Amy Konefal serves as a search consultant for Closed Loop Marketing in Roseville, CA. When not fixated on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and optimizing client ROI, she enjoys traveling, rollerblading and spending time with family.

There’s nothing I like better than when Google AdWords decides to make our lives as search marketers just a bit easier. If you’re interested in working smarter and improving campaign results, be sure to check out two of the more recent reporting roll-outs – Google’s new Placement Performance Reports and Search Query Reports.

Google Placement Performance Reports -- Finally... We now have visibility and CONTROL over where our ads display in the Content Network given Google AdWords’ relatively new Placement Performance Reports.

For the sake of providing some historical context, there definitely has been an evolution in terms of Google’s Content Network offerings. We were granted some control years back when Google decided to let us set separate bids for Content v. Search (and by the way, if you aren’t bidding separately for the Content and Search Networks, you really need to make this change – these really should be viewed and managed separately, as they are entirely different beasts).

The ability to bid separately for Content and Search was definitely a big step towards more control.

Then, another not-so-small victory came about when Google decided to let us exclude sites – nice feature, and another step towards more control. But given that most account managers don’t take the time to dive into their log files, this didn’t help much for those who were clueless as to the source of their traffic in the first place.

But now with Google’s new Placement Performance report, we’ve got quick and easy visibility coupled with control. These reports allow you to see exactly which Content sites are sending you traffic and conversions, and therefore make the right decisions to improve your campaign’s ROI from the Content Network (as opposed to throwing your hands up in the air in frustration and pausing the Content Network all together as many of us did in the past).

For those sites that are driving costly traffic yet few or no conversions, go to your Tools link and choose the Site Exclusion option to eliminate future clicks from these lower performing websites.

For those sites that show up in your Placement Performance Reports as top performers, consider maximizing your exposure by setting up a Site Targeting campaign. With a Site Targeting campaign, you can explicitly choose which sites you want to appear on and therefore maximize exposure on your most effective placements. However, note that I say ‘consider’ Site Targeting because there is one major caveat – you end up paying on a CPM basis if you do this and in my experience thus far, this is a big downgrade in ROI. I’m personally willing to give up the increased control in order to keep my coveted CPC pricing model.

The Placement Performance Reports combined with Site Exclusion is definitely a great combination for increasing ROI on the Content Network... though I have to mention one big flaw. Domain ads. You’ll notice in your Placement Performance Reports that there are line items that say ‘Domain ads’, which refer to Google ads that show up on parked domains. In our experience, these parked domains drive lots of clicks and few conversions... yet currently, Google will not allow advertisers to opt out of domain ads, as you can with individual sites.

Overall though, a thumbs up to Google for granting us this increased level of visibility.

Google Search Query Reports – If you are using Broad or Phrase Match, then Google’s new Search Query Reports will definitely be your friend. Downloading a Search Query report will allow you to pull statistics including conversion information for the specific search queries that were used by the searcher who clicked through on your ad – as opposed to seeing metrics only for the term you were explicitly bidding on in AdWords.

I definitely recommend pulling this report ASAP if you have not already. You will be quite shocked at the terms that you are phrase and broad matching to currently. Many are so completely and totally off the mark it is not even funny – which in turn is creating a whole lot of buzz and well-warranted discontent regarding Google’s Expanded Broad Match (check out Expanded Broad Match Hurting AdWords Advertisers and Up The Creek With Google AdWords Broad Match).

Here are some suggestions for taking the Search Query report data and converting it into a positive in terms of ROI.

For those terms that are driving traffic yet not converting, set up negative keywords in your campaigns and/or ad groups; thus eliminating this ineffective traffic.

For those terms that are driving effective traffic and conversions within your ROI benchmarks, yet you aren’t explicitly bidding on them (the broad or phrase matched terms), go ahead and add these terms to your campaign. Even though you’re already showing up for these terms, you can maximize exposure and control by bidding on them individually.

