Cuil, is it Cool?

As I'm sure you've read, Cuil.com is the new search engine on the block. It's main claim to fame is that it supposedly has by far the largest search index of any search engine. However, on the basis of my review of Cuil.com, I suspect it will be a short-lived flash in the pan.

Here's what I think is uncool about Cuil:

1. Limited functionality: compared to Google, for example, the functionality of the site is just too limited. I have become so used to being able to search the Web, images, news, etc. with a single additional click that I could never switch to another search engine that doesn't offer that functionality.
2. Search results format: I really hate the 2- or 3-column result layout and from this layout I cannot obviously tell the ranking of the results. I also don't like the images inserted into the results
3. Actual search results: for several of the searches that I have run on Cuil.com, I just didn't think the results they provided were always the best results for my search terms.

However, on the plus side, the main thing I do like about Cuil, is the tabs that appear along the top for certain searches, which allow you to "drill down" into specific topics related to your initial search.

For example, when I searched for "elivs presley" the following tabs appeared: Elvis Presley Lyrics, Elvis Presley Enterprises, Elvis Presley Pictures, as well as a "More" tab, containing a list of, perhaps, more obscure categories.

All in all, I think Cuil.com has a long way to go before Google and Yahoo will start worrying.

Google/DoubleClick Deal Being Challenged over Privacy Concerns

A complaint has been filed with the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) that challenges Google's proposed purchase of DoubleClick.

The complaint has been filed by consumer protection groups the Electronic Privacy Information Center (“EPIC”), the Center for Digital Democracy (“CDD”), and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (“U.S. PIRG”). Their main concern is that

the increasing collection of personal information of Internet users by Internet advertisers poses far-reaching privacy concerns that the Commission should address. Neither Google nor DoubleClick have taken adequate steps to safeguard the personal data that is collected. Moreover, the proposed acquisition will create unique risks to privacy and will violate previously agreed standards for the conduct of online advertising.

It is interest to note that their main concern is in the area of privacy rather than any concerns regarding monopolization of the industry.

Red the entire complaint, which outlines their privacy concerns in great detail and makes for an interesting read!

Tags: google, doubleclick

Google Introduces Account Snapshot Page for AdWords

Google has a released a Beta version of its new Account Snapshot page for summarizing the information from your AdWords account. The snapshot page looks something like this:



The page is divided into 3 main sections.

1. The top-left portion is for Alerts, Status Notifications and Announcements
2. The bottom-left portion contains links to Help and Tips
3. The right-hand side contains configurable campaign performance summaries and an interactive graph illustrating either Cost, Clicks, Impressions, or CTR data

You can also select whether to make this page your starting page when logging in, or the familiar Campaign Summary page.

Personally, although the Snapshot page does contain some useful information, I don't see it being of any real benefit to serious AdWords users. The data it contains is too general and I shall be surprised if I ever use it as everything I need is on the Campaign Summary page.

Having said that, it's good to see that Google is continually seeking to improve the AdWords experience by its ongoing efforts to add new functionality, services and an improved interface.

Tags: adwords

My Comments on "Lost Rankings Due to Site Redesign or Spam?"

Jill Whalen has just published an interesting Q&A in her well-known "High Rankings Advisor" newsletter entitled "Lost Rankings Due to Site Redesign or Spam?" This article, which I recommend you read in its entirety, contains some very interesting and provocative points worthy of discussion.

Summary

To briefly summarize the scenario Jill described, Company X had their web site redesigned and, afterwards, their Google rankings went way down. Jill discovered that the SEO company they had hired was using some pretty questionable SEO practices.

Jill made two statements in particular that I would like to look at further.

"I don’t believe in relying on search engine rankings in order to successfully run your business"

Thank you Jill for reaffirming what I have written about previously (see under the heading "Don't Put All Your Eggs in One Basket" in my article "A Holistic Approach to Internet Marketing"), that any business that is dependent on being found in organic search results is being built on shaky ground. As I also mentioned in a recent post regarding Paid Links,

Google owes site owners nothing when it comes to organic search results and is free to rank its search results however it sees fit.

Now, I certainly don't condone the practices employed by the SEO company that Jill mentioned in her article. However, I also think Company X was wrong in making its business dependent on achieving certain rankings from Google and it is sad that someone had to be laid off as a result of their rankings dropping.

