Google AdWords Management & Pay Per Click Marketing Blog
Internet Marketing & Consulting by Windy City Strategies, Chicago Illinois. A full service Internet Consulting company specializing in Pay Per Click Management, PPC, Website Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Local Business Listings, Shopping Portal Management, SEO, and Social Media Marketing, SMM.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Update: Google's Annual Revenue at $497 Million
Update: Ben Edelman left a comment on Web Pro News where he wrote, "Surely it's not Google's fault that some people misspell. But our study [shows] that typosquatters register more domains targeting companies in sectors with high PPC prices. That tells us that PPC funding is *causing* and *exacerbating* typosquatting. Without PPC payments, there would be fewer typosquatting registrations -- much less reason for squatters to register these domains. Google's payments put the system in motion; squatters register domains exactly in anticipation of getting paid by Google. Google knows where it's showing ads. (Example: Google shows Expedia ads if you misspell Expedia, but Travelocity ads if you misspell Travelocity!) So it's natural to look to Google for resolution of these problems."Original Blog: Many people hate typos and find them annoying. I can be one of those people. Seriously, it only takes one second to hit the backspace key and fix the typo. With Google, however, typos can mean big business as Benjamin Edelman and Tyler Moore have estimated that typos make the search engine giant $497 million per year.
Edelman and Moore both wrote a paper titled, "Measuring Typosquatting Perpetrators and Funders." In a blog post summarizing it, they stated a few sets of data and wrote, "According to our analysis, 57% of typo sites include Google pay-per-click ads."
Then they took a comment about the effect of Google’s connection: "Combining our observations with financial reports and others' estimates, we conclude that Google's revenue from typosquatting on the top 100,000 sites is $497 million per year."
Google's is most likely the only search engine they point a finger at, since not nearly as many ads from Yahoo and Microsoft appear on typosquatting sites.
Labels: adwords-management-company
posted by Angie Rentmeester at
8:12 AM
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Google's Annual Revenue at $497 Million
Many people hate typos and find them annoying. I can be one of those people. Seriously, it only takes one second to hit the backspace key and fix the typo. With Google, however, typos can mean big business as Benjamin Edelman and Tyler Moore have estimated that typos make the search engine giant $497 million per year.Edelman and Moore both wrote a paper titled, "Measuring Typosquatting Perpetrators and Funders." In a blog post summarizing it, they stated a few sets of data and wrote, "According to our analysis, 57% of typo sites include Google pay-per-click ads."
Then they took a comment about the effect of Google’s connection: "Combining our observations with financial reports and others' estimates, we conclude that Google's revenue from typosquatting on the top 100,000 sites is $497 million per year."
Google's is most likely the only search engine they point a finger at, since not nearly as many ads from Yahoo and Microsoft appear on typosquatting sites.
Labels: adwords-management-company
posted by Angie Rentmeester at
8:04 AM
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Consumers More Likely To Pay For Professional Online Content
It’s no surprise to see that the majority of online consumers prefer free content, but some categories consumers wouldn’t mind paying for access, according to a new survey from Nielsen.Nielsen asked more than 27,000 consumers across 52 countries what types of online content they would actually pay for. The survey states that people would most likely pay for content for movies, music, games and television shows. They would not pay for content on social networking Web sites, podcasts or consumer-generated videos and blogs.
Consumers pretty much agreed on the guidelines for content that they would pay for.
- 78 percent said if they are already subscribed to a newspaper, magazine, radio or television service they should be able to use its online content for free.
- At the same time, 71 percent of global consumers say online content of any kind will have to be considerably better than what is currently free before they will pay for it.
- Nearly eight out of every ten won’t use a Web site that charges them, presuming they can find the same information for free.
- As a group, they are ambivalent about whether the quality of online content would suffer if companies could not charge for it.
- But they are far more united in their conviction that once they purchase content, it should be their copy to share with whomever they want to share it with.
Labels: adwords-management-company
posted by Angie Rentmeester at
8:36 AM
Monday, February 8, 2010
Google Analyst: U.S. Internet Needs to Be Faster
Google has been a big advocate of a single Web, one that’s free of government censorship and barriers to information access. However, this is not the case anymore.Governments from China to France have put different roadblocks in the information superhighway to serve their interests, filter speech or protect copyrights. The Internet connection hasn’t reached all corners of the world, not even all parts of the U.S.
CNN recently sat down with one of Google’s policy analysts, Derek Slater, to get more information on the split between Google’s idea of an all-access Web and the reality they’re facing today.
