Facts, Fiction and views by valuepitchers

All of a sudden you dont get to upload the brand new image ad you have made to try in AdWords. what do you do now?

You can try this
copy the url of 'upload text ad'
and change the type of ad to 'IMAGE' and click!
Take this:
https://adwords.google.com/select/AddCreative?campaignId=xxx&adGroupId=xxx&creativeType=TEXT
And replace with the last variable with 'IMAGE'
https://adwords.google.com/select/AddCreative?campaignId=xxx&adGroupId=xxx&creativeType=IMAGE

Meanwhile, google guys say they will get some help from Mountain View on how to come over this.

v

Make sure to verify you Ads how it appearing on MSN! Click on the above image to see what I am talking about.

I was one amongst thousands greedily waiting for the release of upgrade of MSN adcenter (5th Aug was the release date). I was so much disappointed that i couldnt dare write anything about it till now. I had to make some changes in an account and my headache started again.

Seriously, the much hyped improvements in the new user interface of adcenter are by no means better. I wanted the date functionality, they gave. But wait - msn's definition of date is US PST or PDT. When they say yesterday, you have to make so many calculations if you are not residing in USA. And, i need to follow the dates according to what MSN gives, if i want custom date range i need to go to the reports section. Then there are 10s of pre built templates and date is a drop down with custom range at the end of the list as if its a step son!

I frankly think MSN is planning to increase jobs from India - yes seriously. My counter parts in US and UK are hiring Indians to give them reporting numbers. They want a report on something on MSN, the best way is to pay some Indians and get the numbers on time, no headache and heart burn to use silly adcenter.

Not just that, you can pass on instructions to the guys in India on what to do with an account, caz anyways one cannot have infinite patience to wade thru 212 pages of keywords and change the bids one by one.

To take a leap from Google, MSN should give out a RULE based bid mangement solution to be given by MSN based on several simple parameters - ctrs, pageviews, conversions, conversion rates and the list goes on. The gaps in optimization that Google left have to be tackled well by MSN. Secretly i keep praying MSN comes out with such stuff and hopefully within few weeks i can see them in Google too, me wins finally:)

Now what, am wondering what happens to any bid management tool that will be built to include MSN. My advice - wait for a year more, till microsoft gets it right or comes out with an API , its a waste of money and resources to tackle the issues and build a bid management tool on msn.

v

Recent experience after launch of new optimized website of our agency client. Their website got indexed in Yahoo and Google very next day of launch. After official launch on 15^th August both the sites got indexed and start appearing in SERPS for some Geo-specific terms. Still there is a long way to go but the best benefits was Lots of PR (press releases) links, search engine friendly structure helping them to get in so quickly. I am also noticing indexing is now very frequent then usually. That is really motivational factor to upload new contents more frequently as you can see them index and convert some traffic out of it.

Overall good start and I am with Google – Create website for users not only for the spiders!

I had a word with Mr. Deep Google Adword CS head in Mumbai, It was 4 days and I failed to see hits on my fast running keyword? The application says Adgroup’s active where as no ads are shown up on google.com (yes the average position is 2.2). Deep was at airport hence asked me to get this resolved by KIRAN.

I just passed this info to one of my collogue & asked him to get it done from kiran, he was excited & without having the complete info he called Kiran and came back in jus 40 sec complaining KIRAN is male dude. I was %$&:@# ya so? He said “I thought kiran is a chick and I will get a chance to talk to a female from Google”

Let me come to the point, Kiran was a great help (considering the fact kiran is male) He said even though your adgroups are active your ads are in queue for review as there are frequent changes in your ads. The point you change your ads it goes in queue for review.

Apart from this some of my ads were on hold for not meeting the guidelines. There should be no Pop ups on landing page & it showed there is a pop up on my landing page. I was confused there is no pop on any of my pages. Soon after that I checked my home page & saw a pop up + junk of ad links. This was due to my domain expiry.

Learning:
Make sure you don’t change your ads very frequent, give a time gap of a week analyze & change at once and again start monitoring the results

If you are professional SEM company do keep a track of client’s domain expiry (ensure 0% error)

hmm Tony helped the world by disclosing fancy new products that google is developing (and got banned for it)

Google Events: G calender is there, can this be for public at large??
Google Guess: some kind of search predictions or stock market ?
Google real estate search: hmm money making ideas?
Mobile Marketplace: Tony guesses it could be eBay killer on mobile..
Online Assessment: Well up to your imagination.. recruitment ? partners? Dating??

Read more.

In the good old days, i used to type in xe.com for currency conversions. No longer now. Just type in 'convert currency 1 to currency 2' in google and you get what you want, instantly!


More examples:

* 3.5 USD in GBP
* currency of Brazil in Malaysian money
* 5 British pounds in South Korean money
* 2.2 USD per gallon in INR per litre

Google is cool, it sent pills to someone who complained of headache trying to cope with its adwords user interface. Now it sends lot of cool goodies to Kirb, who complained about google checkout!

It so happened that Mr. Kirb who bought something on buy.com using Google checkout, got 'headache' of order not being processed forever. The result ? Apology letter from Google with T-shirts, caps, mugs, mouse, and lot of stuff. See them here.

MSN... i want lot of stuff from you :)