Under the AdWords Hood Series: AdWords Policy

Director of Engineering for Advertising at Google, David Baker and AdWords Specialist Lindsay Brownell hosted a Hangout on Air yesterday as the first installment of the four-part “Under the AdWords Hood” series. This series sheds light on topics that you chose in a vote on the Google Ads page!

David and Lindsay broke AdWords Policy down into and delved into three areas:

1. Ad Policy
2. Landing Page Policy
3. Account Policy

You can watch the full 30-minute Hangout on Air below, or on the Google Business YouTube channel.

To learn more about how to get started with AdWords, visit our Help Center, check out the AdWords Community forum, or call us at 866-2-GOOGLE if you already have an AdWords account.

And remember to tune in to the live stream of our next Hangout on Air at 11 a.m. PDT, January 24th 2013 when we go Under the Hood and learn all about Ad Rank.

Posted by Courtney Pannell and Divya Vishwanath, AdWords Support Team

Insights for 2013: Understanding Your Customers & The Full Value of Digital

(cross-posted from the Analytics blog)

We’re just a week into 2013, and we’re undeniably living in the new multi-screen age. Our day-to-day interactions with technology—and our expectations—have increased dramatically. We’re no longer content to wait until later to buy shoes or schedule travel or find a hot spot to eat. Technology lets us act now, and we expect reliable results. In fact, we’ve become so dependent on being connected all the time that 43% of U.S. adults would be willing to give up beer for a month if it meant they could keep accessing the Internet on their smartphones, and 36% said they’d be willing to give up chocolate.*

What does this mean for you? Many businesses have fallen behind consumer behavior—in a world where people look first to mobile devices and real-time streams, the digital journey has grown more complex, and it’s become more challenging to gain a clear picture of these interactions. As a marketer or analyst, your success depends on adapting to this new reality. We’re working to provide tools that let you connect the dots, so you can regain visibility into your customers’ preferences and behaviors and take advantage of the full value of digital.

Holistic Measurement: Capture the full customer experience
Your customers are active all the time and everywhere, so you should be as well. To truly win moments that matter across all screens and situations, you must acknowledge, and measure, all relevant touch-points. For example, are you running related marketing efforts across email, display, and search ads? Do you see customers performing some tasks more frequently on smartphones while other tasks are more common on laptop? Rather than evaluating these programs and behaviors separately, your measurement strategy should focus on connecting the dots between these consumer moments. Consider your overall business goals and then measure the role that each touch-point plays in achieving those goals, keeping in mind the complementary effects of multiple channels and devices.

Active measurement: Plan ahead and optimize throughout
Harnessing the power of location, intent and social connections is possible today, and smart marketers are always on, always optimized—using customer signals to create winning experiences for their brand. Active measurement is about quickly acting on the insights you uncover as you go, but more importantly, it’s about good measurement planning. This proactive piece is often overlooked, even by the savviest marketers and analysts. To effectively measure, you must define expectations about how your customer will interact with your brand before you look at the numbers. Then, question any surprising results. Is it normal or strange for your business to have a 3% conversion rate? Is it good or bad if event tracking shows that 3,000 people view a video on your homepage in a single day? Are your TV spots driving viewers to your website in Real-Time, or do you see more traffic at other times? Are you bringing together data sources and devices holistically? Active measurement means examining real human behavior and influences instead of reporting the same old data on clicks or bounce-rates.

Media-Agnostic Measurement: Give credit where it’s due
As technology usage has expanded, patterns of research and influence have become more diverse (with many consumers consulting 10 or more sources before a purchase)*—but also more identifiable. In the new digital age, it’s no longer realistic or smart to judge campaigns solely by the final interaction using a last-click model, or to think only about single-device or single-session interactions. Customers move fluidly across channels and devices. To truly understand the value of your digital investments, you have to overhaul your conversion goals to capture all the large and small behaviors that lead to business success. Once you have visibility into the customer journey, you can begin assigning credit with attribution models to determine your best channel and investment mix. Next, optimize your programs and run controlled experiments to see how you could improve your results even further. It’s an active, ongoing process.

So, make a New Year’s resolution to take a more proactive approach: consider and give credit to all the interactions in the customer journey, and act on your measurement insights. Throughout 2013 we’ll be sharing practical advice to help you dive in and join your customers in the always-on world. Good luck!