It needs to be remembered that Google's mission is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," not to provide free marketing avenues to the world's businesses. It is generally recognized that Google has been actively trying to devalue commercial web pages in its search results so that informational pages are ranked higher. This is so that users of its search engine actually get information rather than commerical promotion when they search but it's also a way to encourage businesses to use the tool that Google has supplied for marketing via search, AdWords.

If you are building your business on Google's (or Yahoo's, or anyone else's) search results, think again because it is very shaky ground and not good business sense.

I’m quite sure that . . . there will be lawsuits based on this kind of bad SEO

Well, as you'll know if you're a regular reader of this blog, legal issues are a particular love of mine so this comment was just too provocative for me to ignore.

So, is this a realistic possibility and, if so, what would someone need to establish in order to successfully file such a lawsuit (in the U.S., that is)?

Well, I'll try to avoid getting too "legalesey" on you. In order to win such a lawsuit the action would probably be one based on negligence and one of the key elements you would need to establish (among several others) is as follows:

If the defendant undertakes to render any service in a recognized profession or trade . . . she is held, at a minimum, to the standard of care customarily exercised by members of that profession or trade--whether or not she personally possesses such skills. (Emphasis in original.)

(Quoted from Heath v. Swift Wings, Inc, 1979 in Gilbert's Law Summaries: Torts).

What this means in practice is that you would need to establish that your SEO company engaged in (bad) practices that would not generally be engaged in by members of the SEO profession. However, there are 2 key points here.

1. Is SEO a "Recognized Profession or Trade?"

Without engaging in some full-blown legal research to discover whether any court has ever held that SEO is a recognized profession, this really is an open-ended question. However, in my opinion, given the vast number of SEO professionals and SEO companies that exist around the world, I would find it hard to imagine that this profession wouldn't be recognized.

Do you think SEO is a recognized profession? Why? Why not?

2. Is there a set of practices that are generally held to be acceptable and unacceptable among SEO professionals?

This point is really where the rubber hits the road. In order to establish a set of "generally acceptable SEO practices" you would probably need to consult some expert witnesses that were leading lights in the SEO field, such as Jill Whalen herself! However, do the well-known names in SEO agree as to what are and are not "generally acceptable SEO practices?" Another pretty open-ended question.

Personally, I think there are some generally recognized "good practices" and some generally recognized "bad practices." Between those extremes is a gray area or practices that may be categorized more as "personal preferences" or practices that some people believe work, perhaps even with good reason, but that others believe are merely SEO superstitions.

It certainly will be an interesting day in court when an SEO company is being sued for losing a company business due to its bad SEO practices and I can't wait to see what happens! Also, as Jill indicates, it really is just a matter of time before this happens, so if you're working for an SEO company or are an SEO professional yourself, make sure that you find out which practices are acceptable in your profession and make sure you use them, and only them, or you could eventually find yourself on the wrong end of a negligence lawsuit.

Tags: seo, negligence, lawsuit, google, jill whalen

Most Popular Posts in February-March

This blog's most popular posts in February-March were as follows:

1. What Every AdWords Advertiser Should Know About AdSense - A slightly tongue-in-cheek look at the seamier side of AdSense


2. Joel Comm or Joel Con? - Questions Joel Comm's integrity with specific reference to a hyperlink on his blog to Agloco.com
   


3. H1 – What Role, If Any, Does the H1 Tag Play in Effective SEO? - An overview of the use of the Hn tags and what role the H1 tag plays in SEO, if any.
   


4. Google PPA Ads: Pros and Cons - The pros and cons of Google's new Pay-Per-Action advertising.
   


5. AdWords & Checkout Icons - My view of the repercussions of the Google Checkout icon appearing alongside AdWords ads.
   

Again, these were the 5 most popular "regular" posts. The 5th most popular page, apart from the home page, was my "About Me" page!

Yahoo Is Such a Copycat

Is it just me, or does Yahoo just seem to be copying everything Google does these days?

