Google Earth and Katrina help
When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast almost a year ago, people across the country and around the world wondered how to help. Many donated money; others lent their homes to dislocated survivors. A group of Googlers lent their expertise by leveraging the power of Google technology.
Over several long nights, the teams from Google Earth and Google Maps created satellite imagery overlays of the devastation in the affected region, which showed more accurately the scope of the disaster. Soon after, we were told that rescue workers and the U.S. Air Force were using Google Earth to find people who were stranded.
And last week, we received formal recognition from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Members of the NGA presented the "Hurricane Katrina Recognition Award" to the Google Earth team, as well as the Google Enterprise and Global Support groups, for their direct support during the Katrina disaster. Individual recipients included Brian McClendon, Andria McCool, Wayne Thai, Charlie Chapin, Michael Ashbridge, Chikai Ohazama, Lenette Howard, and Rob Painter, along with two folks from Carnegie Mellon University who assisted us: Randy Sargent and Anne Wright. We're pleased to be recognized in this way -- but even more pleased that we could help.
Summer health tips
Our esteemed Google doc, Taraneh Razavi, M.D., has kindly provided a few tips on coping with such summer challenges as tick bites, thunderstorms, and heat exhaustion. She's also blogged about insect repellents and sunscreen. But as she reminds us, summer also means - there's ice cream. Stay healthy and cool, people, and have fun this and every weekend.
Hourly reporting for account and campaign performance reports
Ever wonder what time of day your ads are searched and clicked on the most (or the least)? Is it early in the morning, during regular business hours, or late at night? To answer this question (and any others you may have on hourly performance), we recently introduced hourly reporting for Account Performance and Campaign Performance reports.
Make your own buttons
Custom Buttons are by far my favorite feature in the new Google Toolbar, which comes out of beta today. Clearly I’m not the only one, either -- we have over 600 buttons in the gallery, with new buttons being added every day -- and here are some some of my favorites, if you'd like to add them to your Toolbar. If you’re interested in making your own, it’s pretty easy. Just go to one of your favorite sites, right-click on the search box, and then click “Generate Custom Search.” You can find out how to add advanced features to your buttons here.
Please plan ahead...
This just in, straight from our tech team:
On Saturday, July 29th, the AdWords system will be unavailable from approximately 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. PDT due to system maintenance. While you won't be able to log into your account during this time, your campaigns will continue to run as usual. We apologize for any inconvenience.
AdWords 101: Setting up a campaign (Part 1 of 2)
After going over account structure, how ads are targeted, and how to navigate the AdWords interface in previous AdWords 101 posts, we figured it's time to talk about creating campaigns.
Today, we'll cover keyword-targeted campaigns, one of the two types of AdWords campaigns available to you. To get started, click the "keyword-targeted" link next to Create a new campaign" on your Campaign Summary page. Now you're ready to create your campaign - let's run you through the basics and some tips:
1) Choose a name for your campaign and its first Ad Group. Be sure to choose something descriptive as the title; "Summer Shoe Promotion 2006" is a lot easier to locate and identify in a list of campaigns than "Campaign #1." Similarly, Ad Groups named "Women's Flip-flops" and "Men's Sandals" will be a lot easier to understand and remember when you look at the list of different Ad Groups within your Summer Shoe Promotion campaign. You'll then be asked to choose the target language(s), as well as location targeting options.
2) Enter your preferences for location targeting, be it countries and territories, regions and cities, or a customized selection. Remember to think about where your potential customers are located, and more specifically, where your potential customers for the product or service you are trying to sell within this campaign are located. For example, let's say your company has stores across the country; but this campaign is dedicated to a promotion available only in your California stores, then you should target your campaign to users located in the state of California, and not the entire country.
3) After you've specified your targeting preferences, you will be asked to create your ad. If you are someone who experiences writer's block, have no fear. All you have to do is take a minute and brainstorm about the following:
4) Choose your keywords. The same principle of being specific and targeted applies to your keyword selection as well. For more details on how to create a good keyword list, review our post on this very topic.
