There are many freelancers and small to medium business owners that want an active presence online. In this competitive world, it is impossible to survive without getting access to both the physical and the online market. People who focus on only one of these are bound to fail. The number of online customers is equal to the number of physical ones and the intention of internet marketing is marketing your business, service or firm on the internet.

If you want to take control of your business online there’s a couple of ways to go.

1. You can do it all yourself.

To do this you’ll have to take a big steep learning curve and become internet marketing savvy by actively working your websites search marketing, social marketing, article writing, pay per click advertising, affiliate marketing just to name some of the many aspects of internet marketing your business online.

A good way to start the learning curve is to read up on a lot of search marketing techniques that are freely available at reliable websites like Search Engine Watch (http://searchenginewatch.com/) or Search Engine Land (http://searchengineland.com/) which are both great sites to take the plunge into. There are many search marketing sites available and doing a quick search will yield plenty of results. You’ll just have to start digging through and absorbing heaps and practicing what you learn as often as possible.

These two site are great resource to learn pay per click advertising too. In fact without being too “WooHoo” about it trolling through hundreds of pages at these sites will give you a great overview of what you’re in for, learning wise, and what you can expect to be doing for 20 hours a week (conservative estimate) for your business.

Of course there’s always the second option ..

2. Hiring an Internet Marketing person to do it for you.

If you’re not into a steep learning curve, trial and error type arrangement like most small to medium business owners, you can always hire someone (qualified) to do this type of thing for you. You just have to find the right one. The one person who “Gets” your business and understands the way you do business. They must and I mean must appreciate your product or services so they can “hook into” your business benefits that you supply to your customers.

Having a great understanding of your business must incorporate this type of mental attribute supplied by the internet marketing to achieve your business goals and obligations. Long gone are the days of NOT understanding a clients business cause there’s so much competition out there. All vying for the same exposure for similar product or services that your business has, it’s a mine field really.

To find the right internet marketing person, here’s a few questions to ask first before you sign on the dotted line ..

Q: How many years of experience have you had?
A: X amount will not cut it. If they can list the clients they have made a difference to (and you check that out) then that person may have ticked the first box.

Q: What, In Your Opinion Is Internet Marketing?
A: Oh Pay Per Click Advertising – Is NOT the answer. The answer to this question should include SEO (Search engine optimization, SEM (Search engine marketing – which is different to SEO), PPC (Pay per click advertising), Website Design, Website Development, Email Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, HTML Code Compliance (W3C Validated Coding Experience) and a few more things added. (Well I can’t give the game away now can I)

Q: How much do you charge?
A: X amount per hour or month IS NOT the answer you’re looking for. Here’s some reasons why. A $X per hour means they’ll put you on a paying drip feed. Not all internet marketers do this but most inexperienced ones with little or no idea will be glad to accept your hard earned on an hourly basis.

Monthly payments are another way of saying, drip feed us and when we’ve had enough of your money we’ll do something.

A standard way of payment could or should be performance based. As in, if the internet marketer increases profits through the work they have done, then of course they’ll get some of the pie. Stands to reason and is a fair way of doing business. If you see results, you’ll pay for them right?

I think you’ll get the general idea by now. So if you’re going to outsource your internet marketing make sure you have a good understanding of those that want to “help” you (usually means free) as you’ll only get what you pay for, as we all know.

Of course, a final idea, you can always contact us if your looking to outsource your internet marketing strategies, we don’t answer questions with X and we defiantly do take the time to understand your business.

Have a great day and Bonn Appetite.

Not long ago I had a random discussion with a fellow business associate over a few beers that required some thought. Not a good look for a beer supping break, having to think and all, but we did have some insights bleat out from both of our minds. He said “We’ve (Australians) lost the ability to be creative and be recognized round the world as an innovative people”.

I said “CRAP Brian, we’ve already given the world the “Ute”, cast wine and a whole lot of other goodies I can’t think of right now”. He said “Yeah but mate, what about the internet, what have we done with that?”

Good point I thought. I hadn’t really seen nor heard of any Australian innovative ideas being impacted into the internet culture .. well none that would be described as truly Australian original content. So I was stumped, which is, for me, annoying, I don’t like being stumped by Brian, with no come back and all.

So the Brian effect has lead me to post this post and say specifically to Brian .. Your Shout Maaaate.

US Investor Ploughs $68m into Australian Developer
By Nate Cochrane from itNews
Jul 15, 2010 10:05 AM

Biggest Australian investment round this year.

Australian software maker Atlassian scored a $US60 million ($A68 million) injection from US venture capitalist Accel Partners overnight.

The Sydney project management developer known for its Jira bug tracker and Confluence wiki software employed 225, mostly developers, and was in use in more than 20,000 companies worldwide including Facebook, Adobe and Haymarket Media, publisher of this website.

Atlassian booked $A58 million in revenues last financial year and was profitable, the company said.

The Australian round was a departure for the Palo Alto-based Accel Partners that tended to invest in early-stage companies yet to strike profitability; Atlassian was profitable last financial year and was started with about $10,000 in credit card debt in 2002.

Atlassian joined a stellar stable of 300 Accel-backed companies such as:

• information security company Imperva;
• filesharing startup Bit Torrent;
• mobile advertising network admob;
• video-distribution platform founded by Flash creator Jeremy Allaire, Brightcove;
• social media website Facebook;
• and the legendary internet company, now part of defence contractor Raytheon, BBN Technologies that did much to spark the internet.

It’s believed this was this biggest Australian capital raising this year and the biggest in Accel’s 17-year history: “This deal is bigger than all the money combined raised by the Australian software industry over the whole year”, an Atlassian source said.

~ Bonn Appetite (You to Brian)

From our previous post Top 5 of 10 Business Marketing Concepts Six-Figure Income Earners Use Everyday

#6 Provide Information
People don’t go online to be sold something. Yes, of course there’s going to be the rare person out in cyberspace that heads straight for your order form, but generally speaking people go online seeking information .. not to read sales pitches.

No matter what field your business is in, you can make your website a valuable resource for your customers by providing free tips and tools. Not only will you build your reputation, you’ll also make one your visitors come back to time and time again .. and this is what your trying to do in the first place, get re-visiting customers, being familiar with you, your business and the great things your business has to offer.

A very important way to establish your reputation and provide information is with a free newsletter. Your newsletter is a direct way to promote and inform your customers of new and exciting services or products that you’ll be releasing, also, it’s a great way to send your customers information related to your website theme or niche that arrives directly into your customers in-box.

