with bad quality score in Google Adwords.

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

Comscore latest press release Google up 2 %

Google conversation tracking for dynamic websites

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.

Microsoft Live Search Offers Cashback

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,http://search.live.com/cashback/
To read more about live search read the FAQ here http://search.live.com/cashback/faq

Some yahoo coupons posted in digitalpoint

Here are some yahoo coupon codes which you can use to have sponsored listing registrations in yahoo
$50

http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/arp/sponsoredsearch.php?o=US1521&cmp=Ambassador&ctv=Spon_Search&s=O&s2=PFP&s3=&b=50&kbid=1265

http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/arp/choose.php?o=USCJ16

http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/arp/choose.php?o=US2261

http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/arp/choose.php?o=USCJ13

$75

http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/arp/choose.php?o=USCJ15

http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/arp/choose.php?o=US1522

$80

http://sem.smallbusiness.yahoo.com/searchenginemarketing/onlinemarketing.php?abr=2022416117&o=USCJ10

$100

http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/arp/sponsoredsearch_v2.php?o=US2334

http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/arp/choose.php?o=US2258

http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/arp/choose.php?o=US2245

http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/arp/choose.php?o=US2295

http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/arp/choose.php?o=US2283

http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/arp/choose.php?o=US2300

I am not in anyway related to the above URLs use them at your own risk. Most of them are valid URLs and you will be able to register with yahoo with these URLs.

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

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

Lawsuit by craigslist and its claims read here http://blog.craigslist.org/etc/cl.vs.ebay.html

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.”

http://blog.craigslist.org/2008/05/unlawful-and-unfair/

Yahoo Publisher Network Still US only

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.

Automatic matching in expanded beta

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 “

How to view Yahoo Sponsored results for US outside US

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

Adwords bidding what is real with Adwords

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.
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