ISEdb.COM » Tim Rule

Floogle

Tim Rule — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:18:28 +0000

A lot of people are unaware of Google.org, the philanthropic wing of Google. Since its inception, Google.org has been involved in a variety of initiatives covering such global issues as health and disease, climate change, education, poverty and alternative energy.

Their involvement includes grants for a wide variety of projects, encouraging employee involvement and use of their own innovative technologies to help make the world a better place.

While this program has its detractors, there are those who claim Google does this only to toot its own horn or to make money. While this may be true, Google does seem to do quite a bit more than most, if not any other corporation, to help improve the world we live in.

Last week I was reading about Google.org’s latest venture, Flu Trends, which I found to be a very interesting use of their search technology.

Basically, through coordination with experts in the field at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and using search data on specific “flu related terms” they have started to track overall patterns of flu infections throughout the US.

While there is some question as to how accurate using search terms is to determine how many people are actually sick in a given area, the results are surprisingly close to the data collected by the CDC. Also of interest is that this data was obtained up to 2 weeks more quickly.

The use of search trends is hardly new; Google has this incorporated into its keyword research tool to help track trends for marketing and keyword visibility purposes.

It also has Google Trends for viewing and comparing specific keyword search patterns graphically.

Google Insights for Search can also be used to obtain this sort of data
categorically, by date range and across specified regions worldwide.

This provides a nice map interface that can be viewed from a world level right down to a state/regional view.

So, essentially, all Google has done with Flu Trends, is to take data anyone can get using their tools and focused it on one specific set of search terms and made it available for view on a site for everyone to see. There are some differences though.

In Flu Trends, you can click from state to state to compare and also you can see results from previous years charted in advance of the current year’s
display progress.

The thing I find odd, is the geographical limitations they’ve imposed on the Flu Trends site. They could easily display the same type of information for countries other than just the US. Nor do I really understand why it’s limited to state level. They could just as easily show flu trends by city.

Google can track these trends by geographical region because each search query is tagged with the searcher’s unique IP Address. Anyone can track the rough location using software or even web based applications. As an experiment I used the latitude and longitude values for our office IP address that I obtained here, pasted them in the decimal value fields on this site and a map location within about 9 blocks showed up.

Certainly not exact, but close enough to be able to track search queries at least by city, if not down to individual municipalities. Personally, if I was after this information, I would rather know if there was a big surge in my immediate area, rather than the whole state.

Maybe they don’t want to make users nervous about privacy issues, as seems to be implied in this interview with Elizabeth Landau, from CNN.com.

As Google has IP’s for all search queries, I can’t see the fuss about them knowing who searched for flu related terms, but that’s just me.

While this seems like a great idea, there are shortcomings with this sort of tool, for example:

1) People who are sick with the flu but don’t search.
2) Searchers not actually sick with the flu, just doing research for whatever reason.
3) Searchers looking up info out of concern for a friend or relative who is sick but in an entirely different area.

I’m sure this is just a first step as there’s much, much more that this could be used for, as we can see on the Global Health Watch site (incidentally powered by the Google Maps engine), the incidence of influenza in the US is not the only going health concern.

What else could they do?

Google is uniquely placed for these types of services; not only because they have the resources and the apparent desire, but because of exposure. A lot of people go to Google, not just for search, but for their mail service and a host of other integrated free services.

Given that, I starting wondering what else they could do to improve the accuracy and utility of this sort of thing.

One way I could imagine, would be to have some sort of direct user input – something like a Google suggest tool for self diagnosis. I can see how doctors and lawyers both would be horrified at what I just suggested, but I’m talking about a way to not only track patterns of health issues but also to better prepare the consumer who is ill for the next stage(s) of dealing with their issues. Obviously, this is not to provide a substitute for consulting a physician.

I know I tend to drag my heels about going to see a physician unless I’m bleeding to death, but by the time I get there I forget a lot of possibly important details that my GP might not be able to dredge up in our brief appointment.

