How does Google rank bidders on its Adwords program?

That’s a perennial question that Google never answers directly – and as a result, leads the web advertising industry a merry game ‘catch-if-catch-can’!

It also leads to much misunderstanding by those who can’t afford to spend their days (and money) researching the actual performance of Google Ads… and find their ads being ranked in strange ways – or not shown at all!

So when a senior figure in Google comes out and clarifies the Google Ad Auction process, and how the ‘Quality Score’ of your ad (and other factors) affect both the ranking and cost of your ad (and whether it’s shown at all)… it’s got to be helpful!

And the video below, presented by Hal Varian, Google CHief Economist, is one of the clearest explanations I’ve seen of the importance of managing Adwords Quality Score and the effect on the Ad auction and your Ad placement.

Consulting Google’s Help pages is a bit like consulting the classical Oracle at Delphi – you never get a direct answer! But this is certainly the most easily understood explanation I’ve seen from Google on the auction process and ranking of your Ad.

If you’re not familiar with the basics of  Google Adwords, you can get a description of Quality Score here. But the video is clearer… So maybe Google does actually realise it needs to clarifyhow it’s rnking system works!

Happy Adword-ing
John Thornely

So, you have your business up and running… You’re ready for business. But, wait.

Where are all the people? You are all ready for them, but they have no idea who you are, let alone what you are offering. What do you do now?

You have to market your business. However, you need to be careful on how you do this. Advertising could be what helps your business soar, or it could be what brings it down. Take the time to research to find the most effective way to advertise your business.

Google Maps is growing more and more popular for businesses of any size. Whether you have a company that only delivers locally or one that delivers around the world, Google Maps can reach anyone on the internet.

People use Google Maps for many reasons. Sometimes they are looking for a place, while many times they are searching for a specific type of place in a specific area.

For example, someone might be moving to a new home, and needs information on daycare centers. If they go into Google Maps, they can type in daycare centers, and all of the daycare centers in that general area will pop up.

Or, if you are a business owner ready to take the advertising step, you can utilize Google Maps to target potential customers in a specific area. Listed below are tips on why and how you can use Google Maps to target potential customers and increase sales.

Tip # 1 – Reach new customers using Google Maps and Google AdWords

Google Maps offers Google AdWords. This service allows your ads to appear next to related map search results. You pick keywords that describe your business. When a person enters in one of your keywords, your ad will appear directly on the map. People will then click on your ad, and will be connected to your business.

This is a great service to those advertisers who want to market their products or services to a very specific location. You may have a service or product that you are only offering delivery to locally because you do not have the resources to deliver all around the world. Therefore, you will only want to target specific areas for advertisement.

Google Maps has made it very easy to customize a target audience. With just a few clicks of the mouse, you can now define your location. All you have to do is click-and-drag the map, and zoom into find your location or target area. Then, enter in a distance of at least 20 miles around your location target. A circle will appear next to the areas you chose. Check to be sure the circle is near the neighborhoods you wish to reach for potential customers.

Advertising your products or services through Google Maps will reach those potential customers at the exact moment they are searching. Millions of people use the internet to find information at their fingertips. Many will be looking for products or services in their general area. Listing your business in Google Maps will generate traffic to your websites, and potentially increase sales significantly.

Tip #2 – Google Maps works for businesses of any size.

Google AdWords is an effective tool and offers excellent marketing opportunities for a business of any size. Through Google AdWords, you are able to control your budget, because you pay only when someone clicks on your advertisement. You do not have a minimum spending requirement, and you can set a daily budget of a few dollars or pounds. This works well for small businesses that only have a certain amount to spend on advertising or larger businesses that are able to spend a little more.

Regardless of whether a business has a lot or a little to spend, the benefits remain the same. You are able to target your advertising campaign to specific locations, demographics and a select market. Google AdWords offers real-time control. You are able to pause, resume, increase, decrease or change any of your advertising specifics, instantly. Your company will begin generating traffic immediately.

Tip #3 – How to Effectively Use Google Maps to increase your sales

The goal you have should be to reach as many people as possible that are searching for your ‘specific’ product or service. It should not be to reach as many visits as possible to your site, but to reach quality targeted clicks.

It is important to advertise cost-effectively. Many companies waste hundreds or thousands of dollars on “unwanted clicks” that do not generate business. You’ll want to target people that are truly looking for your product or service, and not pay for clicks that don’t generate sales.

In order to find these people searching for your specific product or service, you need to create a keyword list that is unique to what you are offering. Using specific keywords, rather than broad or generic keywords, will ensure those people are finding exactly what they are searching for.

This in turn, leads to ‘true’ potential customers, which leads to ‘potential’ sales. And, in the end, leaves your paying for less unwanted clicks.