#7 Include A Call To Action
One of the most common online business mistakes is “implying” what you want your visitors to do rather than explicitly stating it. This most likely stems from a desire to be polite and not impose your wishes on anyone. Nobody likes to give orders .. but the plain truth is unless your blunt with your visitors, you’re going to see mediocre (if not downright poor) results.

So make sure you tell your visitors exactly what you want them to do! Whether you want them to .. 1. Subscribe 2. Click 3. Fill out a survey 4. Read an article 5. Enter a contest 6. Join an affiliate program or 7. Buy your product or service .. or anything else you can think of, make sure you let your people know what you want them to do .. a very important issue to take control of straight away.

#8 Test Before You Invest
Many people are like ostriches when it comes to testing their ideas. They would rather bury their heads in the sand and hope for the best than find out they’re on the wrong track.

It’s easy to find out what your customers want by tracking what they do at your website. With this valuable information you can easily maximize your profits by adjusting your web site to reflect your markets interests and needs. Makes sense right?

Isn’t it better to loose a handful of sales during this testing process than loosing thousands and thousands of sales by NOT fine tuning your website.

One of the best if not essential website tracking services today is Google Analytics. Why? It’s free, it’s easy to use, it’s comprehensive across all page views, customer clicks, goal sets, Country entries and much much more. Give it a go and you’ll soon see why Google Analytics is the webmasters preferred tracking services program.

To get information on Google Analytics just click this link.

#9 Automate, Automate, Automate
I’ve seen this happen to some very intelligent business owners. They start out with the best intentions. They grow their business and website traffic .. they run a few successful promotions .. and suddenly they go from personally dealing with a handful of emails and orders each day to drowning under hundreds of customer inquiries, questions, orders and requests. Managing mundane tasks suddenly turns into a full time job.

If you want to grow your business you can’t afford to be spending your time chained to your computer managing every single chore manually, especially if you want to grow quickly.

Like anything, you can make the automation of your business website as simple or as complicated as you like. Large e-commerce sites hire programmers, educated and experienced in putting together intuitive automation systems that make learning to translate Greek to Latin seem easy. Fortunately the average website business owner starting out doesn’t need anything nearly this complicated .. or confusing for that matter.

There are plenty of automated services out there in cyber world, but one stands out for mine and that’s Infusion Soft. They’re automation system, follow up email services, collection of email and name services etc (all types of website business email & e-commerce automation) deserves the award for most comprehensive and easy to use interface that’s going round today. You can check them out at Infusion Soft’s website on this link.

To grow your business, keep your customers in the loop and generally have your website business delivering product & services to your customers, even while you’re asleep (Yes Asleep) you need .. no WANT a great automation service that 1. Doesn’t break the bank & 2. Delivers the information directly into your customers in-box. Makes sense .. yes?

#10 Pursue Multiple Streams Of Income
Once your business is running on autopilot you can start adding new profit streams into the mix .. or even start another online business. This will provide you with multiple streams of income to fall back on if there’s a shift in the industry and one of your profit streams doesn’t do well for a while.

If your business has a slow period wouldn’t it be nice to know that you could count on revenues you’re generating through a secondary income source to get you through those quite months?

With the help of the internet you can find a very targeted market, build a business and then either add more products and services that appeal to your existing market, or find another targeted market and build another business, using the same techniques I have mentioned in this ROI Consultancy Post Top 10 Marketing Concepts …

Start with a profit stream that’s easy to run and easy to automate with a market that’s easy to target, then do it again .. over and over. If one profit stream ever fails the loss will be minimal when compared to the large model or vision your business has grown to. And always remember .. small profits add up .. instead of one or two huge priced products hardly ever being bought .. see what I mean?

Download Top 10 Business Marketing Concepts

To make things really easy for you, we’ve made this post into a down-loadable PDF document so you can keep it stored on your own computer and reference it anytime you like.

It’s very easy to get .. just fill this little form in and you’ll be sent the information straight away .. how easy is that?

In the marketing business, if you want to be successful, it’s extremely important you understand these 5 of 10 concepts, no matter what type of business you choose. These concepts are the building blocks that you can use and develop to really get involved with your business and your marketing efforts to increase your knowledge, professionalism and of course your business sales.

#1 Follow Your Passion!!
Anyone that tells you that starting your own internet business is a sure-fire way to make millions overnight with hardly any effort is simply lying. The truth is that you CAN make millions of dollars online, but it’s going to take some work .. of course.

For this reason alone, it’s so very important that you develop an online business that you’ll really really love. After all, you’ll be spending a lot of time developing it and so why not spend it loving every minute of it.

If your business IS something you love, you’ll not ever work a day in your life.

#2 Find A Niche Market
Once you have a few ideas your passionate about you’ll need to make sure that other people (your potential customers) are passionate about them too. You’ll need to do some market research to find your niche market to sell your products or services ideas to.

Simply put, a niche market is a targeted group of people who share a specific interest. The more specific your group is, the easier it will be to tailor your marketing messages to them directly. This next point is critical to identifying your market .. you must identify and locate your niche market online .. makes sense right!

The secret is to focus focus focus! Why? Because everyone does NOT want your product, so just concentrate on the people that do. Develop your products or services with these people in mind and you’ll be far more successful than trying to sell to everyone.

#3 Solve A Problem
Made it this far .. great. Here’s a very useful and important aspect to really get your teeth into, Solve A Problem!!!Once you’ve found your niche market and figured out who your niche market is you’ll need to study them to find out what products or services they’re looking for.

It’s always better to discover what people want first and then provide it, instead of creating a product or service and then try to find the market for it.

How do you do this I hear you asking .. well it’s easier than you think. With your passionate business idea in mind go to chat rooms and forums where members of your niche market are likely to hang out. Do a Google search using your business idea keywords and you’ll find a list of chat rooms / forums etc that you can join or sign up to that your target market has already signed up to and receive emails that your niche market are getting.

Then analyse that information over a week or so and try to uncover a common problem your niche market has. Once you’ve found a common problem try and develop a solution! This is the simplest way to find an obvious void in the market place and fill it. Also, it’s the best way to ensure you have an eager market for your product or service.

#4 Focus On Benefits .. NOT Features
Following on from the previous concepts, you may have found a great product or service to release .. but .. you will not earn a cent until you convince your prospects that they need it, want it and can afford it.You must emphasize how your product or service will BENEFIT your customer. You know how it will solve their problems and make life easier for them and you need to make sure they know this too. This technique will ultimately make the sale.

Simply listing off features of your product or service won’t do the job. You really need to know how to turn the features of whatever your selling into compelling benefits. A feature is a simple fact about your product .. a benefit explains what advantages your customer will actually get from using it. Makes sense right!

