You asked for it and Google listened. Yesterday Google introduced free phone support for AdWords advertisers. Now when you have a question about your account or campaigns you can call and speak with a live person, rather than rely on waiting for a response to your email or navigating through AdWords forums.
Just call the phone number for AdWords help — 1-866-2-Google — Monday through Friday 9am-8pm Eastern Time and have your customer ID on hand.
If you misplace the number, just log into your AdWords account and click on Help in the upper right hand corner and the following box will appear:
Phone Number for AdWords Help
This Google AdWords helpline is currently only available to advertisers in the United States and Canada. The company said it will be rolling out phone support to other countries in the coming months.
If you have an AdWords campaign, most likely you have targeted your ads to specific geographic locations, be it by country, state, city, or region. Well now you have even more control over who sees your ads. This week Google added two new targeting methods: (1) targeting by physical location and (2) excluding by physical location and search intent.
How the enhanced AdWords location targeting works
Targeting using physical location. If you own a florist in New York City, with the location targeting available prior to this week, you had to pick a target location. You probably picked New York City. Your ads would be shown to people in New York City as well as people who included the term New York City and your keywords in their search query. Now you can target New York City using physical location only. This will limit viewers of your ads to those in the New York City area who use keywords in your campaign in their search query. BUT keep in mind this will also prevent people outside of New York City searching for “new york city florist” from seeing your ad – even if this is one of your keywords.
Excluding by physical location and search intent. Let’s again say you are a New York City florist and you are not affiliated with FTD. You have agreements with florists in some additional states, but not others. You don’t want to limit your ads to New York City, but you don’t want them to show throughout the entire country. You can now exclude what states you “don’t” want your ads to be shown in.
If the previous AdWords location targeting had been limiting your marketing campaigns, try these new options.
One more reason to keep on tweeting. Bing just added tweets on its news search results pages. Now when you conduct searches on Bing News, you will see realtime Twitter updates related to your search query.
Below is a recent search for the term “exercise program”:
Notice the tweets on the bottom right under Public updates for exercise program. They are a continuous stream. You can pause and restart them. You can also click through to the direct Twitter page and any links inside the tweet. If you click on More updates under the stream, you will be directed to additional search results on Bing’s Social Search, which you can filter for just Twitter, Facebook or All.
Over the last few months, Google has been making it easier for users to find local businesses on their mobile devices. Last month it released the Google Places iPhone App. This month, it has launched an “open now” search filter –available on Droid and iPhone in the US – so your results only show currently opened businesses. These hours are based on a business’ Google Places Listing – just one more reason to make sure your listing is complete and accurate.
Droid and iPhone mobile users can also filter their Google Places search by star ratings and distance as well as enjoy some additional enhanced features – images, reviews from around the web, and larger buttons to click to view a map or directly call a business.
With continuous Google Places Mobile App improvements we can’t stress enough the importance of robust Google Places Listings.
Last week Google held its ThinkMobile event. The statistical insights it provided highlighted how big and powerful mobile search is and how much bigger it will become. As mentioned above, Google reported a 400% increase in the number of mobile searches in the last year. In fact, they say currently about 20% of its searches are mobile searches.
As Google showed, the stats are even more powerful for local businesses.
Slide from Google ThinkMobile Event
And the demand for smart phones is ever increasing. In took only 17 hours for Verizon iPhone pre-orders to sell out. Analysts estimate that Apple will sell 9 million to 12 million iPhones on Verizon’s network alone this year. Add to that, Nielson’s estimate that by the end of 2011, 1 in 2 Americans will have a smart phone
Why do I need a mobile website is no longer really the question. The real question today is “How quickly can I create one?”
Clients with home businesses often ask if they can use a PO Box as their address in the Google Places listing. The short answer – not a good idea.
Google has seemed to waffle back and forth in this area. When Google Maps was first created, businesses without a brick and mortar address could not create a business listing because the Google Map was unable to display a listing without a pinpoint address. Then Google Maps started incorporating business listings from data partners and began showing a floating dot, rather than a pinpoint, to represent those businesses with no “actual” address – but that information had to come from data partners rather than a listing.
When confronted with how businesses with no brick and mortar address could get on Google Maps back in 2008, the Google Earth VP suggested that those businesses get a PO Box. Hence, people started doing so. Acknowledging that not all businesses have brick and mortar addresses, in April 2010, Google rolled out the ability to add service areas to your listing AND hide your address.
“Google Places is meant to facilitate customer interaction with brick-and-mortar businesses and service providers. Therefore, the business owner or employee who is officially authorized to represent their particular business location must have a physical address in order to comply with our guidelines.”
