Vamsi Gangavalli's Weblog » Google

Your AdWords Account has stopped running today! – Google AdWords Phishing Scam Emails doing rounds

Vamsi — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 11:50:16 +0000

If you received an email saying “Your AdWords Account has stopped running today” or “One of your Google AdWords Customer’s account has stopped running this morning” and if it is not addressed to you directly using your name or email or customer account number, its 100% a phishing scam email.

These emails wont have your email address in the “to” field, they are sent to undisclosed recipients and the email also wont have your account number.

They might have content something like this:

Your Google Adwords Account has stopped running this morning.
Some of the ads have stopped running today (Thursday, 4 February 2010, 04:34:08). We had encountered a number of problems with some of our servers that crashed this morning and at this time we cannot check to see what customer accounts are now running 100%.

Most of all, the links in these emails will take you to a fake login pages on domains like Google-ob.com, Google-ov.com, Google-kd.com, etc. and not Google.com – All real emails from Google AdWords will take you to Google.com only and not to some “Googlesomething.com” or “google.com.something.com”.

For those who are managing clients accounts: you might want to give a heads-up to your clients just to make sure they don’t fall prey to these phishing mails.

Sample copy of AdWords phishing emails:

So, before logging in to links from emails, do check the domain name always.
This applies to all emails and not just Google AdWords emails.

Google Search Results Now Showing WordPress Thumbnails?

Vamsi — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:42:23 +0000

Observed this just a little while ago.
Not sure if I am the first one to spot this, but this is sure an interesting development for Bloggers and WordPress users.

We already know that Google shows the Video Thumbnails beside the search results from top video sites like YouTube and Metacafe. We also know that Google shows the Picture of a news article from news sites if there is a picture in the news post. But this is new: (The search result which has the image is a WordPress.com Blog)

The search on google.
The blog with an in image in the post.

Have you spotted this before or is this a new feature that Google is testing? Does this also work on Self hosted WordPress blogs and other Blogging Platforms othet than WordPress? I didn’t spot any other occurance yet.

Google Morse Code Logo – Daring and Brilliant

Vamsi — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 10:13:22 +0000

Millions of users in many countries were surprised by this confusing logo with Morse code which is being displayed today across all Google Homepages.

Some would argue that Google is brainless or doesn’t care about users because the logo is so confusing that some users thought there was something wrong with their internet connection and the logo didn’t load completely, some thought their new LCD screens are about to die. Some people also thought it was representing some block breaker game. Some Even thought it was Braille.

I would say, so far, This is the most Daring and Dashing Logo ever done for any occasion by any company on the Internet. Also biggest risk taken by any company to play with the Company Identity. I think it should be the best logo ever in the Top Official Google Logos.

What do you think?

Telegraph Says: No St George’s Day Doodle in 2008

Vamsi — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 13:02:52 +0000

Telegraph was quick to appreciate the Google logo for St George’s Day on the Google UK homepage.

But in the article, it says

Google regularly produces altered “doodles” of its name to mark national days, sporting events and scientific anniversaries, but did not release a St George’s Day logo on April 23 last year.

“We have done St George’s Day drawings a few times before, but part of the reason for releasing them is to surprise and delight our users so we try not to do them every year,” a Google spokesman said.

“Most of the ideas come from our own staff, but we also get hundreds of requests from campaign groups and charities, and very occasionally we do ones for them.”

So was there really no logo last year?
No. There was one.
You can check the 2008 St George’s Day logo here.

Update:
Telegraph was quick to change the news article after I posted this on Twitter replying to Telegraph.
The changed lines:

Google regularly produces altered “doodles” of its name to mark national days, sporting events and scientific anniversaries, and has previously released St George’s Day logos in 2002, 2006 and 2008.

You got that?

Blogs Surpass Newspapers & Magazines in Popularity on Google

Vamsi — Mon, 12 May 2008 06:41:51 +0000

Stats source: Google Trends

Another close-up screenshot with data for the last 30 days:

And here is the new Definition of blog:

source: http://www.labnol.org/

Spending thousands of dollars but very low ROI on Google AdWords?

