After a year or longer absence, my Google Places Dashboard has finally reappeared and with data!
Google Places Dashboard Live
While all of the above data can be found in the minutia of my site’s Google Analytics account, the Google Places Dashboard provides a quick overview of local search demand for my business in one convenient location.
Quite frankly, I was surprised to learn Google sent any clicks to my website at all.
Question: Why has it taken so long to finish my book?
Elenchus
As of today, I have posted to this blog 821 days in a row – every day since September 1st of 2008.
Today is my 1000th post since launching this blog on September 4, 2006.
First Blog Post 09-04-2006
If you don’t blog or haven’t blogged consistently, I highly recommend it.
“Stick to it steadily and you will see great effect.” Benjamin Franklin
I have put Mr. Franklin’s assertion to the test and I can confirm doing as he suggests will produce the results promised.
Google’s recent addition to its local search product lineup is called Google Places with Hotpot.
From Google:
Hotpot is a new local recommendation engine for Google Places, powered by you and your friends.
You tell us the places you like — restaurants, cafes, book shops — and we’ll recommend new places to you the next time you search. Start rating and reviewing now @ http://www.google.com/hotpot
According to Google Product manager Mat Balez, over 20% of Google search queries have local intent.
As such, Google plans to integrate ratings and reviews from Hotpot users into its database of 50 million places.
With enough user participation, Google foresees creating a more informed local search experience – one that turns all of its users contributions into a recommendation engine for all searchers looking for that special local place in Google.
Can innovation be reduced to an algorithm?
Has someone already reduced the process of innovation to an algorithm?
Who?
What are the attributes of the innovation algorithm?
If not, what are the attributes of innovation that can be reduced and written as an algorithm?
I effectively went cold turkey shunning almost all media for the last four days – at least not consuming eight hours worth of media a day.
As a result – I have little to say.
Why do people share content?
Is it because the sender gets value from sharing it?
Is it because the receiver gets value from having received it?
Or is content shared because doing so produces some form of value for both the receiver and the sender?
I received the following Class Action Settlement notice from Google yesterday – Thanksgiving Day.
Google is sending you this notice of a proposed class action settlement that may affect your legal rights as a creator of an AdWords campaign between October 2007 and July 2009. This notice is being sent to you by Court Order so that you may understand your rights and remedies before the Court considers final approval of the proposed settlement on March 11, 2011.
This is not an advertisement or attorney solicitation.
A settlement agreement has been reached by the parties and is pending approval by the Court. Under the proposed settlement, Google will pay a total of $3,500,000 to the settlement class, including attorneys’ fees and costs, for charges accrued by AdWords users who left the “CPC Content bid” input blank upon creating an AdWords campaign, and were charged for content ads appearing on Google’s Content Network.
IMPORTANT. If the settlement is approved, your legal rights may be affected whether or not you act. You should therefore carefully read the documents filed with the Court concerning the settlement, the reimbursement of attorneys’ fees and litigation expenses, and the litigation generally.
Please go to http://www.largocargosettlement.com for full details on the settlement and further instructions on what to do to submit a claim, opt out of, object to, or otherwise comment upon the proposed settlement.
Please do not reply to this email.
Please note that Google will never ask you for password information or other personal credentials when sending you notices. If you suspect someone is improperly using Google’s name or products to obtain your personal information, please report the message as phishing. See http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=184963.
This mandatory announcement was sent to certain AdWords users in the U.S. as part of a legal settlement and was authorized by the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.
Google Inc. | 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway | Mountain View, CA 94043
LargoCargoSettlement.com provides the following details regarding the proposed settlement.
Largo Cargo v Google Settlement
To qualify for inclusion in the proposed Largo Cargo v Google Class Action Settlement, Google AdWords advertisers must first answer and submit their responses to the following three questions.
AdWords Class Action Settlement Questions
Whether the time and energy required for answering three simple questions to qualify for any potential reimbursement from Google is worth it or not will be left up to the individual advertiser to determine.
Google Goggles is Google’s brand name for their visual search product.
Google has launched a Google Goggles visual search marketing experiment featuring five top advertisers – Buick, Delta Air Lines, Diageo, Disney & T-Mobile.
Whether visual searching will be embraced by the general public let alone ever exceed the number of text searches conducted remains to be seen.
I finally got a Beta invite to Google Adwords Contextual Targeting tool.
Contextual Targeting Beta
Although I haven’t yet had a chance to utilize the Contextual Targeting tool to its fullest, I did put it to some quick tests.
Contextual Targeting Suggested Ad Group + Keywords
The Contextual Targeting tool appears to show great promise for several obvious reasons and one not so obvious reason.
The tool performs as described for its intended and obvious uses – establishing tightly focused lists of keywords and then grouping them into respective ad groups.
What the tool also does in a not so obvious way is winnow down potentially unmanageable long tail keyword lists into lists of mostly head only terms.
The resulting lists of keywords and ad groups thus provide great insight into what type of contextual targeting inventory Google has available.
Does this tool then not in the process also identify true keyword head inventory?
It appears to do so to me.
What do you think?
Search Marketing Communications 
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