5) The last step in creating your campaign is setting your daily budget and Max CPC. Determine the maximum amount you are willing to spend on your campaign each day, and specify the maximum cost-per-click. After you submit these amounts, you can review all of the details of your campaign and make additional edits if necessary. Finally, click "Save" and watch your campaign go live!
Today, we'll cover keyword-targeted campaigns, one of the two types of AdWords campaigns available to you. To get started, click the "keyword-targeted" link next to Create a new campaign" on your Campaign Summary page. Now you're ready to create your campaign - let's run you through the basics and some tips:
2) Enter your preferences for location targeting, be it countries and territories, regions and cities, or a customized selection. Remember to think about where your potential customers are located, and more specifically, where your potential customers for the product or service you are trying to sell within this campaign are located. For example, let's say your company has stores across the country; but this campaign is dedicated to a promotion available only in your California stores, then you should target your campaign to users located in the state of California, and not the entire country.
3) After you've specified your targeting preferences, you will be asked to create your ad. If you are someone who experiences writer's block, have no fear. All you have to do is take a minute and brainstorm about the following:
- What product or service are you offering?
Perhaps your store carries an imported brand of Spanish espadrilles, or a line of specialized orthopedic footwear. Be specific and tell your customers exactly what you have to offer, preferably in the first line of your ad. - What is different about your product or service that makes it better than your competitors'? Do you have a special offer?
If you’re running a sale, tell your customers that your shoes are 50% off, or that you offer free shipping on all orders over $100. (Make sure these special offers are reflected on your site.) - What is your "call to action", or the action that you want searchers who see your ad to perform?
If you want searchers who see your ad to browse your product selection, then say that. Or if you want them to sign up on your mailing list to receive a coupon, mention that in your ad text.
4) Choose your keywords. The same principle of being specific and targeted applies to your keyword selection as well. For more details on how to create a good keyword list, review our post on this very topic.
5) The last step in creating your campaign is setting your daily budget and Max CPC. Determine the maximum amount you are willing to spend on your campaign each day, and specify the maximum cost-per-click. After you submit these amounts, you can review all of the details of your campaign and make additional edits if necessary. Finally, click "Save" and watch your campaign go live!
Lane's Gifts settlement ruling
We know many have you have been following the Lane's Gifts v. Google case, so we want you to know that Judge Joe Griffin ruled today to approve the proposed settlement. Here is his ruling. We're pleased Judge Griffin has affirmed the settlement as appropriate and fair to advertisers. We look forward to continuing to manage invalid clicks effectively and provide our advertisers with an outstanding return on their investment. If you're an advertiser, there's more about how the settlement applies to you here.
A roadmap for Google help
Those of us in user support had a pet peeve: there was no single place that held all of Google's help information at your fingertips. So we decided to build one -- and now you can visit Google Help to find tips, tricks, and troubleshooting solutions for just about every Google product and service. We don't want you to have to work hard to find anything, so we also added an A-Z guide in case you do know exactly what you're looking for.
From the Support page you can also visit the Help Center of your choice to discover answers to frequently asked questions and link to our interactive help groups to discuss various features with other Google users. So remember to keep google.com/support handy, and enjoy.
Estimating invalid clicks
Over the past few months, we've provided answers to your invalid click questions. Now, Shuman Ghosemajumder, Business Product Manager for Trust & Safety, is back to provide details on a new related feature.
Update: Changed to reflect the fact that monthly, but not weekly, reports are available at this time.
Today, we’re announcing the launch of a new AdWords feature enabling advertisers to have a much more detailed picture of invalid click activity in their account. The metrics of “invalid clicks” and “invalid clicks rate” will show virtually all the invalid clicks affecting an account.