Vamsi — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 08:25:08 +0000

Paying a lot on Google AdWords and making nothing? Well, I’m sure you might be bidding for generic keywords like “cameras” or “mp3″ (based on your business and keywords). Generic keywords like this have a very high Min.CPC could range from $5 to $70 or even more and have a very less conversion rate

because most of the people clicking these ads might just be searching for something and you showed up with an interesting ad and you got clicked, with a $25 a click and no sale means simply adding this to the negative ROI. Instead you could you long phrases which have less CPCs.

Observed this years ago when I first stated working on AdWords and saved a lot of money and ofcourse improved conversion rates exponentially.

Update: You might want to read this for better understanding.

Google AdWords AdSense Pay-per-action beta answers

Vamsi — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 09:21:29 +0000

Google recently introduced Pay Per Action advertising which is going to compete with the affiliate networks on the Internet.

Being new to this feature, even I had to mail some questions to google AdWords support and got them answered. Covering some common questions, google posted on their blog about pay per action feature.

Last week, we announced the launch of our pay-per-action beta test for selected US advertisers. Since that post went live, we’ve received a number of questions — and wanted to answer the most popular ones (paraphrased for brevity) in a quick follow up post:

Do pay-per-action ads show on Google.com or on sites in the search network?
No. Pay-per-action ads are not eligible to show on Google.com or in the Google search network. They’re only eligible to display in the Google content network.

I am an advertiser using My Client Center (MCC) and am interested in the pay-per-action beta test for my clients, as well as for my own business. What are my sign up options?
We’re only adding individual AdWords accounts to the beta test, so if you are an advertiser managing multiple accounts with an MCC, you can add the individual accounts that you believe will benefit from pay-per-action, including your own.

Is it possible to set a cost-per-action (CPA) value (I.e. the amount I’d like to pay for a specific action) as a percentage of the amount of the purchase rather than as a fixed amount per purchase?
We don’t currently offer the option to set a CPA value as a percentage. The cost-per-action value must be a fixed amount.

I am also an AdSense publisher and would like to participate in this test. How can I sign up?
Please visit the AdSense referrals beta site, on which you’ll find a ‘Sign Up’ link.

I am not a US advertiser, and wonder when pay-per-action will be available in my country?
Although we plan to extend the pay-per-action beta test to advertisers outside of the US in the future, we donÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t currently have a date for when this option may become available in other countries.

Although I am not a US advertiser, my campaigns do target US customers. Can I participate in the beta?
At this time, we’re only accepting advertisers who have a billing address located in the United States.

Google Breaking its own rules?

Vamsi — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 06:49:28 +0000

Google Adsense has been a great proven way of revenue for many webmasters. There were several things that we Adsense Optimizers did with Google Adsense Layouts on web sites and blogs. Google banned one after the other technique with which we use to attract site visitors(but not in my sites). Clients have made thousands of dollars with the things we did. One of which is placing images next to the adsense ads. Recently Google Announced a strict policy that it will ban any website for using google adsense if they place images next to the ads and in a very short span of time we switched to other methods of attracting visitors. Now i’m wondering if the google’s policy won’t apply to Google Adwords Ads placed on the Search Engine result pages. Google is doing exactly the same thing that it don’t want others to do. Now what kind of rule is this? someone explain!

Best Search Engine Marketing and Contextual Advertising Blogs

Vamsi — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 13:55:36 +0000

for the SEOs and SEMs, these marketing blogs are a must read.

AdRants (www.adrants.com)
Did-It Frog Blog (www.did-it.com/blog)
Got Ads? (gotads.blogspot.com)
JenSense (www.jensense.com)
Google AdWords & AdSense Blogs
Marketing Vox (www.marketingvox.com)
ProBlogger (www.problogger.net)
Traffick.com

More blog lists:
- Best Search Engine News Blogs
- Best SEO, Search Engine Optimization Blogs
- Best Search Engine Owned Blogs
- Best Search Engine Marketing and Contextual Advertising Blogs
- Best Blog Search Engine Blogs

Best Search Engine Owned Blogs

Vamsi — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 13:52:55 +0000

these blogs are a must read for search engine savvys.

Yahoo Search Blog (ysearchblog.com)
Ask Jeeves Blog (blog.ask.com)
MSN Search Weblog ~~(blogs.msdns.com/msnsearch)~~ is now (http://blogs.msdn.com/livesearch/)
Google Blog – All of Them (googleblog.blogspot.com)