I would love to have something like a logical, online questionnaire/checklist with some sort of flowchart type progression of questions based on my answers that I could fill in at my leisure. Even better, if I could then print off the results and hand it to my doctor when I got to my appointment. This would save their time and reduce the number of irrelevant questions that need to be asked.

Even if the tool only gathered symptomatic data, rather than conclusive diagnostics, it would still be valuable. For example: if in a short period of time an specific area shows a higher than normal set of specific symptoms, it could tip off health authorities or even people browsing the data that something out of the ordinary is taking place and they could track down that contaminated water supply, or previously unknown environment hazard or whatever. Likely this could enable problem identification and resolution much quicker than by normal means.

Another public service field that Google could provide is a plug for the huge gap in emergency notification.

Currently, disaster notification is kind of all over the place. There are all manner of solutions ranging from those that require people to have their TV or radio on right through to commercially available corporate notification and disaster recovery services, and anything and everything in between. One great model for updated alerts and information is GDACS, but that is geared towards keeping the international emergency response community notified and not designed to handle specific area notification to the average Joe.

Some sort of system that provides rapid, mass notification to subscribed users in affected areas could be right up Google’s alley. Imagine if this sort of system was in place a few years ago.

Picture this scenario:

You’re going to Phuket, Thailand for Christmas holidays in 2004. You do all the standard trip planning for medical insurance, booking, itinerary, etc. You go to Google Emergency Alerts and update your subscription to receive SMS text (mobile texting) and gmail emergency notifications for Thailand for the duration of your trip. Your vacation is wonderful and the beach is a dream. Suddenly, you receive a text message on your cell, warning of a possible Tsunami. You snatch up the kids and head for high ground immediately, warning everyone you pass by. Those critical moments, could mean the difference between life and death.
This could be used for more than just disaster notifications; subscription channels could be used for prescription drug alerts, food allergy alerts, all sorts of things beneficial to the safety and wellbeing of users.

I think Google is capable of great things and kudos to them for instituting Google.org in the first place. I could name a lot of other big corps that could sure use that kind of PR, but they never seem inclined to go that extra distance.

Protecting Your Google AdWords Account from Fraud

Tim Rule — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 01:17:25 +0000

At some point, most people have had some sort of encounter with internet scams, viruses, spyware or other security problems. Hackers and scam artists are a pervasive reality in today’s world and making assumptions about security is unwise. A pay per click account makes an attractive target to a technically savvy criminal and gaining access to someone’s account allows them to promote their schemes at someone else’s expense.

Originally trained in Network Security, I have always taken such
precautions very seriously and now even more so, since a recent
fraudulent act affected one of our client’s accounts.

Early this
summer I arrived at the office on a Monday morning and proceeded to
check my weekend mail. Two emails caught my attention right away. The
first from AdWords, informing us that the client’s credit card was
declined and the second, from the client asking ” What is the campaign
“Qwasde” – Campaign #1″?

Upon reading that came the realization
that this account had been hacked. This was further confirmed by a
review of the account’s recent activity. I discovered that on the
previous Friday someone had created this new, innocuously named
Campaign #1 with a daily budget of $7000. It contained only the single
“Qwasde” ad group, with a single ad:

No doubt this was intended to phish for bank account details of anyone unwisely clicking on this ad.

This
hacker was pretty slick. The whole scam was set up late in the day on
Friday, when it was less likely to be detected. The domain the ad was
directed at was registered in Australia to a “resident” of New Jersey.
The website was put up on Friday and gone by Monday morning and in 2
days the ad generated $13,000 in click charges.

I immediately
called Google and an investigation was initiated. They agreed this
looked like fraudulent activity and promised to contact us with their
investigation results within a few days.

Concerned about the
means by which this person gained access, I checked my security for any
indications of a breach. Finding nothing unusual in my own logs, I then
contacted the client with instructions for locking down and cleaning
his computer system, advising him to change any sensitive passwords in
case his system was infected.

Google got back to us a couple of
days later confirming the results and promising to refund the client’s
money. This was good news, as it appeared the fallout from this would
be limited to a loss of only a week or so in the client’s Google
marketing initiative. In reality though, this had a far greater impact.

