So needless to say I was pretty excited to get an email a while ago about the new Yahoo Search Marketing Desktop tool.

I just downloaded it today and have only played with it a bit, but so far I’m pretty happy with it. I think what I like most about it is that its layout and interface is pretty similar to AdWords Editor in a lot of ways – unlike MS’s AdCenter Desktop tool, which confused the crap out me at first (and to be honest, still does sometimes).

Editing keyword bids and ad text will certainly be much easier now, allowing me to get more work done for a client per month than I used to be able to. And, I was happy to note, they seem to have features similar to AdWords Editor’s “advanced keyword bid and ad changes,” which I find INCREDIBLY useful and time saving.

BUT – I will reserve further praise until I use it more in depth.

Are Yahoo & Microsoft Teaming Up Against Mac?

Now that Yahoo and Microsoft have formed their “search alliance” I can’t help but wonder what that means for us Mac users. I already know I can’t use AdCenter Desktop on the Mac without setting up parallels or special programs, which I leave up to my tech guys.

And now on the FAQs page about Yahoo’s Desktop Editor, I read “The tool has been officially certified by Yahoo! to work on the Windows platform only. Using the tool on another platform, such as Mac, that is capable of running Adobe AIR applications will work, but issues found will not be supported by Yahoo!.”

So basically you can use it on a Mac (as I have) but there’s no guarantee that something won’t go wrong…and you can’t rely on Yahoo to help you if it does.

Now obviously Microsoft’s not trying to produce Mac compatible downloads…but now Yahoo too? Look’s like their search alliance is against more than just Google….

I will of course, qualify that by saying that I’m not sure if any of Yahoo’s other tools or downloads were built to be Mac compatible – I’m not typically a big fan of Yahoo tools.

Bottom line: Support Macs Yahoo! I don’t care if you’re in bed with Microsoft, Macs need love too!

Now, I won’t go into too much detail, since I don’t want to piss Google off, but since I was taken off guard by some of the questions, I think it’s only fair I share my opinion of it.
First off, I did study in the Google Advertising Fundamentals Exam Learning Center – but I basically did a review of the outline, skimmed the info and only read indepth on topics I felt I needed a little extra help in.

That was a mistake. While I am confident in my ability to use and build Adwords campaigns for our client’s benefits, there are still details of the program I could learn more about, and that certainly came up within the test.

For example, while I am familiar with Adwords’s billing policies, I don’t have the details memorized. I would suggest understanding their billing cycle before you take the test. Actually, my biggest recommendation is to simply study the Learning Center topics and take any example quizzes you can find.

Adwords Qualified Professional Study Guide

But if you’re like me, and your experience is more with the actual management and optimization of campaigns, here’s a particular list of subjects you may want to work on:

1. Billing details, such as the billing cycle, where to go to change preferences, etc.
2. The tabs/navigation of the Adwords interface and what each section includes.
3. The pros and cons of the different keyword match types
4. Editorial and policy guidelines for trademarks, ad formats, etc.
5. Different ways of “targeting” your campaign
6. The difference between Search Network and Content Network, and their individual policies. (Hint: Look into any difference in rules or approval policies in the Google Search Network between Google search results pages and the search results pages of other properties within the search network).

I think that’s enough for now – if I give too much away, Google might revoke my Google Adwords Qualified Professional status and I worked too dang hard to give up my pretty logo now!

Speaking of which, apparently it takes 1-3 days for the passed exam to show up in your Company profile. Guess I’ll just have to be patient.

While I suppose that’s great news for Adsense users, as a PPC Specialist, I’m more worried about what it means for my Adwords campaigns, specifically when it comes to the content network. More competition for ad space means higher CPCs obviously…but I’m trying to wrap my head around any other repercussions for my content network campaigns, either good or bad.

If I’m having to mess more with CPC bidding to keep my ads in prominent positions, it’s obviously going to increase some time spent on PPC management initially…if the third-party networks come running to jump on board that is. Supposedly Google will have some pretty high standards in the certification process.

So what does everybody else think? Besides the obvious increase in competition and CPCs, how else will our Adwords campaigns be affected? I’m particularly interested in anyone who can think of some positive changes it could have.

