Google International PPC Ad Targeting Twist

After some testing and a confirmation from Google, I've discovered a new (to me, anyway) twist to Google's PPC Ad targeting for international sites.

In SEO, Googe decides on the country your site is relevant for first by ccTLD (Country Code Top Level Domain - like .ca, .uk, .mx, and so on) and then by IP and other methods.

Turns out this thinking also applies to PPC.

If you target a specific country, like in my case, Mexico, Google will only show ads to surfers within Mexico, right?

Wrong. They show ads to surfers in Mexico, yes. But they also show ads on Mexican tagged sites, such as sites with a Mexican IP address or sites that use the ccTLD of .mx, even if they are hosted in the US, etc.

It makes sense if you think about it. Of course, you may be thinking that this would only apply if you have chosen to advertise on the content network. You'd be wrong.

See, even if you don't advertise on the content network, there is a site that is a .mx and is not on the content network - www.google.com.mx

That's right. Even if you target only Mexico, your ads can show up to anyone anywhere in the world who happens to use google.com.mx. Anyone who needs to look at or verify geo-targeted ads knows it's sometimes hit-and-miss, but they do show up.

I first really put it all together when I was looking at traffic patterns for my Mexican campaign and noticed a bunch of traffic from the US and even India. This is normal, and is not necessarily an issue, as long as you are aware of it.

But let's say you really don't like it. There is a fix.

Instead of targeting Mexico (or wherever) you simply target physical locations within Mexico, such as cities, and lat/long areas. This forces a geolocation check and gets rid of your Japanese traffic.

Just remember that the traffic from Japan may be traveling Mexican business-people, since they would have to be using google.com.mx, and you are now excluding them.

But if that's what you need to do, then that's how you do it.

Ian

The Relationship Between Search Behaviour and SERP Landscape (Part 2)

This is the second and final part of a 2 part series on the relationship between search behavior and SERP landscape. Part 1 is here.

PART 2: THE EFFECT OF SERP LANDSCAPE ON SEARCHER BEHAVIOR

The seeds of this article arose when I was studying differences in searcher behavior between countries.

I noticed that in many countries, especially those who are relatively new to the internet being widely available, searchers seem to show, in general, lower stages of search behavior, often progressing no further than Stage 2 - Exploration.

At first, I assumed that this less sophisticated behavior was due to less experience with the internet, an assumption I now know to be false and, to a degree, ethnocentric.

The assumption that searchers in these countries are less sophisticated due to a lack of experience can be supported by the massive growth rate (500% or higher is common) of internet availability, but does not explain why even people who have had the internet for years in these countries still tend to show less sophisticated search behavior as a whole than searchers in developed countries.

There is no "national searcher" - everyone progresses by themselves as an individual due to their own experiences. Additionally, in many of these countries (typically developing countries) people who have internet tend to be well educated and spend a lot of time online - they should progress fairly quickly, yet often do not. So the question is - what's going on?


I believe the answer lies in the SERP landscape, and it's been hidden there due to the halo effect of the online industry as a whole.

You see, my research appears to show that searchers everywhere will naturally try to progress through the stages of search sophistication as they use search more and more.

However, if the SERPs do not support that progression, the progression stops. In short, increases in the sophistication of tool use is limited by the sophistication of the tool itself. Some tools simply lend themselves to more sophisticated actions than others.

How could this happen? Many ways.

Sometimes, it's due to limitations of the search engines themselves. Back in the days before Google, searcher behavior was also fairly unsophisticated, since attempts at sophisticated searches were generally foiled by small indexes filled with spam. It simply wasn't worth the effort to try to improve your search techniques when the search engine still gave you poor results.

Another reason this could happen is due to the available results. If nothing but spam is available, then you will get nothing but spam. If local websites are designed in a manner that is not search friendly, then no matter how good you are at searching, you are still unlikely to find what you need, because the search engine simply doesn't have it to give you. It may exist, but it's not available through a search engine.

GIGO - Garbage In, Garbage Out.

It is this second reason that appears to be why searcher behavior tends to "stall" in some countries and languages.

Although part of the blame sometimes lies on the search engines themselves for not adapting to local restrictions, culture and resources, the majority of the blame for this is, very simply, poor websites from an SEO (and often usability) perspective.

As websites for the region or language become more sophisticated and accessible to search engines (and start carrying useful information rather than being just web brochures), the search engines will begin to be able to provide a better sampling of results, thus allowing more advanced searcher behavior.

Analogy - Buying some Beans

As an analogy, think of going shopping to go get a can of beans at two different stores. The first store is a well run national chain with a huge selection and a logical, clear layout. Since you have been there many times before, and you already know exactly what you want, you will probably know exactly what to do, even if you have never bought beans before at that store.

You will go to the aisle that is most likely to contain the beans, glance quickly down it for the area most likely to contain the beans and head right there. On the way, you have probably already checked for coupons and sales, and have a very good idea of exactly what brand and size you want, along with what brands you may not want. You may also know whether you want to get the beans from the "All Natural" aisle, the "Ethnic Foods" aisle, or the general "Soups and Canned Goods" aisle.

Within seconds, you have exactly what you want, after following what is, if you think about it, a very sophisticated and effective search pattern, that was helped by a large, well-organized selection to choose from. This is Stage 4 - Control mode. You take control of your search and make it work for you.

Next, contrast this with going to get a can of beans from a nearby store that is very messy, disorganized and has little stock. First, forget coupons, the "All Natural" aisle and all of that. If you are lucky, there might actually be a "groceries" aisle. Your can will be there, in with the other cans, if you are lucky. If there is an organization to it, it's not readily apparent.

At this point, you have to throw planning and sophistication out and basically just start hunting through the shelves until you find a can of beans. The chances of it being exactly what you were looking for are remote, so you may then end up sifting through yet more cans in a vain hope that there might be another choice (hopefully one that has not expired). You may even decide to give up and either skip the beans altogether, or go check a different store. You are in Stage 2 - the Exploration mode.

In this scenario, it's not YOU who has changed and become less sophisticated, it's the shopping environment that has. You basically had to degrade your planning and shopping behavior to deal with the fact that sophisticated actions can only take place at the top end of the available actions, and the available actions are reliant upon the choices, support and quality present at the time.

Conclusion

In short, searchers in China, Mexico and elsewhere are only searching in unsophisticated manners because the SERPs themselves are unsophisticated, not because of some sort of cultural norm, which is often currently the assumption.

I hear this all the time: "The Chinese search like this" or "Mexicans tend to do searches this way", but this is ethnocentric and misleading.