Determine if your product or service will be local, national or global. Google AdWords allow you to specify the exact areas you would like to target. Analyze your product or service. Determine keywords that are unique to what you offer, and try to be as specific as you can about the description of your product or service.

Tip #4 – Update your listings at any time

Google allows you to update your listings at any time. It is imperative to carefully manage your account in order to reduce expenses for ineffective advertising and gain the maximum benefits Google Maps has to offer. Along with carefully considering your keywords, you should monitor them, too. And, you should continuously manage your cost per click.

Increasingly, Google is presenting maps on its everyday searches, so this can help your business!

So – Check out what Google Maps can do for you!

John Thornely
© John Thornely www.johnthornely.com

To learn more about how YOU can
Profit From The Internet – Fast, visit
www.Internet-Tycoons.com

What Can Google Do For You to Build A Lucrative Business?

How many of us realise just how much power we have at our fingertips with the Web and just how much of that power is brought to us by Google?

But just what can Google do for you? Or, in reality, is it a more question of what can’t Google for you?

Well, the answer is that Google can boost your business and make you rich beyond your wildest dreams! But, as ever, there are only 24 hours in a day, and you’ll want to see success pretty quickly if you’re not to get disillusioned, won’t you?

So let’s have a quick look at some of the Google services that we’ll be looking at in future issues…

What Sort Of Money Can You Make Using Google?

But first things first! Before we go much further, you’ll want to know how much you can make using Google!

Well, that’s going to vary on your appetite, your market place and the products that you’re going to offer. Some people will be happy making a couple of hundred bucks a month, while well-run sites in busy market sectors can make well over $1,000,000 a month, just on one site.

When you are looking at market places that have 15,000 or 20,000 searches monthly and you’re in the top areas in Google, there is no reason you cannot make $1,000 to $10,000 a week or more!

What Google Tools Are Most Lucrative?

OK, so Google is not only the largest search engine but it provides search and on-page advertising, office applications (word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, etc), maps, images, email, blogs, video, feeds, groups, forums, news, product search, shopping, payment, etc, etc. Google offers such a huge range of services that it would take a 20-volume encyclopaedia to explain them all – and I doubt if any single person in the Google empire knows all the answers!

But which of these will make you money? The answer is that you can make money out of virtually every aspect of Google’s services, although it depends on your interests and level of expertise .

Making Sense Of Adwords and Adsense

So let’s start by focusing on the linked services of Google Adwords and Google Adsense – these are the two principle tools that it’s simplest for most of us to start with.

Adwords and Adsense are part of the huge industry of Paid Search – usually known as ‘Pay Per Click’ (PPC).

AdWords is Google’s flagship advertising product, and main source of revenue. AdWords offers PPC advertising, and site-targeted advertising for both text and banner ads and, more recently, image Ads (‘Widgets’) and video Ads. The AdWords program permits local, national, and international targeting.

Adwords text advertisements are short, consisting of one title line and two content text lines and a website link. Image ads can be in several different sizes and videos are generally in the YouTube format (www.YouTube.com – Google bought YouTube in late 2006).

Adwords ads are shown either when someone searches for a trigger keyword on Google’s search engine on www.google.com (a ‘search’ ad) or can be displayed as an Adsense ad on a site published by someone unrelated to Google that has related context (a ‘contextual’ ad).

And the really easy thing about Adwords and Adsense is that you can set up your accounts for both in just a few minutes and absolutely FREE – and you can learn how to use them very cheaply!

But, used to good effect, they can be very lucrative.

How Do I Get Started?

It couldn’t be simpler, really! You don’t even need a website or a product to get started making money with Adwords!

You can set up an Adwords campaign and send traffic to an Affiliate site or a merchant site such as Amazon.com (although Google may not allow Ads from multiple affiliates pointing at the same website).

And, if you’ve not done this before, you’d be surprised at just how easy all this is! Please do me a favour – go and try it out!

John Thornely
© John Thornely www.johnthornely.com 2008

To learn more about how YOU can
Profit From The Internet – Fast, visit
www.Internet-Tycoons.com

Here’s how to do quick research on a market… and cutting your losses.

Set up ten different Affiliate campaigns in ten different markets:

· Sign up as an affiliate for suitable products at ClickBank.com or Amazon.

· They give you your affiliate link

· Use Google Adwords to drive traffic to your Link

· Check daily how you’re doing.

If you’re making sales and covering your ad costs—stick with it…

… and get out of the ones that don’t pay as soon as you’ve got some results.

Try it!

John Thornely
© John Thornely www.johnthornely.com 2008

To learn more about how YOU can
Profit From The Internet – Fast, visit
www.Internet-Tycoons.com