Slater declined to comment on Google’s negotiations with China. The search engine has threatened to pull out of the country after Gmail accounts of a few human rights activists were hacked into. Since the interview took place, it was reported that Google is working with the National Security Agency to prevent similar cyber attacks.
However, Slater did give his take about increasing sluggish Internet speeds and why the Web can really help peoples’ lives.
Read the edited transcript here.
Labels: adwords-management-company
posted by Angie Rentmeester at
12:30 PM
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Google Campaign Optimizer
There are hundreds of AdWords Management companies that will help optimize your AdWords campaign, but be sure to take advantage of every free tool and feature Google has to help AdWords clients get the most out of the program.One tool in particular is the Campaign Optimizer that’s available within your AdWords account. When you implement some of the suggestions, you’ll be able to tweak your results enough to have positive changes to the return on investment (ROI). Campaign Optimizer takes a look at your ad text, keywords, landing page, and budget and runs it through their extensive database of past ad campaigns, comparing and analyzing in order to come up with a proposal of suggested changes. Once the proposal is presented, you have the option of implementing the changes or not on a piece-by-piece basis.
The three main areas the Campaign Organizer focuses on are: ad text, keywords, and budget analysis.
Ad text: Creating your ad text will make further suggestions on aspects like punctuation and capitalization.
Keywords: Keywords are important in your AdWords Campaign. This tool will look at the landing page(s) associated with your campaigns and what keywords will generate traffic to them.
Budget: After looking at the history of your AdWords Campaign, Google can find opportunities you’ve missed by not having enough in your budget to take advantage of them. A new budget proposal will be presented along with the details of missed opportunities.
The Campaign Organizer does not offer an intensive analysis of your campaign on the level of detail that an AdWords management company would put together, nor does the program suggest actions to cover all your bases. Only you can ultimately decide how useful of a feature it is for your specific AdWords campaigns.
Labels: adwords-management-company, adwords-management-services
posted by Angie Rentmeester at
10:18 AM
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
AdWords Editor 7.6.1 Upgrade
Today Google made an upgrade to their AdWords Editor software, which will help with Google AdWords management.Google AdWords Editor 7.6.1 was released today for Windows and Mac, so let's take a look at some of the improvements Google made:
1. Ad Scheduling and Location Targeting - The ad scheduling lets you update the times and days you would like your accounts to run, and the location targeting gives you the option to use radius targeting, exclude locations, and target a combination of cities.
2. Add and Update Multiple Campaigns - This is a great feature and must needed if you are an AdWords management company like us that deal with large accounts. Now you can update multiple campaign settings across multiple accounts at once.
3. Promoted Video Ads - AdWords Editor 7.6.1 now allows basic support for YouTube promoted ads. Download your ad into Editor and then you can add or modify ads with CSV imports.
4. Updated Keyword Expansion - With the Internet constantly growing it is no wonder that new searches are constantly popping up that a Google AdWords marketing team has to consider. Now Google AdWords has done an update to their Keyword Expansion tab that now has a link to "include additional terms" that can you can view based on your keyword results. Be careful though. Google likes to push some broad terms that can cause some serious damage to an account if not monitored properly.
For more information on the AdWords Editor 7.6.1 upgrade, check out Google's release notes here.
Windy City Strategies account managers have been in the Internet marketing industry for over 10 years and will improve your Google AdWords management with our industry leading Internet marketing consulting, search engine optimization and pay per click campaign management.
Labels: adwords-editor, adwords-management-company, google-adwords-management, google-adwords-marketing, pay-per-click-campaign-management
posted by Bjorn Torling at
1:22 PM
Friday, November 13, 2009
Google Click Through Rate (CTR) And Pay Per Click Campaign Management
Today, I want to talk about click through rate (CTR) and how this affects your pay per click campaign management at Google.Click through rate (CTR) is the number of times your ad was clicked on divided by the number of times the ad was shown (impression). Your ads and keywords have their click through rates unique to your own campaign, which is a common misconception.
So why is click through rate (CTR), so important to your Google AdWords marketing campaign? Well, according to Google, and I say this because I see a major flaw in their philosophy, which I will get to later in this blog, is a strong indicator of how relevant it is to a user and thus its overall success as a keyword in your account. A well targeted keyword that has a nicely targeted ad is going to perform better than a broad keyword with a broad ad. Pretty straightforward, and means you should group keywords about a certain product or service into an ad group with targeted ads, hence you have a nicely organized account, which should return high click through rates.
Now here is a problem that I have as an AdWords management company with the Google system when evaluating a low click through rate. According to Google, a low click through rate can point to poor keyword performance indicating a need to optimize the ad or keyword further. These low click through rates will affect your overall account quality score, so Google kind of forces you to not utilize these keywords. There are keywords out there that are that I believe have a huge search volume that are extremely relevant that Google will penalize you based on this system.