Posted by Paul Muret, Director of Engineering, Google Analytics

*Source for statistics in this post:
http://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/insights/facts/marketing-objective/

IT Change Management - The 7 Steps for Effective Change

Technology updates and upgrades are part of the IT infrastructure life cycle. However despite the best intentions of the person(s) responsible for changing upgrading or modifying a system or solution, deploying changes can be one of the most difficult challenges IT teams face. Often resistance to change comes within the organisation itself, which is risk adverse, getting stakeholders on-board with a major change sometimes requires substantial skills in people management. That being said, this article describes the necessary steps to execute an effective change within any IT operations department. The components of a successful change management practice should include as a minimum: Reason for the change Benefit to the end user Disruption to the business Time required to complete the change Resources needed to complete the change A secure backout plan if the change is unsuccessful Change approval Changes of any type should be conducted outside normal business hours, or at times when user traffic is at its minimum. If you are operating in a managed service model, where alarm monitoring occurs, the change needs to include acceptance from the network operations supervisor, if it is going to create management alarms. At times, change management is required to correct issues in software or hardware configuration. The ability to track those changes for auditing purposes becomes necessary, especially in the event of a roll-back or backout due to unforeseen failure. Ensuring availability of server logs or system state information becomes critical if an organisation uses automated change agents within the network. In case of large networks, automating the process of distributing software updates or configuration changes can save hundreds of man hours over a calendar year, However, evaluating whether the change was completely successful will depend on the quality of the available audit information. Most network change management suites consist of a modelling application that allows organisations to build the complete network in a virtual environment that runs the exact same configuration as the live network. This allows the simulated deployment of a complete configuration change to be evaluated before it is committed to the live network. If your organisation doesn't have the luxury of a fully automated change suite, or the type of planned change cannot be simulated then the following steps can be followed to realise an effective network change. Reason for the Change Regardless of the change you are planning, it is important to inform all the relevant parties involved the reason for the change. Usually the reason will determine when the change will occur, and will be dependent on it's importance to the users of the system. Usually taken for granted, but here are the questions which will be asked. Is an outage required? Can the change occur without outage? What is the benefit/impact to the end user? Can the change be merged with other planned change events? How critical is the change? If the change is major, it is important that sufficient resources are allocated beforehand, usually a project manager or some other responsible person should produce a change plan which all stakeholders can agree upon. Change Risk Register Many change requests have dependencies which can affect the overall change, sometimes the simplest things can cause a planned change to completely fail, such as site access, or cable length being too short. The risk register should contain a list of concerns which the initial stakeholders provided during the initial meeting. It is critical that open items on the risk register are closed or satisfied before the actual change occurs. Responsibility Matrix This is simply a list of who, what and when. Prior to the changes, many things must occur first. For example, purchase orders may have to be raised for external resources, equipment may require purchasing and some additional planning may be required. The responsibility matrix covers the task and when it must occur. Make sure names of people are recorded by each task and a completion date is also included. Change Simulation Depending on how critical the change is, it may require evaluating in a test environment first. This can be useful to determine how much time is required to effect the change, and to iron out any unforeseen problems beforehand. A change to swap a copper Ethernet connection to fiber is an excellent candidate for change simulation especially when redundant connections are involved, and fail over doesn't work as expected. User Notification Communicate well in advance with the end users, is vital to any successful change. Multiple announcements should be sent to affected users by email, and should contain as much information as possible, but as a minimum must include. Reason for the Change Benefit to the user The outage time The Backout Plan Change management is a bit like robbing a bank, usually it happens in the middle of the night and there is only a short amount of time. There needs to be hard time limits attached to each activity. Ultimately it is the project/change manager who decides to execute the backout if the change exceeds 75% of the allotted time. Questions to ask stakeholders regarding the backout plan prior to the change. Can we provide 100% service restoration in the event we have to backout? What logs or information can be captured to report to management as to the reason for backout execution? Is there a point of no return where the backout plan is ineffective Change Closure Report This final aspect of most changes is often overlooked. It should be included especially if similar change events are planned for the future. The report should include a list of events which went well, events which proved difficult, and events which could be done better next time.

The Business January 9th 2013, The "There’s GOLD in This Here Show!!" Edition

 The Business has elemental riches! Our lush lands are bursting with precious metals. You can’t dip a pan in our rivers without coming up with gold. ..

HEATHER GOLD!

Our guest this week is none other than sweet cookie Heather Gold.
Heather Gold is a writer, performer and audience involver whom boingboing calls "brilliant" and "one of our favourite comedians." She scales conversation and public intimacy. Her mission is to create a space and a world where we can be ourselves together. Heather emcees and performs for venues and clients across North America, and contributes to magazines and newspapers like The San Jose Mercury News, the Toronto Globe & Mail and CBC Radio. Heather hosts the weekly podcast Tummelvision.tv the leading show about social engagement in a networked world. She’s been quoted and covered in places like WIRED, Salon and NPR.

Of course, your regulars will be there as well. Though Mike Drucker will always be IN The Business, he is off to New York to make TV funny, so he can’t be in The Business every week anymore. We are very pleased to welcome our new Businessman, Nato Green! Nato has long been a favorite guest of The Business, he will continue to delight as a regular member.

Come join us! Sean “Silver” Keane, Bucky “Bismuth” Sinister, Alex “Mercury” Koll, Caitlin “Palladium” Gill and “PLATINUM” Nato Green.
We sell out! Get there early.

BYOBeryllium.

(JK BYOBURRRRRRITO!!!!)

Make some New Year’s resolutions for your business

Cross posted from the Official Google Blog.

