First how do you set up Google Ad Sitelinks?

Ad Sitelinks Setup

Ad Sitelinks are an adwords campaign level setting which reinforces the need for well structured campaigns; your ad sitelinks should be relevant to all ads in that adwords campaign.

Under your adwords Campaign >> Settings scroll down to Ad extensions

Simple, now all you need to do is define the additional sitelinks you want to display below your ad. All you marketers get out there and give your opinions, I know you will all give your opinions anyway, so …

Google is trying to encourage users to interact more with their search space; last year they added the expanding left “search tools” bar for users to filter their searches, but because it all looked the same most of the people I chatted to about this had not noticed that you could now reorder your search results by date or exclude older stuff. I mean that wonder wheel is loads of fun!

Another thing is the search results are occupying more browser window width, as screen resolutions have generally trended wider in the last 10 years.

But what of the new features? None really, just making the stuff they have already built and added more visible for the end user.

Pages / visit ==> UP ==> More Google search ads served ==> Google makes more money ==> Google happy

Well Artlogic have managed to create a jQuery plugin that is at version 0.1 but looks beautifully elegant, just go to spritely.net.

My expectation was that the birds in the header would stay in the header, being so used to Flash where the sprite is bounded by the box it is in. So I was surprised when I clicked further down the page and the bird came to the mouse, Fun stuff!

It would seem that DFP has now come full circle with the integration of Google Ad Manager into DFP as DFP Small Business.

Features listed include:

• Ad trafficking and delivery
• Inventory management
• Revenue optimisation
• Inventory forecasting
• Reporting
• Intuitive user interface
• Significant cost savings
• AND Powered by Google (this is a feature even if it appears arrogant to say it)

Clear benefit to Google is a direct upgrade path to the premium product

Well it is disappointing that Google Apps users have to wait until Google Buzz is released for them. Reading the text on the official announcement it appears that Buzz will be: “We also plan to make Google Buzz available to businesses and schools using Google Apps”

It remains to be seen if this means that only premium Google Apps clients will get this feature. This would be strange however as in my experience it it precisely businesses who are for ever trying to stop their staff from using sites like Facebook, YouTube and such like, so they would not be interested in enabling a Google apps feature that distracts staff from their work.

A friend’s (an ex PHP developer) comment the other day was that PHP isn’t a real programming language because it does not compile, he uses C# for his CMS. But I suppose the mechanism of HipHop confirms what he was saying, as the compiler essentially converts your PHP code or script into C++.

Most exciting is the performance benefits of the compiled PHP code vs un-compiled PHP script. Facebook will be streaming a live tech talk regarding HipHop for PHP this evening at 7:30PM Pacific.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/search-is-getting-more-social.html

What does it offer:

• List of pages that link to the domain/page
• Count of inbound links both follow and no-follow (and the ratio of these)
• Count of domains with inbound links to your domain
• Domain Authority
• mozRank (of course)
• mozTrust
• Anchor text distribution (what are the words that link to the domain)

I like the last one most being both an SEO and SEM person. You can report on what text links to your website or specific page. But the part I like best is that I can use it free for my small clients.

Here is what I did, when inserting an image into the web page I give it the class “swapper” and ame the mouseout or default state of the image -OFF:

<img class="swapper" src="http://xyz.com/coffee-OFF.jpg" />

Then the jQuery function to do the swapping:
<script>
$(document).ready(function(){
// do this on hover for images with the class swapper
$("img.swapper").hover(function() {
//Get the src attribute of the default image
rollSRC = $(this).attr("src");
//Replace -OFF with -OVER for the rollover version
rollOVER = rollSRC.replace('-OFF', '-OVER');
$(this).attr("src", rollOVER );
}, function() {
//revert to the original image
$(this).attr("src", rollSRC );
});
});
</script>

If you are using this on WordPress change all the $ signs to jQuery (eg jQuery(document).ready(function()...)

Now I should be able to explain to the client that they need to:

1. Upload the two image states coffee-OFF.jpg and coffee-OVER.jpg into the same folder (case sensitive)
2. Insert the default image with the class=”swapper”

So Simple how can it go wrong!

Of course I did not come up with this entirely on my own, the following articles all helped me:

http://www.atlantajones.com/web-dev/even-easier-jquery-rollovers/

http://bavotasan.com/tutorials/a-simple-mouseover-hover-effect-with-jquery/

http://www.frodesigns.com/2009/07/wordpress-jquery-image-rollovers/

I am in online marketing and find that I often need to be logged into Three different Google accounts at the same time. Firefox, Opera and IE on Windows gives me two relatively responsive browsers and IE, so that is enough. On Linux I have had Firefox, Opera and Konquerer? Sorry it just does not cut it, it kind of reminds me of old versions of IE which were web browser and file browser all-in-one.

So Google Chrome is a great addition, why do I like it? Google Chrome is lightweight and stable; no plugins or OS hooks, so it loads really fast. It is also standards compliant, so page rendering is not a problem. And that Incognito mode is really great if you do not trust a site (or have other browsing needs you do not want recorded )