It would be more accurate to say that "searchers in China do this" or "searchers in Mexico have to search this way". The sophistication of the searches are based on the sophistication of the search landscape, not the searchers themselves.

There are 2 major conclusions of interest to the search community that can be taken away from this, IMO.

1. If a market shows unsophisticated searcher behavior (as evidenced by the types of searches performed), then there is almost certainly an excellent potential market for SEO (along with an attendant lack of awareness of SEO in the first place). Additionally, due to this lack of sophistication within the market, SEO and PPC are likely to very effective. There is simply less high-quality competition.
   
   
2. Since searchers will increase in sophistication as the available search landscape evolves, it is important to prepare websites for more sophisticated searches (ie long tail terms, searches for specific on-site information rather than just contact information, etc) rather than simply rely on current KW research. You will need to evolve within your market as your searchers do. And they will, as quickly as the market does.
   

Hopefully these 2 articles have been helpful to you. I know the insights I've taken from coming up with them are serving me well with my current international SEO efforts.

Ian

Keyword Research Schedule

I was doing some keyword research this morning and was reminded of a very important issue that I'd like to share.

It's February, and I just did some KW research related to Calgary (my home town,and a place I'm very familiar with, as far as KW research goes).

Services like KeywordDiscovery and Wordtracker typically default to showing what's in their database for the last few months (usually around 3 months or so).

That means that right now, I'm seeing KW's like "calgary valentine sale" and almost no searches for what I *know* is one of the biggest KW's for the city - the Calgary Stampede.

If I didn't know better, and used this KW research, I might come to the conclusion that the Stampede wasn't that big of a deal. But it is, and KW research done in August will clearly show it.

This seasonality especially affects seasonal things like tourism, tax preparers and so on, but keep in mind that it will have an effect on almost all industries, either directly or indirectly. For example, the end of summer is when a lot of people move to go to school. This results in more searches for anything from pots and pans to computers to local nightclubs as the new residents start to settle in.

As a result, I recommend doing KW research at least once per quarter (ie every 3 months) and to aggregate the data at least once per year.

Aggregation should be the following reports (keep them in a binder or in a folder somewhere):

1. Quarterly KW Reports, saved by year.
2. Yearly aggregate reports of the quarterly reports for the year, also saved by year.
3. Quarterly Reports, aggregated and *trended by KW* from the same quarter for each successive year.
4. Yearly trended reports of KW popularity. This is so the temporary huge popularity of a topic isn't directly affecting your decision making. "Pam Anderson" was an extremely popular KW back in the early 2000's, but not so much today, for example.
   

This will typically give you enough good information to act on, yet not be terribly onerous to create, analyze and report on.

Ian

PPC Text Ad Formats for the Major Search Engines

I'm currently working on a very, very cool tool that I can't tell you about (yet). However, part of it (an extremely minor part) allows the creation and export of PPC text ads for all major search engines.

Although I can't share the full tool yet, it took me some work to collect this information in one spot, so I figured I'd share it with you.

Where bulk upload is allowed, the listings use the exact terms that the search engine in question uses (i.e. the heading you would use for the CSV).

"SB" is single byte (i.e. English) and "DB" is double byte (i.e. Chinese). Enjoy!

Google AdWords Character Limitations and Format

Headline: 25 SB, 12 DB
Description Line 1: 35 SB, 17 DB
Description Line 2: 35 SB, 17 DB
Display URL: 35 SB (SB Only)
Destination URL: 1024 SB (SB Only)

Yahoo YSM Character Limitations and Format

Ad Title: 40 SB, 20 DB
Ad Short Description: 70 SB, 35 DB
Ad Long Description: 190 SB, 95 DB
Display URL: 25 SB (SB only)
Destination URL: 1024 SB (SB Only)

MS AdCenter Character Limitations and Format

Headline: 25 SB, 12 DB
Description Line 1: 35 SB, 17 DB
Description Line 2: 35 SB, 17 DB
Display URL: 35 SB (SB Only)
Destination URL: 1022 SB (SB only)

ASK ASL Character Limitations and Format*

Ad Title: 25 SB
Ad Description: 70 SB
Display URL: 35 SB
Destination URL: 1000 SB

*Ask is English Language (SB) ads only.

Baidu Huobao Character Limitations and Format*

Ad Title: 13 DB
Ad Description: 32 DB
Display URL: 35 SB
Destination URL: 1000 SB

*Baidu is Chinese/Japanese (DB) only

Optimizing Powerpoint Presentations

I give a lot of presentations, and I optimize things for a living, so it was just a matter of time for nature to take it's course and for me to start wondering what the hell I was doing.

See, there are a lot of different types of presentations (I'm talking about ones that use slides or PowerPoint here). There are presentations intended to inspire, presentations intended to sell, presentations intended to convince, and presentations intended to teach. Each type of presentation will require it's own format and style.

I do mostly the teaching type, and I love doing them. Like anything else worth doing, if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right. For years I've been a frustrated victim of PowerPoint and so-called "advice" on how to make a great presentation. Enough is enough. It's simply not fair to the audience for someone in a technical field like SEO to try to teach them using the wrong presentation style.

Bad Advice

It's not so much bad advice, as it is the wrong advice. If you go looking, as I have, on how to make a great PowerPoint presentation, you'll find that most of the advice boils down to: "Make a presentation like Steve Jobs". All pictures, little or no text.

What was the point of this again?

Maybe that's great advice for Steve Jobs, who is trying to sell you overpriced, proprietary hardware and software by making it seem really, really cool, but for someone just trying to teach people how to get better rankings or convert visitors into customers, cute graphics and drop shadows simply don't cut it.

People at search marketing conferences don't want to be inspired (they already are, that's why they have a site they want to promote), they want to get their money's worth by learning tactics and strategies they can actually take back and use. It's about being practical and effective, not about getting excited over the latest color available for the iPod.

You simply can't use a Steve Jobs / Seth Godin type of presentation to do anything other than inspire. There is nothing wrong with inspiration (I love Seths work), but inspiration won't fix that 302 redirect issue you have, or give you a checklist for finding good links.

The worst part is when you need to take notes. As an audience member, you probably can't write fast enough, (or perhaps were at the session next door) and may want to download and review the presentation later instead. Fat lot of good that picture of the monkey with a banana with no text will do then!

Presenters at technical conference learn this very quickly (assuming they even get invited back) and change their presentations to include examples, data and text so that the presentation will be more useful - basically helping the audience take notes, so they can spend the time listening to you rather than scribbling madly.

