On the 8th June some of the worlds leading web companies took part in the global test for IPv6, the so called “test flight” aimed to encourage ISP’s, hardware and software manufacturers and web-based companies, to make the transition to the new protocol, following the successful completion of a 24 hour global test.
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Following the announcement last year that Google News was developing manual controls for users to choose published content on their news site, last week via the Google News blog, the search engine company confirmed the launch of their latest personalisation features, in a bid to provide appropriate, up to date content to their users, claiming that: “Google News aims to surface the most relevant, useful news for you”.

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Last week Google was forced to defend it’s ‘Panda’ update, amid claims that changes made to their ranking algorithm were conducted in order to reduce the hit rate of popular websites, that might be perceived as rivals to the Google empire. (more…)

From May 25th 2011 a revised European Framework on electronic communications will require marketers to obtain the consent of visitors to their website, in order to store and retrieve data usage information from a users computer. (more…)

Last year Google turned their attention to the problems posed by poor quality information being provided on a large scale through their ranking system; in 2011 they have taken decisive action to combat this issue. (more…)

A very interesting adwords development that’s been trialled across the US recently has finally made it to these shores. Essentially what’s happening is that Google are allowing some accounts, initially just ones with particularly high quality scores, to show more than just text in their ads, this can take some surprisingly diverse forms with everything from links and maps, to pictures of products and even videos. (more…)

For ages the advertising of hard liquor using Adwords was flatly forbidden. Adwords had a no nonsense approach, no mention or implication of the good stuff was to be used on their platform, whatsoever. Recently however, the credit-crunch amongst other things has forced Google to reappraise its values and perhaps look a little less harshly on the multi-billion dollar alcahol industry.

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Google Images is one of the best and most popular image search facilities on the internet, so it’s surprising that Google have up to now resisted putting ads on it. They did however speculate recently that they could be losing up to $200 million dollars a year by not doing so. After that statement, it came as a surprise to absolutely no one when they began experimenting with banners on Google images and then last month with text ads.
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Adwords is beta testing a new budgeting option called ‘Timeframe’. If Timeframe is rolled out properly it will allow users to budget for their campaigns by the day or by the month, depending on their preference.
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You know when you allow ads to be placed on your website using Adwords? When you’re seduced by the promise of making millions from clicks and conversions and you decide to sell space on your site to nameless companies? If you do, then you’ll know all about Google’s apocalyptic warning about click-fraud that you’re required to read before signing up.
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Adwords has greatly expanded the number of accounts trialling its ‘automatic matching,’ feature, allowing them to earn more money during the tough economic times ahead. The feature works by identifying keywords, in addition to those that the client user has stipulated, which could be useful for a particular account by making use of Google’s extensive language processing ability. The ads will then be shown in response to these keywords as well as the ones the advertiser has actually stipulated. These clicks are billed at a rate that is around that of the ad group’s average CPC.
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On a preliminary testing basis, AdWords has begun implementing ads with optional product images and additional descriptions. A main example is ‘diamonds,’ searches for that keyword have recently begun displaying results for a company called Blue Nile that can, if the searcher chooses, include product photos and descriptions.
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Google has just launched a very exciting new tool for Google Adwords users. It’s called display Ad Builder and it allows you to customize and create your own adverts, be they image, animation or flash based. The tool allows even small businesses to get creative with their advertising, instead of simply displaying the traditional text ad.
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This article follows on from last weeks post on ‘Getting the best ROI from Adwords using Google Analytics’.

Keyword Popularity
Impressions show you the number of times your advert has been displayed.
Clicks show you the amount of clicks the advert has received (and you paid for)
Click Through Rate(CTR) is the percentage of times a searcher clicked on your advert.
By looking at these, you can get a good idea of how often people search for a particular keyword, and when being supplied with your advert, how likely they are to click it. (more…)