Introducing the Google AdWords Premier SMB Partner Program: Connecting you with partners to help maximize your AdWords campaigns

As a small business, we know you spend a lot of valuable time trying to reach more customers. Many of our advertisers build and create successful AdWords campaigns on their own, and others prefer to work with partners to get their Google advertising up and running. We think it’s important to provide you with the options that work best for your business, which is why we’re excited to announce a partnership program dedicated to helping small- and medium-sized businesses reach new customers with Google AdWords.

The Google AdWords Premier SMB Partner Program (PSP) connects Google’s trusted and experienced partners with businesses to create, manage, and optimize AdWords campaigns that help you reach more customers and make the most of your advertising budget.

Premier SMB Partners bring to the table years of industry knowledge and meet Google’s highest standards for qualification, training, and customer service. Teaming up with a PSP gives you a marketing and search engine advisor who can take the guesswork out of online advertising, to save you time and resources so you can focus on running and growing your business.

Check out the video below to see how a Google AdWords customer named A&D Automatic Gate & Access has worked with a Premier SMB Partner to find new customers with their Google AdWords campaigns.

To learn more about working with a Premier SMB Partner, visit our website, www.google.com/ads/premiersmbpartner/.

Posted by Todd Rowe, Director of Global Channel Sales

Small business and the power of video, announcing “My Business Story” by Google and American Express

(Cross-posted on the Inside AdWords Blog)

Let’s say you’re a custom sneaker maker. Or you run a yoga retreat center. Or maybe you even sell vegan Vietnamese out of a gourmet food truck. Your business has its own unique story to tell. If you had the chance to show the world what your business is all about - from its founding roots to the ways it changes your customers’ lives, would you take it?

Today you have that chance. We’re pleased to be presenting “My Business Story®” alongside American Express. “My Business Story” is a program for small businesses to tell their stories through video, leading up to the second annual “Small Business Saturday”, a day set aside to encourage communities to spend and support local businesses by shopping small.

And since Google research has shown that companies who use video can expect better customer engagement and retention, we are launching a new video tool so that small business owners can create personalized, professional-quality videos about their business.

Once you’ve got your video crafted, business owners are invited to submit it to the contest for an opportunity to appear in the YouTube homepage ad on Friday, November 25th, which is viewed by an estimated 22 million people in the United States every day. Thirty-six small businesses will be featured in the ad and will receive an online ad campaign worth $5,000 from Google and American Express. All submissions will be viewed and judged by an independent panel of experts. The deadline for contest entry is Tuesday, November 15, but entry is not required to use the My Business Story editing tool.

Happy editing! We’re eager to see what you come up with.

Posted by Marisa Currie, Product Marketing Manager

Google Apps highlights – 10/22/2011

This is part of a regular series of Google Apps updates that we post every couple of weeks. Look for the label “Google Apps highlights" and subscribe to the series. - Ed.

In the spirit of helping people work better together, over the last few weeks we made big improvements to Google presentations, introduced a version of Google Docs optimized for Android tablets, and enabled more dynamic content in Google Sites. We also celebrated the fact that Silicon Valley has gone Google!

Google presentations reloaded
On Tuesday we launched a completely rebuilt version of our web-based presentations application, so you can build more beautiful presentations together with colleagues and classmates. Google presentations now lets you make great-looking slides with animated builds, advanced slide transitions and better support for drawings, tables and themes. Plus, we made it easier to create presentations with others, without the hassles of attachments. Your whole team can work together in the same version of a presentation at the same time, and you can see who’s doing what, chat with others, and see a full revision history at any moment in time.

Google Docs on Android tablets
We’ve made it faster and easier to work with Google Docs on Android tablets with a new version of the Android application that takes full advantage of larger screen real estate. The three-panel view lets you browse filters and collections, see your document list and view file thumbnails and details simultaneously. You can get the Google Docs Android app for free from the Android Market.

Charts in Google Sites
Charts are often created in spreadsheets, but sometimes you want charts to appear in other places, like your team or project sites. In Google Sites, now you can select “Chart” from the “Insert” menu, and navigate to the Google Spreadsheet where your chart or data is located. You can also choose to have your site’s chart update in real-time when someone updates the underlying spreadsheet.

New look for Google Docs and Sites
We started rolling out a new look in Google Docs a couple months ago, and now this new design is available throughout all our collaboration tools. In addition to a cleaner, simpler design, we’ve made it more clear when your files are being auto-saved and added new icons to help you see at-a-glance who your docs are shared with. You can also customize the overall “density” of screen information, a great feature if you want to fit more onto a smaller display.

