'adwords' Category

• Google. Foot. Gun. Shoot.

  The AdWords Help Forum has degenerated over the last year or so, into a customer service forum. I intend to cover that in detail some other time. The common signatures of pain in the forum are:

  Complaints that “Google won’t accept my Credit Card“
  Making promo vouchers work
  Suspension for various reasons, often involving guaranteed ways to make [...]

  February 4th, 2010

• AdWords Help Experts - Twitter Influence

  AWHE (AdWords Help Experts, is now rated as “Influential” by Topsy. The blog was started by Google-recognised “Top Contributors” in the AdWords Help Forum, to help us to include pictures and video and common answers for frequent or tricky questions in the AdWords Help Forum.
  A recent graphical rework and substantial posting by Kim Clinkunbroomer [...]

  February 3rd, 2010

• Google AdWords: Credit Card Declined

  A common topic over in the AdWords Help Forum is that of a declined Credit Card. I’ve just had some more approaches from people suffering from this problem and looking for a cure. Someone signs up for AdWords, tries to make a payment and Google fails to take the money. The bank says that the [...]

  January 21st, 2010

• Google Help Forums, Customer Service, SEO and Stupidity

  Not quite a Jane Austen title, but “Help Forums and Helplessness” involved far too many terminal sibilants. The recent launch of Google’s Nexus One, the Google branded Android phone, highlights Google’s fledgling incompetence with mass market customer service, already demonstrated in abundance in many of Google’s own help forums.
  Harsh criticism, you might think, but I’ve [...]

  January 14th, 2010

• SEO, Click Fraud and Mis-Attribution

  I’ve been involved in some paid search click fraud measurement for about five years. It’s pretty interesting work, trying to understand whether the clicks you’ve bought are related to the traffic on the site, and any qualifiers that you’ve added, such as geotargets and the keywords. Oddly, it has provided a sideways illumination on a [...]

  November 23rd, 2009

• Google Is Better On Caffeine?

  Google continually fiddles with the way in which search results are ranked and presented. Usually we find out after the fact. This time, Google is telling us beforehand, and inviting comments, on the Google Webmaster Blog. What’s the significance?

  Early warning of rank changes - helpful to know, and there’s a feedback form at the bottom [...]

  August 11th, 2009

• AdWords, Dates, Times and a World Business

  You may find Google’s use of dates and time zones to be confusing. It may not be your problem, but a Google problem. Here’s a practical example of the kind of confusion that the AdWords user interface can offer. I have a client on the East Coast of the US, with an AdWords account set [...]

  July 14th, 2009

• AdWords Help Forum Weather Report

  Every day - or as much as I can make it so - I Tweet an AdWords Help Forum Weather Report. What does it mean? The AdWords Help Forum is a user to user - or advertiser to advertiser - help forum. Apart from the advertisers, there are a few Google staffers who spend some [...]

  June 6th, 2009

• Privacy and AdWords Extended Search Query Reports

  Good news - Google is allowing more insight to be gathered from AdWords Search Query Reports, by exposing more search queries to scrutiny. This reduces the need to use third party click redirectors or web analytics tools to extract search queries. However, there’s strangely spurious logic - or I’ve failed to grasp a fundamental point [...]

  May 23rd, 2009

• Google Slap - QS 1

  Looks like Google may be taking action against another class of advertiser who delivers a poor experience of search. The AdWords Help Forum is showing signs that a number of advertisers, who have run multiyear accounts, are unable to improve their Quality Score from a measly 1/10 and are seeing no impressions. It also appears [...]

  April 4th, 2009