No Found Video Recap on this one, so instead, here’s a picture of Heather with a West Virginia exporting award for Russia:

We’re pleased to help our clients and help bring foreign dollars into our economy as well.  If you’re located outside the U.S., or if you’re an American company that wants to sell outside the U.S., we can help.  Give us a call…today or Thursday.

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management and was named a 2012 Top 25 Most Influential Pay Per Click Expert by Hanapin. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?

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Google, though, just announced that over the next few weeks AdWords:

will be launching new targeting functionality in your Google AdWords account. To give you greater control over your ads, we are changing the way you can target tablet devices such as the Apple iPad, the Samsung Galaxy Tab or the Motorola Xoom. The ‘Tablets with full browsers’ check box will be located on your ‘Settings’ tab under ‘Networks and Devices’ and will enable you to select more precisely which types of devices and operating systems will display your AdWords ads.

The decision makes sense, as does the placement of the controls. While you currently get defaulted into all available devices accessing the internet (capable of seeing the ads), you do have the option of segmenting out desktops / laptops from smart phones.  Then within smart phones, you can further choose from four specific types of mobile devices and/or from seven different mobile carriers*.  Click on the screenshot below to enlarge:

* At least in the United States, with options for AT&T, Cricket, Metro PCS, Nextel, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon.  This varies by country. In the United Kingdom, your options are 3, O2, Orange, T-Mobile, and Vodafone.  In Australia, you get 3, Optus Mobile, Telstra, and Vodafone.  And so on.

Separately, I wonder how long Google will continue to describe the smart phone segment as “iPhones and other mobile devices with full Internet browsers.”  Perhaps they change “iPhones” to “Droids” when this update goes into effect?

If You Don’t Want to Target Tablet Devices…

You’ll need to opt out specifically.  Google’s announcement states, “Ads on tablet devices provide a similar user experience to ads on desktop devices and are an effective way to reach tablet users.  In the coming weeks, your ads will automatically begin showing on tablet devices and no further action will be necessary on your part.”

That sounds about right.  The experience is so similar – other than typing without a keyboard extension or if you’re evil and design your site in flash – that this doesn’t seem to be a money-grab on Google’s part.  They note that, “this change may result in an increase in costs to your AdWords campaigns. If you don’t want your ads to appear on tablet devices, you will be able to specify this preference in your device targeting settings.”

Don’t worry – they will put a message up in the user interface once the change goes into effect.  It will give you instructions on how to make changes if you wish, but they should be really, really basic and easy to do.  Plus, if you’re not sure whether or not you want to appear on tablets, Google will make it easy to test performance without needing to split up campaigns (though you may want to still do so).

Measuring Performance of Tablets

Just as you can now through segments,  you will be able to get data broken down for tablets to see how devices such as Google’s own Android tablets perform for you in relation to computers and smart phones.

More options, more win for advertisers.  Great news from Google.

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management and was named a 2012 Top 25 Most Influential Pay Per Click Expert by Hanapin. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?

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German web companies could face hefty fines for using Google’s online metrics service after data protection officials broke off talks with the US internet giant this week and threatened to pursue a precedent-setting court case.

“Unfortunately we have come to the conclusion that Google has not complied with our data protection demands,” Johannes Caspar, commissioner for data protection in Hamburg where Google Germany is based, told daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Monday.

…

The free internet service Google Analytics gathers detailed information about website visits via a user’s IP address, sending the data back to Google servers in the United States for processing.

According to the paper, Caspar and data protection officials in other German states believe this practice should be illegal.

Caspar has been in talks with Google over the issue since November 2009, with the company agreeing to abbreviate IP addresses for anonymity, in addition to creating user protection modules for different internet browsers.

…

“For this reason they are using the circumstance that legal responsibility for the use of Google Analytics lies not with Google, but with website operators. Google is hiding behind their backs,” he said.

Caspar and the collective of state-level data protection officials, known as the Düsseldorfer Kreis, plan to find a way to act against companies that continue to use Google Analytics, he said.

Those that defy the rule could face a “steep fine,” he said.

So, in essence, it sounds like they think they’ll have a tough time beating Google’s Anwälte in court, so German officials are going to go after businesses who use Google Analytics on their site instead, 99%+ of whom are not using the data they’re worried about protecting, and 95%+ of whom don’t even know what they’re talking about.  Kudos, Herr Caspar.

I truly respect the protection of privacy, but this just seems like the wrong way to go about it.

Oh…and about the title of this post – here’s a screenshot of the article:

Cheap title on my part? Yeah, cheap title.

Not making any social / political commentary here.  Just found the juxtaposition of the stories on The Local amusing.

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management and was named a 2012 Top 25 Most Influential Pay Per Click Expert by Hanapin. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?

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Posten och Google förenar sina varumärken för att nå ut till landets småföretagare. På en timme ska en småföretagare kunna sjösätta en kampanj med reklam som träffar deras målgrupp både i brevlådan och på nätet. Det är målsättningen när ett samarbete lanseras i dag.

