According to email alert I just received, Bing will start powering Yahoo organic later this week. On a side note, I’ll be posting an instructional blog about how to export your Google AdWords campaign structure and import it to Microsoft adCenter in preparation of the eventual paid platform merger:

Dear Advertiser,

As we continue to work toward implementing the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance, we’ve reached some very significant milestones and wanted to share this important news with you.

Yahoo! organic search transition to begin
Later this week, we will begin the work of transitioning the back-end technology for Yahoo! Search over to the Bing platform. This is an important step toward our goal of improving the overall relevance of Yahoo! organic search results and attracting a larger audience to Yahoo! Search, to ultimately put your ads in front of more potential customers. You’ll want to make sure that you’re prepared for this change, so be sure to check out these tips and stay tuned to the Yahoo! Search blog for confirmation of when the organic search transition is complete.

Testing of paid search account transitions has begun
Soon, you’ll be able to access a transition portal from within your Yahoo! Search Marketing account, which will walk you through the simple step-by-step process of creating a Microsoft Advertising adCenter account and importing your campaigns, or linking an existing adCenter account you may already have. Before we make this transition portal broadly available to all advertisers in the weeks ahead, we are currently testing it with a limited number of accounts. You will be notified via email once the transition portal is available.

Commitment to a quality transition continues
As we’ve stated all along, our primary goal is to provide you with a quality transition experience in 2010, while protecting the holiday season. We continue to make great strides toward this goal and we evaluate our progress every day. However, please remember that if we conclude that it would improve the overall experience, we may defer the transition to 2011.

Sincerely,

Your partners in the search alliance, Yahoo! and Microsoft

The Internet provides us instant and open access to a plethora of information the likes of which we’ve never seen before. But the Internet as we know it may go away if corporations turn “agenda” into reality.

First, a quick Wikipedia definition of net neutrality: “Network neutrality (also net neutrality, Internet neutrality) is a principle proposed for user access networks participating in the Internet that advocates no restrictions by Internet Service Providers and governments on content, sites, platforms, on the kinds of equipment that may be attached, and no restrictions on the modes of communication allowed.”

If you haven’t heard the latest, Google and Verizon released their “network neutrality policy proposal” to the world this week, and not everyone is as happy about it as AT&T and other telecommunication companies. I don’t care what anyone says, I believe Google sold out. “Do no evil” my sweet, haole okole! It’s not that I’m surprised, just really disappointed.

I’m in agreement with Wired.com when they say this “… joint proposal with Verizon is a net-neutrality flip-flop of epic proportions”. Search “google net neutrality” at google.com and you’ll find the first results show just how much the search engine giant compromised when they started spooning with Verizon:

1) Page from summer of 2006, which states: “Today the Internet is an information highway where anybody – no matter how large or small, how traditional or unconventional – has equal access. But the phone and cable monopolies, who control almost all Internet access, want the power to choose who gets access to high-speed lanes and whose content gets seen first and fastest. They want to build a two-tiered system and block the on-ramps for those who can’t pay.”

2) And compare to this week’s Public Policy Blog, which states: “It’s true that Google previously has advocated for certain openness safeguards to be applied in a similar fashion to what would be applied to wireline services. However, in the spirit of compromise, we have agreed to a proposal that allows this market to remain free from regulation for now, while Congress keeps a watchful eye.”

In that same Policy blog, Google also says that “the wireless market is more competitive” than wired market, which to me translates to “there’s oodles and oodles of revenue we haven’t yet tapped” in the wireless market.

I don’t think these huge corporations should be the policy makers of net neutrality. Allowing “phone and cable monopolies” to control and prioritize content we see and hear is wrong. And it’s exactly what the Google-Verizon “proposal” (more like “agenda”) is all about.

Our Internet future IS wireless and the Google-Verizon agenda plainly leaves wireless networks free and clear of any proposed regulation. This means wireless networks such as Sprint, AT&T and Verizon decide what Internet content you see and hear. Tim Wu, Columbia Law School professor who popularized the concept of net neutrality, likens the tiered system to a kind of “internet payola“, and I emphatically agree:

“In exchange for payment or some other mutually beneficial considerations, Verizon would give special priority to sites like Google.com and YouTube, making them run faster than competitors like Yahoo.com and Hulu.”

Anything could happen without net neutrality – and the consumer will end up paying the price. It’s not up to Google, Verizon or any of the other big telecommunications to make such important public policy as they are only out for corporate profitability. The FCC needs to act, and act swiftly.

So what you can you do?

Email FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski expressing your concerns.

Visit SaveTheInternet.com to read more and email your congressman.

I look forward to the day I never have to login to Yahoo Search again! And thankfully adCenter finally stepped up and made importing campaigns from Google much simpler than years past. Here’s the email with transition tips I received today:

Dear Advertiser,

As your transition to the Microsoft Advertising adCenter platform approaches, we have more details to share to help you prepare for the changes to come.