These clicks are filtered in real-time by our systems before advertisers are charged for them. The resulting data will of course differ from one advertiser to the next. In addition, a much smaller number of invalid clicks may also be credited to advertisers’ accounts after-the-fact, as the result of a publisher being terminated from the AdSense program for invalid click activity. These will appear as account-level credits.
One of the most controversial issues related to the topic of click fraud has been estimating how big the problem is. Estimates from third-parties (usually from consultants who have a financial incentive to make the problem seem very large) have been both inconsistent and greatly exaggerated due to their methodologies. Advertisers have always been able to compare their log data with their AdWords charges to calculate an estimate of the number of invalid clicks in their own account. This new tool will make estimating invalid click activity much easier.
Remember, when we determine that clicks are invalid, you aren’t charged for them, and they don’t affect your other campaign statistics. You may include the invalid clicks and invalid click rate columns in yearly, quarterly, monthly, and daily reports. More information about the new reporting can be found here.
Update: Changed to reflect the fact that monthly, but not weekly, reports are available at this time.
London conference on test automation
Earlier we announced a first-time conference on test automation, something of interest to an admittedly select group. Just a reminder to those of you who work in this area that our deadline for requesting a spot at the London meeting this fall is coming up at the end of the week. Here's more information if you'd like to sign up.
Corporate info on the go
In keeping with the blog's mobile theme today, we've just made enterprise information -- corporate networks, databases, content management systems -- searchable on mobile devices. You can read more here.
Home on the road
It may be liberating to step away from your computer and out into the world -- but who can stand to leave the convenience of the Internet behind? I like to take the information I need with me -- like news, weather, Gmail, and everything else from my Google Personalized Homepage -- and now so can you. Before you take off, customize your mobile home page from your computer. On your Personalized Homepage, decide what you want to add to your phone, then drag and drop to reorder the items. On the road, in line, or wherever you go, you can view all this information on your phone. The world is waiting!
Saving the galaxy, one traffic jam at a time
Is it wrong to refer to your own handiwork as "the new hotness"? Probably, but we're hoping you'll humor us for a bit. So what is with the new Google Maps for mobile? Well, to paraphrase Agent J:
Old and busted: Being stuck in traffic
The new hotness: Checking traffic conditions from your phone*
Old and busted: Showing up late
The new hotness: Driving directions with real-time traffic estimates
Old and busted: Typing in the same addresses over and over
The new hotness: 1-touch recall of favorite locations and routes
This release won't avert an intergalactic disaster any time soon, but we'd like to think the Men in Black would give it a try. You can too: just point your mobile phone's web browser to www.google.com/gmm.
*Update: Currently available across the U.S. with comprehensive data coverage for more than 30 metro areas; partial coverage elsewhere in U.S.
Consider a backup credit card
Earlier this year we posted about backup credit cards. For those who haven’t taken advantage of this new billing feature, a backup credit card ensures continuous delivery of your ads, even if your primary credit card gets declined. (Note that if both credit cards are declined, your ads may stop running and you’ll need to log into your account and edit your billing information.)
Additionally, in response to customer requests, we’re now showing the last four digits of the credit card used to process a payment on the Billing Summary page. This makes it much easier for you to distinguish which credit card (e.g. primary or secondary) was used.
Findings on invalid clicks
Those of you who follow news about online advertising closely are seeing plenty about the issue of "click fraud" lately. Since there's been a development in a case Google is involved in, you might like to hear about it.
As part of the settlement in the click-fraud case Lane’s Gifts v. Google, we agreed with the plaintiffs to have an independent expert examine our detection methods, policies, practices, and procedures and make a determination of whether or not we had implemented reasonable measures to protect all of our advertisers. The result of that is a 47-page report, written by Dr. Alexander Tuzhilin, Professor of Information Systems at NYU. The report was filed with the court in Texarkana, Arkansas, this morning.
