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With local business ads, you can promote your business location within the map on Google Local. Users searching for your products or services will be able to clearly see how close (or far) they are from your business' physical location. In addition to your ad text, you can also include a phone number or add an image of your company logo or one of the products you carry. Whether it’s a hotel or flowers, pizza or plumbing, you can get key information about your business in front of potential customers as they browse or shop locally online.If your business has multiple locations, you can promote them all within the same Ad Group or campaign using the same keyword lists -- your ads will appear whenever someone is searching for those keywords near any one of your locations. Local business ads are associated with business listings in Google Local, so check to make sure your listings are included and up-to-date. If you want to make changes, simply visit the Local Business Center. And, for those of you with more than ten business locations, you might want to consider uploading a feed.
I'm wondering how to really delete a campaign? You know, make it go away? Not see it any more?... - Make it gone
We will be performing routine AdWords system maintenance from approximately 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. PST on Friday, March 24, 2006. Please note that, while you will not be able to access your AdWords account during this period, your campaigns will continue to run normally.
We are the only "widget" company in our county. When someone does a search using, for example, "widgets my county" our sponsored link shows up at the top of the list, which is how it should be...How can I get our site to show up in the free search results too? - Not there
We hope that you're finding the recently added search performance data useful, because we've added even more! You can now review global traffic trends (all languages, all countries) along with search volume for all your potential keywords (same languages and countries). For example, for the keyword 'bathing suits' you'll see how search volume varies each month for the last 12 months as well as which month (June -- no surprise!) saw the highest volume. You can access this feature from the AdWords home page as well as from within your account.We've also added the option to add keywords of any match type, including negative keywords, directly to any Ad Group. We hope that these improvements to the Keyword Tool make your keyword performance estimates easier to understand and use.
The pages under the 'My Account' tab will be unavailable tonight, Friday March 17th, from 7:00 to 10:00 pm PST for system maintenance. You'll still be able to log into your accounts during this time, but you won't be able to view invoices, change your billing address, or update your credit card during this maintenance period. Rest assured, however, that your campaigns will continue to run normally.
Next time you create a new keyword-targeted campaign, keep an eye out for the yellow box at the top of the page (see screenshot below so you'll know what it looks like). Simply selecting one of your existing campaigns from this new drop-down menu will allow you to create a brand new campaign pre-configured with many of the advanced settings from your existing campaign.
We run an ad in the content network that normally gets a huge number of impressions daily. However we made a very minor change to the ad and now it is getting 0 impressions in the content network. Why did this happen? We really need this ad displayed in content, and not being there has reduced our sales dramatically! - Confused and curious.
In addition to our automatic filters (which will catch and discard the vast majority of invalid clicks), our team proactively identifies invalid activity that may not have been automatically filtered and credits advertisers accordingly. These credits used to appear on your Billing Summary page as 'Service Adjustments.' In the interest of transparency, all credits, past and future, for invalid click activity are now labeled 'Adjustment - Click Quality.'You may notice these credits appearing more frequently as we work hard to ensure that this advertising budget is returned to affected advertisers as quickly as possible.
What is click fraud? I often hear the term “invalid clicks,” too. What’s the difference -- or are they the same?The term "fraud" implies deliberate deception. Our aim in fighting invalid clicks is broader and includes clicks that we suspect may have been deceptive or malicious, as well as clicks that we deem invalid for other reasons, such as accidental double clicking on an ad. The usage of the word "fraud" in this context has caused a great deal of confusion, as it's practically impossible to "prove" that an impression or click was caused by deliberate deception. Our servers can accurately count clicks on ads, but we cannot know what the intent of a clicking user was when they made that click. When we identify a click as invalid, it simply means a click we won't charge for, in order to deliver the best ROI to advertisers.Why not say more about the specific methods used to identify invalid clicks?There are many things we do to detect invalid clicks, including looking at duplicate IP addresses, user session information, network information, geo-targeting and browser information. These are all important signals for detecting invalid clicks.The technology we use to detect invalid clicks is highly sophisticated and was developed by some of the world's leading experts -- PhDs in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and statistics. We’re reluctant to share more about our technology and methods, however, because doing so would make it easier for fraudsters to try to defeat our systems.How big a problem is invalid click activity?We take it very seriously and have devoted significant resources and some of our best talent to this. By far, most of the invalid clicks we see are detected and discarded by our automatic filters even before they reach advertisers accounts. If an advertiser is monitoring click activity, these automatically filtered clicks may show up in an advertiser's logs, but