August 2, 2007 Archives

Mick at Search Engine Watch Forums says that he is organizing a UK SEO meet-up in Manchester on September 14th and 15th at the Britannia Hotel. If you're interested, please let him know.

And it's finally August! Search Engine Strategies San Jose is coming up at the end of the month. We'll have conference coverage (with a schedule to be posted soon).

Also, a heads up for SES SJ travelers: Andrew Goodman has posted at the Search Engine Watch Forums about the 3rd Annual San Jose Golf Classic. It will happen on August 21st in the morning. If you're interested, let Chris Boggs, Andrew Goodman, or John Krystynak know.

Forum discussion about the UK SEO Meet at Search Engine Watch Forums and the Golf Classic at Search Engine Watch Forums.

A Reuters article that was covered by Barry at Search Engine Land goes into Google's decision that it is not ready to behaviorally target ads to its users. There is, right now, the ability for Google to personalize ads based on previous searches but that's as far as Google wants to go for the time being.

In the article, Susan Wojcicki, Google vice president of product management for advertising, says that:

"We believe that task-based information at the time (of a user's search) is the most relevant information to what they are looking at. We always want to be very careful about what information would or would not be used."

Some factors involved in this decision are privacy concerns and the inability for Google to understand human intent. The article says that "the intentions of users can be elusive based on any given set of actions."

At WebmasterWorld, advertisers and Google users alike are embracing this news.

I believe this is wise on the part of Google. They can't be all things to all marketers. Google is contextual marketing. Let others attempt to deliver demographics.

Others feel that it will be only time until Google actually does support behavioral ad targeting.

I think it's a logical evolution of the ad targeting process, and Google is no doubt willing to let other firms take the heat while they develop better tools.

...or they'll acquire the technology to do so efficiently.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld member has asked if there is any consequence of setting and surpassing the "End Date" in his campaign. Will the campaign history be deleted?

AdWordsAdvisor2 says that any status change to a campaign does not effect the campaign history.

In fact, we covered that pausing an AdWords campaign doesn't have any negative consequence as well. But if you change payment options from pre-pay to post-pay, you will need to close your AdWords account and reopen a new one, and in that case, there are consequences. And when there are, losing the history of your account can impact your CTR which could dramatically affect the rankings of your ads.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

A number of Google Groups members reported that the information in the Google AdWords Learning Center seems quite dated. For example, the old analytics was featured, but as we know, the old interface was deactivated on July 18th. Additionally, a person who had taken the exam in March said that a lot of the questions were "just plain wrong" because newer features have been added to Google AdWords and Google Analytics.

AdWordsPro wrote that the teams that are responsible for keeping the exam and learning center current have been notified, and this morning, I checked the learning center and it appears that the new Google Analytics is in fact highlighted in the learning center, so they must be listening and making these updates.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

There are some reports via WebmasterWorld that Ask.com has completed some type of search update.

It is hard to tell for sure, since the volume of traffic received from Ask.com is typically low. So any increases and decreases, percentage-wise, can be huge.

I reviewed a few of my sites and did see spikes up or down via Ask.com from this week to last week.

One member said:

Been watching movement with ask.com for the last couple of days and my sites been getting progressivly worse as the days move on..

The Ask serps have been before the update very stable and constant.. Yesterday and Today not so much..

But as I said, it is hard to know for sure, like with a Google or Yahoo update.

Forum discussion WebmasterWorld.

I spotted a blog post named Catching Terrorists with Google Adwords via DigitalPoint Forums and then tested to make sure it is real.

Do a Google search at the UK engine on hydrogen peroxide, and up comes an ad that reads, "Hydrogen Peroxide - www.met.police.uk Suspect it? Report it. Call the Anti-terrorist Hotline." Here is a screen capture:

Clicking on the ad takes you to the Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorist Hotline page. The page says, "If you suspect it, report it."

Found that very interesting.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

If you do a search on Google for number of horns on a unicorn up comes the Google Calculator.

Of course, there are many more of these examples:

• answer to life, the universe and everything
• 1 mile in parsecs
• Plus it really does act like a calculator

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.