Some of those listings have been removed and some have not. But there are plenty of Google Places Help questions out there regarding people being penalized for using a P.O. Box as an address.
What are your options? Some places let you get a P.O. Box that is not listed as a P.O. Box address, but rather as a suite number. Use your home address but don’t display it. Try to partner with another business to use their address – but remember that there cannot be two businesses at the same address so you would need to have a suite number.
Can I use a PO Box as my google places address?
If you want your Google Places listing to be shown, DON’T use a P.O. Box!
Yesterday, Google announced that a Google Places App is now available for the iPhone. This App lets you quickly search for places nearby, just like local search on google.com – but while you’re on the move. Google gives you some popular search categories to choose from and allows you to customize the list by adding your own favorite searches.
The Google Places for iPhone App also helps you make an informed decision by integrating Google Hotpot, which is a recommendation engine that displays reviews and ratings of local businesses/establishments.
Google is making local search easier while people are mobile – looking for a nearby restaurant to stop and eat, the closest gas station, a good cup of coffee. Want them to find you in their search? Make sure you have a complete and optimized Google Places listing for your business. The iPhone already has a huge market with ATT. Imagine how much larger that market will get when Verizon starts selling the iPhone next month!
If you have a website, you should be using an XML Sitemap to help improve your Internet visibility. What is an XML Sitemap? It is a simple, effective way for you to give the search engines a list of all the URLs you want them to crawl and index. If the search engines don’t find your site or specific pages on it, your prospects won’t either!
Brief highlights of the importance of an XML Sitemap
1. Although adding a URL to the Sitemap file does not guarantee that a URL will be crawled or indexed, it can result in pages that the search engines had not yet discovered or indexed get crawled or indexed.
2. XML Sitemaps can help pages that are on the search engines’ supplemental index make it to the main index.
3. You can use these Sitemaps to let the search engines know how often a page is changed to improve crawl rate.
4. You can alert the search engines to any changes/additions to your site
5. The additional URLs you provide help increase crawl coverage and crawl speed.
6. The verification and registration of an XML Sitemap can give the search engines the credibility that they desire.
7. In all, XML Sitemaps can help improve visibility and rankings.
8. Best of all – they are FREE
There are a few things to keep in mind. It is important to use the correct canonical version of your URL (i.e. www vs. non-www.) and that you load the XML Sitemap in the highest-level directory you want the search engines to crawl. Don’t include multiple URLs that point to identical content, simply pagination pages and low value pages. And make sure that none of the URLs you include contain tracking parameters.
Start 2011 off right. Check with your web developer to see if they created an XML Sitemap for you. If not, ask them to do so right away!
Similar to Google tags, the brand new Yext Advertising allows you to highlight your business listings with a – yellow tag. But unlike Google Tags – which are simply seen on Google – when you advertise with Yext, your highlighted listing can appear on multiple search engines including Yahoo, Yelp, MapQuest, Superpages, Citysearch, Yellowbook, WhitePages and many more.
You can create custom messages such as coupons, specials, new products or services, and more. And you control/update your tag on all of Yext’s partner search engines from one dashboard – quite a time saver.
The power of Yext advertising
According to Yext’s website, “recent studies performed on Google search results showed that businesses highlighted with a Google Tag received more than twice the attraction from prospective customers. Through special partnerships, Yext now offers you a new way to advertise your business listings on leading local search sites.”
The cost is $99.95 per month. Although this is four times the cost of Google Tags, your listing is showing on more places. You can try it out free for 7 days.
While we don’t think Yext Tags are going to replace Google Local Search, they are another affordable way to expand your web presence.
If you want to keep your social media connections at your fingertips, then RockMelt is the perfect browser for you. It makes the Internet a personal experience. As soon as you log on, your Facebook friends, bookmarks, feeds, and more are right in front of you.
RockMelt is built for sharing. Your Facebook friends are in a bar on the left of the page. You can browse with them, share with them, all in one interface. Your news feeds and web streams are on the right. This right bar is like a live bookmark because you will receive notifications when your favorite feeds or streams are updated. Search is in the middle. The big share button on top of the page makes it easy to share everything.
But do you want to share everything? RockMelt is built on a cloud so you can access it from anywhere, but that also means all of your information is hanging overhead. The browser pulls all of your information together and tracks it. Google keeps track of your history as well, but they don’t use your Facebook ID to log into the browser. Will Facebook start using this information?
It is also fast, as it is built on Chromium, the same open source browser that Google’s Chrome is built on. It is currently in beta. Check it out.