Considerations for your upcoming transition

adCenter account
Soon, you’ll need to either create a new adCenter account, or link an existing adCenter account to your Yahoo! Search Marketing account. Later this month, you’ll see an “adCenter” tab within your Yahoo! Search Marketing account. Clicking there will take you to the beginning of the account transition process, where we’ll walk you through the simple steps to create or link accounts.

Budgeting
Once you create your adCenter account, it will be active and your ads will be eligible to serve on Bing right away. As a result, you’ll be managing both your new adCenter account and your existing Yahoo! Search Marketing account in parallel until ad serving for Yahoo! traffic transitions to adCenter, so plan to budget accordingly.

Microsoft Silverlight
With Silverlight installed, you’ll be able to see and address key differences between your Yahoo! and adCenter accounts as you transition. Download Silverlight now.

Organic search transition
Yahoo! organic search results will be powered by Bing as early as late August. If organic search results are an important source of referrals to your website, you’ll want to make sure that you’re prepared for this change. For more details, check out this blog post.

As we’ve stated previously, our primary goal is to provide a quality transition experience for advertisers in the U.S. and Canada in 2010, while protecting the holiday season. However, please remember that as we continue to go through our series of checkpoints, if we conclude that it would improve the overall experience, we may choose to defer the transition to 2011.

We are committed to making this transition as seamless and beneficial for you as possible. We appreciate your business, and look forward to bringing you the benefits of the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance.

Sincerely,
Your Partners in the Search Alliance, Yahoo! and Microsoft

Got this email alert today:

“As many of you know, we started the Go Mobile! series of posts on the Inside AdWords blog to give you an easy way to keep up with the world of mobile advertising.

The mobile industry has really evolved since the start of the series: mobile is becoming a core part of many marketing campaigns and publishers are developing mobile-specific content across the web and in applications across mobile operating systems. We’re even more excited about the prospects for driving further innovation in mobile now that AdMob has joined the Google Mobile Ads team.

With this in mind, we created a dedicated blog for those of you specifically interested in mobile advertising and mobile monetization. The Google Mobile Ads Blog is a place where advertisers and publishers can find the latest news, product updates, tips, and account management resources from the Google Mobile Ads team.

Of course we’ll continue to post major Google Mobile Ads announcements on the Inside AdWords blog, but be sure to visit the official Google Mobile Ads Blog for all of your mobile-specific updates.

Mobile has come a long way in a short period of time and we can’t wait to see what’s next.”

I was considering making Google AdWords match types the topic of my next blog post. However, SearchEngineLand recently posted a great recap here so I figure I’ll just share that with you instead!

The article also includes a blurb about the recently announced broad match modifier, which gives advertisers (in Canada and the UK only right now) greater control. Per Google, “Each word preceded by a + must appear in the user’s search exactly or as a close variant. Close variants include misspellings, singular/plural forms, abbreviations and acronyms, and stemming variations (like floor and flooring). Synonyms (like “quick” and “fast”) and related searches (like “flowers” and “tulips”) are not considered close variants.”

Looking forward to the US release of that one soon!

For an official Google AdWords explanation of the various match types, read their help section here.

And while you’re setting match types in AdWords, remember to review your keyword structure too. Account structure and keyword grouping are very important factors in building effective and profitable PPC (pay per click) campaigns with high Quality Scores. You can read more about keyword grouping in my recent blog, “Are You a Keyword Groupie?“

As most internet marketers should certainly know by now, Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft AdCenter (online console for managing ads on Bing.com) finalized their “search alliance” in late 2009. The Search Alliance partnership site outlines how the two engines will work together here. The most important take away is that the Yahoo! console you’ve grown to know and love (ha!) will go away, and you will manage both Yahoo! and Bing via Microsoft AdCenter only.

It’s still months away, but there are things you can do now to prepare for the merge. First, open an adCenter account and import existing AdWords or Yahoo! account. Importing to adCenter now will give you enough time to familiarize yourself with the adCenter online console and desktop tool so there’s less of a learning curve when the merge actually happens.

Download AdWords Editor tool

Download Microsoft adCenter’s Desktop tool

Without  these desktop tools, the export/import work becomes extremely tedious because of adCenter’s cumbersome online console. These free, time-saving desktop applications make managing your PPC (pay per click) account quick and easy. The tools allow advertisers to copy and/or move ad groups, keywords and ads, and also allow for bulk changes and mass updates to keywords, text and image ads, bids and more. I find AdWords Editor is easier to use, and especially like thier duplicate keyword finder, keyword grouping and find & replace tools.

IMPORTING TO ADCENTER:

First, you must export a current account (in this example I’m using AdWords). To export whole account (to CSV) from AdWords, follow these instructions. NOTE: make sure you first “Get Recent Changes” to ensure you are downloading most current version of account.

