In the Search Marketing industry its a constant battle to stay on top of what’s going  on with the search engines. We have to anticipate it, we have to analyse changes that happen and we have to pro actively be on top of whatever changes are coming through. It can seem like a never-ending task because, honestly some decisions and changes made by the search engines don’t always seem to be in line with their own philosophy. This can make analysing and then re-acting frustrating.

We do tons of research, spend thousands upon thousands of dollars on testing and refining so that we know what works and what doesn’t. We attack this challenge with a passion, however at times it can feel like we’re chasing our own tail. We make progress and we move forward however of course we sometimes wish things could be simpler.

On a day like today though, when we take some time to reflect on those that have fallen in war, what we do and the challenges we face can seem pretty insignificant. It is very humbling to think that we get to do this for our clients and make an impact for them because of those who sacrificed their lives.

During this day of reflection, we can’t help but feel tremendously grateful to know that we get work with an amazing team here, and serve fantastic clients who provide great products and services . We get to  live out what our team believes in with a passion – which is to help improve the value of businesses throughout Australia and the world and be able to make a living doing it. Its inspiring to be able to stay on top of what’s happening with our industry and help our clients stay on top of theirs. Getting results for our clients is truly what drives us.

And so we just wanted to say Thank You to all the veterans who put themselves on the line, literally, so we get to do what we love doing. Thank you.

Google is usually very quiet about anything that may help SEOs understand its Search Engine Algorithm better or the way it evaluates ads for Google Adwords. However they are starting to be a bit more vocal. For the last few months they’ve started to reveal the changes and tweaks they made to their search algorithm on their blog. And just this last week they’ve also started to reveal more about how they review their PPC ads.

Basically they look at it over 3 levels.

Firstly they look to see if the ad is breaking the terms of service – and promoting banned products like counterfeit goods or viruses.

Next they look at the site (overall) that is being promoted in that campaign. They evaluate what the site is about, what its promoting to ensure the site does not promote anything that’s untoward. Interestingly they’ve revealed that they look at the data they have on a site across all advertisers. That could possibly mean that if a site has already been blacklisted and you promote it on a new adwords account, then you will be immediately tarnished.

Finally, they will look at the whole account – including its history – what kinds of campaigns its run, the number of policy violations in the past its incurred at both the ad level and the site level. That means if you ran a bad campaign in the past, your account will not be given the benefit of the doubt. Basically this is put there to identify serial offenders and treat them more harshly than one-off offenders.

In keeping with Google’s spirit the reviews at each level is first done in automated fashion. However if the results aren’t clear cut, it is escalated to a human reviewer who will decide what action to take.

While Google review policy is set out for people who are purposely trying to promote something that’s banned, there can be many otherwise innocent campaigns from well meaning Companies that also get suspended. For example if you are running an campaign to a site that gets hacked and is now distributing malware – you may not be aware of it immediately (if your security checking systems are not uptodate), or if you are a reseller of multiple products in an industry (like a mortgage broker who sells loans from different providers), you may have just copied and pasted content that the companies that you are promoting provided to you on your website without realising that Google sees this as you not adding any value to its users as its just re-hashed information. In cases such as these it has become a lot more easier to get back on track and have your campaigns running again over the last few years.

In our experience, we have had to deal with situations where clients come to us with ads or even campaigns that are suspended. Usually its a small innocent mistake made by our client and nothing malicious. What’s been pleasant over the last year or so, as opposed to before that is that Google’s customer service has improved significantly. In the past they would never tell you what you need to do fix your campaign or tell you specifically why you were suspended. You had to take a stab in the dark and make changes and re-submit your ads. In the last 2 or years we’ve found that Google is a lot more transparent about what needs to be fixed to get your campaign up and going. They are also very forgiving if you fix those quickly and let them know what’s going on.

So if you run a campaign and hit problems and you’re not sure from within Adwords exactly what the problem is, make sure you open a support ticket with them. If they can see that you are willing to make corrections, they are usually very forgiving (assuming you are not blatantly trying to abuse their system).

If you do want to read up more about Google’s review system in their own words, here is the release on Google’s company blog.

QuantumLinx's Ash Aryal was invited to be part of the BRW's 30th Anniversary photo shoot

As head of consulting for QuantumLinx, and because of our achievements to date (2011 BRW Fast Starter, Deloitte Technology’s 500 fastest growing technology companies in the Asia pacific region, top 5 SEO company in Australia and finalist in the ActionCoach MyBusiness awards for Best Business Growth Strategy), I was lucky enough to be only one of six entrepreneurs and businesses invited to be part of the BRW 30^th edition photo-shoot.

Being in LA at the time, I flew back to Sydney for this opportunity – I love reading the BRW and always have.

It’s nice that the BRW have taken notice of the impact we are having on the Australian business community because there is nothing more we love than helping companies dominate their market in the search engines.

Thank you BRW for the opportunity and we hope to have a continued mutual admiration well into the future.

To Higher Profits,

Ash Aryal