#5 Develop A Unique UPS (Unique Selling Position)
No matter what your selling you need to develop your very own unique selling position. You need to emphasize what makes your product better than your competition. Explain to your customers exactly how and why they’ll benefit from doing business with you as opposed to someone else.

Your product or service might cost less than others .. you might offer a better guarantee than anyone else .. you might provide special knowledge or advice that is not available anywhere else .. you might offer special incentives that no one else does .. or your customer service might be better than your competition’s.

Whatever your unique selling point is you need to clearly define it, clearly understand it and always have it ready at your fingertips so that when you’re asked “What makes your product / service special?” you’ll be able to deliver the goods, your UPS, in a caring, beneficial way.

Continue to the next Top 10 Concepts #6 #7 #8 #9 & #10

Or if you like, download your free Top 10 Business Marketing Concepts by adding your name and email address to our form below and receive our Top 10 PDF zip file to store on your hard drive and access any time you like .. easy as that!

Bonn Appetite

Online Brand Popularity ..
How to measure it!

The deeper information technologies penetrate our lives, the more powerfully you and your customers can use them for decision making. All we need to make the best available choice is reliable information – from eyewitnesses, first-hand users, reviewers, and experts.

Search engines and news feeds give you a good idea if your brand is established and how it is perceived on the Web. But sites providing user-generated content – shared opinions in the form of ratings and votes, reviews and comments, tags and bookmarks – are even more important places for you to check brand reputation, and measure brand popularity.

What are the measurable signals of brand popularity?

Search for mentions of your brand name, create benchmarks, and run comparisons with your top competitors. Brand popularity metrics can be monitored at:

• Major search engines for both search volume (Google) and the number of found results.
• Blog search engines (Technorati, Google Blogs) for the overall number of blog posts, tags, comments, blog authority rates. There is no need to track all the blog search engines – select one or two with the results that you find most representative.
• Sites consisting of user submitted content (Digg, Reddit, Newsvine, etc.) for votes and comments.
• Twitter for found search results, followers, retweets.
• Media sharing sites (YouTube, Hulu, Yahoo Video, Flickr, Deviantart, and many others) for the number of uploads and downloads, views or listenings, video/image/photo/music ratings, number of comments.
• Social bookmark sites and toolbars (Delicious, StumbleUpon, Diigo, and others) for tags and saved bookmarks.
• Product and service review sites if applicable (Epinions, Ratings, Buzzillions etc.) for the number of reviews, pro and con votes, ratings.
• Forums for the number of search results, threads, user reputation, connections.
• Social networks for engagement facts such as the number of connections, profile completeness, recommendations, participations in groups, Q&A, etc.

At the same time, brand reputation measurement should rest not only upon the numbers being quantitative characteristics of popularity, but also upon qualitative evidence. An analysis should also include the prevailing tone of the reviews, articles or comments.

How to automate the brand popularity analysis

The market has replied to a social media boom with numerous buzz and sentiment analysis tools. The most comprehensive solutions are quite costly. Nielsen BuzzMetrics, Sysomos’s MAP and Heartbeat and Radian6 are outstanding web buzz tracking and analysis solutions covering tens of millions of blogs, social networks, groups, boards and other CGM platforms, but a typical ‘do-it-yourself’ small business marketer could hardly afford them.

So if the perspective of paying a three- or even four-digit monthly fee is beyond your purse, a healthy approach would be to focus your analysis on a) the most popular (and crowded) social media and b) the most targeted (niche) sites while using free tools to check your brand reputation on them. The below free services will automate your brand reputation monitoring task rather efficiently.

• Major search engines – use the Web CEO Keywords tool to retrieve the search volume from Google and competition numbers from all the major search engines.
• Blog search engines – Nielsen BlogPulse is a great free service to see brand popularity trends. You can also use BlogScope for the same purpose.
• For Twitter info analysis, you can use TweetStats, Twitter Analyzer (< By far the best Twitter App seen in a long while), TweetVolume and Twopular.

Measuring positive and negative sentiments is still difficult to achieve via automated measuring services. Scoutlabs service (which is quite expensive) brings the best results in sentiment analysis and trend building. To our best knowledge, the current technologies for automated text meaning recognition are far from perfect. This is why, to guarantee the most accurate results, some expensive reputation management solutions offer manual sentiment measurement.

~ Bonn Appetite

Share this one please

My brilliant sister in-law sent an email with this little game in it and …

OMG MY SANDY ONLY LASTED 30 SECONDS!!

Steer Sandy Seal through the dangers of unprotected waters and sign the petition to Save Our Marine Life.

From

Game on! Help protect Australia’s coast

An Article From http://www.itnews.com.au/

By Shaun Nichols, Iain Thomson

Famous head-slap moments from history.

In light of the UK government’s ill-thoughtout and wrong-headed decision to support a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ rule for internet service providers we thought we’d take a look at the history of stupid decision making in the IT field.

We’ve all had the ‘oh no’ moment, when you realise two things – you’ve just done something incredibly stupid and you can’t take it back. Unfortunately, IT has the potential to make those moments a whole lot worse. As we say: “To err is human, to really screw things up you need a computer.”

So here they are, history as a lesson.

Honourable Mention – Watson’s “five computers in the world” comment

Shaun Nichols: Former IBM chairman Thomas Watson was credited for saying in the early 1940s that “there is a world market for maybe five computers.”

Though there is some debate as to whether the quote was ever actually uttered, similar comments attributed to other early computer scientists around that time indicated the belief that the total number of computers the world would ever need was anywhere from three to ten.

Regardless of the specifics, Watson’s quote explains the mindset of the early days of computing and suggests why it took so long for individual terminals and personal computers to really take off.

The thinking is better explained when one realises that at the time neither the transistor nor the computer chip had even been suggested, and computers were huge beasts that required immense amounts of time and attention to work. There really were fewer than a dozen entities that had the need and resources to develop and operate an old-fashioned vacuum tube computer.

Iain Thomson: Watson is certainly not the first person to misunderstand the potential of technology.

When shown a demonstration of the first telephones the mayor of Chicago was so impressed he thought they would be vital in the future and one day every city would have one. Alexander Graham Bell wrote down a list of ten uses for his newly invented phonograph and not one of them was playing music.

But what makes Watson’s comment more of a head-slap moment was that he was the founder of IBM. That’s what makes me a little bit suspicious about the facts and ensured Watson only gets an honourable mention.

Honourable mention- Intel’s Pentium III tracking system

Shaun Nichols: Back in 1999 Intel was gearing up for the release of its much-anticipated “Willamette” Pentium III processor. The new chip sported a 1.5ghz clock speed that had gamers and enterprise users alike salivating. Unfortunately, it had another feature that drove consumers to break out the torches and pitchforks.