I suppose one pro for us Adword-ers is that if potential revenue earnings for Adsense publishers go up, more and more people might jump on the Adsense bandwagon, which means more sites for us to advertise on and more impressions for our ads- but I dunno, seems like a bit of a stretch for me.

I was actually just doing a search for our new Universal Search Optimization Chart to see if it was showing in google images and noticed the sponsored ads appearing.

The kicker is that I wasn’t even signed into google, which means that these results may now show all the time.  What does this mean for the industries that internet marketing focus on? What about artists and others who want to sell their “prints” and things?  Will Google offer to sell them for you?  Does this ruin the algorithmic benefit to Google image search in any way?

I have outlined in the video how you can see where your ads are placed in certain cities around the nation as well as spy on your competition a bit.

Here’s a text recap:

1. Go to The Google Adwords Targeting Preview Tool
2. Enter your keyword into the box on the left
3. Select the state or country or territory on the top right that you want to “spy” on
4. Refine the location to as detailed as the city level

Let me know if you have questions or other applications below.

Now that I have encouraged you to stand in line at the polls, I guess I too need to step away from my desk and do my civic duty. Before I logout for the day and go stand in line with countless others getting their vote on, I thought it’d be nice to recap how the candidates used internet marketing in their campaigns.

I wasn’t THE first person to blog about this, but I did write a post here on the ProspectMX blog in September discussing 2008 Election Internet Marketing. If you’re into reading about election marketing, you might like to check it out.

Here’s some more reading on internet marketing and the election. Oh… and don’t try to decipher my vote by reading these posts. By no means should the links below be taken as an indicator of who I’m voting for. Thanks.

Now… onto the Link Love!

• Election Day Paid Search Comparison (Direct Online Marketing)
• Swing State Comparison for McCain and Obama (Hitwise)
• Obama McCain SEO – My 2008 Election Prediction (Portent Interactive)
• Obama McCain Keyphrases Used On Search Engines (Planet Chiropractic)
• Why Obama Kills It Online, McCain Not So Much (Stephen Espinosa)

It’s funny to me when I realize that even the largest of companies hire inexperienced pay per click people (this goes to American Airlines)… unless… of course they just put AA.com as their “test”.

Anyway… there are experts out there, people! You could call us, for example. Just a suggestion.

For starters, each candidate is using the essential social media and networking sites – Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, YouTube, Digg. Obama has the appearance of being more “tech savvy,” thanks to his Twitter profile with over 78,000 followers.

Obama’s use of the web as a driver for donations has been well executed. In a random selection of ways to get to Obama’s online home – Google organic search results, Google PPC links, direct website visits, and mobile searches by Blackberry – our team found four custom lead generation forms to fill out before hitting the main page. Two were e-mail capture forms, two were for donations.

Only one pay-per-click ad led to a donation form on the McCain site, but the Arizona Senator isn’t neglecting the internet. The Wall Street Journal noticed McCain’s camp is using an ambush pay-per-click campaign. Search “Joe Biden” and check out the top sponsored listings – “Joe Biden on Obama” links to McCain’s site. Very sneaky, sir.

McCain’s campaign is placing a heavy focus on this year’s election issues with its PPC. Search “housing crisis” and “U.S. economy” in Google… McCain will have a PPC ad there – Obama won’t.

The internet is definitely playing a huge role in this year’s election. Its cool to see how each candidate has found a completely different way to use the power of the mighty internet and search engines to their advantage.

Any other cool internet marketing tools the candidates are using that we missed? Drop us a line below.

This couldn’t be further from the truth! For a few years now, Google has enabled businesses with a local audience to market only in areas where they want to target. In other words, if you are a plumber and want to come up with someone types in “how to replace a toilet”, you can create an adwords campaign that targets that specific keyword exclusively in the area that you have chosen to market.

Yahoo is now offering the same type of thing as well and I believe that Google is coming along with it.

One other important thing that I noticed is this. If you use the city specific local advertising option, it will also target keywords that people type in along with the city name. So, if you would type in “Lancaster plumbers”, the ad would come up in Lancaster, even though you never put “Lancaster plumbers” in as a keyword into your adwords account. This, however, does not seem to work for other forms of local targeting such as state or regional.

Let me know if you have experienced something different than this.