Who’s gone Google?
Successful small businesses tend to stay laser-focused on improving their core businesses, without getting distracted by peripheral activities that don’t make them more competitive. For example, most small businesses don’t want to spend time or money developing in-house expertise to run email and other IT systems. Case in point: 97 percent of Business Insider’s “Silicon Valley Startups to Watch” use Google Apps.

More than 5,000 businesses and thousands of other organizations start using Google Apps every single day, and more of our customers have shared their stories recently so you can hear why. A warm welcome goes out to Philz Coffee, Mid-Atlantic Door Group, Bradford & Barthel, LLP and the City of Mesquite, Nevada.

I hope these product updates and customer stories help you and your organization get even more from Google Apps. For more details and the latest news, check out the Google Apps Blog.

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

Weekly Inspiration

110bch, originally uploaded by River Valley Design.

Submit your photos for consideration as a Weekly Inspiration by adding them to the Flickr Group.

Renewing as an Etsy Marketing Strategy

Before Etsy switched their default search to relevancy you could pay $.20 to renew an item and get bumped to the top of the search results (which benefited larger sellers who could afford to spend the money to renew dozens of times a day). Relevancy search hasn't been a benefit to every seller but it is a much more fair system for sellers of all sizes, the quality of your titles and tags matters more than your budget for renewals.

Renewing items isn't totally useless though. Lets look at a few ways people find items:

• Search: Relevancy is king, if your items aren't relevant to the search you're unlikely to rank highly in results. Your titles and tags are the most important things here, however recency still plays a part so newer items that are highly relevant are more likely to show up at the top of search results.
• Categories: Etsy's category pages are still sorted by recency so people browsing that way will still see the most recent items listed or renewed.
• Your Shop Home Page: Renewed items get pushed to the top of your shop which makes it look fresher for returning visitors. You could also use the rearrange shop tool every day or so to do this as well.
• Etsy Mini: If you use this widget on your blog or other web page it is sorted by newest items (unless you choose to show featured items)
• Facebook Fan Page App: Etsy's official Facebook app puts a tab on your fan page that displays your shop ordered by most recent items.
• RSS Feed: Your shop feed (found at http://www.etsy.com/shop/yourshopname/rss ) can be used for automatically posting new or renewed items to various services like Twitter, Facebook, email newsletters, etc.

As you can see if you rely only on Etsy internal traffic then renewing helps but is limited, the vast majority of people browsing Etsy use the search rather than categories so making sure you have good titles and tags is a better use of your time than renewing items. If you use external tools then the impact of renewing can be greater. Should you rely on renewing to bring you all your sales? Absolutely not. Should it be a part of your overall strategy? Yes, renewing a handful of items regularly that are close to expiring is a good idea.

Renewing Tools
You can save yourself some time by scheduling your renewing using the following tools:

Clockbot - Lets you schedule specific items to renew, this is a free tool (not counting the $.20 listing fee from Etsy). You can schedule for days or weeks in advance but every item and time has to be selected for each scheduled renewal which can be time consuming.
Etsy on Sale - You can buy unlimited renewing options in monthly increments, I use this tool just because I can schedule renewing to occur at set intervals automatically (every 9 hours currently). It costs a small amount of money but I personally find it worthwhile for the convenience.

Small businesses in NYC help fight breast cancer with Pink Pin

This October and November, Google and Susan G. Komen for the Cure are taking the fight against breast cancer to New York City with the Pink Pin initiative. The Pink Pin initiative is a way for businesses to support the fight against breast cancer by encouraging consumers to donate to the search for a cure.

Physical businesses who register at PinkPin.com will be marked with a Pink Pin on our map. Customers who visit these businesses will be able to donate to Susan G. Komen for the Cure at stores via mobile phones. The more customers businesses reach, the more of an impact Pink Pin will have—and the closer we’ll be to a cure. We’re also encouraging businesses and consumers to inspire others by sharing their stories about the cause online at www.pinkpin.com. Our goal is to raise hope, raise spirits and raise more than $100,000 for Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

So get involved, get on the map, share your stories and be a part of Pink Pin. With the support of small businesses like yours, Google and Susan G. Komen for the Cure can help take breast cancer off the map.

Posted by Ria Tobaccowala, Associate Product Marketing Manager

Faster updates to local business listings

(Cross-posted on the Lat Long Blog.)