As the Willamette chip was being designed and engineered, someone at Intel thought it would be a good idea to provide each chip with a unique tag and then use the information to gather data on the processor and track its use. IT managers could use it to track systems in companies too.

Imagine the company’s surprise when it learned that the public wasn’t exactly ecstatic with the idea of their systems being remotely tagged and monitored at the silicon level. Customers revolted, privacy groups were up in arms and at the All Saints Churchyard in Oxfordshire one could hear a faint whirling sound as George Orwell spun in his grave.

Fortunately for Intel, the company was actually paying attention to what its users were saying and the tracking feature was abandoned, thus saving the company much criticism and keeping them out of our top ten.

Iain Thomson: In 1999 I and other technology journalists attended a press conference given by Intel.

Intel was about to reveal the details behind its forthcoming Pentium III processor. The press conference went well, the technical specs looked good and there were no blinding revelations.

Then the announcer started going over security and proudly announced that from this time forth every Intel chip would have a unique ID number stamped on it, and that could be checked remotely. The company seemed to think this was a good idea. At the words “Any questions?” a sea of hands shot up and every single one of them was about the new scheme.

As the details unravelled it looked more and more of a pig’s breakfast. Intel said it wouldn’t use the system to find stolen chips – about the only thing it was good for. The software used to query the chip number was also hopelessly easy to hack. After a face-saving period the company backed down and our computer hardware remains untracked.

10. The UK identity card programme

Shaun Nichols: When it comes to bad ideas, it’s tough to beat the government. Put a bunch of crusty old politicians in charge of a massive technological infrastructure and you’re bound to get some terrible ideas.

The basis of the UK ID card effort is quite understandable. In the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US much of the world was looking into how it could improve security. In the United Kingdom, this took place in the form of a mandatory national ID card system.

As the hysteria from 9/11 subsided and people began to return to normal, opposition to the idea grew. As tests began on the system criticism mounted and at one point Microsoft even slammed the idea. Since then, the government has backed off a bit, though the programme remains in place for foreign workers.

Iain Thomson: For the life of me I can’t understand the keenness in government for the national ID card scheme.

It’s one of those projects that I’m sure involved the finest sales folk of the technology industry and the bureaucracy that wants everything accounted for getting together in a mutual love-fest. But anyone with half an ounce of sense could have told them it wasn’t going to work.

The technology behind the scheme was laughably simple to subvert. Biometric cards are all very well but unless the police officer checking it has a fast link to a database there’s no way of checking it. Even building the database looks to be massively expensive and will do little to achieve the stated aims of the plan.

And those aims have changed a lot. Officially billed as an anti-terrorism tool the card failed to excite, so then it became an efficiency platform to access services and when that didn’t work the government spinmeisters went for the traditional “It’ll keep out “Johnny Foreigner” routine.

It also overlooked some basic psychology. Brits don’t like ID cards. They accepted them during the Second World War but managed to get rid of them in 1952. No-one wants them back, apart from a few misguided souls, and the government should drop the scheme now, before the Tories take over and do it for them.

9.Yahoo re-hiring Jerry Yang

Shaun Nichols: Sometimes bringing back a founder can work wonders for an ailing company, such as Apple Computer with Steve Jobs. In the case of Yahoo, however, it took the company from a rut to a full-fledged financial crisis.

When the company found itself on the ropes in 2007, it turned to co-founder Jerry Yang to guide the company back into a dominant position and recoup shareholder losses. Yang then proceeded to bungle a deal with Microsoft, send the company’s value plummeting and cause a full-fledged shareholder revolt.

The company should have seen this coming. While Jobs was a shrewd businessman with years of experience, Yang was a computer scientist that struck gold with a good idea in the 90s.

The company needed to turn a page and Yang was stuck on the image of the free-wheeling start-up he created with David Filo. When Steve Ballmer came calling with a very good deal, Yang let those memories of the dot-com boom get the better of him and he turned down a US$32bn offer rather than sell out to a stuffy out-of-town rival.

Roughly 18 months later, with Yahoo’s value a fraction of the original offer, new chief executive Carol Bartz cut a deal for a fraction of what Yang turned down.

Iain Thomson: Yang’s pride in Yahoo was understandable. What is not is his pigheaded attitude over selling it.

Yahoo was a distant number two in the search market and had nothing really to offer except a sizable user base. Add into that the worsening economic situation and Yang should have taken the US$32bn (or even an apparent US$40bn), paid off the shareholders and headed off into the sunset for a life of whatever he pleased.

Instead he decided to fight on but was stymied at every turn. Eventually he had to step down and get someone to salvage the wreckage. I bet when Steve Ballmer signed off on the deal with Bartz he was grinning from ear to ear.

8. RIPA

In 2000 the British government enacted new laws to manage data and privacy and it what became known as the The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.

What followed is now a text-book case for how not to legislate on the internet, and proof of mission-creep in privacy law. The act was updated in 2003, at the peak of hype about terrorism, by the then Home Secretary David Blunkett and would have allowed the internet surveillance of anyone by pretty much every branch of government, right down to the members of the town council.

Thankfully his son, an IT consultant, sat his dad down and explained a few things to him. Not for the first time it fell to the younger generation to sit the old folks down and explain things to them. Blunkett cut the number of bodies allowed to conduct surveillance of citizens down to nine.

But because the bill was poorly crafted that number grew and now 792 organisations have the right to request all the details of your surfing habits, and over half a million did so last year. Isn’t that a comforting thought.

Shaun Nichols: Most people don’t like the idea of allowing the government to arbitrarily look up their online activities without any notice or given reason. Government officials know that there is no way citizens would allow them to pass a bill giving law enforcement those powers. That’s why the UK government went after the ISPs instead.

Early on this sort of thing didn’t seem like such a big deal. After all, we were at the height of the terrorist scare and unless you were doing something illegal like planning an attack or distributing child pornography, you didn’t really have much to worry about. Now that those powers have extended to things such as copyright theft, however, I think people are starting to get the idea.

Imagine if the police kicked down your door and demanded to search your house for recorded TV shows and old mixtapes. What was once designed to thwart terrorist attacks can now be used to bust people for sharing a song with a friend.

7. Ignoring Software as a Service.

Iain Thomson: When we first started to hear the word SaaS bandied around the office and at conferences it all looked pretty basic – client/server on steroids.

But the messianic young chief executive of a company called Salesforce.com had a dream; that accountancy software would be available to anyone with an internet connection. Sure, as dreams go it’s not on a par with curing smallpox or world peace but it works for Marc Benioff.