That's the point, really - avoiding too much note-taking or boredom. Inspirational presentations do this with big picture statements and great graphics, technical/teaching presentations do this by providing the notes so you don't have to write them yourself. Both accomplish the same goals, just in different ways.

Over-Correction

This brings me to the next annoyance with technical/teaching presentations - information overload. These presentations are the opposite of inspirational ones - they are basically a speech or lecture in slide form. I've even seen people do the entire presentation simply by reading every line of every slide - horrors!

An old presentation of mine from 2006. Ouch.

I think these presentations are even worse than the inspirational ones, in that although it solves the problem of note-taking, there really isn't a reason to attend the conference anymore, is there? These presentations are boring - which is one of the worst insults you can give to a presentation, in my opinion.

The font size keeps getting smaller as more and more information is packed in, the number of slides increase dramatically, and many presenters find themselves fast forwarding or skipping slides due to time constraints. This is very, very annoying.

Showing me a smaller amount of information than you know is one thing, but skipping by slides of potentially juicy information because you ran out of time is unprofessional and frustrating.

Making the Ideal SEO/SEM Conference Presentation

So, what to do? How do you inspire people enough to make them interested in what you have to say, but at the same time, give them enough information that it's worth it for them to get inspired in the first place?

Well, let's break it down. What do you need to accomplish? You need to:

• Make the presentation interesting and even entertaining to a live audience.
  
  
• Free people from the necessity of writing a lot of notes. It's great for them to make "AhHa" notes to themselves as they listen, but they should not be trying to scribble down every word you say for fear of missing something. If your audience is doing this, you should have stuck with blogging.
  
  
• Provide answers and resources, which you can use during the Q&A, as well as helping people who download your presentation. Although some people don't like to allow their presentations to be downloaded, they are missing the point (among other things).
  
  If your presentation is about your branding, then you are giving a commercial rather than a presentation and you should do everyone a favor and get the hell off the stage (unless the audience knew they were going to see a commercial in the first place). If you are trying to teach people, put a copyright notice on it, ask for a link and attribution, and let them download your notes.
  
  
• Identify yourself. This is not only great from a branding and marketing standpoint, but it's also helpful to your audience, should they wish to contact you. How will they remember? You've let them download the presentation! It's now like a giveaway pen with your logo on it, except it's a lot more useful, more likely to be saved, and contains much better contact information. Virtual swag, and costs you nothing to reproduce!
  

The Perfect* Presentation

*A good presentation should be like a website - always being tested and improved. Perfection is a goal, not a state of being, especially for anything using computers.

Section 1 - Splash Page. This should introduce your presentation and yourself in a simple and easy to understand format - no marketing hype. Also the perfect place to point out where you can download the presentation, since the audience looks at this while you are being introduced, and it's really the only time they can/should take notes. They usually also look at this slide the longest, since it's a placeholder during the introduction. Never underestimate the value of a splash page. A splash page/slide has a job to do, and they are only useless if you forget that. Use it wisely and well, or don't use it at all.

Section 2 - TOC. As my old drill instructor said, "Tell 'em what you're gonna tell 'em, tell 'em, then tell em what you told 'em". Resist the urge to put in every slide - just the main topics and sections. This is the perfect opportunity to point out you have additional information at the end of the presentation that won't be shown (I'll get to this in a moment).

Section 3 - Visual Presentation. The main event! This is where you keep the graphics clean, the text light, large and punchy, and the entertainment value high. Don't go into excruciating detail. Provide an overview and enough information so that people will be introduced to what they don't know and what kind of questions they should be asking you and themselves.

Remember many members of your audience will only be interested in certain sections, and just want an overview on how it all fits together. But don't over correct and be too shallow. A good way to accomplish this is to do an overview on a topic or sub-topic and then give some specific, practical tips related to that topic or sub-topic.

Section 4 - FAQ. If you have one or two questions that always come up that are not easily addressed in section 3 - put them in here. This is an audience favorite, and establishes you as helpful and available, rather than just a lecturer. This section is optional, but recommended. It does 3 jobs - it answers questions, it signifies the end of the official presentation, and it provides a time cushion where you can easily skip this part or go into greater detail, depending on how much time you have, without making the audience feel they have been ripped off.

Section 5 - Resources. This is where you put all that juicy info that you can't put in the visual presentation because you'd need to use small fonts and crowded screens. Charts, data, links, a bibliography and so on can all be placed in here. This is a great incentive for the audience to download your presentation if they want, but if they only wanted an overview, they don't feel they are forced to. You can also put in the kind of information you may want handy during the Q&A part of the session, but didn't want to get into during the main presentation.

Section 6 - Contact information. This is more than just your name and email. You can include a company overview, services you offer and even things like special offers and discount codes. This is your reward and incentive for making the presentation useful and available for download. It's low-key and not pushy, but highly effective at getting your marketing message out without ruining the on-stage presentation.

Wrap Up

I hope this has been helpful to you (and your audience). If you decide to use this format, feel free to leave a link in my comments area to the presentation for others to see and be inspired by.

Ian

Are you an SEO/SEM in Mexico or Brazil?

I'll be visiting Mexico from Feb 16-24 and Brazil from Feb 24-Mar 3 for the purposes of meeting other SEO's, learning about the local search marketing environment and culture, and generally beginning to learn more about and promote those two countries as excellent SEO targets for international businesses.

If you live in either place (specifically Mexico City, Acapulco, Cancun, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro) I'd love to meet with you - I'm also looking for local contacts and sources, and can in turn introduce you to my other contacts and sources internationally. I'll buy the beer :)

And, just to make this post more interesting, I'm in the process of finishing up (finally) my book (International SEO) and I'd like to share with everyone the top 20 international SEO/SEM countries (there may be a few surprises in here for some people):

This list was created by comparing overall population, internet users, internet penetration, broadband subscribers, and user growth for 194 countries. Ranked in order of internet broadband users:

1. United States
2. China
3. Japan
4. Germany
5. Korea, South
6. United Kingdom
7. France
8. Italy
9. Canada
10. Spain
11. Brazil
12. Netherlands
13. Taiwan
14. Australia
15. Mexico
16. Turkey
17. Russia
18. Poland
19. India
20. Vietnam

I intend to meet with SEO's and other search marketers in every single country before publishing the book, hence my trip to Brazil and Mexico.

Cheers,

Ian

Search Engine Share 2008

I just made these for a presentation, based on the latest information I have for this year. Enjoy.

Organic Search Engine Share 2008 for North America

PPC (Pay Per Click) Search Engine Share 2008 for North America

Ranking Reports - a Defence.

