As Google celebrated its 11th birthday this week, it is apparent to me how many product improvements have been made to Google content network in the past 2-3 years. When I began buying PPC in 2005, you could basically turn Content “on” or “off” for your search campaigns, and you really had to know your way around Report Center to even try to “optimize” content network.

Google Adwords is dangerous.
It’s seductive.  It offers the promise of instant profits on one hand, yet on the other it has the potential to reach in to your wallet and clean it out.
Over the last two weeks, our team of client managers has audited almost forty new client and prospects’ campaigns.
Every one of them was [...]

I frequently have the opportunity to look into someone’s Adwords account, and almost without fail, I’m greeted by the sight of red flags flying.
It’s painful to see because this signals that good marketing money is going to waste.
So what should you be looking for in your Adwords account?  Well you know your PPC is in [...]

I’ve looked into several Google Adwords accounts recently and it only took few minutes to see where a client was pouring money down the drain - and perhaps why Google’s stock is so high.

My pet theory on Google’s stock price? I’ll bet 80% of its value comes from underperforming keywords! Yes, keywords which never convert to sales yet still run, month after month, unchecked.
So here are a couple of ways to cut your PPC costs today

What your mamma never told you about search marketing or you were afraid to ask. In this informative webinar we’ll take you through baby steps and then dive in with some practical advice to help you get over your fear of the unknown. Enjoy
Google AdWords 101 Webinar - Video

The AdWords system doesn’t recognize most symbols (i.e., non-letter characters) when they appear in keywords. The two exceptions are ampersands and accent marks. 
I. Valid Symbols
 Our system recognizes two kinds of symbols in keywords: ampersands (&) and accent marks (e.g., á).
 The following terms would be treated as different keywords:
 ’bed and breakfast’ is distinct from ‘bed & [...]

Haven’t seen it in action yet, but I believe this will really help us understand cause and effect of the optimizations we perform:
Change History tool enhancement: Charting
In the coming weeks, we will be updating the My Change History Tool to include a helpful new addition: Google Finance-like graphs that map change events to account performance [...]

SE Roundtable is reporting that WebmasterWorld is talking about the fact that Adwords is starting to incorporate landing page load time in the quality score, which gives advertisers yet another reason to streamline and simplify landing pages and build them specifically for SEM. Apparently you will be able to see your load time “grade” [...]