The competition thought he was mad. The idea of offering software in the browser was still in its infancy and this upstart was suggesting that companies would be happy handing their accounts online, instead of purchasing the reassuringly expensive financial software systems they owned.

Benioff, rather obnoxiously, described companies like Siebel as “dead” but the fact remains that he was right, and they’ve all had to get into the market and follow his line. It’s a salutary tale of never thinking you’re invulnerable.

Shaun Nichols: When Salesforce.com was first launched, the company was literally laughed at by the big names in the CRM market. After all, CRM software was sold to large corporations thousands of licenses at a time and put into place and managed by teams of IT professionals or specialised support firms. Running that sort of application in a web browser was unheard of and the likes of SAP and Siebel regarded Salesforce.com as little more than a toy.

The biggest fault of large companies is always their lack of flexibility and unwillingness to see the concerns of the individual user. While Marc Benioff likes to boast about bringing on the “end of software,” his company really succeeded because of its price and granularity, not because it didn’t sell its product on a CD-Rom.

Rather than be saddled with hefty license costs and massive deployments, Salesforce.com allowed customers to pay a small monthly subscription rate and run the software on as many or as few workstations as they pleased. This allowed smaller firms to try out CRM products and gave Salesforce a foothold in the market to establish itself and go after bigger clients.

Not everyone overlooked Salesforce, however. When Benioff told Larry Ellison of what he wanted to do, the Oracle founder not only gave his former protege his stamp of approval, but also asked to buy a stake in the new company.

The rude nature of his company’s early dismissal is a chip Benioff still carries on his shoulder. Shortly after the company went under, Benioff purchased the former headquarters of Siebel and turned it into an “incubator” for third party Salesforce platform developers.

6. Google censorship in China

Shaun Nichols: Google’s corporate motto is ‘do no evil.’ In at least one case, however, the company has been accused of directly aiding others in doing evil.

In 2006, the company took heat for allowing the Chinese government to censor results on Google searches within the country. Among the blocked items were pages on democracy and information on the Tiananmen Square protest.

From a business standpoint, one can see why Google would want to work with the Chinese government- after all the country is the most populous in the world and is becoming increasingly wealthy. From an ethical stance, however, this was a terrible idea.

As the dominant force in the search market Google could have made a very strong statement and taken a leadership role by refusing to cooperate with the censorship efforts. In the eyes of many, the move cost the company much of the spirit it had displayed since its beginning and destroyed the image of Google as a torch-bearer in the field of online rights.

Iain Thomson: I remember a friend bemoaning Google’s first foray into China, saying it was like the moment when young Anakin finally crosses over the the Dark Side.

We’d had such high hopes for Google. It had seemed so full of promise and the China question was a killer. You’d expect Microsoft to sell out its users, particularly if there was a buck in it. Yahoo too didn’t seem particularly trustworthy. But this was Google, and some people never forgave it for the decision, even after an apology from Brin.

Using the internet in China is a strangely dislocated affair, where you know there is information you want but you just can’t get to it. As a result of Google caving in there is now no impartial information source in the world’s most populous country and an entire generation is being brainwashed. Do no evil just looks like marketing now.

5. IBM turning down Microsoft

Iain Thomson: In the late 1970s Microsoft was just another struggling software company stuck in the heat in New Mexico.

It spent most of its time developing software in BASIC for the Altair, the computer that kicked off personal computers. Its very young leader Bill Gates showed promise but reportedly was at one time trying to sell the company. The sum mentioned was apparently US$80 million and the offer was made to IBM. They said no.

That Microsoft went on to great things is not in question. ‘What if’ historians would tell you that if Microsoft had been bought by IBM then it would have earned all the money that Microsoft did subsequently, but I’m not too sure.

IBM would have had a useful software arm to be sure, but it’s unlikely Bill Gates, and especially Paul Allen would have lasted long at IBM. Without Gates and Allen the investment would have been worthless.

Shaun Nichols: As Iain pointed out earlier, IBM was at the time not a big player in the software market, and the cost of buying Microsoft would have likely exceeded the costs of simply buying the company’s products for use in its machines at the time.

I would agree that the only way it would have worked would have been for IBM to leave Microsoft as an independent outfit, which once again would have made little sense when Big Blue could simply buy the rights to Microsoft’s products.

Keep in mind that Microsoft didn’t really hit it big until DOS, and even then they were still not a huge player in the market until Windows was developed. We have the advantage of hindsight in saying this was a huge mistake, but you can’t really fault IBM for not being able to see into the future.

4. Commodore’s PC price war

Shaun Nichols: Commodore founder Jack Tramiel operated under the motto “business is war.” In 1983, Tramiel would kick off the business equivalent of a nuclear war that wiped out an entire sector of the computing industry.

With the Commodore 64 battling several other firms in the burgeoning home computer market, Tramiel sought to get an edge by cutting the price of his machines. Normally, cutting prices is a good thing. Consumers flock to bargains and the company makes its money back with increased sales.

In this case, however, the cuts were a death blow. Tramiel’s cuts were too drastic, wiping out profit margins and causing the company to lose money. Other vendors followed suit and dropped their own retail prices beneath profitability. Perhaps they underestimated the market for home computers, or perhaps they thought the cuts would be temporary.

Regardless, the move bankrupted many companies and triggered what would later be known as the Great Video Game Crash. Console gaming was almost wiped out completely and only began to recover when Nintendo expanded to North America and Europe.

The cuts also dealt a crippling blow to Commodore. When all was said and done, the company had exhausted its financial resources and though the market had been greatly thinned, Commodore was no match for the oncoming wave of Macintosh and Windows PCs.

Iain Thomson: It’s a fact you seldom hear from free-marketeers but most businesses hate competition and open markets.

Tramiel was no exception and chose to try and monopolise the market and ensure that everyone used a Commodore. But he took things way too far in his lust to win and ended up nearly tanking the whole sector.

That said it’s possible we owe him a small debt of gratitude. Yes, he caused the first PC recession but he also got buyers into the mindset where computers should become faster and cheaper every year, unlike most other market sectors. This expectation isn’t solely Tramiel’s doing but he played a major part.

3. SCO

Iain Thomson: I have a personal conspiracy theory about Darl McBride, who’s still clinging on as head of SCO. I don’t think he likes the business of software.

SCO’s decision to go after control of UNIX was a mistake so egregious that it’s hard to believe it was taken. The small software company took on the open source movement, and Novell and IBM too. The resultant legal battle was epic, and drags on today, although these days SCO is a shell of its former self, limping from lawsuit to lawsuit with occasional bursts of energy as it finds more cash.