[By Amy Konefal | Original post | Comments]

The Digital Point forums showcase a screenshot of what seems to be a new Google AdSense format experiment. At the bottom of the vertical banner ad (a leaderboard, with 728x90 pixels), you can see a variety of linked keywords, e.g. “Celebs” and “Hot Celebrity”. Ionut Alex. Chitu, who sent this in, says “If you click on a keyword, you get different ads on the same page.” [Thanks Ionut!]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]

Technology blog Digital Inspiration has posted a quick and easy tutorial on how to make your own desktop wallpaper from any image in Google Maps. All you need is a location, some screen capture software, and Google Maps.

With all the new fun stuff that Google Maps has rolled out lately, this is definitely a great way to take advantage of your favorite spots. Maybe some vacation planning, or just nostalgia for where you've already been?

Are you tired of typing into your browser “Google.com”? Would you like to enter something else, but still get the same results as if you went to Google.com? … How about XXXDisc.net?

Heather Paulson noticed something odd during a test of the SEM/SEO/AM research service Syntryx, which is currently in beta.

She stumbled across a site at the domain XXXDisc.net that shows weird stuff in the Who-Is records of domain name registrars. The other odd thing about the site is that it appears to be the search engine Google.com. The main part of the Who-Is record also seems to confirm that this site belongs to Google.

The site is hosted on a server with a number of other sites that have questionable content, to say it carefully. This is of course very unlikely. Another thing that is odd, is the fact that the site does not show the universal search navigation bar, but the old links above the search box to select the type of search you want to do (Web, Images, etc.). It also does not show a “sign-in” link to logon to your Google account and it has a link beneath the search box to http://www.google.com/ncr and the anchor text “Go to Google.com”.

You can do searches and browse around to most of the content of the Google.com website while actually being on the XXXDisc.net site. That this is confusing, even for search marketers is not surprising.

I think that there are only two possible explanations for this. The first and most likely one is that the xxdisc.net site IS pulling the code from Google.com. It looks like a simple DNS forwarder to Google’s data center 39-GV (IP 216.239.59.104). The sites DNS Server is DNS1.NAME-SERVICES.COM.

If you ping the domain, it shows the real IP, which is 69.25.142.3 and not he Google data center IP. “No reverse DNS set” for that IP is the response, if I try to do a reverse lookup via online tools like the ones from DomainTools.com or by using the Windows tool “nslookup” on my local machine.

You can do a domain forwarding to any other domain (website) you want to, even if you don’t own the domain. There are common uses for this, most of the times for sub domains. Like this one. It is a sub domain of cumbrowski.com and even looks like my site. However, it is not my site and actually hosted and operated by somebody else. The “Branded Feed” option from (now Google’s) FeedBurner is another example of that.

It is not limited to sub domains and can be done with the top domain as well. A common use for that is the domain forwarding of other domains you own (e.g. your brand names and/or trademarks or TLD variations of the same domain name (e.g. .org, .net, .info)) for your business to your primary website domain (e.g. YouBusiness.com).
The registrant of the xxxdisc.net domain is a person in Zimbabwe.

High Av Video co
cosomer lee (123user AT hiavgirl DOT net)
+263.123555777
Fax: +263.123456777
West wood street 213# linken road
mogan, 432229
ZW

It does not seem to be a malicious attempt by that person to do something sneaky. He just does not use that domain yet and instead of having a parking service throwing up some stuff (e.g. ads) does he simply redirect to Google.

However, that Google (the site code) allows that the Google.com site is pulled via a different domain name that is not owned by Google is a big oversight by Google. Somebody with malicious intentions could use it for bad things. The Google site uses relative URLs, which keeps the user on the different domain.

I checked the logins, they redirect to Google.com, which is good, and because that prevents that, the login cookie is being created on that non-Google domain.

In addition, a link appears on the Homepage that reads. “Go to Google.com”, but that is not enough IMO. Google should (301) redirect any request to their sites if the domain is not the real Google domain or at least if it is not one of their domain properties.

This is not that easy, if the second explanation is true. This explanation of the site would not explain the weird information in the Who-Is record for that domain though.

It could be the case that the a script is running on that domain that takes all requests, then does a HTTP request to Google in the background on the server side and then returns the results as is or as an altered version to the end user in his browser.