When Melodie Bishop heard about our Get Your Business Online program (an initiative that makes it fast, easy and free for U.S. businesses to get online), she jumped at the opportunity to turn her hobby of creating Chicago-themed gift baskets into a full-time business. Since launching her website, Send Them Chicago, this past summer, Melodie has seen a 70 percent increase in new customers.

Melodie Bishop with one of her gift baskets

As the holidays wrap up and the New Year starts, millions of business owners just like Melodie are thinking about how they can grow in 2013. For many, this means getting found and connecting with customers on the web.

Yet often, it can be difficult to know where to start. That’s why we’re helping business owners create a list of New Year’s resolutions for 2013.

Let us know what you hope to accomplish in the New Year. Do you want to get your basic business information online? Or do you already have a website and want to reach more customers? Once you select your goals, we’ll create a customized list of resolutions with resources to help you stick to it.

In the U.S., 58 percent of small businesses don’t have a website, but 97 percent of Internet users look online for local products and services. So it’s not surprising that businesses with a web presence are expected to grow 40 percent faster than those without. Creating a list of resolutions for your business may just be one of the easiest things you can do to help your business grow.

We’ll see you on the web.

P.S. If you aren’t a small business owner, it’s not too late to give that business you know the gift of a free website.

Posted by Aditya Mahesh, Product Marketing, Get Your Business Online

The Business January 2nd 2013, The “2013- the Exciting Sequel to 2012 Starring John Cusack” Edition

Roland Emmerich guest directs this very exciting edition of The Business, in which we will face off with Godzilla in a terrible storm that happened cause we flooded the atmosphere with carbons while we were fighting aliens for our Independence.

We have guest stars to help us! (and they are the good kind that will survive til the end of the movie!


… OR WILL THEY?!?!)

Jules Posner!

Jules Posner is a stand up comedian and San Francisco native. He has been described as a comedian who, “puts the ‘b’ in subtle”. Jules performs all over the country and is a regular at the SF Punchline. Jules Posner has been featured on Jokes.com, Hulu, and SF Sketchfest 2011-2012.

Tony Camin!

Tony has appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Jimmy Kimmel Live, Real Time with Bill Maher, and lots of others that have been cancelled. He's has performed at The Just For Laughs festival in Montreal as well as The HBO US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, as well as the Melbourne Comedy festival in Australia. Tony has written for programs on NBC, VH1, and Comedy Central. In addition to being co-creator/ performer of "The Marijuana-Logues", he can also be seen as a correspondent for "The Media Project", on IFC.

This Big Big show is just $5. You can even bring a friend for free!!!!!!!$!!! with one of our two-for-one coupons.
http://thebusinesscomedy.blogspot.com/

We sell out, get there early for a seat!

BYONYBurrito

13 business tips to countdown to 2013, Part III

Happy 2013! Over the past 13 days, we've been posting one tip daily on the Google+ Your Business page to countdown to January 1st and get your business ready for the new year. We previously shared our first and second set of five tips, and our final three of our top 13 tips are below. Now you can turn some of these tips into New Year's resolutions for your business!

Tip #11: Schedule due dates for tasks in emails on Google Calendar
When your inbox is overflowing, you don’t always have time to follow up on tasks discussed in emails immediately. And since you’ve already seen the email, you might not want to mark it as unread.

Make your workflow easier by saving emails that you need to follow up on in your Gmail Tasks list. When you have the email open, just click More > Add to Tasks and it will be automatically added to your list. Click “Related email” under the task to open the email whenever you need.

You can even schedule a due date--click on > next to the task then on the Calendar icon. When you select “Back to list” the date will be saved on the list and you’ll also get a reminder in your Google Calendar so you don’t miss a deadline!

Tip #12: Save online images right to Google Drive
Summarized from the Google Drive blog

If your business ever saves files from websites, you know it can cumbersome--right click on an image, download it to your computer, open it and rename it, save the file, and maybe even attach it to an email.
Instead, streamline the process with the Save to Drive Chrome extension, which lets you capture content from anywhere on the web and store it neatly online in Google Drive. Once you install the extension, just right click on the file or click on the Drive extension icon to save:

• an image of an entire page or an image of the visible page
• the HTML source code
• a Web archive (.mht)

After you save with the extension, you’ll see options to immediately open the file in Drive, rename it, or view it in your Drive list, where you can do things like add it to a folder or share it with others. You can install it from the Chrome Webstore.

Tip #13: Use Google Maps on your website
Bring the power of Google Maps directly to your website! You can embed a simple map, a set of driving directions, a local search result, or a My Map (http://goo.gl/CcWDN) created by another user. Here's how:

1. Ensure that the map you'd like to embed appears in the current map display.
2. Click the link icon at the top of the left panel.
3. In the box that appears, copy the HTML under 'Paste HTML to embed in website,' and paste it into the source code of your website or blog.

If you'd like to adjust the size of the map before you embed it, click “Customize and preview embedded map”, select your preferred size, and take a look at the preview map. Once you're happy with what you see, copy the HTML that appears in the box at the bottom of the window. For more advanced maps, learn about the Google Maps API: http://developers.google.com/maps/

Posted by the Google and Your Business blog Team