So the fact that maybe McBride never wanted to run SCO occasionally creeps into the back of my head. After all, this way he’s an internationally known figure, nice salary and he can probably milk this for years to come.

Shaun Nichols: While McBride is almost universally loathed in the IT sector, his guts have to be admired. Taking IBM to court over the rights to a multi-billion dollar software platform is akin to charging a Panzer tank with a pair of rollerskates and a broom handle.

At some point you have to think that one of SCO’s lawyers would have turned to the executives and simply asked if they had gone mad. One can imagine IBM’s huge legal team had a good laugh when this suit first crossed their desks.

Perhaps SCO simply wanted to push IBM and Novell into a settlement, making some cash and perhaps even securing a new licensing deal. Whatever the company’s motive, the move proved to be catastrophic failure which has all but killed SCO.

2. Apple losing Steve Jobs

Shaun Nichols: Through much of the 90s it seemed that Apple could do nothing right. Stifled with a dated and unreliable operating system and under assault from cheaper Windows machines, the company was nearly killed off by one fizzling product after another.

Those woes, however, can arguably be traced back to a single decision: the removal of Steve Jobs. In 1983 Jobs himself moved to bring John Sculley on board. Two years later, Sculley convinced Apple’s directors that the company had outgrown Jobs’ erratic ways and moved to push the company’s co-founder out of the business.

In the following years the company would experience a fall from grace that would only become fully apparent ten years after Jobs departure. A former Pepsi executive, Sculley was unable to keep up with the rapid pace of development in the computer market and by the mid-90s the company saw both sales and profits take a dive.

With the company on the ropes in 1997, Jobs returned only to find Apple on the brink of bankruptcy. Perhaps as a testament to the failures of the old regimes, one of Jobs first moves was to halt development on nearly every new project and overhaul the company’s entire product line. The rest is history.

Iain Thomson: Jobs lured Sculley from his old job with the line “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?” He certainly changed Jobs’ life.

If I’d have been on the board of directors of Apple at the time I’d probably have got rid of the annoying little git as well, given his penchant for meetings that began early or ended past midnight. Jobs is not a good person to work for – although he is an excellent person to serve if you are so inclined.

That said Sculley really should have hired people who knew what they were doing after ousting Steve and Apple’s death spiral could only be halted by the return of the king. I just hope they know what to do the next time Jobs can’t show up for work.

1. Digital Research

Iain Thomson: Very few companies are unfortunate enough to know the precise moment of their peak. In the case of Digital it was when IBM came knocking.

IBM needed an operating system for its first PC and didn’t have time to develop one itself. So it went to discuss purchasing a licence for CP/M, the leading operating system of the time and sold by Digital.

Negotiations didn’t go well, due to IBM’s notoriously strict non-disclosure agreement which totally gagged Digital while allowing IBM full use of whatever was discussed. On the advice of its legal team they declined the meeting. Luckily the chairman of IBM knew Bill Gates’ mother and Microsoft was happy to sign because it saw the bigger picture.

In a way the final deal was a tipping point for two companies not one. Digital saw Microsoft’s code on the bulk of the world’s computers. Its competitive operating system drowned in numbers and was not supported by Microsoft.

But for IBM it was also a tipping point. The company had just handed over control of the most valuable bit of the deal. It’s understandable, IBM at the time was all about big iron computing and that was insanely profitable at the time.

But the software industry, or at least a few people in it, saw that you could still make plenty of money by building something once and then copying it and selling millions of copies at almost no extra cost. Microsoft showed the world just how much that could be.

Shaun Nichols: Think for a moment about just how different the computing industry, and the world as a whole, would be if the Kildalls hadn’t baulked at IBM’s disclosure demands. Perhaps Digital would be the biggest company in the business and Bill Gates would have be toiling in obscurity as a niche software developer. Without Windows does Apple become the dominant provider? Or perhaps Commodore and Amiga take over the market.

While it now looks like an epic missed opportunity, without the benefit of hindsight it’s an understandable decision by Digital. Rather than pay royalties IBM was said to be looking to pay out a single lump sum, and who could have known that the PC and DOS would take off the way it did?

Unfortunately, the deal was never made and the saga with IBM and Microsoft haunted DRI founder Gary Kildall until his untimely death at the age of 52.

As Iain noted, the deal was also a turning point for IBM, though I think it was bound to happen sooner or later. The company with all the savvy and precision of a well-oiled machine, and when it comes down to it they want little to do with the low-margin PC sector. Ironically, outside of its server efforts IBM is now for the most part a software and IT services outfit.

The Gov are at it again trying to spruce up and tighten an already tightly bound competitors market that only a few can play in. Is this a good thing?

Warns of costs to broadcasters and consumers.

Television broadcasters may be required to change their channel frequencies and upgrade network kit to make way for next generation mobile technologies including long-term evolution (LTE), a Federal Government report has revealed.

Read the full article:

He also stated “The “once-in-a-generation” opportunity, as Conroy called it, was expected to attract international interest and could also add billions to government coffers.”

Seems to me, Gov. wants well in. Also wanting so many other branches in the online, mass media field and, being a Gov. will probably eventually snare us all, consumers and business owners alike.

So, what do you think?

~ Bonn Appetite

The Google support representatives posted several threads in the various categories of forums. Each of the forum categories have their own frequently asked questions.

So the FAQs are broken down by Can’t See My Ad, Ad Position & Performance, Campaign Management, Ad Approvals & Policy, Billing & Payments, Analytics & Conversion Tracking and miscellaneous.

I figured it would be nice to document them all in one place, so here they are:

Can’t See My Ad:

1. I see that my ad is accruing clicks and impressions. But when I search for it , I can’t find it! What should I do?

Such situations are due to the dynamic nature of our ad serving system. For this reason, what you see may, sometimes, not be representative of what most other users see. Try searching for your ad using our ad preview page. This page will show your ads the way most users see them, without accruing any additional impressions for your ads.

2. I want to know about first page bids.

On your Keyword Analysis page, you’ll see a metric labeled ‘Estimated bid to show on the first page’ or displayed in your keyword table’s ‘Status’ column. This metric, also called the ‘first page bid estimate,’ approximates the cost-per-click (CPC) bid needed for your ad to reach the first page of Google search results when a search query exactly matches your keyword. However, meeting your first page bid is not a guarantee of placement.

Ad placement will still depend on Quality Score, your cost-per-click (CPC) bid, your budget and account settings, and user and advertiser behavior.

3. My keywords show ‘Active: Ads show rarely due to low Quality Score’ in the status column. What does this mean?

This means that your keyword is rarely triggering ads due to its low Quality Score. In this instance, we recommend visiting your Keyword Analysis page for more insight into the keyword’s performance. Then, follow our optimization tips to improve the keyword’s Quality Score. This will help the keyword’s ad position and allow it to accrue more traffic.