The bottom-line conclusion of the report is that Google’s efforts against click fraud are in fact reasonable. At several points in his report, he calls out the quality of our inspection systems and notes their constant improvement. It is an independent report, so not surprisingly there are other aspects of it with which we don’t fully agree. But overall it is a validation of what we have said for some time about our work against invalid clicks.
Here are excerpts of some of the positive things Dr. Tuzhilin has to say about Google and invalid clicks:
“During this project, I visited Google campus three times and interviewed over a dozen of the Click Quality team members from the Spam Operations and the Engineering groups, as well as the Product Manager of the Trust and Safety Group. I found the members of both groups to be well-qualified and highly competent to perform their jobs. Most of them have relevant prior backgrounds and strong credentials.” (p.4)
“The current set of Google filters is fairly stable and only requires periodic 'tuning' and ‘maintenance’ rather than a radical re-engineering, even when major fraudulent attacks are launched against the Google Network.” (p.25)
“These inspection systems have been developed by Google over an extensive period of time and are constantly improved to extend their functionality and make them better for the investigators to do their inspections more effectively. I have personally observed several such inspections and can attest to how successfully they have been conducted by Google’s investigators. This success can be attributed to (a) the quality of the inspection tools, (b) the extensive experience and high levels of professionalism of the Click Quality inspectors, and (c) the existence of certain investigation processes, guidelines and procedures assisting the investigators in the inspection process.” (p. 40)
“Google has built the following four 'lines of defense' for detecting invalid clicks: pre-filtering, online filtering, automated offline detection and manual offline detection, in that order. Google deploys different detection methods in each of these stages: the rule-based and anomaly-based approaches in the pre-filtering and the filtering stages, the combination of all the three approaches in the automated offline detection stage, and the anomaly-based approach in the offline manual inspection stage. This deployment of different methods in different stages gives Google an opportunity to detect invalid clicks using alternative techniques and thus increases their chances of detecting more invalid clicks in one of these stages, preferably proactively in the early stages.” (p. 47)
We also filed a document with the court today that may be of interest. You can find it here. And there's more information on invalid clicks and how we manage them here and here.
Update: Google Desktop Gadget Contest
Just a quick update to let all you know that, due to popular demand, we've extended the Google Desktop Gadget Contest another two weeks. So if you have a great idea for a gadget, and want to enter it for a chance to prove your brilliance and creativity, you now have until August 14 to do so.
And if you're interested in some tips and tricks on creating Desktop Gadgets, have a look at the Inside Google Desktop blog. Good luck!
Resolved: Inside AdWords mailing list issue
If you're a member of our Inside AdWords mailing list, over the last 18 hours you may have received a series of unrelated emails via the list. We wanted to let you know that our tech team has now resolved the issue and you should not receive any additional unrelated emails.
We sincerely apologize for this inconvenience and can assure you that this should not happen again. We remain dedicated to sharing the latest product information, news and tips about AdWords with you, and we hope that you'll continue to visit us at http://adwords.blogspot.com or through our mailing list.
We sincerely apologize for this inconvenience and can assure you that this should not happen again. We remain dedicated to sharing the latest product information, news and tips about AdWords with you, and we hope that you'll continue to visit us at http://adwords.blogspot.com or through our mailing list.
Finding easy-to-read web content
Like most of you, when I search the web, I want to find relevant information with a minimal amount of distraction. But because I can't see and I use a device that converts web text to speech, I'm even more in tune with the distractions that can sometimes get in the way of finding the right results. If the information I'm after is on a visually busy page, I have to sort through that page to find the text I want--an extra step that can sometimes be very time-consuming.
That's why I've been passionate about a project I'm working on at Google called Google Accessible Search. Accessible Search adds a small twist to the familiar Google search: In addition to finding the most relevant results as measured by Google's search algorithms, it further sorts results based on the simplicity of their page layouts. (Simplicity, of course, is subjective in this context.) When users search from the http://labs.google.com/accessible site, they'll receive results that are prioritized based on their usability.
