Category: Google

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Get an Invitation to Google AdWords Experiment and Try Before You Go Live

Everyone wants to try the new tools when Google rolls them out and here’s one for you to try that is by invitation only right now. It is called AdWords Experiment and I think it looks like a terrific new tool for serious users of Google AdWords.

There is very little doubt that Google AdWords is among the most effective forms of Internet marketing available in terms of both effectiveness and cost.  With immediate visibility and completely customizable content, AdWords allows users to quickly and efficiently target the people who would be most interested in the product or service that they provide at a price they can afford. 

With the ability to now run simultaneous programs side by side in your account, you can do AB testing like never before. Previously if you tried to test on your own, AdWords would only service the keywords with the best CTR making it nearly impossible to test similar keyword lists. This is critical when your keywords are broad matched.

In order to offer their customers the best possible results from using Google AdWords, the company has just launched the Google AdWords Experiment, or ACE, which allows AdWords users to measure exactly how effective their changes would be, prior to making them officially.  The test is accurate because you would be comparing your proposed changes side by side with your current campaign at the very same time – so no extraneous situations which may or may not cause changes in web traffic would have any bearing on the results.

If you like what you see from your changes in keywords and placement – you make the changes.  If your original campaign performed head and shoulders above the one you were considering than you can consider yourself lucky for not having missed any opportunities while you tested out new possibilities.

If you want to consistently make the most of your marketing efforts without ever having to risk making a change that you’ll regret, grab your invitation to the Google AdWords Experiment here and get started managing your campaign to achieve optimal results. This new tool is in Beta testing and only available by invitation so grab your invitation and be one of the first to reap the rewards of improved AdWords performance. If you like this tool, you may want to check out other cool tools that Google is working on in beta testing by visiting the Google Labs page.

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Google Voice – Why You Must Have It

Google Voice is my new tool that I can now not live without. In fact, I have found it so helpful that I may replace my landline phone number posted on my website with my Google Voice phone number. This last trip, I found my Google Voice account to be an indispensable asset for any business traveler.

There is nothing worse than feeling tethered to your computer when you are a small business owner and there is no faster way to make your family mad at you when you are on vacation and you are stuck doing business on “their” special time. I found that Google Voice put me in the “driver’s seat” when it came to managing my phone calls while on travel.

In the Google Voice settings, I was able to set up groups for my business contacts and then set attributes on who would have immediate access to me by phone. Clients were asked to say their names on dialing, and then Google Voice phoned me and asked if I wanted to answer the call or have it send them directly to my voice mail.

With an additional setting I was able to have all my Google Voice messages transcribed and emailed to my mobile phone. This way I could decide who to call and when. Additionally, when I returned to my office I now had a full archive of all phone calls and transcribed messages. With one click I could listen to the actual phone call to figure out if the transcription was accurate with names. (The transcription was not perfect, but pretty good.)

If you are a business owner on the go, I would highly recommend Google Voice to you for your next trip. For now Google Voice is still by invitation only, but you can sign up to get access when it is opened up for public use from this link.

P.S. Google is not paying me for this post, I just feel they have a great new product and wanted to share it with you.

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March e-Newsletter is Posted

In this month’s issue we have two great articles on Google Maps you will want to check out.

The Secret to Getting Google Maps Placement

I am starting to see a few trends in Google Maps that can be leveraged for placement and wanted to share them with you. It is important to note that I am not seeing this specific trend appear across all market sectors for all of the searches that I have done, but have seen them in many cases. I consider the information noteworthy.

First, it is important to note that not all businesses will really consider a great position in Google Maps valuable. However, if you sell services and products in a location specific area, Google Maps placement can be crucial to your business’ success. Some types of businesses that will generally want or need excellent Google Maps placement are restaurants, dentists, pest control firms, lawyers, plumbers, roofers, and local brick and mortar stores. Read more…

Getting Service Reviews for Google Maps

If Google Maps placement is valuable to your business it is time to get busy soliciting customer reviews. Google appears to be pulling reviews from these sites and several others: FlipKey.com (for real estate services), CitySearch.com (for restaurants and services), Maps.Google.com, Insiderpages.com (for restaurants and services), Judysbook.com, Tripadvisor.com, Superpages.com, Menuism.com (for restaurants), and others.

Google used to show reviews from Yelp.com, but after their deal to buy Yelp.com fell through Google does not appear to be showing reviews from Yelp. In fact, Yelp didn’t come up in a single review I saw as I did my research.

Reviews that you capture yourself by email or direct solicitation and post on your website are not considered by Google. The reviews must be on a third party website or on your Google Maps page itself. Read more…

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Identification of Trends Impacting Google Maps Placement

Image of a Google Maps exposure on Google.com.

I am starting to see a few trends in Google Maps that can be leveraged for placement and wanted to share them with you.

I have particularly studied several pest control firms up in the New York City and New Jersey areas. Here’s what I see in regards to who owns the top spot and on down. My comments below are based on what I see for the New York City search query above, but are matched with the New Jersey listings as well.

1. Typically the business with the most number of reviews will be placed first. These reviews are pulled from maps.google.com reviews as well as other review locations. The New York City reviews are being pulled from NewYork.CitySearch.com in the link above. All the business locations with the city name in the query with reviews are listed first and in order with the one with the most reviews listed in the number one position.

2. Google Maps then appears to pick up adjoining cities alphabetically with the business with the most reviews first. In the link above the first city was Astoria. The business listed had nine reviews.

3. Any businesses that had no reviews were then listed with the city that matched the search query first and then additional cities were listed in alphabetical order. So in this case the first listing without a review had a Manhattan address (as Google understands that this is New York City). The second business was in Astoria and also had no reviews. The next listing without a review was for Brooklyn.

Additionally Google will show a listing over another if it has a coupon. So if you have no reviews, but you offer one or two coupons, your listing will appear in a higher position than others without reviews and with no coupons.

It is easy to create coupons. You do so by logging into your Google Maps or Google Local Business Center account. Now getting positive reviews is harder.

My recommendation is that if Google Maps placement is valuable to your business is to get busy soliciting customer reviews. Provide clients with a link to post reviews directly on your Google Maps profile page when you have sold or completed your service. You may want to even encourage reviews with a small monetary tip, coffee cup with your name, or personal email asking for their comments and a link to your Google Maps page. I would also recommend that you create one to five coupons for your business.

This is the first real trend that I have been able to see in regards to how Google handles who gets placed where when it comes to Google Maps. At this time we do not offer Google Maps placement services as really getting reviews and creating coupons is about you and your interaction with customers directly and not necessarily something that should be farmed out. That being said, clearly the “nut has been cracked” so get busy working to improve your Google Maps placement starting with customer reviews and then coupons.