4. Is there a tool that can help me identify the reason why my ad may not be showing?

The Ads Diagnostic Tool can identify why a particular ad or group of ads may not be showing. In those cases where an ad isn’t shown, this tool recommends steps to help you get your ads up and running. In some cases, you may see more than one reason why your ad isn’t appearing.

5. I’ve just started on my AdWords account, and my ads are not running. Why?

If your ads have been reviewed and approved to run, it is most probable that your account is going through a periodic review. Account reviews are designed for your protection and to maintain the quality of AdWords. To confirm, please contact AdWords support.

Ad Approvals & Policy:

1. My ad has been disapproved for Inaccurate Display URL. What does that mean?

This means that you have violated our policy on inaccurate display URLs. If your destination URL is too long for your ad, use a shortened version – such as your homepage – that meets the character limit for this field. Edit your display URL to match your destination URL and save your ad which will automatically submit your ad back to us for review.

2. How will I know about my ads approval status?

When you submit a new ad or edit an existing ad, the ad will be immediately queued for review by AdWords Specialists and will be reviewed shortly. If your ad is disapproved, you will receive an email from us. You can opt out of receiving these emails by updating your email preferences in the ‘Account Preferences’ section of the ‘My Account’ tab.

3. What are the display URL guidelines?

The display URL for each AdWords ad is limited to 35 characters. If this character limit prevents you from displaying the actual URL of your site in your ad, consider using a shortened version of your URL, such as your homepage.

Also, your display URL must be an actual web address, appearing in the form of a valid URL.

It must include the extension (such as .com, .net, .org, etc.). It doesn’t need to include the prefix (such as http:// or www). You can review our guidelines at http://adwords.google.com/select/guidelines.html.

4. What is one domain per ad group policy?

Per this policy, we no longer allow multiple display URL domains within a single ad group. All display URLs within an ad group must have the same top-level domain. This policy applies to all advertisers, regardless of previous acceptability of any ad groups.

While we understand there are legitimate use-cases for multiple display URL domains within one ad group, advertisers must use separate ad groups for each domain.
5. What does unacceptable content mean?

Google believes strongly in freedom of expression and therefore offers broad access to content across the web without censoring search results. At the same time, Google may refuse any ads or terminate any of your ad campaigns at any time, for any reason, as noted in our program Terms and Conditions.

Google AdWords reserves the right to refuse to run certain ads or categories of ads on a case-by-case basis. Ads disapproved for Unacceptable Content need to remove this content from the ad text and site. Once done, an AdWords Specialist can review ads again.

For more information on our Content Policies, do visit: https://adwords.google.com/select/contentpolicy.html.

Campaign Management:

1. I have a technical issue with my account while I attempt to perform an action. What should I do?

As a first step of troubleshooting, please try clearing your cache and cookies. If you are still facing difficulty after clearing cache and cookies, please write in to AdWords support with a screenshot of the error page or the screen and the detailed steps that you have taken.

2. How do I edit, pause, delete, or resume my ads?

You can edit, pause, delete, or resume one ad at a time, or you can change many ads at once. Changing the actual ad (such as editing text or uploading a new image) is the same as deleting the original ad and creating a new one, so after editing the ad, its statistics will be reset to zero. The same is true when you move an ad to another ad group.

3. How many campaigns/ads/keywords I can upload in my account? (or) Why am I unable to add more campaigns/ads in my account?

You may not be able to upload more campaigns/ads in your account if you have exceeded your account limits. Follow the tips to structure your account so that you will not exceed your limits.

4. I am an AdWords customer, however, why is my website not appearing in the left hand side(organic) search results in Google? It used to be there earlier, but now I do not see my website indexed. Please help.

Google’s advertising programs are independent of our search results. Participation in AdWords and AdSense doesn’t affect inclusion or ranking in the Google search index.

5. How do I add, edit, or delete keywords?

You can update your keyword list at any time. Be aware that changing the keyword itself or the keyword match type is the same as deleting the original keyword and creating a new one, so after editing the keyword, its statistics will be reset to zero. The same is true when you move a keyword to another ad group. You can make bulk edits or inline edits.

Analytics & Conversion Tracking:

1. How can I link my Analytics account with AdWords account?

First, make sure that you’re using the same Google Account email address for both your Analytics and AdWords accounts, and that the AdWords login email address has Admin access for the Analytics account.

Then follow these steps to link your Analytics and AdWords accounts. You’re finished! Your two accounts should now be linked. If you opted to keep auto-tagging turned on, Analytics will start automatically tagging your AdWords links.

2. How can I unlink my AdWords with Analytics account?

If you are an Administrator of the Analytics account to be unlinked, you can do so from within the ‘Edit Account Settings’ page. Select ‘Google Analytics’ from the ‘Reporting’ tab of your AdWords account. Navigate to your ‘Edit Account Settings’ page where you can click on ‘Unlink AdWords account from Analytics’ to finish.

If you do not have Administrator access on the account, please contact the account administrator of the account in order to get the account unlinked.

3. How do I log into my Analytics account?

Try logging in from the Google Analytics home page at www.google.com/analytics with your corresponding login email address for your account. If you’ve forgotten your password, you can retrieve it from the Password Assistance page at https://www.google.com/accounts/ForgotPasswd.

4. How can I recover a deleted profile in my Analytics account?

It is not possible to recover historical data once a profile has been deleted. Creating a new profile based on a previously existing domain will not re-create the original profile with the historical data.

5. How can I add users to reports in my Analytics account?

You can add any number of users to your Google Analytics account as well as grant varying levels of access to each user. To add a new user or administrator, sign in to your Analytics account.

Click ‘User Manager.’

From the Existing Access table, click ‘Add User.’

Enter the user’s email address, last name, and first name.

Select the Access type for this user.

If you selected ‘View reports only,’ select the profiles to which this user should have access and click ‘Add.’ Click ‘Finish.’

To modify access for an existing user, sign in to your Analytics account. Click ‘User Manager.’ Find the user in the Existing Access list and click ‘Edit.’ From the Available Website Profiles, select the profiles to which this user should have access and click ‘Add.’ Click ‘Save Changes.

Billing & Payments:

1.Why have I been billed after I canceled my account or paused/deleted my campaigns?

Check for the date when your campaign(s) was paused/deleted or when account was canceled – be assured that you would not have accrued additional costs after the date when any of the above happened. If your account currently has no outstanding balance, it will cause no further charges. It is important that you know more about the billing cycle, as well as how to verify that you had unpaid costs in your account when you were charged.