I doubt that this is happening though. It redirects to Google from some of the links, I mentioned already the login links and other links that do not refer to secured sections of the site, such as the links on the Google products page, link to the actual Google domain. A scripter would have caught those and changed to local URLs on his domain.

If there is another plausable explaination that explains these things and a reason why Google would allow this to happen, I am curious to learn about it. What do you think?

Cheers!

Carsten Cumbrowski

Free Internet Marketing Resources Portal.

Google has had suggestion help for a while — you know, you start typing in a search and Google starts offering you search terms you might want to use. You can try it at http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en .

Now Yahoo has expanded its search suggestion service to Yahoo.com. If you go to Yahoo.com and start typing in a search term, and you’ll get a list of search suggestions. (It seems this takes a few seconds to load — at least it did for me — so don’t start looking for suggestions right away.)

Now I was pretty sure that the search suggestions wouldn’t be the same across the two sites, but I wondered how different they were. Then I remembered that Ask.com did that as well, and decided to do a head-to-head across the three services.

Hmm. Not really sure if I learned anything here except, according to that last search, suggestions can be really, really different….

First it was Siskel & Ebert, then it was Ebert & Roeper, and now it’s all three guys (and guest stars) in a video archive spanning over five thousand reviews, available at http://www.AtTheMoviesTV.com . The new review set is called “The Balcony Archive”.

Note that it is nowhere near complete. Siskel & Ebert started in 1975 and apparently many of the reviews were not kept. Instead, it looks like the majority of the reviews start around 1985. (The direct link for the video review archive is here.

Search is simple keyword; search results however are provided in three panes: movie titles, actors/actresses, and directors. Partial words are searched — a search for thin will find anything, etc. Click on the name of an actor or director and you’ll get a list of their films.

Watching the reviews is a matter of clicking on the table and waiting for the in-browser video player to load. There is a small commercial that plays before the review, but it’s not so long as to be annoying. While the review is playing, there’s a link to the right of the video that links to summary and cast information for the movie being reviewed. You can look at this information without bothering the video. Reviews seemed to be about five or six minutes long.

The videos themselves were mostly easy to watch. Sometimes in the older ones the sound is a little blurry. And of course in the movie clips themselves swear words are censored out. If I were better at movies I would like this more, but it was fun searching for favorite actors and seeing how far back I could go with finding old movies.

The Black Hat convention In Las Vegas disclosed vunerabilities in Gmail and other cookie based email programs. Hackers detailled the hijacking of a gmail session.

The information was presented at the 15th annual DefCon convention in Las Vegas this weekend.

Google announced Friday the release of AdWords Editor 4.0. This version has a number of new features and many upgrades to the existing features.

New features include the ability to edit mobile ads, specific campaign editing, setting negatives and more.

Here’s a way to mix song lyrics. Take a given popular song, and replace each rhyme line with the line from another, popular or not so popular song, by searching for the rhyming word (e.g. if the rhyme is “a-a-b-b” then replace the second “a” and “b”). You can use Google and look for [word] lyrics, and you can also use Yahoo Lyrics search. For instance, if the lines from the song are ...

<<When I want you in my arms
When I want you and your charms>>

.. then you search for “charms” or “your charms” in other lyrics and pick one of the first lines that pops up. In this case, the song is changed to ...

<<When I want you in my arms
Brake baby brake, taking me in with all your charms>>

To list the full example, please sing along the following song with the melody of Elderly Everly Brothers – All I Have To Do Is Dream. (So this is the Nylon version with a little help from the singers Lush, Roy Orbison, Stacie Orrico, Willie Nelson, Carla Thomas, Blue Cantrell and Luther Vandross.)

<<When I want you in my arms
Brake baby brake, taking me in with all your charms
Whenever I want you all I have to do is dream
How long must I dream?

When I feel blue in the night
Only you can keep us tight
Whenever I want you all I have to do is dream

I can make you mine
Partaking of yesterday’s wine
Anytime night or day
But all I can say is gee whiz
I’m dreaming my life away

I need you so I could die
Why, why, why
Whenever I want you all I have to do is dream
I only see you when I dream my dream>>

Here’s another song, this one by the Police, with help from Frankie Valli, Local H, Led Zeppelin and DMX. Sing alog to the melody of “Roxanne”:

<<Roxanne, you don’t have to put on the red light
Those days are over
’Cause I remember what a night.