You know you are getting old when you have an uncontrollable urge to start a post starting with words like "in my day.." , "I remember when.." or "I've seen this before..."

But it's true - that's the problem. People who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it, or to even live through something worse. I was reminded of this while reading a recent forum thread about ranking reports.

Someone started complaining that Google had prevented a certain piece of ranking software from getting information from them. This was almost universally followed not by useful advice, but by a bunch of people saying ranking reports were useless. You see this type of thing with regard to PageRank, as well.

I appreciate that the posters meant well, but I really wish people would think clearly, rather than spouting off the latest over-correction crap they've heard recently. Regardless of the topic, there seems to be a consistent flow to this:

1. Something is pushed too far. Could be a theory, or political view, or whatever.
   
2. Experts, concerned about this, issue reasons why those pushing too far are wrong
   
3. A new generation of people, in a fit of rebellion against the status quo, quickly grab the "new way of thinking" and then, you guessed it, go too far with it.
   
4. Eventually, there is a counter-rebellion and the thinking about the topic matures, now that both sides have been expressed fully and challenged.

The examples are legion. Think about any political, civil rights or scientific revolution and you will see this. So it should be no surprise that it affects SEO, as well.

That being the case, let this be the first shot fired in the counter-revolution against Ranking Reports.

See, in the old days, no one did ranking reports. Who cares how you rank if no one ever visits your site? Instead, server reports were used. In this case, it was often "hits". At the time, hits were not a bad measurement. Pages were very light on graphics, and e-commerce wasn't really a workable concept - people were after "branding" and "buzz". In this context, measuring hits was an easy and fairly accurate way to measure the popularity of a site.

Even today, a popular site will tend to have more hits than a similar unpopular site. You can complain about issues with hits all you want, but the broad brush stroke is usually still representative.

Of course, there are many problems with hits - they are a method of measuring server performance, not visitor performance. A page with a single graphic on it counts as 2 hits (one for the html page and one for the graphic) whereas a page with 50 images on it (even 1x1 pixel images) would count as 51 hits. In both cases, there is only one visitor, however. This was exploited by spammers and bad SEO's who, rather than increasing visitors to a site, would sometimes just slowly add more invisible pictures to the pages in the site, thereby increasing the hits without increasing the actual visitors.

Soon, the industry became more sophisticated, the experts began to call for ranking reports instead of "hits" reports, and we began to move from server-based measurement to search engine based measurement. Instead of measuring our performance using internal criteria (server logs), we switched to external criteria (ranking reports).

After all, it can clearly be shown that your rankings directly affect your traffic and sales. I can see this in both PPC and SEO everyday across many industries. Additionally, measuring based on rankings was more closely tied to the job an SEO does - optimizing for search engines, not for server performance. Life was good. For a while.

Then, the problems with ranking reports began to emerge - first, search rankings can fluctuate from day to day and even minute to minute. Second, some clients wanted daily and even twice daily ranking reports for their top terms. This placed a lot of pressure on both SEO's and search engines, in many cases for no good reason. There is a point when granularity exceeds the information. You can measure too much, and too deeply, getting lost looking at bark under a microscope when you should be looking at the forest, or at least groups of trees.

Other issues with ranking reports were just as serious - ranking well in a term that no one searches for is useless, and sending unqualified traffic was just as bad (and even worse) than sending no traffic at all. Finally, search engines started placing robots.txt files on them. Suddenly, ranking reports didn't look so good anymore. The experts changed course again and began to recommend analytics, instead.

Ironically, we've come full circle. We started doing server based measurement (hits and unique visitors), abandoned it in favor of search engine based measurement (ranking reports) and have now come back to server based measurement - except now we are a lot more sophisticated. We don't want hits anymore, we want unique visitors, time on site, fallout reports, and all sorts of other Key Performance Indicators (KPI). This is cool. It's scientific, it's visitor-focused, and it's got all sorts of pretty graphs and charts.

Ranking reports are now in disfavor, to the relief of bad SEO's who can now justify bad rankings (and their dislike of doing linking campaigns) by talking about how rankings don't matter - it's visitors and sales. How very convenient. It sounds great. Very forward-thinking and modern. Except it's wrong.

Why? Because there is no context. Your visitors and buyers have increased - big deal. Maybe your competition's has also increased, but at a rate ten times yours. But you won't know that, because guess what? You are only looking at your own server for information. If it's not on your server, it doesn't exist. Analytics ignores the outside world and just builds a better navel gazer.

It's all well and good to make yourself better, to optimize the user experience and to increase conversions, but I have news for you - a qualified visitor does not usually stumble randomly to your site - they arrive from somewhere, and that is very often from a search engine. To say rankings don't matter is to do your clients and yourself a great disservice. The best website in the world is no good if no one can find it.

So what now? Go back to ranking reports? No - their weaknesses are well known and legitimate. The next step is to blend your rankings and other external data with your analytics. The visitor experience of your website doesn't begin when they land on your page, it should start as soon as they start looking for what you have to offer. Branding, buzz, social media, PPC and SEO all play a part in this, and thus far analytics has not adequately addressed it, particularly in SEO and social media.

Oh, they can say that people coming to the site based on keyword "X" convert at such and such a rate, but they usually don't suggest new keywords, or tell the analyst where the site ranked for keyword "X" that day, or whether the site was on the front page of Digg that day, or whether there was a news article, blog post or twitter campaign going on. That's important, but since it's not on their server, it doesn't get reported. There is no context, and therefore the information is suspect.

SEO's who "don't believe in ranking reports" don't get it. That's part of their job. If you want to avoid the robots.txt issues, do it manually or use a human-operated script rather than a robot (yes, there is a difference). It will help stop you from over-doing it, anyway. But to say that you optimize sites for search engines and then say that you don't believe in checking a search engine to see if your site is optimized for it is ludicrous.

If you have done your keyword research, a ranking report is a legitimate and extremely important part of the puzzle. It's only a part of the puzzle, not the solution, but it's a very important part of it. Data without context is meaningless, and context is provided from external sources of information, not self-referencing (internal) sources.

I think, like analytics moving from "hits" to KPI, search reports need to become more sophisticated, as well. A simple ranking isn't enough. You need more information. In many cases this information can come from analytics, but it can also come from linking reports, SE saturation, social media buzz references, and many other places. I call not for the return of ranking reports 1.0, but for ranking reports 2.0 - newer, improved and more connected to the visitor.

Doing the job properly requires BOTH server-based and external information sources. I hereby issue a call for all search marketers to move past the current myopic focus on analytics and to look at the whole picture - that's where true understanding lies.