Here are some examples of things Yahoo has been copying in the online marketing world:

1. Yahoo Search Marketing (YSM) has copied Google's terminology for the structure of its advertising campaigns
2. It is adding quality score functionality
3. It is making available its own equivalent of Google Analytics
   
4. It is going to be limiting ad descriptions to 70 characters (the same as AdWords 2 x 35 character limit fields)
   
5. And now, it has announced that PayPal buttons are going to appear on it's sponsored search listings in just the same way that Google Checkout buttons appear alongside AdWords ads.

Come on Yahoo!, how about doing something original!

Tags: yahoo, google, ysm

Google's New URL Removal Tool

Google has just added some new functionality to its Webmaster Tools at Webmaster Central that allows you to remove certain URLs from Google's search results. Let's take a closer look.

Verified Sites Only
The most important point to note is that you can only remove URLs of sites for which you have verified ownership.

Located Under Diagnostics
The option itself is labeled "URL Removals" and is located under the "Diagnostics" tab.

Four Options
You are given 4 options for URL removal:

1. Individual URLs - that is, individual web pages, images, etc.
2. An entire directory (including all contained files and subdirectories)
3. Your entire site
4. A cached copy of a Google search result
   

Effective for 6 Months
Removals are effective for 6 months. You also have the option of undoing the removal. When the six months is up

if the content is still blocked or returns at 404 or 410 status message and we've recrawled the page, it won't be reincluded in our index. However, if the page is available to our crawlers after this six month period, we'll once again include it in our index.

Removal From Search Results
A final important point to note is that this functionality removes the specfied files from Google's search results NOT from Google's index. As mentioned above, removal from the index can only occur once the six-month period is completed.

Tags: google, url removal

New AdWords Feature: Preferred Cost Bidding

Google announced today a new bidding option called "preferred cost bidding." This option allows AdWords advertisers to set their desired average price rather than a maximum bid.

First impressions indicate that this involves getting Google to manage your bidding for you so I am cautious about the real benefits of this new option. However, it's early days yet, in fact, this option isn't rolled out to all advertisers yet.

For full details, check out the official blog post.

Tags: adwords

Google and Paid Links

As you've probably seen, there has been a lot of discussion lately about Google and their opposition to Paid Links. Rather than discuss this exact issue though, I'd like to share my thoughts in response to a post on seoclass.com entitled "Google Wants to Tell You How to Run Your Website."

Background
However, first of all I think a little background is needed. This whole topic has come to the forefront after a set of posts by the well-known Matt Cutts on the topic of hidden and paid links (post 1, post 2, post 3). The thing that has really caused an uproar is that Matt has requested that the general public report sites that contain paid links, even if they only suspect the links are paid. In addition, Matt is requesting that sites using paid links actively disclose them in both a human-readable and machine-readable manner. Which is pretty much where "graywolf" (the author of the seoclass.com post) enters the fray . . .

Discussion
Graywolf (aka Michael Gray) writes

So the question remains; does Google have the right to tell you how to run your website and dictate how you are allowed to make a living?

He also quotes a comment from Andy Beal on this issue

I don’t like to impose on others, my thoughts on disclosure (I personally disclose any relationships in our disclosure policy), but I think Google is going too far with this “best practice”. What business does Google have in dictating the disclosure of any business relationships on others?

I challenge Graywolf's basic premise, that Google is in any way telling us how we should run our websites.

Basically, all Google is saying is that they want to know which links are paid for so that they can discount them in its search results algorithms and that if you don't want to be penalized for them, you should disclose them. What's wrong with that?

Google has the right to use whatever algorithms and penalties it likes. No-one's forced to use Google or to submit to its demands. If Google wanted to rank pages simply according to the number of spelling errors on a page, or the number of 3-letter words on a page, it has every right to do so. Google owes site owners nothing when it comes to organic search results and is free to rank its search results however it sees fit. If people don't like it, then they should start using other search engines so that market forces come into play to effect change.

Now, that doesn't mean that I'm happy with what Google is trying to do and I also don't think it's being logical in the way it's going about this issue. However, Google is perfectly within its right to rank web pages in whatever way it sees fit and if that means penalizing pages containing undisclosed paid links, so be it.

