Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.
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Google
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Official Google Webmaster Central Blog (325 unread)
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Search Engine Roundtable
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Search Engine Roundtable (5 unread)
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Daily Search Forum Recap: March 24, 2009
Posted: March 24th, 2009, 10:00pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Search Forum Recap
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23% of Google AdSense Publishers Say 75% of Their Income Comes From Google
Posted: March 24th, 2009, 1:19pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google AdSense
Last week, I ran a poll asking if Google AdSense made up most of your income. The 129 responses are in and I wanted to share them with you. It seems like 47% of those that make money will AdSense say Google makes up more than 25% of their income. 53% said Google makes up less than 25% of their income. Here is the breakdown:
:: Less Than 25% of My Income said 58 respondents or 45%
:: Over 75% of My Income said 25 respondents or 19%
:: Not Applicable To Me said 20 respondents or 16%
:: Over 50% of My Income said 14 respondents or 11%
:: Over 25% of My Income said 12 respondents or 9%Is it possible that 23% of publishers make 75% or more of their income with Google? The 23% is when you take out the "Not Applicable to Me" results, since they likely are not AdSense publishers.
Forum discussion continued at DigitalPoint Forums.
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What To Do When Clients Mess Up Your Portfolio?
Posted: March 24th, 2009, 1:11pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: SEM SEO Companies
A HighRankings Forum thread asks a question that likely applies to most professions on the web, what does one do when a client messes up your portfolio. For example, you provide SEO copywriting services and that content is used on client X's web site. Then a few months later, the client updates the content here and there and forgets to consult you for those changes. Now, when you want to show your work to future prospects, they are reviewing work that has been mangled by your client.
The same issue applies to when clients make design changes to web sites or when they make SEO changes in terms of title tags, content, and even link building. This can apply to other industries, including even building homes.
The big question is, how do you keep your portfolio in order?
The simple answer is to screen capture the work you have done. A local Wayback Machine, if you will. There is nothing wrong in taking a local copy down of the web site and using that to demo to prospects. In addition, it is always good to have a local copy, that you can use for staging the changes you made to the site, before uploading those changes to production.
Personally, I typically demo sites we built to prospects on our test servers. Why? (1) The content is sometimes cleaner. (2) I can safely make changes to the site without impacting the live site. (3) I don't run the risk of sharing real information and intellectual property with potential competitors.
Do you run into this issue?
Forum discussion at HighRankings Forum.
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Should Google Allow AdWords Day Parting Based on Searcher's Time Zone?
Posted: March 24th, 2009, 1:04pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google AdWords
Last week, Yahoo announced enhancements to their search marketing platform. Part of that announcement was that they added the day parting option, giving advertisers the ability to say they want to show their ads on specific days and different times or even increase their bids at different times.
The one option Yahoo has added that the other engines do not have, is that they give you the ability to specify if you would like the day parting settings to be based on your time zone or the searcher's time zone. I was fairly confident that Google set it based on you (the advertiser's) time zone.
I confirmed that today by asking that question in a Google AdWords Help thread. The response lead me to a answer at Google help that read:
Ad scheduling for your AdWords campaigns is based on the time zone you have set for your account. Your ad will appear during the hours shown in your account -- not in the time zone of the regions you have targeted.
For example: Assume your account time zone is set for Amsterdam, but your ads are targeted to Bangkok, six hours ahead. When you schedule your ads to run from 1:00 until 3:00 pm, the ads will run from 1:00 until 3:00 pm Amsterdam time. That means that in Bangkok, six hours ahead, they will be running from 7:00 until 9:00 pm.
So there you have it. Even features such as day parting can get very granular in its targeting options. Google doesn't give you the detailed level of control Yahoo gives you, but do advertisers need it?
Here is a poll, let us know what you think:
Should Google AdWords Add Day Part Time Zone Preferences?
( surveys)Forum discussion at Google AdWords Help.
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Google Issues Free Hour of AdWords API Calls Due to Glitch
Posted: March 24th, 2009, 12:59pm CET by rustybrick
Tags: Google AdWords
Yesterday we reported that there was an Google AdWords API Usage Reporting Glitch. In short, Google wasn't telling AdWords API users how many API calls they were making, and since Google charges some advertisers for API calls, it can become an issue.
Google confirmed the issue in a Google Groups thread. Jeff Posnick from AdWords API Team said the issue is now resolved but there was an hour of API call usage Google seemed to have lost. Due to the data loss, Google cannot charge for that usage. Here is what Jeff said:
To update the thread: there was an issue that prevented AdWords API usage information from being updated following the scheduled downtime on March 14. For a few days after there was a backlog of usage info, and both the display in the AdWords web interface and the count returned via the InfoService was out of date. The engineering team believes that this issue is resolved now, and that the underlying circumstances leading to it should not recur.
They did identify a window of about an hour on March 14 for which they were not able to retrieve usage information, and any calls made during that window of time will not incur any charges (nor will they be reflected in the InfoService or the web interface's usage count). However, this window took place during the scheduled downtime, so there should have been only a small amount of traffic that got through during that time.
This likely only impacts a smaller percentage of our readers, but this seemed interesting enough to post about.
Forum discussion at Google Groups.