The Search Alliance (a.k.a. Bing and Yahoo! PPC) have announced a change to their trademark policies to go into effect on March 3rd, 2011.  Much like the Google AdWords trademark policy has been for some time, the Search Alliance will no longer investigate the use of trademark terms in keywords.  They will still investigate the unauthorized use of trademarked terms in ad text when presented with a complaint by a trademark owner.  This change just means advertisers can now bid on trademarked terms, as they can in AdWords, they just can’t use those terms in their ad text.

The Search Alliance states that by aligning their “trademark policy with the current industry standard, we hope to help simplify your marketing efforts across the various online advertising programs.”

Campaigns running on Google’s Display Network often get a bad reputation for being difficult to control. Long-standing issues like the absence of tools that provide sufficient bid data and the inability to know where exactly your ads may show are just a couple of reasons advertisers tend to shy away from these types of campaigns.

We all want a return on our ad spend and many advertiser’s will tell you that display campaigns are just too risky, especially contextually targeted display campaigns. Well, times are changing with Google’s new contextual targeting tool.

The tool, still in beta, may already be hiding under your nose in your AdWords account, check under the tools tab.

Keyword strategy is quite different on the Display Network vs. the Search Network. These campaigns target content on the web by keyword themes rather than specific user queries. So it’s important that each of your ad groups consists of only a few very tightly themed keywords that all work together to tell Google exactly what kind of content you want to target.

Many advertisers just use the keywords they are already targeting in their search campaigns to target display. This can be dangerous and spendy as it’s easy to get carried away with too many keywords per ad group and then the theme evaporates leaving your ad to flounder around the net showing too often next to irrelevant content or not show as often as it should because Google’s confused. The contextual targeting tool gives you the ad groups based on your topic. These ad group suggestions come straight from the horse’s mouth folks. Google thinks these keywords go together and make up a single theme that Google understands and can use to find relevant content that matches the content you want to target.

One of the things I love most about this tool is that it also provides suggested bid information alongside the suggested ad groups. Yay! No more magical bids pulled from thin air to start contextual campaigns. We have a source of data prior to launch and if you think this is good, you’ll love the sneak peak at potential placements!

That’s right; you can click on each suggested ad group to see a list of placements where your ads may show and not just the domains, the specific URL’s! You can now find sites that aren’t appropriate and exclude them prior to spending a single cent running a blind contextually targeted campaign.

Contextually targeted campaigns aren’t so scary after all, are they? Thanks, Google!

An updated AdWords keyword tool has been in beta for some time now.  If you were used to linking back to the previous version you may have noticed that link has been removed coinciding with Google’s announcement that The Keyword Tool is officially out of beta.  This one tool replaces both the original keyword tool and the Search-based Keyword Tool.

Google states that The Keyword Tool combines the best of both the previous tools.  Some of its features include:

• The option to search by keywords, URLs or a combination of the two
• Multiple ways to filter and sort the results
• The option to view mobile search, ad share and search share data

Finally the way in which Global Monthly Searches and Local Monthly Searches are calculated has been updated.  In the past the data was from both google.com and Google search partners.  With the new tool it is only based on google.com search traffic.

You may have seen seller rating extensions like these in some Google AdWords sponsored links lately. Note they are a little different depending on whether they show in the top of the page sponsored links or on the right.

This is the newest ad extension available to AdWords advertisers. If an online store is rated in Google Product Search, with 4 or more stars and at least 30 reviews, seller ratings can be associated with its AdWords ads. These ratings will show up automatically if the above requirements are met and there is no set up involved.

As of now this feature is in limited release but is being rolled out to all eligible accounts.

Google recently announced a new keyword targeting feature on the Inside AdWords blog.  Broad match modifier is a middle ground between broad and phrase match.  The intent is to take phrase match and make it a little broader and broad match a little more controlled.

Implementing this feature works similarly to the standard broad, phrase and exact match keywords used today.   Instead of the brackets or quotation marks you use a plus (+) sign.  The plus sign modifies the word it is attached to so that it must appear in the searcher’s query exactly as is or a close variation.  Close variations include misspellings, singular/plural forms, abbreviations and acronyms, and ings (like “floor” and “flooring”).

Today you may have the broad match keyword of black hat.   As a standard broad match keyword this can match multiple variations such as black caps, gray hats or black baseball hat.  If you had that same word as a phrase match it may match on things like midnight black hat or black hat for baseball. With the new broad match modifier feature you can narrow down those broad matches and expand the phrase matches.