For those of our readers not versed in Swedlish – that’s what they speak over there, right?  – here’s a translated version:

By combining their services to the Post and Google offer a package that allows small business owners define an area for direct-distributed advertising through Google Maps. direct-distributed advertising through Google Maps. By pre-made templates you can use their own material item, press and distribute in the area of your choice. The next step is to then buy keywords that allow ads with a link to your own website show up in searches on the web. Also online you can do geographic restrictions on which computers ad to appear.

By combining its brands and combine the availability of 4.3 million mailboxes and 25 million searches made on the web from Sweden every day, hopes to capture new customers to the services they already have. Direct mail is a familiar medium to small businesses. Direct mail is a familiar medium to small businesses. Buying the keywords you are less familiar with.

- Many people are interested in an online presence, but there are only a few percent of Sweden’s 500 000 small businesses that use keywords in their marketing, says Google’s Country Manager Sweden Stina Honkamaa.

Now here’s the really interesting part of the article:

- Sweden becomes the first of this cooperation, but if successful can we safely to other countries as well.

Could the U.S. be next?  Might make sense for a postal service immensely struggling with operational budgets.

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management and was named a 2012 Top 25 Most Influential Pay Per Click Expert by Hanapin. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?

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I pointed out the differences between pay per click ads and natural results to make sure we were on the same page.  That’s when he said something about search results I don’t think I had ever heard phrased exactly this way before, which is saying something considering I’ve been in search since 2001 and speak with clients, prospects, and partners all the time about search.He was worried that they didn’t show up for keyword searches related to their non-branded products not being found by potential clients that had never heard of them (well, that, too), but because of potential clients that had heard of them.  When he looks online, he figures that if a company doesn’t show up on the first page, they’re not real, so he doesn’t buy from them.

To him, search engine visibility equals credibility / reputation. Google has become a 21st Century reference check.  Even though my job is to sell people on search engine marketing (and doing it with us), I don’t personally take this extreme of a view.  I’ve seen some very good businesses that don’t know the first thing about SEO and not rank for anything but their name.  In some cases, not even that – of which I do get suspicious.

But how many other people do?  How much people have already heard about you and are crossing you off their potential vendor list because you don’t show up for any products or services you sell?  Something to think about.

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management and was named a 2012 Top 25 Most Influential Pay Per Click Expert by Hanapin. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?

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At this rate, it will surpass Korea’s NHN and eBay very soon, perhaps by the next time comScore releases its global search market growth figures. So as soon as it gets past eBay, the top 5 spots will be held by actual search engines (NHN counts, but eBay doesn’t at least in my book).

Simply put, if you want to export to Russia, Ukraine, Georgia (not the bulldog one), and other regional nations using the Cyrillic alphabet, you need to be on Yandex.  Heck, even Mozilla changed its default Russian search engine option to Yandex.  It’s not the same as European countries rocking Latin-based alphabets where Google is the only search engine you really need to care about.

So if you want to start advertising your products or services to Russia and other countries from the former Soviet Union, here are a few things you need to know:

Top 3 Differences: Yandex Direct Vs. Google AdWords

1. Everything ties to the ad. Yandex doesn’t have ad groups, so everything ties directly to ads. If you’re a good little search marketer, you like testing ad copies, so you’ll do that by putting keywords into the campaign multiple times. If you’ve ever had to rework a Google AdWords account by pulling out duplicate keywords, this difference in account structure will send chills down your spine.  Maybe even up and across. “
2. Ads automatically optimize. Just like the dreaded “Ad Rotation: Optimize” setting that AdWords automatically opts you into – and that 95% of advertisers should change immediately upon account creation – you’re ads will optimize until the point when lower performing ones (e.g. lower click through rates) will cease showing altogether.  That makes constant testing necessary.
3. Web Site Monitoring.  Now this is a feature that Google ought steal and implement immediately.  With the simple click of a check box, you can choose to have Yandex pause all your ads as soon as it detects your site is down.  If you’ve ever had an urgent call from your boss (or client) saying the site is down and all ads need to be stopped immediately, you’d know just how awesome this feature is.

So there you go. Good luck with your Russian exporting.  If you have any questions about advertising with Yandex, leave a comment below or get in touch.

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management and was named a 2012 Top 25 Most Influential Pay Per Click Expert by Hanapin. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?

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Quick programming note as we just signed two new foreign clients for pay per click management – one from Australia and one from the UK.  We are fully capable of running paid search programs for both companies outside the United States and for running campaigns for United States organizations looking to export their products and services across the world.  That includes not just Google, but also search engines like Yandex (Russia), where we’ll be starting a new campaign for an existing client in two weeks.  Who needs a Latin-based alphabet?

Two New Windows Holes

Brick by Brick...

By the way, I found we’re super green.  It’s called adaptive reuse, apparently.  More pics after the jump.

Here are Some Windows

Where Paid Search Marketing & SEO Magic Will Happen

Bidding Adieu to Century Video

They Took Down the Century Video Sign!

I wasn’t actually sure if I was going to take down the old Century Video sign, but I guess the contractors made the decision for me.  Just as well – a couple of the letters were damaged.  I was thinking about keeping it up, though, as kind of my version of Jumbo’s Clown Room from Los Angeles.

Earlier building pictures here.

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management and was named a 2012 Top 25 Most Influential Pay Per Click Expert by Hanapin. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?

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