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ah, i've been waiting for some feedback. i wonder what made it flag.

answered, thanks.

In Google Adwords if the destination URL is changed then it resets the history for that keyword and the campaign. Was Wondering if simply adding the utm_ parameter in Adcenter would have the same result...

If you are using any paid search services other than Google or Bing, I would strongly look into click fraud detection. The easiest way to do this is on your own end... First, you want to make sure that it is a real user, not a bot. You can check the following... 1. Does the user carry a referrer? 2. Does the user accept cookies? 3. Does the user allow javascript? 4. Does the user allow flash? The above are some simple tests - neither of them individually conclusive - that can test if it is a bot. Secondly, you want to make sure it is not the same user over and over again, by tracking IP addresses. Third, you should make sure that your clicks aren't being generated in small iframes or popunders - the easiest way to do this is with javascript and capturing the window size and/or whether self.window = top.window. Fourth, you should track what users are doing once they reach your site. If your conversion rate is less than 1/10th of Google AdWords or Bing, you should be concerned. You can always use a third party software like AdWatcher, which is pretty good. It can get buggy in large volumes though. Good Luck.

Thanks!   Interesting that newegg is bidding on its own brand to make this offer.

Be careful with anyone who does pay for performance that they are doing white hat seo - look at work they have done for others thru yahoo site explorer and ask for references- you dont want to wake up one day and see you have been penalized by google

Thanks for the advice. I agree that someone who knows our business would have a better chance of optimizing our campaigns -- just not sure if we have the resources to accomplish this. As far as the work required by the agency, it would involve only the campaign setup (research & building the campaigns) and optimization after introduction. They will not be doing any landing page optimization. I guess I feel $2k is a high setup fee to charge when the monthly ad spend is only $2k. I'm not too worried about the $750 management fee, which is the fee that will be applied to the agency's optimization efforts -- but if the traffic is only enough to recommend $2k in ad spend, are they really doing $2k worth of "setup" work? I guess if we had a higher ad spend, it might make more sense to start the campaign, since the setup efforts would remain the same but with a bigger budget.

I am guessing you are looking for sites to use as examples so you can emulate your site after them? Each site is unique for various reasons. In general I would recommend wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Sudan  Things to notice: the URL is not technology dependent (i.e. no .php or .html after the page name) the URL matches the page's title the URL is a flat structure the page's title is a H1 tag and is the first content you see on the page on most wiki pages, the very first words of the wiki article is the page's title. You will also see the page's title repeated several times throughout the article, and in various forms. In this example you see "South Sudan", "Southern Sudan", etc. the wiki content uses consistent anchor text to link to other pages within the site. For example, anytime you see "landlocked country" in this wiki article, or any other one, it is a hyperlink to wiki's "landlocked country" page. There are no hidden secrets here. It is about taking all of the SEO basics found in the Beginner's Guide to SEO, then applying them consistently throughout your site, along with providing great content which is up-to-date. If you do that, you will find your website on page 1 of search results. I could also suggest the New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/, but you cannot copy them as their methods will probably not work for you. For example, they have over 400 links on their home page. They have a DA and PA of 100, which allows them to support that many links. If you were to copy them thinking "well NYT does it and they are successful" it would simply not work for you.

Thank you Bevelwise that makes sense.

While your #3 option is tempting, I can offer a few other ideas: install Microsoft Translate on your site. It is an improvement over Google Translate in a couple of key areas. The widget can auto-detect a user's language and translate pages automatically if you wish. If you site requires users to login, Google Translate will log the user out when a user requests a translation. The logout will occur on any and all pages. MS Translate allows users to remain logged in to your site. while you may not be able to translate to every language, you should determine which language is used by the largest percent of your customers and add that one language to your site as an option. The process may take time, but when it is complete you can then consider adding additional languages. If you can cover Russian, German, French and Spanish you will reach a lot more users. you can also try to simplify your pages. Imagine going to McDonald's in a foreign country. If you see a picture of a BigMac, a bag of fries and a coke then a price, you understand everything without a single word being read. Clearly it isn't that easy to do with your website but you can move a few steps in that direction.

I would like to add to this discussion that although you may not see Quality Score on the Display side, it doesn't mean that it is not a factor for Display. However Quality Score on the Display Network is different than QS for Search.

Thanks. Exactly what I needed. But why is is that the display URL in the title line looks different from the green display URL? AS in ROASTe.com instead of roaste.com?

Since original posting I did some further research and decided to not use the software but thanks anyhow.

Dan, IIRC, it may relate to the sort order and looks at the ad that's currently at the top of your list of ads. Try showing only ads that are not deleted, or sorting by impressions in the past month (thus showing the most active ad at top), and see if that works.

Higher QS means you get more clicks for the same amount of money. Too many people accept automated suggestions to up the buy. They should focus on improved QS first. It's all a matter of well the trigger words, ads, and landing page relate to each other.

Your google rep should be able to tell you more then any of us about why you got banned

If the server was not publicly reachable (i.e. just on their intranet), then there would be no issues. If the server was accessible to the public, then as long as the site was blocked with a robots.txt file search engines would not index it. There would be no reason for anyone to link to the site, so it should be invisible to search engines. At least Google/Bing will respect those settings, and they are all that really matter. I would be most comfortable with the above but if you want to be extra cautious you can set up a canonical for each page back to the main site. You would need a script to either add or modify the canonical tag on every page.