Let's look at an example. A Chicago realtor calls us for some PPC help. A term like Chicago real estate should be a great keyword for her. This keyword has 60,500 searches per month. To keep a 3% click through rate (CTR), she would have to pay for 1815 clicks. At a 2% click through rate, you would pay for 1210 clicks, 1% click through rate, 605 clicks and finally at a .05% click through rate, which definitely would be considered a poor keyword to Google, you would have to pay for 302 clicks. Now to be in the top 3, you would have to pay around $4.80 based on Google's estimates. So to keep a 0.05% click through rate, your budget would have to be at $1500 a month minimum, 1% click through rate, $3000, 2% click through rate, $6000, and finally at a 3% click through rate, $12000. This is just for one keyword!
I completely understand that this realtor should target specific areas in Chicago to keep the click through rate higher, but my point is this keyword is a great starting point for a customer that does not know the area. Now one thing that I did not point out is the $4.80 is based on the account having a nice quality score. As your quality score gets worse, you have to pay more per click, which makes it even harder to play in that space.
Windy City Strategies account managers have been in the Internet marketing industry for over 10 years and will improve your Google AdWords management with our industry leading Internet marketing consulting, search engine optimization and pay per click management.
Labels: adwords-management-company, click-through-rate, ctr, google-adwords-management, google-adwords-marketing, pay-per-click-campaign-management, ppc-help
posted by Bjorn Torling at
7:20 AM
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Why Utilize A PPC Management Company?
More and more companies are turning to a PPC management company to help jump start an online advertising campaign. Building, managing and staying ahead of the ever changing search engine marketplace takes time, and if you don't have the proper knowledge, you can spend a lot of money without any return on investment.Hiring a PPC management company is extremely cost effective for most companies too. If you were to hire someone that knew how to build and maintain a pay per click management campaign, you are looking at around $60- $70K minimum in salary. Now a PPC management company normally charges a percentage on budget spent, for example, Windy City Strategies charges 13% of budget, so if you spent $50K per year, which is a healthy budget, you would only pay $6500 for the year. How can you beat that? This includes two certified account managers and several assistants at your disposal.
Certifications are extremely important when looking for a PPC management company, because you want to make sure they know their field. These certifications currently are utilized by Google and MSN, while Yahoo had one, but at this time has decided to stop. These certification logos should be placed on the companies website showing that they are a certified AdWords management company or Microsoft adExcellence Member and clickable. The click should take you to the page at Google or MSN showing the companies certification. Stay away from companies that do not have that link. That means they are not certified and most likely took the logo from someone else's website.
Windy City Strategies account managers have been in the Internet marketing industry for over 10 years and will improve your online marketing with our industry leading Internet marketing consulting, search engine optimization, website design and development and pay per click management.
Labels: adwords-management-company, pay-per-click-management, ppc-management, ppc-management-company, search-engine-optimization, seo
posted by Bjorn Torling at
10:19 AM
Monday, November 2, 2009
Google AdWords Management Comparison Ads
Google announced today that they are rolling out a new feature called AdWords Comparison Ads, which will help your Google AdWords management program even more. The AdWords Comparison Ad program will let users compare relevant ads more easily, and will let advertisers reach the consumers that are looking for your product or service specifically.So why are Google AdWords Comparison Ads useful? Well, as an AdWords management company, bringing qualified and relevant traffic to our clients sites is our goal, and being able to quantify results is critical, and this is where Google is going to help us even more.
Let's say you were an insurance company. Is the term "insurance" a good keyword? It is pretty broad as far as insurance, but specific also if you sold all types of insurance, so can it be a good keyword? It is broad, so it will bring lots of clicks, but it is not typically a strong keyword for conversions, until now, possibly.
When a user searches "insurance," are they looking for auto, home, life, etc? AdWords Comparison Ads will show up and let users specify what they would like and then they can compare rates or companies side by side. If they click on the ad, it will direct them to a page with even more detailed results for the user. If the user finds what they like, they can either call directly or request a quote. Very nice, and of course can be tracked.
The AdWords Comparison Ads are still in the early stages, but again Google is at the forefront of innovation to improve searches. If would like to get more information about AdWords Comparison Ads visit this Google blog.
Windy City Strategies account managers have been in the Internet marketing industry for over 10 years and will improve your online marketing with our industry leading Internet marketing consulting, search engine optimization, website design and development and pay per click management.
