Here’s a round-up of recent developments in Google that I found interesting: 1. Analyze Competition Feature In Adwords 2. Report Center In Adwords To Be Retired 3. YouTube Wins Copyright Infringement Battle with Viacom 4. Google Ad News 5. Google Shares Its Opinion On Quality Links > Learn more about our Google Adwords and Online Marketing services.
Adwords will have a new Analyze Competition feature under the Opportunities tab. This allows you to compare your campaign performance to those of your competitors, based on your account’s activity in the last 2 weeks. Depending on your chosen metric, you’ll be shown a bar graph comparing yours to the competition averages (see sample). The data is anonymous and you’ll be able to export this information to a .csv file for further analysis. The Analyze Competition feature is now available only to a small number of advertisers - I don’t see it in my account yet.
The Report Center in Adwords will be soon be retired and the reports moved into the Campaigns tab. This definitely sucks - I’m not sure why Google feel it necessary for advertisers to constantly learn how to cope with such changes instead of focusing on their campaigns. Thankfully, these changes will only affect invidual advertisers and not MCC accounts. Phew!
A US judge in a New York U.S. District Court ruled in favour of Google-owned YouTube, in a billion dollar copyright infringement case against media giant Viacom. Specifically, “the court has decided that YouTube is protected by the safe harbor of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) against claims of copyright infringement. The decision follows established judicial consensus that online services like YouTube are protected when they work cooperatively with copyright holders to help them manage their rights online.” Personally, I think this makes perfect sense because YouTube can’t control what their users (and possibly Viacom execs) upload to their servers, but at the same time, they’re cooperating by removing infringing materials immediately whenever they receive a complaint.
If you’re in the advertising industry and find it hard to keep up with all that’s happening, here’s something for you - Google Ad News. Powered by Google News, it allows you to search, read and subscribe to current news coverage by category, e.g. search, display, mobile, direct marketing, etc. Go check it out!
Google gave some pointers about getting quality backlinks in a recent blog post at Webmaster Central. Although it’s mostly targeted at newbie webmasters and SEOs, there are some useful takeaways like to avoid buying links or make random link exchanges. Directory link-building is still acceptable but you’re encouraged to target established directories that are “on topic, moderated and well structured.” Owners of new websites are also advised to “engage with the community” through forums and blogs, somewhat hinting that forum and blog links are equally important towards your site’s rankings.
