Thursday, July 21, 2005

Google buys Brazil firm for research center

Google buys Brazil firm for research center: "Web search leader Google said Wednesday that it bought Brazil's Akwan Information Technologies, which it will use to set up a research and development center for Latin America. The small Brazilian company develops information search systems for companies"

Optimizing for Google AdWords' New Quality Score System

Optimizing for Google AdWords' New Quality Score System: "by Greg Ives - KeywordRanking
In the coming weeks, Google will release a new method for deciding when your ads show up. Out with the old system of 'on hold, in trial and disabled' keywords and in with 'the quality based system,' where keywords are either active or inactive...

There are several issues that will be challenging for marketers.

Inexperienced advertisers will likely increase their max CPC to retain their paid search rankings. This only provides a short term solution that will drain your budget and leave your ad costing too much.

Increasing CPC is one thing you can do in order to attain active status, but the correct thing to do prior to spending more money per click is to improve your quality score through optimization.

In addition, inexperienced advertisers are likely to erase existing keywords that aren't activated but could easily become so by changing the structure of the account, budgeting, etc (see below). This could lose them some easy return on keywords that convert.

To keep your keywords activated an experienced agency will:

* alter the structure of the account, campaigns, ad groups and keywords
* alter campaign budgeting
* refine content targeting
* optimize for your max CPC
* select proper keyword matching
* ensure rotation of quality ad text
* proper keyword selection
* build out campaign negative keywords
* implement content website exclusion"

Monday, July 18, 2005

Google PageRank

SiteProNews: "Google PageRank
Update Analysis By Dave Davies

The most current PageRank update will undoubtedly cause a largër stir than usual in that many sites have shown drops in their visible PageRank while at the same time showing significant increases in their backlinks. This fact reveals that one of three things has occurred in this latest update:

1) Google has raised the bar on PageRank, making it more difficult to attain a high level, or
2) The way they are displaying their backlinks has changed, or
3) The way they calculate the value of an incoming link has changed.

Concludes: "if you've noticed that everyone around you has stayed the same or increased in PageRank try to remember this, there's nothing you can do about where you're currently positioned in regards to PageRank and it will probably be another 3 months before Google updates the public PageRank again so ... start building some good quality (high relevancy, solid PageRank) links. Work towards an increase in the next update.

Panicking now won't help, intelligent reaction will."