Then, login to adCenter, click on the Campaigns tab and select “Import Campaigns” from the More drop-down menu (above the Monthly budget column). Follow the steps for finding and importing the file and once you see the “Your file imported successfully” confirmation you’ll have a few more steps to take before activating the campaign(s). (If you run into problems with the import, you can follow this second export option provided by adCenter online)

Next, open adCenter desktop and Download Changes (button at top left). This should download your recent adCenter import to your desktop tool so you can make some necessary changes like:

* adding negative keywords (which do not get imported)
*adjusting geo-targeted locations
*setting budget
*making bids adjustments
*changing ad and/or keyword destination tracking URLs

Finally, once you’ve completed and uploaded the changes (via green Sync Changes button at top  left of desktop tool), the final step is change ad groups from “Draft” status to “Active”. Go back into online console and click the campaign name to go to Ad Group view. Here you’ll see all ad groups with status listed as Draft. You will need to select all ad groups then click Submit (button above start date column), which should change status to “Active”.

Of course, if you aren’t yet familiar enough with the desktop tools, or just don’t have the time to learn them, you also have the option of contacting adCenter and requesting QuickLaunch or Performance Improvement help here. This will put you in touch with an adCenter rep who can either walk you though the import process or else take your CSV export and complete the upload for you.

I believe the most important preparation you can do at this point is to stay informed via Search Alliance page, which has links to each engine’s “transition center”, but mainly familiarizing yourself with adCenter’s online interface and desktop tool.

Relevancy is everything when it comes to Google AdWords. Per Google, “The AdWords system is designed to match our users’ needs as closely as possible to relevant ads. This ensures a positive user experience so that users click on AdWords ads more often, while maintaining the advertising value the program provides to our advertisers.”

Since inception, Google AdWords has introduced several updates to their algorithm to ensure they deliver the highest quality ads to the right audience. One of the most important  measures implemented was Quality Score, which ultimately determines how much you pay per click and how your ads are ranked in the search engine results. Read Google’s help section for detailed description of Quality Score as well as how it’s measured for Search vs Content network.

Account structure and keyword grouping are very important factors in building effective and profitable PPC (pay per click) campaigns with high Quality Scores. Gone are the days when advertisers could throw thousands of keywords into a single ad group. Now, in order to achieve high Quality Scores, advertisers must group their keywords into tightly themed and well-organized groups with highly targeted ads.  Create as many small, highly themed ad groups as necessary. Depending on the account, I aim for groups with no more than 50 to 100 keywords, but smaller groups of 20 or less are often more ideal for certain websites.

The idea or process of categorizing keywords into themed groups may seem daunting. But never fear, there are tools to help make your job easier. If you aren’t sure where to begin the process, try Google AdWords Editor’s free Keyword Grouper tool. Find instructions for how to use the simple feature in AdWords Editor help section. You can also research other free and/or paid tools by Googling “keyword grouping tools”.

NOTE: When moving keywords into smaller, more tightly themed ad groups, they don’t lose their history. However, sometimes the AdWords system does need a few days or longer to “reacclimate” recently moved keywords with the ads and landing page in their new ad group. Generally you’ll find a handful of keywords in any ad group generate the most clicks, leads and/or orders. I would strongly advise leaving your best performing keyword in its existing ad group, so as to not hinder volume. Instead, move all other lower volume keywords into new ad groups. My Google reps have advised this as well.

More relevant keyword groups can result in higher click through rates and lower minimum bids – so get in there and reorganize and optimize! And remember, optimization isn’t a one time thing – you must constantly monitor Quality Score and performance metrics for new areas in need of further optimization.

Google has been busy the last month, releasing new AdWords features on a regular basis. The latest, AdWords reports viewable in Google Analytics.

Per a recent Inside AdWords post, with helpful accompanying video:

The new AdWords reports in Google Analytics give you more insight into what happens after the click. For example, suppose you wanted to see if potential customers searching for your exact matched keywords were more engaged with your site’s content than those who were searching on broader terms. Using the new reports, you can view all the visits from clicks on exact matched ads for any keyword, ad group, or campaign in your account. You can also see how many pages that group visited and the average time spent on site. If you use the funnel reports in Google Analytics, you can even see the specific step where visitors tend to drop off when trying to make a purchase.

It’s not available for all advertisers yet, and I haven’t seen it for my clients – but I’m excited for the additional reporting features!

I see a new reporting feature announcement under the AdWords reporting tab this morning. It says I can now access saved campaign reports directly via campaign tab.

Per Google:

“To make it easier for you to analyze your account’s performance, we’re adding more advanced reporting options, previously only accessible through the Report Center, to the Campaigns tab. With these changes, you can manage your campaigns and analyze their performance all in one place.

If you have these reports saved in the Report Center, they’ll be copied to the Control Panel and Library, a new area on the Campaigns tab where you can access all your reports and more.”

At this time,  only Campaign Reports are available – nothing at Ad Group or Keyword level.

Read more about it at AdWords Help Center.

Yes, yet another shining example of Google’s goal to “pair well-targeted ads with our powerfully relevant search results” and to reward and promote the most effective and well-targeted ads in their system to help maintain the value of an AdWords ad to both advertisers and users (you can read it for yourself right here)

I googled sacroiliac joint surgeon and this ad showed up on first page…

Nuff said…