Whooah Biz

In a clever way to deliver a better product to their customers, Google Adwords have come up with the quality score. As explained below.

“A Quality Score is calculated every time your keyword matches a search query—that is, every time your keyword has the potential to trigger an ad. Quality Score is used in several different ways, including influencing your keywords’ actual cost-per-clicks (CPCs) and estimating the first page bids that you see in your account. It also partly determines if a keyword is eligible to enter the ad auction that occurs when a user enters a search query and, if it is, how high the ad will be ranked. In general, the higher your Quality Score, the lower your costs and the better your ad position.

Quality Score helps ensure that only the most relevant ads appear to users on Google and the Google Network. The AdWords system works best for everybody—advertisers, users, publishers and Google too—when the ads we display match our users’ needs as closely as possible. Relevant ads tend to earn more clicks, appear in a higher position and bring you the most success.”

It would appear the Google are saying that you cannot buy your way to the top. It would appear that you need to have a quality website to insure your adwords are successful.

What are your thoughts?

I was out about this weekend and was asked on more than one occasion why I blog. I blog for a number reasons. Some personal and some professional.

On the professional side:

1. It demonstrates expertise knowledge and expertise in chosen skill year.

2. Increases Google page ranking and key words with relevant fresh content.

3. As a sales marketing tool, to build references through comments and the online community for consultancy work.

4. Generate income through paid advertising.

On the Personal side:

1. As a personal development log

2. to give help and give something back to people trying to understand and use this technology

3. For personal enjoyment of developing writing and pr skills

Chris Brogan is highly accomplished writer and blogger he had this advice to say about blogging in different media spheres.

1. If your goal is to be an entertainment or news blog, be very clear that it’s that and not a “fun” blog. Consider splitting off your personal or fun blog.
2. If your blog is to be your business, treat it like that. Get into stats. Get into building audience. Get into delivering something unique. Don’t straddle back and forth on this.
3. If the goal is to be a great community resource, mix your blogging time with time spent reaching out to the community you propose to serve. If that’s an offline opportunity, like something local, be there. Be active. Be a connector.
4. If you’re going to be a professional about your blog, carve out the time to do it right. Never, ever, ever post a “sorry I haven’t posted lately” blog post again. Ever.
5. Up the ante on delivering original material. Get outside the echo chamber. Writing a me-too blog isn’t the way to build your blog to the levels you seek to attain.
6. It’s okay to use a personal voice. In fact, there’s no point blogging if you’re going to write like a cold robot. But keep personal and useful in balance.
7. If you are attempting to do real business via your blog, look for ways to convert readers into customers.
8. If it’s just an ad revenue business, compete, and be honest about that. Compete with others in your space for audience, value, and better deals. My point in this regard is that going halfway into the water doesn’t make you less wet.
9. If your blog is the premier source of information for nonprofits, for photographers, for whatever, then be sure you’re scouring news feeds and finding information outside the blogosphere to keep that relationship informed.
10. Make a point of engaging your community often in the comments section, on their blogs, on the other social networks where you cross paths.

chrisbrogan, 50 Ways to Take Your Blog to the Next Level, Sep 2008

If want to see how much your money is worth in another currency instead of searching the internet for a website all you need to do is literally type in what you are looking for as the example below shows. This is a simple but great advancement in web technology.

Type in the Google search box this: 200 dollars in pounds:

Demo link here

Will give you this result:

200 U.S. dollars = 100.877635 British pounds

Rates provided for information only - see disclaimer. More about currency conversion.

I have checked the rates and they are correct which is great for the competition I ran here: http://workconnexions.com/node/659

The same will also work for mpg3 files. The search parameters you need are:

“song title here” intitle:index.of mp3 -html -htm -php -asp -txt –pls

You will need to change the song title to the one you are searching.

This morning I got an interesting email from Google warning for Adword users that they have been a number of security issues recently. Apparently users of the service have been receiving emails telling them that they are at risk to money being transferred from there account. To counter this they have to click on link which leads them to a false site (phishing) Where the site operator is able to get there account information when the user tries to log in. From the criminal perspective is clever scheme. What surprises me is that anyone who would be using Google ad words or administrating it is unlikely to be an internet novice. The problem must be widespread for Google to be emailing all of us. What does that say about their user base?

Here is an excerpt from the mail:

“There are currently reports of phishing attempts that appear to be from adwords-noreply@google.com. These fraudulent emails ask users to update their billing information, take action on a disapproved ad, edit their account, or accept new AdWords terms and conditions. Please remember that the Google’s AdWords team will never send an unsolicited message asking for your password or other sensitive information by email or through a link.

If you need to change your account information, such as your billing details or your password, always sign in to your AdWords account from the main AdWords login page at https://adwords.google.co.uk and make the changes directly within your account.

We’ve included more information below on how to avoid phishing.  If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us at http://adwords.google.co.uk/support/bin/request.py?ctx=cuffhelp.”

Everybody loves Google or so the saying goes. A few years ago if you wore a Google T shirt you would be greeted by smiles as you walked down the street. But that was a couple of years ago. The market place has changed with Google now controlling at least 75 percent of the search engine market and respectively the same amount of advertising and they now hold a very secure position. Fundamentally Google has not done anything wrong. It is just that you have no choice when it comes to advertising. Small and big e-commerce sites all use Google advertising. For example Tech crunch , Digg etc.

Effectively there is no competition which means that Google can dictate terms and conditions and have a very big say over who does what in the market. If a website owner was to say the wrong thing they could find themselves on the other side of the fence with no advertisers. Now the much talked about takeover of Yahoo by Microsoft is the first step in readdressing this problem. I am still not comfortable though. Both of these companies have such a large influence and control of the most dynamic communication medium. Is it time that we should start to worry?

Maybe not just yet, but the signs are there. While we have all become Google search converts. What would it take for some of us to start using another search engine? The array of products that Google provides are truly amazing. From Gmail to Youtube all for no cost to the user and paid for by advertising. But as the old saying goes Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely. Is Google too powerful?