Ian

Google Rolls out New Invoice System, and Immediately Bills Wrong People!

So, I have a client, all nice and tidy in my AdWords Pro Account. This client has a very large spend (500K+) and frankly, my credit cards simply don't have the space on them. So I set up invoicing with Google.

Google, to their credit, work quickly and are very helpful. Even so, there are delays involved simply due to processing times, etc. During this period, which is rather nerve-racking, I actually have to take out a second mortgage on my home in order to pay Google. The second mortgage also takes time to put into place, so in the meantime, I'm frantically paying Google by rotating through every credit card I have, and I even borrow a card from my brother in law.

Eventually, everything gets straightened out, invoicing kicks in, my client pays their bills, the credit cards are paid off, and my company is now stronger for the experience. All told, although it almost gave me a nervous breakdown, it was an overall positive thing.

(The reason I couldn't bill the client up front and pre-pay is another story, related to contracts and government regulations. Suffice to say that if it had been an option, I would have used it, but it wasn't).

But for now, everything is going fine. Once per month, I'm sent a snail-mail version of the invoice, but since I'm in Canada and the invoice is coming from the US, it arrives later than I'd like. Instead, I log into AdWords, download a PDF of my invoice and pay it. No problem.

Now For The Problem

At this point, life is good, I get paid, Google gets paid and everyone is happy. Until yesterday.

Yesterday, Google sends an email version of the invoice. Sounds good, right? Much faster than snail mail.

Except:

1. The invoice was sent to my client's email address, not mine. Big mistake number one. I'm surprised it even got through their spam filters, much less got forwarded to me. They certainly had no idea what to do with it.
2. The invoice was billed to my brother in law. You know, the guy who loaned me his credit card once on this account. He's certainly not going to pay it, and my client had no idea who this guy was.
3. The invoice was sent yesterday - not at the time when the invoices should have been sent. By this point, I had not only received the proper invoice (when I download them, they are billed properly to my company, not to my brother in law), but I had paid it already. Why the invoice was sent AFTER THE DUE DATE and after being paid is totally beyond me.
4. Finally, it was sent on behalf of Google Collections Canada. Now, we don't work with Google Canada due to some very bad service we had received last year. When I contacted the person listed in the email, she said that her name had been added automatically and she had not directly sent the email. So the email was sent FROM the wrong person (and wrong country)!

So, Google invoiced the proper amount, but did so:

• To the wrong email address
• To the wrong billing contact
• At the wrong time
• After it had been paid
• From the wrong country and collections department

Not exactly a stellar start to the new system. If you are an AdWords customer, be very, very careful about this new system, and I strongly recommend you check everything. Twice.

Just like Google should have.

Ian

Proposed SEM Standards (Part 1)

There is no way that one person could hope to write an entire Standards document for an entire industry, so I'm breaking this down into smaller parts that I feel would be the most helpful to others.

In this case, the following is a proposed set of Standards for creating Standards. Yes, you need rules for making the rules. In the full Standards, this would be the first section.

Naturally, comments here or elsewhere (as long as you quote what you are commenting on so we are all on the same page) are welcome and actively encouraged.

More information on how Standards fit within and relate to a Code of Ethics and Guideines

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Search Marketing Standards

In accordance with the Search Marketing Code of Ethics, the following Search Marketing Standards reflect the general consensus of the search marketing community.

The Creation of Standards

All Standards outlined in this document and any amendments thereof shall follow the intent and purpose of the Search Marketing Code of Ethics, and no Standard that directly violates a principle of the Code of Ethics shall be created.

Interpretations and Guidelines for Standards shall also be made in accordance with the principles of the Code of Ethics.

Standards shall strive to be consistent, useful and clear.

Standards should be written in such as way as to not stifle innovation, creativity or informed professional judgement, while still providing for a coherent, consistent and authoritative frame of reference for the industry and the public.

Standards should be written in a manner that is respectful towards, but independent of, other stakeholders in search, such as website owners and search engines.

No Standard shall be created without the opportunity for debate and discussion within the entire search marketing community. Standards are necessarily independent of the organizations and companies promoting them, and discussion and debate cannot be limited to only members of a particular company or organization.

Standards Creation Process

All Standards proposals shall undergo assessment and debate within the search marketing community.

• Method 1: A proposed standard is created and offered publicly for comments.
• Method 2: A particular Guideline or Best Practice achieves such a consensus amongst the search marketing community that it begins to act as a de facto Standard. With community permission, it can be promoted to a Standard.

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Ian

Proposed (Draft) SEM Code of Ethics

For more information about how a Code of Ethics fits in with Standards and Guidelines, see the previous post.

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Search Marketing Code of Ethics

We, the search marketing professionals who are voluntarily adhering to the statements of principles set out below, do hereby believe in and commit to the following:

Truth

We shall strive towards truthfulness and integrity in our dealings with others.

We will accurately disclose relevant significant potential conflicts of interest to our clients.

We shall avoid deceptive marketing practices.

We will clearly, accurately and fully disclose realistic potential negative consequences of our actions to our clients in advance.

Responsibility

We are responsible to our clients. Clients should never be harmed by our actions, and are entitled to be dealt with in a fair and accountable manner.

We are responsible to the profession. We will not engage in actions that are likely to bring the profession into disrepute in the eyes of the public.

We are responsible to society. We shall obey all laws pertaining to our professional actions and efforts.

We are responsible to ourselves, to continually improve and update our skills and knowledge.

Respect

We shall treat others with professional courtesy and conduct.

We shall hold the private information of others in strictest confidence.

Fairness

We shall treat clients fairly and in good faith, and are entitled to expect the same in return.

We shall use our best efforts to act on behalf of a client, while maintaining a professional demeanour towards other stakeholders.

We shall not encourage clients or the public to have unreasonable, unrealistic or unattainable expectations regarding the profession, the industry or the services offered.

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The Creation of Draft SEM Standards

UPDATES:

Draft Code of Ethics posted

Proposed SEM Standards (Part 1)

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As promised, I offer the following several posts to the SEM community as proposed draft Code of Ethics, Standards, and Guidelines.

First, a primer on how these 3 things fit together:

Code Of Ethics

A Code of Ethics is a general statement of common principles and ideals. They are usually not intended to deal with specific issues, but rather outline an overall approach and philosophy.

In law, this would be the equivalent of a constitution. It should rarely, if ever, change.

Example: SEO's shall avoid deceptive marketing practices.

This is fine as a philosophy, but of course it's not terribly clear what "deceptive" is in all cases. Sure, this would deal with directly and fraudulently lying to people, but what about something like IP delivery or cloaking, where there could be arguments as to whether they are deceptive or not?