According
to Google, the account needs to remain inactive until the refund
process reaches completion. This took place nearly 2 months ago and
still there is no sign of the refund. The account is still frozen.
Google has no ETA on completion of this process; apparently their
refund department has a huge backlog, due to the numerous email
phishing scams that keep cropping up.

We still haven’t figured
out how the breach occurred. For my part, I think it’s possible the
client inadvertently became a victim of the phishing scam.

This scam is similar in some respects to the Paypal phishing scam
of 2 years ago. It’s pretty slick and can easily fool the uninformed.
In fact, another of our clients with an AdWords account received an
email some months ago asking me what to do with it and I had them
forward a copy of the email to me. Thankfully, they hadn’t clicked on
the link, as it was indeed one of these scams.

Here is the email they had received:

—–Original Message—–

From: Google AdWords [mailto:adwords-noreply@google.com]
Sent: Sunday, May 25, 2008 4:49 PM

To: xxxxxxxxxxx

Subject: Google AdWords Account Verification Email

Dear Google AdWords customer!

In order to confirm your contact details, please click the link below:

Google AdWords Form

This should take you directly to the Google AdWords Form.

Thank you for choosing AdWords. We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available.

Sincerely,
The Google AdWords Team
————————

This
particular scam differs from most emails of its kind because it looks
like a legitimate AdWords support email. Also it lacks the spelling and
grammatical errors common to spam n’ scam emails.

There is a tell tale flaw though:

In the original email if you
mouse over the link, you would see it is not actually pointing to
google.com but rather to google.com.adwdl.org.uk, a completely
different domain and unrelated to Google.

Other email variations
report imminent account closure unless account details are verified.
Even if you don’t provide account details, just following the link can
expose your system to malicious software.

Tips to Protect your account

Here
are some guidelines to help keep your account secure. Bear in mind this
is best practice for security of any sensitive financial, business or
personal information, not just AdWords.

1. Google will NEVER
ask for your account information by email; they won’t even ask for your
password on the phone. All they ever ask for whenever I phone them is
the 10 digit account number. They don’t need any other information to
open up the account for viewing. Most legitimate enterprises don’t need
your login details, so if someone requests them, be very cautious.
If
you receive notification about something you didn’t initiate, likely
this is about something not to your benefit. i.e.: receiving a
confirmation of a password change when you didn’t change your password,
etc.
Always use security solutions and keep them up to
date. Virus protection, firewall and spyware protection are vital for
any system that connects to the internet.
Use strong
passwords. Weak passwords, while easy to remember, are also very easy
for password cracking programs. A strong password contains both
alphabetical and numeric characters and utilizes capitalization, length
and special characters. As well, stronger passwords don’t use
recognizable or easy to guess words.

Examples: lame password =
your name, password (the actual word) or 123456; weak password = date
of birth, newgirl22, ItsaSecret, p@$$word; strong password = tP%m34!pX
Use
different passwords. If you use the same password because it’s easier
to remember, then everything you do becomes compromised if any forums
or sites you use become breached. I have hundreds of logins and
passwords, so I use RoboForm to securely store them. This type of program can also reduce vulnerability to keylogger type spyware.
Keep
the number of account users with administrative access to the minimum
necessary. The more people who have access, the greater the chance of
an information leak.
Turning your computer off or
disconnecting from the internet when you are done using it greatly
reduces the chance of bad things happening unnoticed.
Don’t
send login or password information by insecure means such as email or
instant messaging. Generally if I have to pass on that sort of info, I
always do it by phone.
Monitor your account regularly;
particularly at the end of the week and take random peeks on the
weekends. It only takes a minute to log on and check for abnormal
account activity.

The most important thing to remember is that
there are people out there who will rob you blind if you leave yourself
open, so a modicum of paranoia along with a bit of common sense will go
a long way to saving yourself some real hassle.

Increasing Conversions with AdWords Demographics

Tim Rule — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:35:23 +0000

Users running a PPC Campaign in the Google AdWords platform are given the choice of displaying ads on the Google Search Network and/or on the Content Network.
I have never been a big fan of advertising on Content Networks, as I
find the automated matching process to be less than ideal. I can
generally browse the net and quickly find ads that are irrelevant to
the sites they are displayed on. This can give one a healthy dose of
skepticism.