In its current version, Google Accessible Search looks at a number of signals by examining the HTML markup found on a web page. It tends to favor pages that degrade gracefully--that is, pages with few visual distractions, and pages that are likely to render well with images turned off. Google Accessible Search is built on Google Co-op's technology, which improves search results based on specialized interests.
This is still an early-stage experiment, and we hope to improve the product's quality over the next few months based on user feedback. Check it out over on our Labs page and tell us what you think.
Stocking up
A few months ago we launched Google Finance. Since then, we've listened carefully to your feedback and learned a lot about what you like and what you don't like about our product. And in response to these requests, we're pleased to announce a few small new features, including a stock-market module on the business section of Google News and support for multiple portfolios. We've also added an auto-suggest feature to the search box to help you find the companies and funds you're searching for more quickly, as well as an auto-refresh feature that keeps the data on your portfolio page current. In addition, rumor has it that a lot of users like to have the choice of reading message boards in reverse chronological order. So we've made sure our discussion groups have that feature, too. Lastly, it's earnings season, and we've been impressed by a small company called SeekingAlpha that offers free transcripts on many earnings calls, so we've added links to them.
These are small steps, and you can expect to see more features and ideas from us in the coming months. We appreciate your feedback and hope you'll continue to push us to make Google Finance better.
Video ads best practices
Since our video ads announcement and the subsequent feature release, we've received a lot of requests for video ad creation tips and best practices. So, over the next few weeks, Bismarck from the Video Ads team is taking to the street to talk to the people who are creating and finding success with video ads. This week, he caught up with Todd Tracey, one of our first video ad customers, and the Senior VP at TurnHere Incorporated (a company specializing in video production), to get a few tips. Here's what he had to say:
We hope you've found this helpful. If you have any video ad tips of your own that you'd like to share, please let us know.
Bismarck: Why is video such a compelling advertising medium?
Todd: With video, you tug at people's emotions and this provides for a higher recall rate than a static image or a text ad.
Bismarck: Can video work online?
Todd: The Internet gives everybody a voice. Small advertisers are able to get the same level of engagement and reach that the large companies, such as Nike, have been getting on broadcast TV for decades, and, at a fraction of the cost. With regard to cost per individual user reached, there is nothing out there that performs better.
Bismarck: Are video ads for everyone?
Todd: Videos are as integral to a company's presence as is their website.
Bismarck: Now for the best practices. What should advertisers look for when creating a starter image?
Todd: Consider the goal of the starter image - it is to entice the user to hit play, so you want to make sure that the starter image grabs the user's attention, but remains relevant to the actual video ad. Use bold, vibrant colors and try to limit text to a minimum.
Bismarck: What kind of content should be included in the video ad?
Todd: Again, make sure to keep the user's attention. Try to tell a story - and stay clear of the product-based infomercial. Use people - owners, customers and the like to tell their story with the product.
Bismarck: How about animation? Does it work?
Todd: We use animation when we're trying to explain a complex idea, but whenever possible, we try to use real people.
Bismarck: Is there an ideal length for an ad?
Todd: Most ads will be watched for less than 30 seconds, so make sure that even if you make your ad longer than 30 seconds, that you front-load your important messages. Movie trailers or short films are obviously watched longer, but even they start to see a drop off at around 90 seconds.
Bismarck: Anything else you would like to share with our advertisers?
Todd: One more thing - avoid using scripts unless you're hiring actors to help you shoot the ad. You want your users or potential customers to believe you and scripting comes off as phony in many instances.
Bismarck: Thank you for your time.
Todd: My pleasure.
We hope you've found this helpful. If you have any video ad tips of your own that you'd like to share, please let us know.
