This Week’s Industry News

Compiled By Rocket Clicks Staff

Text Ad Display URLs Changed To All Lowercase Letters

Google admits that through testing of how Display URL’s appear, that they have been able to see increases in CTR. This will be in effect for Search and Search Partners’ as well as Mobile and Computer. Believe it streamlines the appearance of the search results page and increases the consistency of the URLs that are shown.

This applies to all advertisers and affects the domain portion of the display URL, including any subdomains, but does not impact any subdirectories or folders. For example, Subdomain.Example.com/Subdirectory will be shown as subdomain.example.com/Subdirectory after the change. Note: the update does not affect ads on the Google Display Network, including text ads, at this time.

Source: Google Inside AdWords Blog

Google Testing New AdWords Ad Types

Speaking of Google AdWords tests, the search engine giant is constantly reworking and refining its display options. Two examples of differing line placements and headline content are evident in the screen shots below:

Source: Search Engine Land

Google Tweaks Sitelinks For The Better

When Google Ad Sitelinks began, the order by which you entered each Sitelink for a campaign was the determining factor in which one to display. Now, the Sitelinks chosen to serve are now determined based on past performance, and AdWords will now auto-rotate each Sitelink to display the ones with the top clickthrough rates on a more frequent basis.

Google also provided reminders to input four or more Sitelinks for an optimal rotation, keep several Sitelinks in a one-line format, and manually rank each one in the order or importance, and rank order still matters on some level.

Source: Google Inside AdWords Blog

Go Mobile With The Google Keyword Tool

It’s no secret to anyone that is mildly familiar with Google that mobile searches have grown exponentially over the past two years. Now there’s an option in the Advanced Settings of the Google Keyword Tool that allows you to do a keyword search for mobile devices.

Source: Google Inside AdWords Blog

Negative Keywords Get Their Own List

Google AdWords now provides a negative keywords list, allowing you to manage and associate multiple negative keywords across many accounts. Instead of having to add the same negative keyword to each new campaign, with a simple click of the mouse you can authorize the list of negative keywords to multiple campaigns.

Source: Google Inside AdWords Blog

MySpace Cuts Workforce Again

MySpace’s layoff of 600 of their close to 1,000 workers was less a question of what and more a question of when and how many. The social network site has continued to decline in popularity and advertising appeal since its purchase my News Corp. in 2005.

Source: Wired

Google Chrome Drops HTML5 Video Support For Popular Codec

The H.264 video codec is widely popular and in common use by Apple and Microsoft. But Google has decided to eliminate the codec’s support in favor of the much more open WebM video-encoding technology for its HTML5 Chrome browser. Google’s logic behind the move is that the H.264, which is used in Flash, Blu-ray players, and video cameras, is limited in freedom of use without patent restrictions.

Source: CNet

50 Cent Uses Twitter To Manipulate Stocks

Rapper 50 Cent made a lot more than his namesake over the weekend, after he tweeted about a hot stock tip for a company (H&H Imports) he also happened to part-own. The end result of his 140 character tweet was a personal net of $10 million, which prompted Stephen Colbert to follow suit by asking viewers to put stock in pennies.

Source: BoingBoing

Notable Commentary

That Will Dry Up The Watercooler

Are You An SEO Consultant? Then This Is Your Fault

Here are five common issues that arise for SEO Consultants, and how to own and work through them even if it doesn’t feel like you’re at fault.

Analysis By: Patrick Moogan, SEOmoz

Bud Light Couldn’t Hold A Candle To This Playbook

Another great article on SEOmoz discusses the topic of reputation management, examples of its growing popularity, and a blueprint for success.

Analysis By: Brian Patterson, SEOmoz

Eight Common Copywriting Brain Farts And How To Beano Them

That title might be a little graphic and sophomoric, but the concept of easy-to-make writing errors and their just as easy remedies is still the same.

Analysis By: Ian Lurie, Conversation Marketing

Don’t Ever Take Sides With Anyone Against Matt Cutts Again

Everyone likes a good forum smackdown, right? Well Matt Cutts went all 1973 George Foreman vs. Joe Frazier on a sketchy SEO company. Coincidentally, the site has changed its home page since the KO from Cutts.

Analysis By: SEO Roundtable

Cross PPC Platforms Strategies Is Entirely Possible…Here’s How

With the announcement that Yahoo would be using Microsoft adCenter, developing PPC strategies across adCenter and AdWords got a whole lot easier.

Analysis By: Matt Van Wagner, Search Engine Land

The Path To A Quality PPC Ad

This article on Search Engine Journal serves as a tutorial for creating a successful PPC advertisement.

Analysis By: Wasim Ismail, Search Engine Journal

Yes, There Is Such A Thing As Unwanted Clicks, And They Come At A Price

This Wall Street Journal article on “session-based” clicks and how they can be a waste of money.

Analysis By: Amir Efrati, Wall Street Journal

Your Twitter Icon Can Become An Animated GIF!

This might be a fun idea for a little bit, but you have to think at some point people are just going to get annoyed with your constantly moving avatar.

Analysis By: Brenna Ehrlich, Mashable

Yahoo/Bing Have Closed The Chasm-sized Gap On Google In A Few Areas

It appears that the paid search partnership between Yahoo and Bing is paying off in ROI for many advertisers.

Analysis By: Matt McGee, Search Engine Land