2. I can’t seem to apply a promotional code to redeem it though I have updated my billing information.

Only new accounts are eligible for promotional credit. You can apply a promotional code to your account within 14 days of account creation. If you created your account more than 14 days ago, the promotional code you received will no longer work. In cases where you have not redeemed the credit within the time frame, Google will not be able to offer you another credit.

3. Can you explain the Billing Report?

Your Billing Summary page provides a snapshot view of all your account billing activity. From this page, you can get detailed information about payments, advertising costs, and adjustments over a specified date range. You can go through the detailed explanation of how to navigate your ‘Billing Summary’ page from the references listed below.

4. How can I redeem my promotional code?

To use an AdWords promotional credit, you have to first enter your billing information. If you haven’t yet, then first enter your billing details to enter your promotional code. If you’ve already entered your billing information, then enter your promotional code. Your promotional credit will appear as a line item labeled ‘Service adjustment’ for the current month on your ‘Billing Summary’ page.

5. What are my payment options?

Payment options available depend on your location and currency, which you can find on our Payment Options page. You may have the option to pay for your advertising after accruing costs which is called ‘Postpay’ or before your ads accrue costs which is called ‘Prepay’.

Ad Position & Performance:

1. What is quality score? How is it calculated?

Quality Score is a dynamic variable calculated for each of your keywords. It combines a variety of factors and measures how relevant your keyword is to your ad text and to a user’s search query. A keyword’s Quality Score updates frequently and is closely related to its performance.

2. I am getting clicks but only a few people are converting. What should I do?

If you find that a large percentage of visitors click on your ad but don’t make purchases, it means that you need to improve the return on investment(ROI) which will increase your conversion rate.

3. My landing page says poor quality but I have made some changes to my website. How frequently is the landing page quality evaluated?

The AdWords system evaluates landing pages on a regular basis. There is no guaranteed timeline of any improvement to your Quality Scores should you make any changes to your landing pages. AdWords retrieves and evaluates advertiser landing pages on a regular basis, but it may take weeks or months for the system to re-evaluate your pages.

4. How does the ranking of ads appear in the Google search results?

A maximum of 8 unique AdWords text ads appear on the right-hand side of a Google search results page. In some cases, ads may also appear in one or more of the three positions above the Google search results.

Your ad’s position on Google and the search network varies per keyword and is determined by your matched keyword’s cost-per-click bid and Quality Score on Google in relation to other advertisers’ CPC bids and Quality Scores.

5. What do I do if my ads have a low ad rank?

If your ad has consistently experienced a decrease in ranking, this is likely due to our ad system’s focus on promoting more relevant, targeted ads. It is recommended that you optimize your account so that you can take advantage of our keyword evaluation improvements and increase your Quality Score.

Miscellaneous:

1. How do I make money through AdWords?

The AdWords program allows advertisers to reach users on Google and our growing network of search and content sites and products in the Google Network. You may be interested in the Google AdSense program for web publishers.

Google AdSense delivers text-based Google AdWords ads that are relevant to what appears on your website. When relevant ads appear on content pages, people click on them. Google will pay you for clicks on ads, so more clicks means more money for you.

Please visit https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35872 to know more about earning using AdSense.

2. I am an affiliate advertiser. Does Google have any policies around that?

We currently don’t accept ads for data entry affiliate programs. If you’re another type of affiliate, your AdWords account is completely distinct from your affiliate program. Please familiarize yourself with Google’s advertising policies which affects many affiliates.

3. I suspect my account has been hijacked.

If you suspect that your adwords account has been hijacked, delete the compromised campaign and recreate your original ads in a new campaign. Be careful not to reactivate the compromised campaign, ad groups and/or ads.

Remove any unwanted software in all of your computers and change your Google Account password. Be sure to clean your system first, and then change your password, as malware could capture your password if it’s still present within your computer.

Do contact support via:

http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/request.py?contact_type=hacked

4. What is the difference between search and content network where ads are shown?

On the search network your ads will appear alongside or above the results on our partners’ search result pages, as well as on other relevant search pages. Search sites are those which provide AdWords ads along with search results after a user searches for a particular keyword.

The Google Content Network is a collection of websites and other products, such as email programs and blogs, who have partnered with Google to display AdWords ads that are targeted based on content themes rather than specific keywords. Content sites display AdWords ads alongside related content; Google scans the content of a Web page every time it is viewed, and automatically selects ads to display when they have keywords matching the page content.

5. No clicks attributed to any keywords, but i see some clicks reported at the end of the table and am being charged.

The reason you are not able to see any clicks attributed to any of your keywords is because individual keywords don’t trigger your ads on content pages. Keywords from your entire keyword list, along with several other factors, determine which content pages show your ads. Your campaign is automatically opted into the search and content network, unless you specifically opt out of any of the networks.

~ Bonn Appetite

InfoWorld – Google on Monday unveiled enhancements to its Google Analytics Data Export API, bolstering an advanced segmentation capability for examining the nuances of data.

Google Analytics Data Export API, which currently is in beta release, enables development of client applications to request data from an existing Analytics profile and refine the results.  Google Analytics offers insight into Web site traffic and marketing effectiveness.

[ In May, Google lauded the Web as a programming model. | Keep up with app dev issues and trends with InfoWorld's Fatal Exception blog. ]

Advanced segmentation enables examination into the nuances of data.  “For example, the average time on site for all visits could be 60 seconds, but when you segment by country, you might learn that average time on site of visits from Poland is over two minutes,” said Nick Mihailovski, on behalf of the Google Analytics API Team, in the Google Code Blog.

Google has added two new ways for using advanced segments through the API. Developers can create them on the fly by specifying an expression through an API query and use advanced segments created in the Google Analytics Web interface through the API.

Google on Monday also announced an API for Google Fusion Tables. The Fusion Tables service enables sharing and visualizing of data online. The Google Fusion Tables API enables programmatic access to  content from Google Fusion Tables.

“With the new Fusion Tables API, you can update and query your dataset in Fusion Tables programmatically without ever logging in to the Fusion Tables Web site. The API means you can import data from whatever data source you may have, whether a text file or a full-powered data base,”  said Anno Langen, Jayant Madhavan, and Rebecca Shapley of the Google Fusion Tables Team, in a blog entry. “On the more exotic side, imagine you’re collecting data via survey software on GPS-enabled cell phones, as the Open Data Kit project is doing. Open Data Kit uses Google App Engine and the Fusion Tables API to instantly map locations of survey results.”

This story, “Google enhances Analytics API,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest in developers issues at InfoWorld.com.

Bonn Appetite ..