Roxanne, you don’t have to wear that dress tonight
Walk the streets for money
It’s only stupid me, so stupid me, all-right

Roxanne, you don’t have to put on the red light
Everybody needs the light.
Put on the red light, put on the red light
While sitting at a red light
Put on the red light, oh

I loved you since I knew ya
X gon give it to ya
I have to tell you just how I feel
do you want another boy?
I know my mind is made up
I’m not wearing any make-up
Told you once I won’t tell you again it’s a bad way

Roxanne, you don’t have to put on the red light
Everybody needs the light.
You don’t have to put on the red light
At the red light.>>

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sergey Brin is telling employees to stop making old products and start improving new ones. "For example, said Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, Google plans to combine its spreadsheet, calendar and word-processing programs into one suite of Web-based applications."

Got a question? Find an answer. In fact, find lots of answers. QueryCAT, at http://www.querycat.com/, allows you to search a database of over four million questions and answers.

Ironically QueryCAT does not have a FAQ page itself, but its about page serves the same purpose. The database of pages is built off the Alexa Web Search platform with the addition of QueryCAT’s “unique question recognition technology” to run the search.

You’ll see from the front page of the site that you can search for questions — my old standard, “Why is the sky blue?” gives 488 results in this context. But you can also search for words or brand names. A search for Maxell found questions from sources as varied as Stevie Ray Vaughan FAQ to DVD+RW Alliance to Elephant Calendar Support.

It’s also interesting to use the search engine to check for products being used as solutions. For example, I might search for “use openoffice” and see how people are using that product to solve various problems (like opening Microsoft Office products on Linux, etc.) It doesn’t appear that QueryCAT recognizes phrases, however, but you will get the occasional wonky FAQ in your search results.

It would be nice to be able to limit your searches categorically, or to get a better sense of what’s being searched, but I found a lot of useful information here — nice to search for brand names and not get a ton of spaham.

Here are some of the really good random logo + slogan juxtapositions some of you found at Logomotto:

(Bill Mac adds “Must have really low sense of self-worth”)

Ongoing comments

[Thanks everyone for playing and creating follow-up sites! Note there’s also 2 flags in the game, not just logos.]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post]

Joakim Jardenberg from Sweden emails in to show above picture of his car, complete with a new “GOOGLE” license plate he managed to get, writing:

<<The idea came from the fact that we live in a world where we keep talking about the increasing importance of brands – but it is getting ever so much harder to protect them. I want “my” business, the traditional media companies, to realize that we have to work harder with BUILDING the brand and stop trying to protect it – simply because it’s impossible. The channels are [too] many, the users to creative and idea of fair use puts everyone in the driving seat – guided only by their own moral and ethics. We cant fight it, so we must face it, live with it, and deal with it. (and as you can see, there are strong [parallels] to the copyright-issue, where I also “fight" for a different approach)

By picking one of the hardest brands in the world I wanted to prove that [no one] is “safe”, but I also picked Google because I’m convinced that my little “show” can in no way harm Google. They have done their lesson of building the brand, so there is absolutely no damage done to them by this.

The cost is 6.000SEK for ten years. Thats $872, or less then a hundred bucks a year.

And there are more proof of concepts to come, I hope.>>

Joakim asked Google Sweden for a statement, but they postponed it as the person who handles personal license plate in Sweden is on vacation...

[Thanks Joakim and Mikael S.! With hat tip to Simon Perry. Photos Creative Commons-licensed.]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments]

If you want to make the most of Google’s Universal Search results, you need to understand how to create killer listings in Google Local. Why? As the screenshot below illustrates, Google Local can and often will dominate what’s seen above the fold?

With real estate like that, you can gather large amounts of traffic if you can list prominently for targeted keywords. With this as our goal, let’s take a dive into how to enhance your Google Local listings?