Industry Standards

Standards are generally accepted and codified rules that are created to provide structure and guidance to a Code of Ethics. These can include definitions, best practices and so forth, but are generally at a high level.

Standards can change with the times, but should generally be written in such a way that such changes should be minimal. The idea here is to stabilize things and to give people something they can rely on.

Continuing with the legal analogy, if a Code of Ethics is like a Constitution, then Industry Standards are like laws or statutes.

Example: Avoid IP delivery methods that present substantially different information to search engines from what a human visitor would experience.

This is more helpful than "avoid deceptive marketing practices". It answers most of my questions and is the one-liner to take back to my client or boss. This would deal with 90% of the questions.

But what if I'm dealing with a technical issue that is more complex than this? I think I need more guidance, since I can think of a few examples where even this definition doesn't cut it. And what does "substantially" really mean, anyway? Well, now we look at Guidelines, which interpret the Standards.

Guidelines

The guidelines could be very large and detailed, and include information like alternatives to IP delivery, some example scenarios, or (worst case scenario) say something like "we don't know exactly what the result of doing X would be, as there is evidence that sometimes it works , and sometimes it doesn't. Proceed with caution."

Or, it could say: IP cloaking to go past verification pages is OK, but using it to go past paid login pages is frowned upon because it creates a poor user experience.

Perhaps a separate guideline would say that you can do this for paid pages if there is notification up front (before clicking on the result) that the page is paid.

Or it could actually be an entire forum thread with the whole community arguing their various points of view. That's OK. Some things are complicated, and often there are many ways to accomplish the goal.

Continuing with the legal analogy, if a Code of Ethics is like a Constitution, and Industry Standards are like laws or statutes, then Guidelines are Case Law: the individually tailored decisions of judges and juries based on messy and unique circumstances.

From my perspective, Ethics are easy, and standards could be set in a committee. It's the guidelines where all the fun happens. That's where the exceptions to the rules happen, where the weird situations get looked at, and so forth.

One of the big issues (and the source of most of the debate on this subject) is that many people think that proponents of standards are intending to put things that belong in guidelines into the standards or ethics. That would be a bad idea.

Debates like the proper use of nofollow, etc belong in the guidelines, because sometimes there is no clear, correct answer. Sometimes the best you can do is to make people aware that there is a controversy and what the issues and risks are. That's perfectly acceptable in a guideline, but not in a Code of Ethics or Industry Standards, which need to a reliable and clear to both SEM's and the public.

Once there ceases to be controversy over a guideline, it can be considered for promotion to a Standard. But it would not be unusual to have some guidelines never getting promoted. SEM's are a contentious, opinionated, independent bunch, and I expect our guidelines will probably reflect that.

At no point should the establishment of standards interfere with or prevent a professional from using their judgement or solving a problem. The standards and guidelines should exist to help and guide, not to hinder or hold back.

With all this in mind, and after reviewing the following (excellent) resources, I'll try to present some draft versions of all of this, hopefully to start a discussion and lend some structure to the debate.

• Business.gov
• American Marketing Association Statement of Ethics
• CMA Code of Ethics and Standards of Practice
• BBB Code of Advertising
• Business Marketing Association Code of Ethics
• DMA Corporate Responsibility Guidelines
• Bruce Clay SEO Code of Ethics
• EthicsWeb

Ian

Search Standards, Part 2

...Continued from Part 1

3. There are already laws to protect people from SEO scams. Sure, you could argue that the law covers all that. Heck, you could (and some people do) argue that we could get rid of all laws but the 10 Commandments. Just interpret everything, and let all your customer relations and the organization of your profession be interpreted by courts and bureaucrats every single time someone enters into an agreement or wants to do something.

You'd think that of all people lawyers would say that they don't need standards, and that the existing laws would cover all the possible issues in the profession. Just trust the court system. But they don't. Maybe lawyers know something about laws that you don't?

Like, "who's laws?" US law? UK law? Chinese Law? California Law? Nevada Law? Personally, I think everyone should follow Alberta law. ;)

Arguing that the "law" will protect people is making the ethnocentric assumption that the laws where you live are the "right" ones. And that they are flawless. And will be able to deal with all of the issues specific to your profession. And that everyone worldwide will agree to them. Those are some pretty big assumptions.

Did you know that both Chinese and French law make it illegal to compare products? They believe that if your product can't stand on it's own merits, it's got no right to start trying to make it's competitors look bad to try to make itself look good. So much for bidding on competitors names. Legal in the US, illegal in France. Yes, Google lost that one.

German contracts tend to be quite short. Why? Because there are laws about what all contracts in Germany have in them, so most of the "boilerplate" in US contracts (ie Acts of God, etc) are unnecessary. The law also overrides the contracts, should the contract say something different. It's kind of funny to listen to US contract lawyers in Germany whine and complain. You should probably know that if you ever sign a contract with a German company. Whose law wins?

At least if you have standards, the local courts of a particular jurisdiction will be able to look at those standards and take guidance from them. Ever hear of "generally accepted accounting principles"? That's a legal term. Courts use it. But the principles are set by the accounting profession, not the courts. Why? Because judges are not accountants. They are not SEO's, either.

"Generally accepted SEO standards" may one day save your bacon. Unless we don't have any. In which case the court will probably side with the client, since the professional is supposed to know better and is held to a higher standard. Golly, that's too bad for SEO's.

4. There's no such thing as "cheating" in SEO. I'm assuming that this is referring to cheating search engines, as opposed to cheating customers and clients. Because that happens a lot more than it should.

Once again, standards are not about SEO's and search engines. I don't care about search engine guidelines (you need a standard to have a guideline, anyway). No, standards are about the public. And the public doesn't like to be cheated, mislead, kept in the dark or lied to. Eventually, if the SEO community doesn't enact it's own standards to protect the public, I have no question that the public will demand that the standards are created (via either the courts or legislation) and foisted upon us.

And we'd have no one to blame but ourselves.

Conclusion

Standards? We don't need no stinkin' standards. But the public does. The SEO community needs to deal with the fact that they and the search engines are not the only ones involved in this issue. That's part of the process of becoming mature: becoming aware of the needs of others. Joining the larger community. Practicing responsible behavior. Caring.

I think it's time we grew up and took responsibility for our own profession, before someone does it for us.

Ian

Search Standards, Part 1

I was interested to read Jills recent article on search standards, and I had to respond, even though I adore her and (literally) owe the start of my career to her. I started responding on her forum, but since it got too long and the article wasn't actually posted in her forum, I decided to respond here, instead.