Tags: google

Happenings While I Was On Vacation

Well, it's been interesting to catch up on all the news that took place while I was away on vacation. Below are some of the main news stories that occurred while I was gone (in no particular order!):

1. Google Checkout was made available in the U.K.
2. Google bought DoubleClick for $3.1 billion (that's $3,100,000,000)
3. Google played two April Fool Jokes - TiSP and Google Paper
4. Google formally released new formats for AdSense ad units
5. Google introduced a new format for ads that appear directly above the search results
6. Yahoo announced that it will soon require a short description for all ads, limited to 70 characters
   

Off On Vacation

Hmmm . . . not sure how you can be both "off" and "on" vacation, but anyway . . .

Tuesday my family and I are leaving the U.K. for 2 weeks back in Northern California, visiting friends, family and all of our favorite haunts and taking in as many Mexican restaurants as possible en route!

I may have time for an odd post while we're away . . . but on the other hand, I may not!

Google PPA Ads: Perhaps the Biggest Pro of All

Yesterday I wrote about the Pros and Cons of Google's new PPA (Price-Per-Action) pricing model for AdWords, which is currently undergoing beta testing. However, I neglected to mention what may possibly be the biggest pro of all for PPA advertising, as compared to the standard Cost-Per-Click (CPC) model: negating the click fraud problem.

Click Fraud and PPA Advertising

Probably the single biggest drawback of CPC (aka PPC) advertising is the issue of click fraud. This serious problem has resulted in lawsuits involving both Google and Yahoo and various studies have estimated that fraudulent clicks make up between approximately 14-30% of all CPC advertising clicks. Those figures make it clear that click fraud is a significant hidden cost for advertisers.

This really is where PPA advertising comes into its own. Because under the PPA model, advertisers only pay when a predefined action occurs, it makes no difference whether the clicks on the ads are genuine or not, because the advertiser does not have to pay for them. Thus, for any action that involves a financial transaction that is beneficial to the advertiser, the effect of click fraud is, to all intents and purposes, eliminated.

Click Fraud and Non-Financial Transactions
However, PPA advertising doesn't entirely do away with the click fraud problem, though it certainly does reduce it drastically. This is because not all actions for which advertisers are prepared to pay will necessarily produce a financial benefit to the advertiser. If the predefined action involves no cost to the "customer," click fraud may still occur.

For example, suppose I want to advertiser my site so that visitors will subscribe to my free weekly email newsletter, on the basis that x% of subscribers end up making a purchase of a product or service advertised in the newsletter. In this case, the predefined action would simply be completing an online registration form, an action that costs the subscriber nothing. In this case, if someone clicks on my ad in a fraudulent manner and then registers for my newsletter, with no intent of ever even reading it, I will have paid for that action with no actual benefit to myself.

However, the vast majority of desired actions will be ones involving financial transactions, so even this scenario is of limited concern.

Conclusion & Reaction

PPA advertising is certainly a big gun in the aresenal against click fraud and has, for that reason, an obvious appeal to online advertisers. However, even this new pricing model is not without its critics. For example, in a recent post entitled "Is Google doing advertising evil with new model?," Donna Bogatin of ZDNet's Digital Markets blog, examines the questions "Is Google compromising the integrity of the advertising it serves? Is Google now doing advertising evil?"

Sources

1. Click Fraud - Our Research, MarketingExperiments.com (2005)
2. Industry Click Fraud Rate Climbs to Year’s Highest Level at 14.2 Percent, ClickForensics.com (2007)
3. Study: Click fraud could threaten pay-per-click model, CNet News.com (2006)
4. Web of deceit hides behind Google's success, GulfNews.com (2007)
5. Is Google doing advertising evil with new model?, Donna Bogatin, ZDNet (2007)
   

Tags: adwords, ppa

Google PPA Ads: Pros and Cons

Yesterday I blogged about the pros and cons of Google's PPA ads from the ad publishers' persepctive on my MoneyTies blog. Today I want to look at the pros and cons from the perspective of the AdWords advertiser.

Introducing Google PPA Ads

But first, a brief word of introduction about this new advertising model.

In a press release on Tuesday of this week, Google announced a limited beta test of its new Pay-Per-Action ads. This new pricing model is initially available only to U.S. advertisers. PPA ads will be shown on the AdWords' Content Network.