Our goal to create a digital representation of the real world doesn’t just mean a birds’ eye view through Google Earth, or a street-level view through Google Maps. It means providing a local view as well, and tools like Google Places help people across the globe learn about and connect with the places and businesses in their immediate areas.

We use a variety of authoritative sources to give users relevant local information about places that might interest them, including data from partners, users, and directly from business owners who verify their organic listings via Google Places for business. In addition, we always want to know about changes to a business that should be reflected on our local search products. That’s why we have the “Report a problem” tool on Google Maps, and also enable users to click on the "Edit this place” link at the top of the Place page to provide updates to a business listing.

And while some business owners may have previously verified their organic listing to ensure that their company information was correct at that particular moment in time, we recognize that amidst all the work that goes into running a successful enterprise, remembering to update their Google Places account may not always be top of mind. Oftentimes, a neighborhood local or a loyal customer is eager to help their favorite business update its online presence when it moves into a bigger space across the street, or extends its hours for the summer season.

That’s why today, we’re introducing a new process that helps streamline the way updates are made to potentially outdated or incorrect business listings. Previously, verified business listings would always reflect the information provided by its owner - even if we received data about an updated name, address, or hours of operation. But now, if a user provides new information about a business they know -- or if our system identifies information from another source on the web that may be more recent than the data the business owner provided via Google Places --  the organic listing will automatically be updated and the business owner will be sent an email notification about the change. Without requiring any effort on the part of the business owner, we’ll take measures to keep their listing up-to-date if our system determines that the edit is accurate. Of course, if the business owner disagrees or has even more recent information, they can always directly log in to their Google Places account and make further edits.

Online ads from business owners using our AdWords or AdWords Express programs will not be affected by these automatic updates. Ads will continue to display the business information the owner has provided in Google Places.

We hope these new features help users find the most accurate local information available, and make it even easier for business owners to manage their online presence. If you’re a business owner with additional questions about your specific listing, please consult the Google Places for business Help Center or visit our user support forum.

Posted by Lior Ron, Google Places Product Manager

Don't be Fooled by Big Numbers in Ad Stats

I originally wrote this as a section of my Squidoo lens "Using Etsy Search Ads to Promote Your Shop" but I think it's so important I want to post it here too. While this is written for the new Etsy Search Ads it applies equally to Google Adwords, Project Wonderful, or any other advertising you run. To get the most for your money and to be the most effective you have to look objectively at the numbers.

Don't be Fooled by Big Numbers
Lots of impressions and clicks doesn't mean a good CTR. 

Here's a perfect example. For 6 days I ran "polymer clay" as a keyword for my ads. This is a term that you would assume would perform well for my items because I make polymer clay jewelry. It also garnered the most impressions and clicks for that time frame.

However when you actually do the math and look at the CTR for this keyword you can see that it wasn't actually a good keyword for me to use with a CTR of under 1%. In contrast, over the same period of time "squid" received 359 impressions and 8 clicks for a CTR of 2.23%, "octopus" had a CTR of 2.36% and my best keyword in terms of click through rate was "halloween jewelry" which had a CTR of 3.64% (though being a seasonal term will be just about useless for most of the year).

Be willing to waste a little bit of money to run ads for one week to determine click through rates then mercilessly eliminate those with low click through percentages. Those with low impressions (less than 100) and no clicks be willing to let run a bit longer to see if they do, a keyword that only get 30 views in 2 weeks but get 1 click may not be getting much visibility but when it does it's effective.

NOTE: Since the changes eliminating low performing keywords went into effect this morning the overall CTR for my ads today has improved dramatically. Next week I'll do another follow up with data from a longer time frame.

Introducing a new support feature for Google Places for business

We want to make it easy for you to get found on Google. The best way to do that is to add your business information to Google Places for business to make sure all your information is up to date.

But sometimes, you need a little help along the way to ensure that you can be found on Google. And lately, we’ve been hearing from many of you that you’d like a little more of this kind of help. That’s why we’re excited to share a recent change to our Help Center.

Now when you visit the Help Center homepage, you’ll notice a new section called “Fix a problem.” Click the problem that applies to you. We’ll walk you through some questions to help you get to the bottom of the issue, giving you tips to help resolve any issues you experience. And sometimes, if you still need additional help, you can send us a note. Fill out the contact form, hit submit, and someone from our team will get back to you soon.

Here’s a video to help you get started, featuring Derek, a member of our Google Places team:



Posted by Joel Headley, Consumer Operations