While advertising on Content doesn’t generally cost
a great deal, we have never seen much in the way of results. By and
large we do Search Network only, however recently I have had to
re-assess that view.

Back in March of this year, Google AdWords released
a tool for Demographic bidding from beta into mainstream use. This
allows advertisers to specify demographics for age and gender, to
filter out unwanted sites. This tool is for use with the Content
Network only. I was skeptical as to the value and accuracy of this tool
and had not tried it out until just last week.

One of the
AdWords campaigns we manage was having some difficulties in an
extremely competitive market. Costs were remarkably high, paying $10+
per click on Search Network keywords in order to achieve decent ad
positioning. While making some headway towards improving the conversion
rate, it was taking too long to get results.

This campaign was a
slow starter and had difficulty getting impressions from the beginning.
I had tried displaying on Content earlier on in the campaign in a bid
to generate more traffic, with predictably poor results. Last week we
decided to try this again, this time using the demographic bidding tool
to narrow the focus on a more specific audience.

The results were astonishing.

In
the first 2 days, we had more conversions from Content than from
Search, at a fraction of the cost. I thought this might be a fluke, but
we continue to see conversions from that source.

I decided to
try this on a campaign for a new client. The first conversion was from
Content within a few hours of campaign launch. Needless to say I am
testing this out on any existing client accounts that can be targeted
in this manner.

For anyone interested in trying this, it can be found on the lower right of the campaign settings page within AdWords.

Here’s a peek at what it looks like:

You can also specify age groups, as this sample shot shows

In
this particular case, we have set a higher bid percentage offering for
display on sites that would be viewed by women in the 25-34 age range,
which is the primary demographic target for this campaign.

Oddly
enough, the table shows only impressions. There’s a considerable amount
of data from this particular campaign that’s not showing here. There
are quite a number of clicks and conversions for the time period this
purports to display yet the numbers don’t show. Hopefully it’s just a
glitch.

On this page a third image is displayed showing overlapping bid totals for gender and age. (See example on left.)

The difference in stats between the two networks is quite significant. As you can see in this ad group example, the Content cost per click is significantly lower than that of Search.

When the demographic bidding feature is implemented, reports can also be generated in the AdWords reporting tool.

Overall, I like how this is shaping up. It’s nice to find inexpensive new ways to drive more customers to clients.

One thing Google excels at is constant innovation. With the announcement of a beta utility called Ad Planner,
more features are in the works for assisting advertisers with Content
Marketing. Hopefully we’ll all get to see more of this great stuff in
the near future.

PPC Management – A User's Review of MSN

Tim Rule — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 21:50:09 +0000

This is the first in a series of articles intended to convey my personal impressions of managing PPC through Google Adwords, Yahoo Panama and MSN Adcenter.

Each
engine has its pluses and minuses and I thought I would write a short
blurb describing my experiences using the interface for each of these.
The first engine I will be looking at is the lesser utilized of the
three, MSN Adcenter.

Interface

One
of the things I like about working within Adcenter is the clean look.
Although from time to time I wonder if the uncluttered interface is
more a product of its relative youth, there’s no denying it’s easier on
the eyes than either of its competitors. In part, this appears to be
due to the lack of clutter that plagues both Panama
and AdWords. Perhaps Microsoft hasn’t had time to fill every gap on
each page as seems to be the case with the others. Part of the reason
however, is the use of bullet links. More often than not, clicking on
these causes the additional information to appear in place, without
having to navigate to another page. This is a refreshing change, as
most of my time using these seems to be spent hitting my back button
and waiting for complete pages to load.

The layout
of subsections is based on 4 tabs; Campaigns, Accounts & Billing,
Research and Reports. Clicking on these takes you to exactly what you
would expect, no more no less. Everything is laid out in a logical
format and it’s pretty quick and easy to find what you’re looking for.
After struggling to navigate through Panama in particular, I find this refreshingly simple.

