by mtraphagen | Jul 18, 2011 | Google, Google+, Social Media
It’s no secret by now that I’ve been in love with Google+ (Google Plus) since I gained admittance on the third day of its existence. Sure it’s not perfect, and there are a number of improvements and features I’d like to see, but it’s...
by mtraphagen | Jul 16, 2011 | Google, Social Media
I was in the process of adding Mashable staff to a new “Mashable Staff” circle in my Google+ (using “How to Add Mashable Staff to Your Circles on Google+”) when this thought struck me: Perhaps the delay in introducing brand and business...
by ekoppel | Jul 8, 2011 | Analytics, Google, Social Media
You have probably already bought into the idea that social media matters to your business. If you haven’t you may just be living under a rock. For those of you who aren’t still living in the stone age and would like to gain a better understanding of how...
by mtraphagen | Jul 8, 2011 | Facebook, Google, Social Media
We are beginning to see confirmation of what I suspected was the real reason Google invested so much time and money into Google+ and now is giving it to us for free. What’s in it for the Google? This: Click the image to zoom to full size. Notice all those little...
by mtraphagen | Jul 6, 2011 | Facebook, Google, Social Media
I had this post all set out in my mind, and then I read “Why Google Has the Hammer to Make Businesses Use Google Plus” by Jay Baer, and realized he said all I was going to say and so much more. Here’s one of many killer quotes from this must-read...
by mtraphagen | Jul 2, 2011 | Google
The social media world is all abuzz this week (forgive me, GOOG, for throwing a “buzz” in there) with the introduction of Google+, Google’s long-awaited full-orbed social network. I’ve been playing with it for a few days now, and I’m very...
by mtraphagen | Jun 13, 2011 | Google, Paid Search
A friend of mine saw the following ad in her Gmail account recently: (Hint: she sends and receives a lot of email about horses.) What happened here? How did such a large company produce such a nonsensical ad? The answer is what I call “DKI Abuse.” DKI...
by mtraphagen | May 25, 2011 | Google, Paid Search
Google announced recently that they will be changing several parameters in the Location Targeting feature available in the Adwords interface (see “Location targeting updates in AdWords”). These changes will begin rolling out after July 8, 2011, and will...
by mtraphagen | Mar 31, 2011 | Facebook, Google, Social Media
Yesterday Google announced the experimental rollout of its +1 search social recommendation feature. (See Google +1 Is Google’s Like Button for details.) For the present, you can only use this feature on Google’s search results page, to “plus”...
by mtraphagen | Mar 30, 2011 | Google, Social Media
Google’s +1 button allows Google search users to “like” both individual search results and AdWords ads in the search results. +1 shows up as an icon to the right of search results and ads (see illustration at right). If you are logged in to your...
by mtraphagen | Jan 21, 2011 | Google, Paid Search
It’s no secret that negative keywords are one of the most powerful paid search marketing tools. By weeding out undesirable search terms, negative keywords can enable you to increase CTR and ROI by driving the right, pre-qualified traffic to your site. In many...
by mtraphagen | Jan 17, 2011 | Analytics, Google, Paid Search
This is part of a series on the new Analytics AdWords Traffic Reports. We’re looking at insights provided by the new AdWords section under Traffic Sources in Google Analytics that go beyond what you can see if you only look at reports within the AdWords interface...