Dream Systems Media Blog

Up Close With Google AdWords Quality Score – Google’s quality score remains a mystery to many marketers, plus Google keeps changing when and how it is used. This session takes a fresh look at the current state of quality score, how it is implemented and tips on using it to your advantage

Moderator: Matt Van Wagner, President, Find Me Faster

Q&A Moderator: James Zolman, CEO, semvironment

Speakers:

Addie Conner, Director of Search Marketing, Course Advisor Inc.
Craig Danuloff, President, ClickEquations Inc.
Nicholas Fox, Business Product Management Director, AdWords, Google Inc.

NOTES:

Addie Conner, Director of Search Marketing, Course Advisor Inc.
Topic: Fact vs. Myth with Google Quality Score

1. There is a different CPC forumula if you are the only advertiser on the page? Fact.
2. Quality score is lost once you  make changes? Myth, QS is changed, but not lost.

Google, PPC, SMX SMX, SMX West

If your visits from Google are down today, there may be good reason!  I Twittered upon something amusing this morning, but this also stinks too, because it really does make me wonder if the referrals will be less today because of this Google mix up.

Thanks to a tweet by @coplandmj I woke up to an interesting problem Google seems to be having.  Every result in the SERPs are telling searchers “This site may harm your computer”.  I have seen this before on a few sites, but not EVERY SINGLE ONE.  I did a random search for SEO Blog and had to screen shot it for those who may miss it – check out all the SEO Blogs that may harm your computer – LOL.  I wonder how long this one will take to fix, and what the story behind it is.

This site may harm your computer Google Error

Google Google, google error, google mistake

Tuesday morning I had the opportunity to meet with a company regarding providing search engine optimization services to them. This is a company that is on the verge of being an Inc. 500 company and I was meeting with the CEO, VP of Marketing, and VP of Development. About 45 min. into the meeting the CEO said, “So how do we get this going?” and my reply to him was something along the lines of, “If we begin working together we will start with, etc. etc.” and went on to explain our process to him. Roughly 10 min. later the CEO stood up and basically said,

I have to get running, so you guys take care of the details and lets move forward, but I have one piece of advice for you, say “when” we begin working with you instead of “if” we begin working with you. We then shook hands and he left the board room.

General, Google, Sales and Marketing, Twitter Motivation, Persuasion, Sales and Marketing

Google News Using More Risque Photos Lately

I have been using Google News for a long time now, and only recently have I noticed them using more risque photos next to the article stories.

I have been wanting to talk about this, and see if anyone else has notice this too?  I know, I know – sex sells, (and apparently increases Google News click-throughs) but I wouldn’t think Google would do this with all of the Kids out there using Google News as a reference.  This picture that I am sharing here, was by a story today, and is less risque then others I have seen lately, but even so I wouldn’t want my mom to walk by when I happened to be on this page – I could hear her now “Matt, what are you looking at?”

Google Google News

I usually try to do a post about this every year around this time, and add some new information that I have learned with it a long the way too.  This year is a year of savings like no other, and everybody is looking for a deal.  People are trying to save money, and have made major cutbacks in their holiday spending.  Businesses are doing anything they can to get you to keep spending, even if it means less profit for them.  You would be surprised to find the savings I found when doing just a few searches.

I am talking about promotional codes that websites offer, as well as the coupons that some websites will allow you to print off and take right into the store for an additional percentage off.  I found some coupons that would give you an additional 50% off your purchase price with no strings attatched – and to major stores too, like Target.

Google coupon codes, online coupon codes, online promotional codes, promotional codes

Last week I sat in a meeting trying to quote a company on the services we offered and found it frustrating because they asked me a few questions that led me to pulling up Google and doing some searches for them to show them a thing or two about their competition. The problem was that this group of people I was presenting to where rather large and a lot of them were very novice with search and online marketing. Most had extensive back grounds in offline marketing, but online marketing was a whole new arena to them. The very next thing that started happening was me giving a tutorial on Google Search and how to use it and how their users would be using it to find them. I don’t really mind, but it took me way off base for the presentation and it ended up running over on them.

Google Advanced Search

Now maybe I have been completely missing something, but I have not seen results like this ever come up on a site that has Adsense Ads.  I usually don’t  view a whole lot of sites that have tons of Adsense all over them, but this was something interesting I saw today and wondered if anyone else had seen this yet?  Am I way behind on this, or is this something new that Google Adsense ads are doing these days?

Here is a screen shot of what I saw:

Google Search Box Inside Adsense Ads

The red arrow is pointing to what up to this point has been showing credit card related ads via Adsense.  You will now see that its showing the Google Search box.  I am very interested to know when this started happening if anyone knows?  Makes me wonder what the point even is?  What happens if someone uses the search box and clicks on a natural result?  Does anyone make money?  If the Adsense user makes money then how does Google make money on this?  It just does not make sense to me!

Google Google Adsense

Ok, so like me, I’m sure many of you iPhone users out there have been reading the hype about the new Google Voice Search feature of the Google App for the iPhone. I have seen a few stories zip through to me via Google Alerts, but until now I didn’t really pay any attention to them. This morning I decided to download the Google App and give Voice Search a try to see how it works for me. Here is what I found.

Google App Install:

It’s as simple as all the other apps you can download from Apple, simple click on the Apps icon on your iPhone and either search for Google or just go to the Top 25 Free Apps page and it’ll be there, it almost always is…and yet it is FREE. Click on the App, click on Free, click on Install, and bang…the download begins. After a few minutes you’ll be in Google App heaven ;o)

Google Google, iPhone

Hello and welcome to my first Dream Systems Media Blog post. My name is Andrew Melchior and I’m going to be posting to this blog on a daily (I hope) basis. To start I’m going to give you a little background on who I am and what I’ll be doing here at DSM.

I got started in the online industry back in 2000 when I launched my first ecommerce website and it was fast moving from there. After launching that site I quickly became inspired to learn as much as I could about internet marketing so I dug in deep and began reading all I could along with testing and applying what I learned. I also had the chance during that time to begin working with some ecommerce consulting companies like Prosper, Inc. In doing this, I got the chance to literally work with over 1000 small .com start-ups and this gave me the ultimate learning and proving ground to apply different strategies in. Fast forward to 2008 and I am now part owner in literally 16+ different ecommerce, blog, and service based sites, DSM included, and will be working in DSM to help acquire clients and service them toward helping them reach their goals. I am very confident we’ll be able to do just that and also know that the clients we have will not just be satisfied, they will be amazed at what we can do for them.

Andrew Melchior, Google Andrew Melchior, Google