I disagree. Although it's all well and good to approach things with a completely laizzes faire, buyer beware attitude, in practice standards are not about SEO's.

They are about the public.

SEO's don't need protection from other SEO's. Neither do search engines.

Why do lawyers and doctors and firemen and engineers and almost every other industry have standards?

Do lawyers need protection from other lawyers? Is there a big concern that by implementing standards your lawyer will not be able to help you sell your house or write your will? Or that shady lawyers would take advantage of those poor, unsuspecting judges? Bah.

The standards are there so that the non-legally trained public has the right to be informed about their rights and obligations, and has a reasonable expectation of a certain level of service and professionalism.

In SEO, they have the right to know what the hell you are talking about when you talk about "attraction", "entry" or "zebra" pages.

So, to address the points in the article in order:

1. There are too many ways of skinning the SEO cat. This is a straw man argument. Of course there are lots of ways to do business, and to approach a problem. That's not what standards are about. That's a checklist, not a standard. A standard could say something like: Don't do things that are proven to be harmful or not work, not "you must do things exactly in the order of X.

Good standards are written in the negative (thou shalt not) as opposed to the positive "thou shalt do this and only this), unless there really is only one acceptable way. Arguing that they would prevent innovation is assuming that the standards would be written in such a way as to prevent innovation, then knocking it down. That's a false assumption. If it hasn't even been written yet, how can you argue that it will prevent innovation or seek to enforce specific practices? You can't. Argument fails for lack of substance or evidence.

2. We can't even agree on the definition of search engine optimization. First, a definition isn't a process, so standard definitions are not even addressed in argument 1, above.

Second, and to the meat of this one: There is nothing stopping people from arguing about definitions and standards for some things. Physicists still can't decide what gravity or light really are. Doctors differ between the "surgery" and "medication" camps. That doesn't mean they don't have standards.

But if there is a set definition that the public can understand, it is in the public's interest to be able to know what they are getting. Sure, you can call your reciprocal link building system a "Proto-Relatic Symbiosis Program" if it makes you happy, but the client should know that you are building reciprocal links, not building rocket ships. And they should know what the pros and cons are of doing so are.

Standard definitions help the public understand what they are getting into, and allow them to compare services. If you want to define "SEO" differently from the industry standard definition, go ahead, but you should not be able to hide behind your custom definition ("I know the contract says I'll do SEO on your site, but I define SEO as only setting up a link farm"). Contracts require a known vocabulary and a shared understanding of the terms of the contract.

Let me be clear about this: if you define things differently than your client, and you sign a contract without clarifying them, you don't have a valid contract. This works both ways. A client can define "SEO" or "PPC" in a very different way than you, and then refuse to pay unless you have completely and fully outlined your definitions. All of them. Does your contract do that? If you gave your standard contract to me, could I find a loophole? I'll bet I could. Do you want to bet your income on it?

Standard definitions help prevent these issues. If you have a different definition, fine. Outline your definition in the contract. Nothing wrong with that. But to not have standard definitions is to open yourself to lawsuits, miscommunications and angry clients.

Continued...

Ian

Bid Management Tools and a SearchCenter Review

A thread in a forum came up recently from someone wanting advice on whether they should use SearchCenter, or some other Bid Management tool like IndexTools or Atlas. Most of the responses were that you should be very careful about using any PPC bid management tool at all. Naturally, I have an opinion ;)

Omniture SearchCenter Review

I'm currently using Omniture SearchCenter for one of my clients. I also genuinely like the folks at Omniture, and have been to an Omniture Summit.

Here is what I like about SearchCenter:

• I can edit Yahoo, MSN and Google listings, all with the same interface. This is worth it almost by itself!
  
• You can assign multiple categories to keywords. I can then create rules that work only on those keywords. The same keyword could be an "Easter", Montana, and Automotive keyword, if necessary. This allows for all sorts of possibilities for reports, metrics and rules, such as "During Easter, increase the maximum bids for Easter keywords by 20%, unless they are aimed at a country that doesn't celebrate Easter". Then give me a report on our Easter Campaign. All without making a separate "Easter Campaign".
  
• Rules are good for dealing with very large numbers of keywords, especially if the criteria you are using for the rule is more complicated than "if CTR is less than 2" or somesuch.
  
• The consolidated reports are really nice. No, seriously. If you report to a client or management and they don't understand PPC, these reports can help you. Very powerful.

Here is what I don't like so much:

• It's expensive, like most bid management software, it costs 4-8% of your spend. In order to use SearchCenter well, you really need to also have Omniture SiteCatylist. Even more expensive.
  
• Although rules are helpful, only one rule can apply to each keyword. This sometimes makes writing rules complicated.
  
• If you make any changes to the campaign on the PPC site, you have to "sync" the info or you lose it.
  
• Minor, but a personal Pet Peeve: In SearchCenter, if you run a rule it sends you an email. Fine. Except the email runs even if it doesn't affect any keywords. Further, the email sent just says "these are the keywords that we acted on" with no explanation of *what* action was taken. This is the stupidest thing I've ever seen. These emails are a daily annoyance and reminder that I hate this. BTW, you can't tell it to NOT send them. I ended up writing an Outlook rule that automatically deleted them. A rule to counteract a rule. What a waste of time. Omniture, get your act together and stop spamming your users!

Bid Management Tool Best Practices

Since they work with the API and the search engines charge for the use of the API, there will be always be a cost to using bid management tools, even if it's only the fee the search engines charge.

It's up to each tool to decide what to charge above that, however. This guaranteed fee means you have to factor in the cost of the tool into your ROI. This usually means it's not worth using bid management tools unless you have a large enough campaign to justify the additional API and software fees. These are usually based on a "per use of API" basis, which means that if you are checking or changing things several times per day for a million keywords, then you are paying several times a day a million times. This can get pricey, and is one of the costs of doing business on that scale.

The best practice for bid management software is to only use rules for the great unwashed masses of keywords. You'll find that there will be a small group of really well performing or in other ways special keywords within that mass. Those you single out for special attention. Usually hand edited. The categories function helps with this.

Overall, I think that if you are already using SiteCatayst and are planning on doing PPC, then SearchCenter is worth it, if only for the centralized editing and reporting.

But unless you have a HUGE inventory of keywords, I'm not so sure of the value of bid management software in general.

Bid management software is the PPC equivalent of SEO software like WebCEO or WebPosition. They make reporting and data collection easier, but you simply can't use them to replace a live human skilled in what needs to be done.