Browse sites by category in the site tool
This week, we released category site selection for the site tool. This allows you to browse sites by category, making it easier for you to find and include sites that are relevant to your products or services. For example, if I want to advertise my soccer camp, I would first select the 'Browse Categories' button in the site tool. Then I can select 'Sports' and drilldown to the topic 'Soccer' in order to view sites that may interest me. It's a great new way to help you browse for sites that fit your needs, and we hope you'll check it out.
"Let click fraud happen"? Uh, no.
You may have seen some of the media coverage generated by a blogger's quoting Eric Schmidt about click fraud. By using select excerpts and ignoring the context of the remarks, that blog post made for an interesting read, but was unfortunately misleading.
Eric spoke at a SIEPR economics event at Stanford in March. At the end of his remarks he took questions. (You can view the whole presentation and Q&A that followed here.)
Here's the relevant question Eric was asked about click fraud: "Recently there’s been some talk about click fraud being a potential threat to the entire advertising business model. I was just wondering what your thoughts on that were and if there’s an economic solution to it more than just technical solutions."
Eric made clear from the very beginning that he wasn't describing our approach to click fraud and was answering hypothetically. He introduced his answer by saying: "Let’s imagine for purposes of argument that click fraud were not policed by Google and it were rampant ..."
The "let it happen" excerpt followed, in which he discusses the economic forces that can retard click fraud: "Eventually the price that the advertiser is willing to pay for the conversion will decline because the advertiser will realize that these are bad clicks. In other words, the value of the ad declines. So, over some amount of time, the system is, in fact, self-correcting. In fact, there is a perfect economic solution, which is to let it happen."
But he made clear that we don't take that approach, by adding that click fraud is "a bad thing and because we don’t like it, and because it does, at least for the short-term, creates some problems before the advertiser sees it, we go ahead and try to detect it and eliminate it." He also said, "In Google's case, we worry about this a lot and we have a number of technical engineers who think that this is great fun to try to go ahead of this and get ahead of it."
The fact is that Google strives to detect every invalid click that passes through its system, and to prevent those clicks from ever reaching an advertiser's account. And Eric and many others at Google have discussed the problem of invalid clicks publicly many times -- on our quarterly earnings calls, at our Press Day, and in other places, such as blogs. Anyone who has followed Google knows that Eric, and others at Google, have stated several times that Google fights invalid clicks, that we've devoted significant resources to manage it, and that we take it very seriously.
Update: Added link to the original story.
An AdWords mid-year review
In this fast-paced world, you're really on top of things if you can remember your best friend's birthday and where you parked your car this morning at work. Therefore, having just passed the midway mark of a very active year, it seems like a good time to review the new AdWords products and features that have been introduced in the past six months. Here are the ones we've mentioned on the Inside AdWords blog, organized into categories based on the feature's purpose:
Account Management Tools:
Advanced account search
Account time zones
Tabbed Ad Groups
Ad scheduling
Billing enhancements:
Backup credit cards
'Retry card' billing feature
New ad formats:
Local business ads
Click-to-play video ads
Targeting options:
Demographic site selection
We've gotten great feedback on many of the new features, especially click-to-play video ads, but we're always looking for more. In particular, we'd love to hear from you regarding your experiences using any of our new features and any suggestions for improvements.
If one of the features listed above happened to slip past you, take a look now since it's never too late to learn something new about AdWords.
Account Management Tools:
Advanced account search
Account time zones
Tabbed Ad Groups
Ad scheduling
Billing enhancements:
Backup credit cards
'Retry card' billing feature
New ad formats:
Local business ads
Click-to-play video ads
Targeting options:
Demographic site selection
We've gotten great feedback on many of the new features, especially click-to-play video ads, but we're always looking for more. In particular, we'd love to hear from you regarding your experiences using any of our new features and any suggestions for improvements.
If one of the features listed above happened to slip past you, take a look now since it's never too late to learn something new about AdWords.