Campaign Setup

Setting up is a 5 step process.

First
off, you lay out your basic campaign structure by naming the campaign
and initial ad group. One of the nifty features at this stage is a
checkbox allowing you to copy an existing ad group. I have found this
can be a useful time saving feature. Network targeting, campaign
scheduling, language and regional targeting can all be set up on this
same page. Also, conversion tracking can either be set up here or later
in the campaign interface with a single click.
The next
step is writing ad copy. The biggest advantage I have found in this
stage is that the interface allows you to paste the entire ad
description in one line rather than having to fuss with the character
limitations for 2 lines of ad text, such as in both Google and Yahoo.
Now
you can add your keywords. This is a very straightforward process, You
have the option to add your own pre-made list of keywords and/or using
a keyword tool that scans a site, or the ad destination URLs. This tool
can generate a list of synonyms based on a suggested term, including
the number of searches conducted in the previous month.
The
last main step is to determine pricing settings. This includes setting
a budget (see annoyances and oddities section), bidding and setting
bidding options, such as incremental bidding. Here also you can set
bids specifically targeting for location, day, time, age, or gender.
The
final step is simply a review of all the information entered to this
point and the option to change settings. I find this a bit annoying, as
opting to change anything takes you back to that stage and after making
your adjustment you have to cycle back through the entire process to
the review page once again.

Keywords

The
only tool this interface has at the moment is the keyword research
tool. This can be accessed under the research tab or when editing
keyword settings. I have found this far less awkward and time consuming
to use than either of the other 2 engines. One thing to note about
adjusting keyword settings is how robust the options are generally.
When adjusting existing keywords it is simple to add negative keywords
to individual keywords, as well as adjust the match types and specific
destination URLs by keyword. Another interesting feature is the trend
charts, viewable by keyword. With this handy feature you can view
individual keyword trends by age and gender, geographical location,
social class and affluence.

One major difference with
keywords between MSN and the others is the level of editorial control
exerted. Recently I was managing a campaign with a particular ad group
that had quite a few different ads. Some keywords were reported by MSN
as being declined for certain ads, but approved for others. This is
certainly a departure from my experiences with either AdWords or Panama, where if a keyword is declined for any reason, that’s that.

Reports

The
reporting feature is also quite robust. One can run single use reports
or create saved templates for performance, accounting or targeting. It
allows for quite a number of specific report types from account
overview down to specific ad or keyword performance. A report can be
set to display information from hourly, daily, weekly, monthly or
yearly. Additionally, filters can be set to customize reports to only
display information you wish to view. Automated report scheduling is
also an option if you wish to receive emails periodically, without
having to fetch them personally. The format for these reports are
limited. Currently downloading one gets you a zipped csv file.
Hopefully they’ll expand that to allow options for other file formats.

Annoyances and Oddities

These are some of the gripes I have with Adcenter.

For
some reason, they’ve incorporated the option to select campaign
settings for either daily budgeting or monthly. While this isn’t really
a bad thing, if you select daily budgeting, it requires you to set a
monthly budget as well. In my experience, doing this seems to have
little effect on the amount spent on a given day. For example, I had
set a daily budget of $10.00 while selecting a monthly cap of $310.00
to reflect 31 days in a month. Day by day this particular campaign was
spending regularly up to and in excess of $20.00 daily. No amount of
fiddling seemed to change that behavior, so consequently the monthly
budget was used up in half the time.
Normally, when
optimizing ads and keywords, I like to pause poorly performing ads.
Pausing them, rather than deleting them, allows me to retain the
statistics for later viewing. This is handy because sometimes I do not
wish to drop an ad or a keyword entirely, but just want to turn it off
for a time, for whatever reason. Unfortunately, there is no option to
pause either an ad or a specific keyword. There is no way short of
deletion to stop displaying a specific ad and the only way to “pause” a
keyword without deleting it, is to drop the max CPC to the absolute
minimum.
There is a limitation on viewing data at
campaign, ad group or even ad or keyword level. One can only view
yesterday, this month, last month, this year, last year or entire time.
I find it very strange that unlike anywhere else in this interface, you
cannot specify a custom date range. To get around this, you have to go
to reports and create and run a report specifying what start and end
date you wish to view data for. This can be time consuming and is an
obvious flaw that will hopefully be worked out soon.
The
timeout is quite short. Many times while working in Adcenter, I’ve
tabbed back after only several minutes, only to find the system has
logged me out and I have to re-login and navigate back to what I’d been
working on.