not in their bills. When invalid clicks are detected after an advertiser is charged, we reimburse for them. Because of our detection efforts, losses to advertisers from invalid clicks are very small.But don't advertisers report invalid clicks to Google which weren't detected in advance? We do receive reports from advertisers and we look at them very closely. When we believe those clicks are invalid, we reimburse advertisers for them. Some invalid clicks do make it through our filters, but we believe the amount is very small.Also, we often find that the clicks are legitimate, but from unexpected sources such as broader targets the advertiser has set up for their campaign. And, as I mentioned earlier, some of the invalid clicks advertisers see in logs are clicks we've already caught, discarded and not charged. Most investigations we conduct concerning invalid clicks are cleared up with the advertiser after explaining the source of the traffic increase or showing them that the clicks were never charged.Does Google have an incentive to allow some amount of fraud because it means more revenue?Actually, it is the opposite of that. We have much more of an incentive to do a better job of handling invalid clicks than our competitors -- and we believe we do. Fighting invalid clicks aggressively is in Google's best interest and essential for us to maintain a viable business. In addition, we offer free tools to advertisers so they can monitor their return on investment -- which is a helpful way to determine whether too many clicks coming through are not resulting in sales. Those free tools help advertisers manage to a bottom line value of their ads.Some people suggest that click fraud may account for as much as 30 percent of traffic -- what do you say to that? We believe the methodology behind that particular estimate is flawed -- and that many who have cited the figure have done so irresponsibly by using it differently than it is characterized in the report.Here's a link to a .pdf version of the study where that figure originated. We encourage you to read the report and evaluate it yourself. Some things we think you will see that undercut those who use this estimate carelessly:Even the report does not say that click fraud is 30% of all clicks. What it does say is that of three ad campaigns (only three ad campaigns were examined in this study), evaluated over a ten day period, one had questionable clicks of 8%, another 10% and a third 30%.So, the 30% figure comes from analysis of a *single* ad campaign, not a study of many. This means that the figure of 30% that is used to characterize click fraud for the whole search and advertising industry comes from the analysis of *one* ad campaign looked at for ten days. Even in that campaign, it is not clear what methodology they used to determine which clicks are "bad" and it is possible that they marked legitimate clicks as "duplicate."Moreover, the study does not indicate whether the advertiser was actually charged for any of the clicks, only that the traffic analysis suggested that the clicks may have been invalid. As I mentioned above, it’s very possible that clicks recorded in an advertiser's logs have already been caught by Google’s detection systems and not charged. (I should also note that when invalid clicks are detected and discarded before they are charged to an advertiser they are also not recorded as revenue.)When considering the validity of this exaggerated 30% figure, you should also consider who is most aggressively using it: it is those who have the most to gain from hyping the problem. Those who are throwing around this figure are doing so as part of their marketing efforts to sell products they claim detect click fraud. The more they can convince others that click fraud is a problem, the more they hope to see increased sales. In other words, these companies have a huge financial incentive to make people believe invalid clicks are a larger problem than they really are.What else on this topic should we be aware of?Whether it’s online or offline, advertising should be about ROI and results. It is in our interest to serve the interests of our advertisers, which means delivering superior ROI. Our efforts to combat invalid clicks are an essential part of that.What we have seen so far is that advertisers continually increase the amount of money they spend, which suggests that they are pleased with the return delivered by their ads. We encourage advertisers to track ROI and contact us when they see something that doesn't appear to add up. If you see suspicious activity on your AdWords account, please contact our click quality team.
After spending a year learning the ins and outs of AdWords, even though I now work on Video, I often see things from the advertiser perspective. I always loved reading stories from advertisers who had used AdWords to help their businesses become more successful. The surprising thing about Video has been that we get the same type of letters. So here are some things that people have done on Video to help their businesses become successful.For advertisers with video content, Google Video is a great way to expand your reach into an entirely new segment of the online community. If you have commercials or demos of your product that you'd like the world to see, you can upload your videos now (for free!). As with all things Google, you'll be able to monitor your stats, which are fully broken out for you within your Video account. That way, you can see the results and know exactly how many times a specific piece of content was watched. And, if you really want to improve coverage, you also have the option of embedding the streaming videos on your site, with no download required for your users -- you just copy the 'put on site' code.If you're selling videos on your site, you can use streaming to provide users with a preview. Use the power of motion -- add an embedded live demo -- to sell a product that words and pictures can't describe. Or, share that funny branding video with the world by placing it in our index. The opportunities are out there; as always, let us know what your experiences are, so we can continue to make Google Video even more useful to you.
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