Landing page quality update
Yesterday, we sat down with Andrew C., a product marketing manager, who gave us a heads-up regarding an upcoming AdWords 'landing page quality' change. This change to the algorithm will affect a small number of advertisers -- while having a positive impact on the quality of ads that our users see. Here's a little background, and a look at what's coming up:
As you may recall, we began incorporating advertiser landing page quality into the Quality Score back in December 2005. Following that change, advertisers who are not providing useful landing pages to our users will have lower Quality Scores that in turn result in higher minimum bid requirements for their keywords. We realize that some minimum bids may be too high to be cost-effective -- indeed, these high minimum bids are our way of motivating advertisers to either improve their landing pages or to simply stop using AdWords for those pages, while still giving some control over which keywords to advertise on. Although it is counter-intuitive to some who hear it, we'd rather show one less ad than to show an ad which leads to a poor user experience -- since long-term user trust in AdWords is of overarching importance.
From time-to-time, we improve our algorithms for evaluating landing page quality (often based on feedback from our end-users), and next week we're launching another such improvement. Thus, over the coming days a small number of advertisers who are providing a low quality user experience on their landing pages will see increases in their minimum bids. It is important to note, however, that the vast majority of advertisers will not be affected at all by this change, as they link to quality landing pages.
If you do see an increase in minimum bids and you feel that your landing page is providing a great user experience, please contact AdWords support and we'll take a look. Also, for useful guidelines which will help to define what users look for in a high quality site, we hope you'll take a look at the landing page and site quality guidelines, from the AdWords Help Center.
Code Jamming in Dublin
On June 29th, Google Dublin hosted the onsite finals for Code Jam Europe 2006. This is the third of four code competitions slated for this year, with China in January, India in April and a Global Code Jam this fall.
After nearly 10,000 registrants and three intense online rounds, the top 50 finalists persevered and flew to Dublin for the final challenge. ACM members also joined the coding community fun, traveling from countries as far afield as Kazakhstan, Russia, Sweden, Egypt, Spain, France, Poland and Bulgaria to celebrate the success of the finalists. Several of the ACMers had qualified for the Code Jam Finals in their own right, and having them in Dublin added a real buzz to the proceedings.
Over 15 countries were represented in the finals, and 31 of the top 50 are from Eastern Europe. We celebrate the success of the top finishers: Tomasz Czajka from Poland took home the €2500 grand prize; second- and third-prize winners were Petr Mitricheve and Roman Elizarov, both from Russia, who won €1000 each.
Watch the fun that defined Code Jam Europe in this short clip from the 3-day event -- and keep on coding to prepare for the next one!
Why not in the free search results?
Having spent countless hours working with the AdWords program and our advertisers, the Inside AdWords crew is pretty familiar with the questions that come up again and again. And we've found it both fun and instructive to answer a few of the more popular ones here in the blog.
One question that's often on advertisers' must-ask list is why their site does not begin to appear in Google's free search results once they have started advertising with AdWords. By way of illustration, here's a recent question (slightly edited, and excerpted from a longer post) from the AdWords Help group:
It's important to know that Google's advertising programs are entirely independent of the unpaid search results. So being an AdWords advertiser (or AdSense publisher) doesn't affect the inclusion or ranking of your site in the Google search index. Put another way, being an advertiser will neither help nor harm one's inclusion or ranking.
That said, an excellent place to get answers to your search-related questions is the Webmaster Help Center -- where you'll find links to lots of information on topics such as webmaster guidelines and your site in the Google index.
Also, don't forget to take another look at recent Inside AdWords posts regarding Google Sitemaps, another useful tool that may assist you in getting your site listed.
Update: changed Help Center links
One question that's often on advertisers' must-ask list is why their site does not begin to appear in Google's free search results once they have started advertising with AdWords. By way of illustration, here's a recent question (slightly edited, and excerpted from a longer post) from the AdWords Help group:
We are the only "widget" company in Santa Barbara County. When someone does a search using for example "widgets Santa Barbara" our sponsored link shows up at the top of the list. This is how it should be and it means that AdWords is working properly. However, why is it that our site does not show up in the free results?