Summary

Overall,
I’d have to say that MSN Adcenter is quite easy to use. Although MSN
gets the least amount of traffic of the 3 engines, this isn’t entirely
disadvantageous. One result of this disparity is that spend for a given
campaign is generally significantly less than in either Adwords or Panama.
Given that, when a conversion is achieved the difference in ROI is
notable. This engine is certainly worth advertising on and with some
improvements will be a fine choice.

Geo-Targeting Headaches with Yahoo Search Marketing

Tim Rule — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 02:01:37 +0000

As an accredited Yahoo Ambassador, I am accustomed to working with the Yahoo Search Marketing
PPC system (YSM). Although YSM can be an effective means of paid
advertising, its Panama system still has a ways to go and I want to
share with you several of the challenges in setting up a geo-targeted
campaign.

Opening an account with an address in the US or
Canada, restricts you to advertising only in those markets. If you’d
like to geo-target other areas of the globe, you have to use this site:
Yahoo International Accounts

Once
there, a separate account for each and every additional country you
wish to advertise in will need to be created. That’s an awful lot of
work for someone wanting to geo-target globally. When calling YSM
support to find out how to get around this, their answer was that it is
impossible to integrate campaigns to be served globally. I found this
to be odd, as I’d just completed a globally targeted campaign in Google
Adwords for the same client.

Another hitch in geo-targeting in Panama is trying to include Canada as a target region. If you select Canada
as the market to be served to, you will only get ad service if the ads
are written in French. This is unusual, as roughly 23% of Canada’s
population is French; in order to get ad service to English speaking
Canada, one needs to set up the account in the US and Canada market . Apparently, however, this odd set up can cause problems in US advertising as well, as evidenced in this RKG blog.

Given that targeting Canada allows for only ad service in French, it seems odd that Yahoo would use exactly the same map
as the English service US and Canada market as there aren’t a great
many French Canadians in the US. By comparison, upon checking
Switzerland, which also has more than one official language, no similar
restrictions seem to apply. The target area was even restricted to just
Switzerland and not the bordering countries, many of which have the same languages.

Overall,
Yahoo seems to be very inflexible as to where they will serve ads. It
would be nice if they displayed this kind of information more
prominently when setting up accounts with them. I imagine a lot of
people have wasted a fair amount of time trying to work through this
system.
I’ve mentioned these issues when speaking to Yahoo support
staff, suggesting that changes of this nature would make the system
more useful for advertisers. Both Google AdWords and Microsoft Adcenter
allow flexible geo-targeting options, with MSN going as far as to allow
an assortment of criteria to be changed at the ad group level.

Yahoo
has thanked me for my input, but I question whether they are really
listening. Dating back more than a year, similar complaints litter the YSM Blog and to date no known attempts have been made to improve the system.

While
Yahoo has a number of good aspects behind its Panama Platform there is
still much room for improvement. Here is a summary of my
recommendations to Yahoo:

A revamping of YSM’s system should
be devised for more user friendly and efficient account creation and
management. Yahoo’s current system has the effect of putting all the
setup and management workload on the advertisers.
Country restrictions should be made clear to the advertiser at the account creation stage.
Any
ad copy language restrictions in place for specific geographic areas
should be clearly noted by Yahoo. In cases where ads are disallowed due
to language, there should be an indication the ads will not be served.
In the case we recently experienced, there were no editorial alerts or
any other obvious indication the Canada – English campaign was not
functioning.

Do you have any tips or suggestions for
Yahoo? Email me and I will be thrilled to add it to ‘the list’ and send
it to Yahoo Search Marketing staff.