Adwords Express Changing Ad Titles Depending on Search

Adwords Express has generally improved since its initial nationwide rollout in January of 2011 and its name change in July of last year. It was initially dogged with poor targeting and huge spikes in monthly cost per click that often made their use untenable. I have continued to test it in a range of local situations …

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Google Maps Bubble Ads and The SMB State of Mind

Awareness of Google’s new, aggressive & annoying Bubble ads has been creeping into the SMBs field of vision since their introduction 10 days ago. Articles have been posted at a number of sites (here, here & here) questioning their purpose. On Saturday alone, there were 4 posts in the Places Forum from SMBs specifically about …

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Rogue’s Gallery of Inappropriate Bubble Ads

This search for “Child Protection Services, NY” provides an obvious example of Google’s inability to target a specific ad against a specific place with their new Info Bubble Ads.  It provides great fodder for my second installment of the Rogue’s Gallery of Inappropriate Bubble Ads… There is some irony that the Archdiocese of New York* …

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Google Places Separates Adwords Express Analtyics

Google has recently (exactly when is not clear) separated the Adwords Express analytics from the standards dashboard view of Places analytics. Until very recently the analytics for both your free Places Listing and your paid Adwords Express ad were shown in a consolidated view:

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Adwords Express: Things that are Easy to Hate

I have a love hate relationship with the elegantly simple Google’s Adwords Express. One of the things I love is that for a business with more than 2 reviews and greater than an 4 star rating, it will show your star rating with the ad. One of the things I hate is that, unbeknownst to …

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Hotel Booking Ads Test Continues – a 2 Bit Hooker?

My grandfather was born and bred on the lower East Side of New York City in the early 1900s. He moved to upstate NY after WWII to join my father in business.The subtleties of gentile conversation that was the norm in rural NYS were largely lost on my grandfather. He was a large, loving, lovable …

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Google Boost Now Becoming Adwords Express

Mike Ramsey of NiftyMarketing, a local search marketer from Idaho, sent along this screen shot reflecting a name change to the Boost product: ——-   ——- The change has not yet made it over to the Boost Help pages. Certainly it makes sense from a branding perspective to leverage Google’s well known, existing ad brand …

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