It's important to know that Google's advertising programs are entirely independent of the unpaid search results. So being an AdWords advertiser (or AdSense publisher) doesn't affect the inclusion or ranking of your site in the Google search index. Put another way, being an advertiser will neither help nor harm one's inclusion or ranking.
That said, an excellent place to get answers to your search-related questions is the Webmaster Help Center -- where you'll find links to lots of information on topics such as webmaster guidelines and your site in the Google index.
Also, don't forget to take another look at recent Inside AdWords posts regarding Google Sitemaps, another useful tool that may assist you in getting your site listed.
Update: changed Help Center links
Tour de France goes 3D with Google Earth
I don't know about you, but with the action and excitement heating up in the Tour de France, it's hard to keep track of exactly where everybody is riding. When you're trying to understand the Herculean effort that these cyclists go through in stages like L'Alpe d'Huez, or which streets in Paris the final stage will pass through, 2D maps just aren't as compelling.
But now you can make sense of it all by flying around the route yourself. A new KML file available on the official Tour de France website lets you see the entire course overlaid on satellite imagery for Google Earth.
This special Google Earth tour is available in French, German, and Spanish as well as English. Pick your language on the Le Tour site, and once you've done that, look for the "Tour on Google Earth" link in the lefthand navigation under Route. Then you can see the starts, the finishes, even information on each of the cities along the way. Just move the KML file into your "My Places" folder on Google Earth, and follow along day by day. (Did you know that Huy has the unique privilege of hosting stages for the Tour de France, the Giro and the Tour of Belgium this year? We didn't either.)
Be sure to try out the tilt feature to see the truly daunting magnitude of all of those climbs where riders are battling it out in this year's wide-open race. "Beyond Category" climbs? No thanks -- we'll stick to the flats and leave those verticals to the pros!
Armchair travel with Google Pack
Even though I've lived in one city my entire life, I've always loved to travel and experience all the languages and cultures around the world. So it's been exciting to be a member of the team responsible for making Google Pack available internationally.
I'm happy to tell you that starting today Google Pack is available in Australia,
Austria, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, and the U.K. It includes a batch of useful software like Picasa (for organizing your vacation photos), and Firefox (for safer web browsing). And it comes with Google Updater, which keeps all the Pack programs current so you don't have to. Maybe with all the time you save, you can do some travelling of your own.
We get letters (4)
Our inbox is filled with stories from people who tell us how they use Google, and occasionally we feature these stories here. If you have a noteworthy tale, write to us.
In the world of marketing, there's always keen interest in knowing what the "target customer" does with the company's products. What are these people really like? How do they use our products?
Well, now we know about one in detail. Meet Alex, age 12. She just completed 6th grade in the Seattle area. And she wrote this essay for her class. If we made Alex up, you wouldn't believe us, so take a moment to read her report yourself.
Her dad Bill wrote to say that Alex "just totally loves doing research on the web and playing with making web sites. She did a cyber camp a couple of years ago, but most of what she knows comes from her mom" (who at the time led development of an online commerce business).
What's more, Bill goes on to say, Alex "has just discovered geocaching" and he adds "I started teaching her python as a first programming language this winter, but she got bored until I could figure out how to do some visual stuff that was more engaging than console read/writes :-)." He also notes that she "just discovered usability studies, and has been seen "flipping through one of her mom's several books on web design, engaging the reader, and ecommerce. Her dream job when she grows up is to be a technical program manager or web designer."
To us, the ideal Google user sounds a bit like Alex - resourceful, keen to try new things, and clearly, someone who appreciates ease of use. So we're really pleased that a number of our services meet her needs.
By the way - she got 106/100 for her essay (extra points for writing technique). Nice work, Alex! And a happy holiday weekend to our American readers. We'll see you next week.
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