Orz and other considerations

Sorry. Busy month.

=Sorta Table of Content=

Triggering Google AI via SEO pages
Measuring global clicks in Google time
The mythical 2,000 keywords mark
Moving keywords - not operator error
Biz.com
Made-up news
Small people need shirts too
More oars in the water
Orz!

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SEO pages - triggering Google AI testing

I must say one of the most interesting things that I have noticed with the SEO exercise is the interaction with the Google adwords program.

SEO (search engine optimization) pages are suppose to help a particular set of web pages show up in higher ranking for the corresponding set of search terms. So, say I want to drive traffic to people who search for "panda bear adoption", I can hire an SEO company that would produce a set of web pages that are designed to have a lot of information on panda adoption and therefore when somebody searches on yahoo for "panda bear adoption" one of these pages would show up as the #1 page. That is the theory anyway.

So, I rolled out a set of SEO pages for the corporate site. And, yes, I definitely see these SEO pages climbing the organic search result ranking. But, what is not expected is that somehow it also triggered the Google AdWords engine to re-consider some of my adwords keywords and ad's.

In all fairness, this is a conjecture in my part, but frankly, I cannot see another explanation. Basically, because my organic search/corporate site has this infusion of new content that target specific service that my corporate site has been relatively weak on, somehow, Google noticed the change in the organic content and activates the AdWords engine to try out some of the existing keywords that have been relatively dormant.

Let me give you a made-up example. Say that I have a set of keywords in AdWords related to New York Taxi. However, due to a number of reasons, none of these keywords have good performance and, as a result, Google's budget auto-optimization gives these keywords low bid prices which, in effect, renders them rarely used. Then, with the SEO pages on New York Taxi added to my corporate site, suddenly, Google noticed the difference and started to experiment on these same keywords to see there is a change in click-thru rates.

Okay, I suppose this does not need to be a coordinated efforts between Google organic search and AdWords as Google has always maintained an official separation between the two operations. And, I suppose it is possible that Google adwords simply found the new content and decided to experiment with those dormant keywords. But, I think that kind of separation is kind of artificial.

Anyway, the SEO pages are out and we are seeing a nice increase in our web hit rate. This is actually a bit problematic as I use to scrub through the daily web hits to get new keywords. But, with the longer list, I do not that kind of time to eyeball all the entries...

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How long does it take for Google adword's conditions to proliferate around the world. How do I know?

I noticed a term that seem to invite quite a bit of click-spam. So, I removed it from my list of keywords and, as an added security, I added the term as a negative keyword to indicate that I definitely do not want it.

Guess what, two days later, I noticed in my daily web hit log, the exact term was being used by a click-spam-er from Japan.

Naturally, I reported this to Google and asked for a refund. And, this also proves that it takes a while for the Google data centers around the world to sync up with the central servers.

Interesting, huh!

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Oh, this is kind of exciting. I have reached the mythical 2,000 keywords mark with one of my AdWord group. I remember reading about it in a forum a while back about the problem of reaching that limit and wondered when I'll hit that number myself.

Basically, when you hit the 2K mark for the number of keywords, Google AdWords tells you to par it down because it impacts the server performance. And, there are certain things that it no longer do such as providing estimates on the budget auto-optimization engine.

But, upon further investigation, the 2k limit is artificial and you can request to have the limit increased. Which I did. It took a bit of back and forth to get the limit increased, but it is do-able.

Of course, this is only the first half of the story. I'll need to break down that monster list into smaller chunks for different campaigns and groups. With 2K+ keywords, however related they are, there are ways to make divisions into smaller groups. I just dread the task. Scrubbing through 2K+ keywords is not exactly a fun thing.

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You may have heard about the google adwords function of copy/move keywords between groups. A pretty nifty tool for those of us that works with thousands of keywords. The problem was that I could never get it to work.

Being the noisy type, I was never shy on asking Google for help. The first inquiry yield a rather unsatisfactory result as the reply basically quoted the information available in Help. Gosh! I know how to read and I have read the darn thing already.

Second time, I asked again and told them not to give me the run-around this time. And, interesting enough, there was a perfectly good reason that I was not able to use the tool and it was not even an user error. Basically, it does not work with the budget auto-optimization engine turned on! Who would have guessed? I have included the actual text below for your info. Hopefully this info makes into the AdWords Help section soon.

Google reply
The reason why you are unable to locate keywords in campaign 'XYZ' using this tool is because that campaign has the Budget Optimizer enabled. In order to successfully use the Copy/Move Keywords and Ad Text tool, I would suggest that you temporarily disable the budget optimizer while using this tool.End Google reply

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I think I have mentioned that I recently contracted with business.com for their PPC program. I heard about them via a conversation with a potential VC investor. After all VC is suppose to be smart money. Right?

Wrong.

I must say that biz.com's performance has been rather dismal since day one. I am paying good money but it is not driving any meaningful traffics. In particular, the conversion rate is nil! So, I am paying for the clicks without getting the benefits of conversion.

The account manager is nice enough but that does not compensate for the lack of performance. The other thing is that biz.com makes it difficult to adjust and retrieve information vis-a-vis Google.

Finally, and this is not biz.com related (I do not think), my biz.como traffic is not showing up in GA(N). Don't ask me why. I just got a reply from GA claiming that they can see it. So, I promptly asked them where they saw it! Hope to have the mystery resolved in a few more days.

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Creating news is a funny business. But, it is important when there is general market interests but people are not looking to you for information. So, in the spirit of shaping public opinion, I have commissioned a consultant to conduct a study that links to the business concerns over Sarbanes Oxley. We'll see if anyone bites on the topic.

And, the beauty of this exercise is that it can become a living thing itself. First with a PR piece on the study. Then, another PR piece on the result of the study. Then, a whitepaper or a webinar on the study. And, if I keep pounding on the issue, maybe somebody would think that I know what I am talking about...

It is all very sinister. And, I am not even left handed.

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Oh, so that t-shirt saga has come to a good conclusion. I found a vendor who was able to do it in Silicon Valley. I also found the contact of the co-worker who was most interested in the project. Very good news for my poker event.

The interesting thing is that I am out of the L size already. It seems like that is a rather popular size for the company. Alternatively, maybe we are a company of small people...

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Not sure if you remember the old saga on how we could not get sales people to show up. Our fortune must have changed. Two new sales people just came on-board. I do not know much about them yet but it is good to have more oars in the water as the saying goes.

Maybe one of them will make it into this blog one of these days?

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Finally, on a completely unrelated front. do you know what is "Orz"? Apparently, this is a popular term for text message in Asia.

One hint, it is similar to the idea of the smiley ":-)" but on a large scale.

Still not sure, that is okay - I never got it myself. It is a pictograph showing a person bowing down on all four. Kowtow, I think that is the technical term. To deconstruct the expression - "O" represents the head, "r" represents the shoulder/arm touching the floor, "z" is the butt, leg, knee on the floor.

Orz!

How cool is that! It is too bad that I do not use text message. But, I am using it here! I do wonder how long it would take for Orz to make it into an auto conversion symbol like ":-)" by MSFT?

Oh, Oh! How about finding Orz in ODE? Actually, I do not know if :-) itself is in ODE - I should check.


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