If you are looking for centralized reporting and perhaps some help with a very large set of keywords that you would otherwise not be able to work with, then get bid management software. But if you are hoping that it will make your PPC campaigns better than you can, then I'm not sure they can do that job very well.

Ian

PPC - SEO Continuum

Almost all sites benefit from a combination of both PPC and SEO. There are only two exceptions:

1. Pure "hobby" sites where the goal isn't to make money or impress anyone but you and your friends. Most people's blogs and MySpace pages fall into this type of category. Although there are some highly profitable blogs, most are not, and not intended to be. Using PPC in this case is akin to publishing a book using a vanity press - costly and only useful to massage your ego.

2. Pure affiliate sites. These are often pretty much duplicate content and, depending on the affiliate program involved, can be virtually impossible to SEO (some companies only allow you to use their own prepackaged pages, for example). In this case, SEO won't help you much, but PPC can be very effective.

If you look closely at these two examples, you'll see that there is a continuum involved. At one end, you have pure information or branding sites, with no intent to profit, and at the other end, you have pure commerce sites, with no intent to inform or brand.
This creates the following scenario:


Ian

The Biggest Information Integration Mistake

Has this ever happened to you?

You phone the customer service line of a large company (bank, telephone, Google AdWords, etc) and get an automated voicemail system.

This voicemail system then asks you for information "to help you get to the right party". You then dutifully punch in your telephone number, bank account number, or client number, whereupon you are transferred to "the appropriate party".

The "appropriate party" finally answers the phone and then they ask you a question. You know what question they ask, don't you?

They then ask you for the SAME DAMN INFORMATION you just gave them.

Sometimes, they then transfer you to one or more other "appropriate parties", who all, without fail, ALSO ask for the same information.

Why?!!!!

In this day and age of analytics and customer tracking, why do companies consistently drop the ball with one the the most important visitors they can possibly have - the current client who needs help or is unsatisfied?

Although privacy laws make it clear that you should not be handing out your customer information to just anyone, they also acknowledge that you are entitled to (and must) collect, pass on and use the information necessary to complete the transaction requested by the visitor. Otherwise there is no point.

It is the height of rudeness to ask someone to give up some of their privacy to you and then for you to treat that information as unimportant and disposable, in the process inconveniencing them.

It's kind of like asking someone for their business card, looking at it, then throwing it away in front of them. Followed immediately by asking them to give you their phone number again. It's stupid, wasteful, inefficient and rude.

This also applies to online forms - deleting a customers form data and forcing them to start over just because they had one typo is bad usability, bad form, and bad programming.

Rules for collecting personal information:

1. Create and enforce a privacy policy that is designed to both protect your visitors and to allow you to do the job your visitors want you to do, safely and securely.

2. Never collect personal information that you do not need to do the job (any additional information should be anonymous and aggregate), and make sure that it's with permission.

3. After you get permission to collect personal information - use it to help the visitor. That's why they gave it to you in the first place, and is the basis of the permission.

Ian

Search Marketing In Latin America?

Every year, I go visit at least one of the major international search markets. Since my specialty is in global SEO/SEM it would not be very credible for me to claim to be an expert on marketing to a country I've never even been to, would it?

Actually, there are a depressing number of companies that do exactly this - sell one-page "international" pages for sites, typically poorly translated, and then "submit" them to the local Google (ie Google.co.uk, etc). This is a scam.

First, you don't need to submit to Google - any version. Second, one page of content is highly unlikely to bring in any traffic to speak of, unless it's desperation or long tail traffic. Finally, the whole concept is wrong. If you are not willing to invest more than one page for an entire market, then you have more problems with your marketing plan than SEO.

Anyway, although I have offices in Mexico, Brasil and Argentina, they are through a contract firm and I've honestly never been there or met the staff. So I'm going. As someone formally trained in anthropology, I'm a huge believer in the value of "field work" and "being there". Now we get to the reason I'm bothering to tell you all this:

If YOU were going on an SEM-related trip to South/Latin America - what would you be interested in learning? Where would you go? What would you do? I'll be happy to share what I learn with you, if you want to give me some guidance as to what you want to know.

I'm thinking of going in the fall, on advice from some friends in Argentina regarding the weather. Since I only have about a week or so, I need to be very focused. Here is a (very) rough idea of what I'm interested in seeing/doing:

Countries to visit: Mexico and Brasil. Argentina if I can, but it's iffy this trip, given the time constraints. Just so you know, the top 3 are (in order): Brasil, Mexico, then Argentina.

Search Companies to Meet with (if possible): Yahoo. Anyone else?

Questions to be Answered: What is the real search market share in these countries? What are the scams that need to be avoided? What tactics seem to work the best?

If you can think of anything else, let me know, and I'll find out for you :)

Ian

PS: No, I'm not spelling "Brazil" wrong - the locals call it "Brasil".

Adwords Editor, Vista, and Error 2739

I've been having problems with the installation of Google Adwords on my Vista machine for a while now. I've been putting off fixing it because I hire people to do PPC for me on a day to day basis, so it's not a huge issue. But today I needed to fix something for a client ASAP, and it was enough of a job that I needed to do it personally, and I needed to use the Editor.

Well, it turns out that Googles installation package doesn't work on Vista. It won't install, it won't UNinstall, it won't repair. Nothing. It's very annoying. I'd blame Vista except nothing else gave me this problem, so it's Googles fault. Oh, heck, I'll blame Vista as well.

Anyway, courtesy of Brent Crouch, I found the fix:

1. You need to make sure you are logged into Vista as an administrator.
2. Open Command Prompt and change into the C:\Windows\System32 directory.
3. Type: regsvr32 vbscript.dll
4. NOW PRESS Enter (I got an error after this command, but it still worked.)
5. Type: regsvr32 jscript.dll
6. NOW PRESS Enter (I got another error after this command, but it still worked.)
7. Now try the install again. It should work this time.

I didn't have to change directories - I just clicked on the "Run" choice in the start menu and typed in the 2 commands. It worked fine. I was able to uninstall a previous version of Adwords and install the latest with no problems.

Thanks Brent. And a big raspberry to both Vista and Google. Mostly Google.

Note to Google: the "eternal beta" trick only works online - you might want to test downloadable software from now on - just a thought. It makes you look silly when you can't even get your software to install properly and every other piece of software I've installed has no problem...

Ian

The 3 Pillars of SEO, SEM and their Relationship

I made these charts for a presentation recently. I hope you like them.

Ian

The 3 Pillars of SEO

The 3 Pillars of SEM

The Relationship Between SEO and SEM