Archive: September, 2009

OK where did my Tools Tab Go?

The new “Opportunities” function replaces perhaps one of the most clicked Tabs within a My Client Center’s interface – Tools.  Well, rest assured the good folks at AdWords have not replaced the precious Tools section but have incorporated all of them under the new Opportunities section within the Adwords interface. You can find the familiar list of tools within this section along the bottom of the left column.

In an effort to continue with the amalgamation of tools and functions within the latest Adwords interface Google has released the Beta version of their popular Keyword Tool.  The Adwords Development team has not only given the Keyword Tool a face lift but has integrated some additional functionality.  The inclusion of a wide gambit of filters allows Campaign Managers to get the data they need faster and with more granularity. Here are some of the new features:

•    Compressive Advanced Options and Filters (Illustrated below)
•    All Match Types at a glance
•    Estimated CTR
•    Estimated Ad Position
•    Estimated Impressions
•    Estimated Cost
•    Category specific filtering
•    Search Share
•    Extraction web page identification
•    Sort by grouping results

I finally noticed a new search function known as BING Visual Search.  If you have not checked it out yet, you would be well served to at least give it a try. It is entertaining on the one hand yet, it soon became frightening because I realized that I was most likely looking at the future of this industry.

Visual Search operates by showing a grid of images, which does exactly what it says: searching visually without knowing the exact name of what you are looking for. The searching seems to function at its best when trying to shop for technological items, public figures, and music and film related things. Basically, you start with something you recognize and then essentially pare down into exactly what you are looking for.  This new searching feature is powered by Silverlight, and the content for Visual Search is provided by several sources, one of them being MSN of course. This is all very similar to the new user interface that is popular with Apple these days.  Interestingly, Google does not have a comparable feature to date.

Many companies and even some industry experts dismissed the value of social media in its infancy. However, most companies have re-evaluated that thinking.

Travel companies are paying close attention this time. Southwest Airlines lists nearly 70,000 “fans” on its Facebook page, and Virgin Atlantic has approximately 20,000 followers and American Airlines has more than 10,000 followers. JetBlue leads the pack on Twitter, with well over 700,000 followers. Southwest has more than 100,000 followers.

Last week, a Los Angeles-based blogger and her kids were stuck waiting for their Virgin America flight to take off. The blogger twittered her situation on her iphone. “Dear Virgin Air,” she wrote. “My children have been on the tarmac for one hour with 90 more minutes to wait. I am at JFK gate b25. Pls RT.” “RT” is shorthand for “retweet” her message, or rebroadcast it. And re-tweet they did. Within minutes, Virgin had phoned the blogger. “Within 20 minutes of that conversation, the plane took off.”

In Atlanta, people communicated by traditional methods during recent flooding, but others exchanged information, photos and videos via social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook. In emergency situations the social networks you’ve been building up that sometimes seem like a waste of time, suddenly become useful,” says a professor at Georgia Tech. Many times, you can learn more, faster than you can from a professional media outlet.

The internet can be a double edged sword.

We all want to develop our online presence but are we preparing properly for the challenges that follow our success? Social media, as we are all now aware, is a fantastic way to grow your online presence and is an amazing SEO too; large search engine gains are possible in a short amount of time, the customer base can grow with a substantial provable ROI, and the increased traffic counts are indisputable. However, as Miley Cyrus  of Hannah Montana fame found out recently,  social media can be similar to the Las Vegas tagline;” what you put online, stays online”. Ms. Cyrus is at the age where she wants to do what other teens do and putting suggestive pictures on myspace is a fairly common practice these days. Unfortunately, even if your profile is set to “private”, pictures on the internet have a way of getting out for public consumption, especially the suggestive pictures. Obviously she was ill prepared for that attention but given her popularity, it should have been expected; and it could have been prevented. Even Twitter with its limited characters and images has backfired on ill-prepared users as I have discussed in a prior blog. You can be sued for what you say.