Labels: adwords-comparison-ads, adwords-management-company, google-adwords-management, search-engine-optimization, seo
posted by Bjorn Torling at
3:30 PM
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Google AdWords Image Ads
Today we are going to discuss image ads that can be placed on Google to supplement your Google AdWords marketing, their features, how to create them and guidelines. First off, image ads are a great way to differentiate yourself from your competition because many companies don't do them, but more importantly they look better than a regular text ad.Image ads are only shown on the content network, so you can either use a placement or keyword targeting. If you use keyword targeting, make sure you opt yourself into the content network, and is in a separate campaign, so you can track results better. This is important when using the content network versus search, because Internet marketing is quantifiable, and you want to know what works and what does not, and proper organization is extremely important. Please consult with an AdWords management company to get this right
Now, image ads are graphic ads that can be motionless or animated, and are shown on content sites that have opted into the Google AdWords image ad program. Static (motionless) image ads can be formatted in .gif, .jpg, and .png, while animated image ads can be in .gif or Flash. Make sure you image ads reflect your site, and advertise your product or service.
Here are the sizes your Google AdWords image ads can be in for static and animated:
* 250 x 250 Square
* 200 x 200 Small Square
* 468 x 60 Banner
* 728 x 90 Leaderboard
* 300 x 250 Inline Rectangle
* 336 x 280 Large Rectangle
* 120 x 600 Skyscraper
* 160 x 600 Wide Skyscraper
Windy City Strategies account managers have been in the Internet marketing industry for over 10 years and will improve your Google AdWords management with our industry leading Internet marketing consulting, search engine optimization and pay per click management.
Labels: adwords-management-company, google-adwords-image-ads, google-adwords-management, google-adwords-marketing, image-ads, internet-marketing-consulting, pay-per-click-management
posted by Bjorn Torling at
5:07 PM
Monday, August 17, 2009
Why Do Google AdWords Management?
So why would you utilize a Google AdWords management program? Well, it is quite simple. 80% of Internet users see Google AdWords ads each month in the United States, and hundreds of thousands more across seas. That is what you call instant access to a large audience.Now some of the benefits of doing Google AdWords marketing is that you can target your ad to an audience looking for your product and service. This is critical because every day people are looking for your product or service and you want to engage those customers at that exact moment. This also means that a proper setup of your Google AdWords management is critical, so you make sure you do not stray from your target audience, which will impact your overall return on investment.
Google AdWords is also extremely cost effective, because you can set your own budget, the amount you would like to pay per click at a keyword level, or you can pay based on impressions. The choice is up to you. Of course, all of these can be changed at a moments notice.
The Google AdWords management system is quite flexible also. When you edit your ads, you can see the change online within 20 minutes. The system is available to you 24 hours a day, and you can see your listing on Google almost immediately after you have entered your credit card.
Now remember that if you chose to outsource your AdWords account, make sure you find a certified AdWords management company, as they have the knowledge to take your account to the next level.
Windy City Strategies account managers have been in the Internet marketing industry for over 10 years and will improve your Google AdWords management with our industry leading Internet marketing consulting, search engine optimization and pay per click management.
Labels: adwords-management-company, google-adwords, google-adwords-management, google-adwords-marketing, pay-per-click-management
posted by Bjorn Torling at
1:11 PM
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Verify A Company Is A Qualified Google Advertising Professional
So you are looking for an AdWords Management company, and of course everybody says they are the best, but how do you know for sure? Well, do your research is what I tell people, but there is one constant that you should always look for when working with a Google AdWords marketing firm, and that is, make sure they are a Qualified AdWords Company.How can you tell if they are a qualified company? Well Google AdWords takes many measures to make sure that users are not conducting business with unethical individuals and companies, and that they truly are a Google advertising professional.
The best way too make sure that they are qualified is to look for the AdWords Qualified Individual or Company logo that is visible from the individuals or company's website. Click on it, and it should direct you to a page hosted by Google, with a prefix starting with http://adwords.google.com/select/professionalstatus. This page will contain Google's validation that the individual or company has attained Qualified status through the Google advertising professionals program.
It is important when looking at Google's professional status page to see the name of the business, make sure the url is hosted by Google, and that Google's validation for the individual or company is present.
If you do not see the logo or status page, you can ask the professional for the page, but that should be a cue for you to not deal with this individual or company.
Windy City Strategies account managers have been in the Internet marketing industry for over 10 years and will improve your Google AdWords management with our industry leading Internet marketing consulting, search engine optimization and pay per click management.
Labels: adwords-management-company, google-advertising-professional, google-adwords-management, google-adwords-marketing, internet-marketing-consulting
posted by Bjorn Torling at
1:44 PM
