Category: News & Trends

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IE 8 Upgrade It’s a One Way Trip

If you have Vista like I do, you may want to know that upgrading your browser to IE 8 is a one way trip. You cannot uninstall it and go back to IE 7. I found this out the hard way.

I have really liked IE 7. I like the clean polished interface. When I clicked install IE 8 just the other day when I received other Windows updates, I did not realize the ramifications for doing so. As I am designing a new client site, and not many people have IE 8 right now, I need to be able to test my site on the mainstream popular browsers. After a few days with IE 8, I decided I wanted to go back to IE 7.

You cannot uninstall the program nor re-install IE 7 over it. In fact if you try as I did, you will receive a message that IE 7 is not compatible with your system. So if you need access to IE 7 here’s a super work around that I have found IE Tester.

I downloaded the application and wow, what a great tool. I can view my site URL in IE 5, 6, 7, and even 8. What a life saver.

So here’s my tip, if you are a regular web surfer, get IE 8 as it is more secure, — sure looks a lot like Firefox. If you are a web designer, be careful about installing IE 8. Now that you know it is a one way trip, make a careful decision. If you do upgrade, make sure to download IE Tester it is an excellent tool and allows for your testing on multiple Internet Explorer versions.

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Hot AdWords Tip on Title Character Count and Keyword Insertion

This just in from a chat conversation with a Googler at AdWords! (This note was also posted at the Webmaster World forum for professionals.)

I challenged AdWords customer support about a competitors ad that showed 26 characters in the title of the AdWords ad and was told by a specific Googler with the initials P. A. that “If you use keyword insertion in your ad text, the ad title may show more than 25 characters.” He verified this with a supervisor when I stated that I would post this on my blog and at Webmaster World.

This is news to me and I have been managing AdWords for over six years and this use of additional characters is not reflected in any of their training information.

To clarify even further the Googler stated that there is no guarantee that AdWords will show beyond the limit for the title but they may choose to show a keyword with 26 or 27 characters automatically. The he stated, “The keyword insertion issue is just a by product of our automated systems. In no way are we giving some advertisers more ad text characters.” Hmm, but they are!

In my case the title I wanted was Virtual Assistant Training which is 26 characters. Entering a title in the AdWords control panel allowed Virtual Assistant Trainin – which makes no sense. I am now setting up dynamic ad groups for keywords that fit these parameters for my clients.

Interesting that the Google rules state 25 characters max or less if you use double byte, but never state that they will show more. You can do a search on Google.com to see the 26 word title for two of my client’s competitors using the query Virtual Assistant Training. You will see two competitors showing the 26 character title.

I just wanted to pass this on to you so that you could leverage this new information for your benefit too.

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CPC Rising on Google AdWords

After three months of decreasing cost per click prices on Google AdWords, the CPC is on the move up for the majority of the accounts we are managing.

I manage numerous Google AdWords accounts and am seeing this as a strong trend starting in mid March and continuing into April. The cost per click is increasing in nearly all accounts. However, impression activity is still low or the same on many accounts. So although advertisers are feeling bullish about AdWords and moving  back into the platform, searchers and buyers have still not returned to previous levels.

For advertisers who have a click budget under $500 a month for clicks, it will be a struggle to get Google to serve their ads due to increasing competition for the available clicks with the decreased search traffic. Advertisers with larger budgets will simply, by default, hog the available traffic as Google tries to help them spend their budget during the day. With their budget lasting longer into the day it will be hard for those with smaller budgets to get a piece of the available action.