Under the PPA pricing model, advertisers only pay when the customer completes some predefined action on their web sites, such as completing a sales transaction, registering for an online course, etc. It is also the advertiser who determines the values of these actions.

In addition to this new form of AdWords advertising, Google is also taking this opportunity to introduce a new type of advertisement: text link ads. This is in addition to the standard text and image ads, which are also available to PPA advertisers.

So, what are the pros and cons of this new form of AdWords advertising for you, the advertiser?

Pros

Greater Cost Control
Under the PPA pricing model, advertisers only pay when a desired action occurs. Futhermore, the value of the action is determined by the advertiser. This gives advertisers much more control over their advertising costs. In addition, this model provides a solution for one of the most common complaints of the existing pricing options (CPC and CPM), particularly CPC. That is, that advertisers have to pay even if no customers ever buy what the advertiser is selling.

Ease of Cost Management
As well as greater control of costs, the advertiser also knows in advance what the profit per conversion will be because it has already been predetermined in setting the value of the action. Thus, advertisers using this pricing model will not need to continually monitor their ROIs ("Returns On Investment") in the same way that is necessary under the CPC pricing model in particular.

However, it goes without saying that advertisers who have previously used conversion tracking will need to monitor the overall effectiveness of their PPA compaigns as compared to their prior CPC or CPM campaigns as it is possible that these previous campaigns could have produced a better return.

Increased Choice
The introduction of PPA ads increases choice for advertisers in two ways.

First, the very introduction of this new pricing model gives advertisers another means of advertising in addition to the existing CPC and CPM ads.

Second, the introduction of the new text link ad format (with apologies to Text-Link-Ads.com - I sense a potential lawsuit there!) gives advertisers a new and exciting ad format to experiment with.

Cons

Lack of Control
There are three ways in which PPA ads provide advertisers with less control as compared to the standard text or image CPC ads.

Over Web Sites
First, PPA ads will only be made available on the Content Network, that is, as AdSense ads. This means that your ads could end up being shown on any site in the Content Network and the only way you can prevent your ads from being on particular sites would be with the site exclusion tool. However, it is unclear at this time if the site exclusion tool will be available for PPA ads. In fact, given that

AdSense publishers are able to choose whether they want to serve pay-per-action ads on their sites. Publishers can select between an individual ad, a shopping cart of ads, or a specific term or phrase that is relevant to their site’s content . . . publishers [have] control over which pay-per-action ads are shown on their site,

I will not be surprised if PPA advertisers will be unable to prevent their ads from being shown on certain sites. This is certainly the case with comparable advertising platforms for affiliate advertising, such as Clickbank.

In addition, the very fact that these ads will be AdSense ads is a potential source of problems, as I've written about before!

Over Adwords Networks
Second, the fact that PPA ads will only be shown on the Content Network means that advertisers will not have the choice to display their ads either on Google.com or other sites in the Search Network. Google.com and the Search Network are arguably better advertising platforms in most cases but they will not be available to PPA advertisers.

Over Ad Exposure
Third, it is possible that no-one will actually choose to display your particular ads on their web site. The choice to display PPA ads, and which PPA ads to display, is with the AdSense publishers. Thus, even if your ads are relevant to hundreds of AdSense web sites, if the owners of those sites do not choose your ads, you will not be able to advertise using the PPA pricing model at all.

This issue also raises another con of the PPA pricing model . . .

The Problem of Price Setting
There are three elements of the problem of price setting that will affect PPA advertisers.

1. Competing Advertisers
First, the price (aka "value") you set for your actions will be competing against the values set by other, competing advertisers. This, effectively, introduces a pure auction for exposure. However, given that the choice is ultimately with the AdSense publisher, an ad with a lower value may still be chosen over one with a higher value. However, how Google will handle the situation when an advertiser chooses "a specific term or phrase that is relevant to their site’s content," remains to be seen.

2. Competing Demands
Second, the advertiser will also need to balance carefully the competing demands of setting a value that is low enough to produce a reasonable return for each completed action while, at the same time, needing to set a high enough value to attract the AdSense publishers who are, effectively, affiliate advertisers.

