…ask what you can do for Google.
To effectively lower your cost-per-click (CPC), and therefore your cost-per-acquisition (CPA) or cost per sale, you need to first appreciate Google’s perspective. If you understand what motivates Google, you’ll understand better how to manipulate the system to your advantage:
1. Obvious, perhaps, but Google is a SEARCH engine. Its job […]

There are many things to love about Google; measurability, tightly focused targeting and all that traffic.
But there’s a little-known element that’s really beginning to annoy me and a lot of the other search community: the Search Network.

You’ll be familiar with the two primary networks; Google Search - essentially, the Google you know and love, and […]

One of our clients just asked about this suspicious email from Google:

From: Google AdWords [mailto:reactivation@google.com]
Sent: 25 March 2008 02:58
To: [removed]
Subject: Please Update Your Billing Information

This message was sent from a notification-only email address that does
not accept incoming email. Please do not reply to this message.
——————————————————————————–

Dear Google AdWords Customer,

Please […]

By default, Google will display your ads on the content network. If you haven’t switched it off, you’re advertising to an audience you know little about, and you’ll find it difficult to measure and manage the results that you’re getting from your whole account.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that the content network is a […]

Google announced today that it is to commence testing on Demographic Bidding. You can already target specific geographic locations for your ads to be shown, and pretty soon you’ll be able to target particular demographics too.
Even if you don’t want to target specific demographics, there could be an incredible amount of value in the new […]

Recently, a number of AdWords campaigns I’m working have been sailing very close to the limits of what Google will permit in a single AdWords account.
Anyone who is a subscriber to the ‘long tail‘ principal will know that generating variations and combinations of keywords is good practice to find lots of niche little terms that […]

Google AdWords includes a wonderful, often unused feature for negative keywords. This allows you to filter out the unwanted irrelevant traffic that would still cost you money in clicks, but not gain you anything in sales.
Using the example of a campaign selling hubcaps, if you don’t sell Renault hubcaps, make sure you use “-Renault” in […]

A colleague posted me this article about the online marketing economy.
Big Bubble? Maybe. Big Trouble? Definitely.
There’s nothing like a bit of Google-bashing, huh? Bill Gates must love it! It certainly takes some of the usual negative attention away from Microsoft.
If Google is squeezing the AdSense partners, and I don’t especially advertise on the content network […]

Initially, I was a little sceptical about this change, and I still am. As Google suggests in its post, we’ll have to monitor campaigns over the next few days or weeks (depending on the number of clicks you usually achieve) to see what difference this makes.
Actually, I have established a circumstance where this is beneficial. […]

There’s a change coming to the way that Google currently chooses the position of your ad in the pecking order. The whole post makes confusing reading and I’d recommend reading it a couple of times.
It’ll be interesting to see how it pans out. Right now, the placement of your ad is not just based […]