Claim Ownership ASAP

Google will add listings to their local results without any user submissions. It takes some creative work to pull it off, but it can be done. With that said, you need to check and see if your business is already listed in there. If so, you need to claim ownership if you wish to suggest revisions and verify all contact information.

Encourage Honest Reviews

You need to understand that local search is a socially driven tool. The more reviews and feedback users provide, the more likely Google will be to promote your listings. Consider reviews on local search to be similar to PageRank for organic listings. It’s not the main ranking criteria but there are enough parallels to suggest there is a connection. As the cliché goes? If there’s smoke, there’s fire.

So - Just how can you go about encouraging reviews on Google Local? First off, start by asking your customers. You will never get anything if you don’t go out and ask for it. Of course, while asking helps - motivating and incentivizing can work better. Reward positive reviews with a coupon, savings or free promotion.

These are just some random thoughts, but I think you get the idea. You need your customers to give you solid reviews, and by giving them something in return, you will accelerate that entire process.

Look Beyond Google

Google’s understanding of local search results reach beyond the information you provide directly to them.

For example Yelp, MenuPages and GrubHub are sources for restaurant data, and Google will show these sources in a listing. In a similar fashion, SuperPages can often be found providing data where Google is lacking.

Study your industry in other cities and try to research what tools and data sources are out there. Check on the “Details” tab of full listings to see where data could be pulled in from. In most instances the listings that show up on Google are on the partnered site verbatim.

Since I’m throwing out clichés to help make some points, let’s quickly use the saying “You need to spend money to make money”.

There are third party services such as Reach
Local and LocalLaunch! that specialize in local search listings and their optimization. You of course pay these providers, but in return they’ll get your listings up to par with the competition and even provide some clear reporting on how effective your listings are.

Editing Listings in Google Local

Okay, now its time to get to business and start editing directly in Google Local Business Center. Here are some ideas, tips and suggestions to keep in mind on an itemized level:

• Titles: Use common business names, not official ones that no one would recognize. If you can do so logically, integrate a primary keyword or phrase that people would be searching for. An example of a poor listing I came across was for “Big Tony’s Pizza #3 Inc” — Imagine then how “Big Tony’s Pizza and Subs
• Addresses: You would be surprised at how many listings I’ve seen where Google tells me that a business is being displayed in an approximate location. I’ve seen restaurants on lakes, hotels in residential neighborhood, and a car dealer inside a military base. Do not rely on directional indicators (N, E, S, W, etc.) and spell out things like boulevard, street, avenue and others. Be as descriptive as possible, and check to make sure the location is plotted accurately and correctly. You can make corrections using the “Fix incorrect marker location” area of your listing editor.
• Web Pages: Since we are talking about search engines, its common sense to connect your business to a URL. That said, many listings go without a URL bring connected to them despite the fact that they exist. This is yet another reason you need to verify your connection to the business!
• Phone Numbers: Add in all the phone numbers that make sense. Restaurants could have a main line listed for business purposes, another for take out and delivery, and another still for an automated reservation system. Adding them all in will only help to educate your consumers and help make things easier for you once they want to do business with you.
• Categories: These are vital to your success, so choose and update them wisely. Do not assume things are good as suggested either. In fact, test out how different categories will impact your listings over time, and work to implement the best approach across the board.
• Hours & Payment / Photos: I have a rule of thumb here? Overwhelm Google. Add in a gallery of photos and be as descriptive as possible in these areas. If Google has to retain that data for you, you can be assured that they’ll want to push their users to it.
• Custom Fields: Get creative and play around with this. Upload menus, sales and specials, seasonal rates or coupon codes? The options are only limited by what you can think up and add in!

Conclusion

While simple from the surface, Google Local is a great tool that will continue to shape how information is served up to users. The coolest part is that these listings are yours to edit and change freely, so you can test things out and draw your own conclusions.

In the end, just realize that you need to commit the time to make the changes, and you should be passionate about what you’re doing. If you can maintain that approach, your listings and business will be rolling in no time!

Involved in the industry since 1999, Eric currently manages organic optimization at a Fortune 500 organization. In addition to contributing here on Search Engine Journal, Eric maintains a blog and consulting business at www.ericlander.com.