3. Competing Pricing Models
Third, advertisers will need to try to determine in advance whether the PPA model will produce a better ROI than the CPC or CPM models. If the advertiser has been using conversion tracking, this should be relatively straightforward. However, it will still be of great importance for PPA advertisers to test the effectiveness of these ads as compared to the CPC and CPM options.

Conclusion

PPA ads are certainly a long-awaited solution to one of the biggest complaints against the CPC pricing model and, even though they give advertisers greater control over their costs this control is not without its own problems. However, I sense a bright future for PPA ads and I shall look on with great interest as the Beta test progresses.

Tags: adwords, ppa

Ads By Google - New Look

I just noticed another interesting variation of the "Ads by Google" text that appears alongside the AdSense ads on this blog:



This variation is quite stylized and fitted quite well with the ads on this blog!

Little-Known AdWords Features: Bid Multiplier

One lesser known feature of AdWords is the ability to automatically have your bid adjusted at different times of the day, as part of the Ad Scheduling functionality. Thus, if you would like to bid less from, for example, midnight until 7:00 a.m., you can do so using the Bid Multiplier.

The Bid Multiplier is available through AdWords' Ad Scheduling functionality. To access this feature, select a campaign and click on "Edit Campaign Settings." Then, depending on whether you've had Ad Scheduling enabled in the past or not, you will need to click on either "Turn on Ad Scheduling" or "Edit Times and Bids." Either of these links will bring up the Ad Scheduling screen.

From the Ad Scheduling screen, in order to access the Bid Multiplier, click on the "Switch to Advanced Mode" link. From this page, whenever you select a time range in which to display your ads you are also given the ability to adjust your default bid by a particular percentage.

Thus, if you wanted to bid only 3/4 the amount of your usual bid between midnight-7:00 a.m. on Wednesday you would first click the "Edit" link by Wednesday. Then select the start and end times from the drop-down time selectors. Finally, enter "75" in the "% of bid" box. This will cause your ads to run at 3/4 their normal bid during those selected ads.


When you have finished entering your schedule, simply click the "Save Changes" button and "voilà!"

You can enter as many of these percentage ranges as you like per week. A great way to control you bidding throughout the day, in peak and off-peak periods.

Tags: adwords

Inconsistent Information from AdWords and AdSense?

Yesterday I was listening to the AdWords Learning Center multimedia lesson on Ad Distribution when I heard something that immediately caused me to sit up and take notice.

In a discussion of the Content Network (aka AdSense), the "lecturer" stated that ads are ranked on the Content Network in the same way as on Google.com. Thus, to put it simply, if my ad ranks above yours for a Google.com search, it should rank above it on the Content Network.

However, if you take a look at AdSense help, you will read:

please know that all eligible ads will compete to be displayed on your pages, and our system will automatically show those that will generate the highest revenue for you.

I believe the official AdSense blog also discussed this topic a while ago, which clearly stated that Google puts the best-paying ads, as far as the AdSense publisher is concerned, first on the page.

Do you see the inconsistency here?

On the AdWords side, we're hearing that ads are ranked according to Bid (max cpc) x Quality Score AND that ads on the content network are ranked in the same way. However, on the AdSense side we're hearing that Google will display the highest paying ads first.

Given that it's possible for an ad with a lower bid to appear above one with a higher bid on a Google.com search results page, as a result of different quality scores, how can this possibly be consistent with AdSense's claim of displaying the highest paying ads first - unless Google pays a higher percentage for a click on the ad with the lower bid/higher quality score than on the one with the higher bid/lower quality score?

The Learning Center lesson also stated that Google stops displaying ads on particular sites that don't produce results for that ad. Thus, there is much more going on here than a simple AdWords "bid x qualty score" auction.

Tags: adwords, adsense

Interesting Professional SEO Suggestions

I am currently doing some web development work for a client and was asked to implement some changes that he has been advised to make to his web site by a local professional SEO company. I thought their recommendations made interesting reading given some of the the topics that I have written about in this blog.

1. Ensure there are 15 keywords in meta name/description tags [Aside: I think that must mean title and description]
2. Use H1 tags for headings and H2 tags for subheadings
3. Change internal hyperlinks to incorporate relevant keywords rather than using generic terms such as "order online."

Now, I'm all for putting keywords in page titles and meta descriptions but I've never come across the magical number 15 before. Have you? If so, please leave a comment!