Enter your keyword as +black hat (Be sure there are no spaces between the + and modified words, but do leave spaces between words).  The resulting matches in this case could be black cap, fancy black dress hat, blck hat or black ski caps. The plus sign in front of black forces black to be in the searcher’s query.  If you were to enter your keyword like this, +black +hat, your matching results could be things like black hatt or black baseball hat or any variation as long as both black and hat are queried.

Note that broad match modifiers are designed for adgroups that contain mostly phrase and exact match words.  If you are mostly bidding on broad match adding the modifiers could result in a significant decline in clicks and conversions.

Google recently announced the creation of the Google Display Network as part of its continued focus on rapidly expanding display advertising opportunities.  The newly create Google Display Network, which now has its own website, will act as an “umbrella” for all the properties on which display ads can be run.  This means everything but search are part of the Display Network; YouTube, Google properties such as Google Finance, Gmail, Google Maps, Blogger as well as the million plus display partners.   All display ad types now fall under this umbrella including text, image, rich media, and video ads.

The process for running display ads is not changing, just the name.   Expect to see references to the Google Content Network changing over to Google Display Network in the coming weeks.

If you check out the recent post on the Google Lat Long Blog, you will see that Google Maps is rolling out their Google Tags feature across the United States shortly. What the heck are “Google Tags”? Of course if it is something from Google, you can assume it’s another way for you to advertise with them. This specific way is targeted at local businesses.  Google’s goal with Google Tags is to make it simple for the “mom and pop” shop to advertise with them; even more simple than using Google AdWords.  With the trouble that Google Places (formerly Google Local Business Listings) has had in the past in getting business owners correctly listed on the map, I’m not sure it will be that easy out of the gate but it’s good to see the opportunity offered.

Details:

• Cost = $25/month/listing (need a credit card)
• You must have claimed your Google Places listing
• What can you advertise via a Tag? Coupon, video, website, photos, custom message (via the Post feature), or your menu/reservation listing (if applicable to your business)
• At the time of this writing, Google Tag advertising is only available in California, Atlanta, Austin, Boulder, Chicago, Houston, Seattle, and Washington DC
  • The first states after these will be Texas, Illinois, Georgia, Washington, and Colorado
  • All other states are expected to come online shortly
  • Where do I find out if I can use Tags? Go into your business listings dashboards and look for the feature.

Also announced with Google Tags is the ability to advertise locally with its Post feature within your Google Places listing. Your message can be changed whenever you want and are a good way to tell your community about new products, specials, or other recent news about your business. The post will show up only on your Google Places page but as mentioned above, you can advertise your posts via Google Tags. If you elect to do so, your post will also show up in Google search results when your listing appears there.

We would love to hear your feedback on your use of Google Tags for your business.

It wasn’t too long ago that we were writing about Google’s launch of new ad extension options on the search network.  Recent additions that allow you to enhance your search ads have included location, product, phone, and sitelink.  Utilizing these features can make your ads stand out among your competitors, such as the search ad for desktop computers below, and give your customers a more direct path to the best landing page for optimizing conversions.

Now Google is expanding further on Ad Extensions by launching detailed reporting in your AdWords Account with a new tab titled “Ad Extensions.”  The tab is available from the account level or the campaign level.  But keep in mind you will only see this new tab if you are using one or more of the ad extensions in your AdWords campaigns.

Select the Ad Extensions tab and then use the “view” drop down box to select which extension (location, phone, product or sitelink) you would want to view.  The data available includes, clicks, impressions, CTR, average CPC, cost and average position.

You can also download, schedule or email the report right from within the tab. If you have been using Ad Extensions already or have been thinking about using them let us know your experiences by commenting here.

As most everyone knows by now, Yahoo! and Microsoft announced a Search Alliance last year and it was recently approved by the US government in February .  Essentially, the two companies will continue with two separate search engines, however Microsoft will run the technology for the organic search algorithms for both engines and the paid search for both will be powered by Microsoft’s current adCenter system.

A recent announcement from the new partners laid out a more defined time line for the upcoming transition as well as a bit on what advertisers can expect as the transition moves along.

The goal, as of now, is to get the transition process for US and Canada advertisers started in late summer 2010 and have it complete before the 2010 holiday season rolls around.  If things are not looking good for that holiday target, the transition team has promised to hold off until 2011 so as to not interrupt the critical holiday sales season.

To keep things running as smoothly as possible regular communication and updates, as well as tools to guide advertisers through the process have been promised.

Stay tuned for more as we get closer to the Yahoo! and Microsoft search alliance becoming a reality and tips and tricks we pick up as the transition begins to take place.