As far as H1 and H2 tags are concerned. When it comes to accessible web sites and just plain ole good practice, I'm all for using the Hn tags for their intended purposes but, as this previous post on the role of H1 tags indicates, I'm still not convinced one way or the other whether it has any benefit for SEO purposes.

Finally, using keywords in internal hyperlinks does seem to be a generally accepted "good practice" in SEO circles. For example, SEO guru Jill Whalen recently responded to the following question in her High Rankings forum with a clear unequivocal "Yes,"

can anyone tell me if it will help my search engine rankings if I have links going back to my home page (from my own pages) with the anchor text containing my main keyword phrase

I always find it interesting to see what other SEO organizations are advising their clients to do and how adamant many of them are that their methods are all essential and valid.

Personally, I certainly think there are some "must do" SEO tactics, such as optimizing your title tags, but I also think other methods happen to be successful on some sites and not on others. Therefore, as always, the bottom line is that you just have to try all of these methods and if they work, great; if they don't, scrap them and try something else!

Technorati Tags: seo

AdWords Minimum Bids Have Been Fixed

It appears that Google has fixed many of the weird minimum bids that were appearing earlier today.

For example, the keyword "norfolk church" that I wrote about earlier as having a minimum bid of £5 and classed as poor, now has a £0.02 minimum bid and is classified as great!

However, it's not all good news, my "mortuary management software" keyword that I referred to earlier still has a $10 minimum bid!

Technorati Tags: adwords, quality score

Even Less Happy with the New Quality Scores!

Ohmygosh!!!!!

I just looked at another account I manage, it's for funeral home/mortuary management software.

The keyword "mortuary management software" (phrase match) is now listed as poor and has a $10 minimum bid!!! How can a keyword that accurately describes the product be considered poor and demand a $10 bid!!

I hope Google is prepared for the upset they are causing.

Technorati Tags: adwords

Stupid New AdWords Quality Scores!

Well, today I felt the effects of the new AdWords Quality Score algorithms and I'm not happy. I'm not just "not happy," I think their assessment is just plain stupid!!

I run a small AdWords campaign for my church, Proclaimers Church in Norwich , U.K. The church is called Proclaimers Church and the web site is www.proclaimerschurch.com.

Today I discovered that 3 of my keywords are now inactive for search and the minimum bid has been raised to £0.50 and they are classified as "Poor." Prior to the new changes, these keywords were costing me £0.03 or less!!

So what are these poor quality keywords for Proclaimers Church in Norwich? Well you might ask!

They are:

• "proclaimers church" (phrase match)
• proclaimers church (broad match)
• proclaimers church norwich (broad match)

Now, I guess that I can just about understand the logic behind the broad match keywords, because synonyms of "proclaimers," "church" and "norwich" wouldn't necessarily apply to this particular church. However, the following keywords are considered "OK":

• proclaimer's church (broad match)
• "proclaimer's church" (phrase match)

What's more, I even have one "GREAT" keyword, which is:

• proclaimers church norfolk

Now, that really is confusing, and here's why.

First, the church's name is "Proclaimers Church" NOT "Proclaimer's Church" yet the version with the apostrophe ranks higher!

Second, Norwich is the city in which this church is located and Norwich is in the county of Norfolk. However, the broad match proclaimers church norfolk is considered great whereas the broad match proclaimers church norwich is considered poor, even though it more accurately describes the church!!

What's more, in another ad group, the following keywords are also considered great:

• christian norwich (broad match)
• jesus norwich (broad match)
• church norfolk (broad match)

Yet this keyword is considered poor and now has a £5 minimum bid (which is nearly $10!!!):

• "norfolk church" (phrase match)

How can this make sense when the keyword "norfolk churches" (phrase match) is considered OK and has a £0.10 minimum bid.

So, take a look at the church's web site and see if you think those keywords warrant Google's assessment.

I wonder if there's a way to appeal these ratings because they sure are STUPID!!!!

Now, I gather that Google is aware of a bug in their new algorithm, I can only hope when they fix it these keywords assessments will make more sense, otherwise I see a fury ahead that will make the outcry against the last update seem like nothing in comparison.

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