Get your ad on the map…literally

Advertisers and users alike know that AdWords ads are a great way to find relevant information. But sometimes you wonder where the businesses that you see advertising online are actually located. Well, we’ve just announced a new ad format -- the local business ad -- which ties targeted ads into a local context. To get the details, we caught up with Sandra, from the Local team:

With local business ads, you can promote your business location within the map on Google Local. Users searching for your products or services will be able to clearly see how close (or far) they are from your business' physical location. In addition to your ad text, you can also include a phone number or add an image of your company logo or one of the products you carry. Whether it’s a hotel or flowers, pizza or plumbing, you can get key information about your business in front of potential customers as they browse or shop locally online.



If your business has multiple locations, you can promote them all within the same Ad Group or campaign using the same keyword lists -- your ads will appear whenever someone is searching for those keywords near any one of your locations. Local business ads are associated with business listings in Google Local, so check to make sure your listings are included and up-to-date. If you want to make changes, simply visit the Local Business Center. And, for those of you with more than ten business locations, you might want to consider uploading a feed.

Ready to let your customers know exactly where you are on the map? Just click the 'Create New Local Business Ad' link from within the Ad Group view of your account to get started. Or, learn more about local business ads first.

Posted by Arielle, Inside AdWords crew

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AdWords 101: Targeting the right customers (Part 1 of 2)

One of the biggest reasons why AdWords can be so effective for your business is that it provides the ability to target your ads specifically to your prospective customers. AdWords offers a variety of targeting options, such as language, location, distribution (where your ads appear), and criteria (by keyword or by site). Today we’ll cover the first two: language and location.

English? Español? Estonian?
In this increasingly global marketplace, you may find that your customers don’t necessarily all speak the same language (literally). You can take advantage of the language targeting options within AdWords to display ads to users in 56 different languages – everything from English or French to Icelandic and Thai. You can choose your language targeting preferences when you create a new campaign, or change existing preferences under "Edit Campaign Settings." To target multiple languages in a single campaign, hold down the CTRL key and click the languages of your choice.

Note: many advertisers ask if Google will translate keywords and ad text into different languages—and no, we do not. The ads will appear just as you've written them. So, for this reason, if you have, say, German customers but don’t feel comfortable creating campaigns in German, we recommend that you seek help from professional translators in order to come up with the best ads and keywords for your customers.

Advanced example: another question we often hear is whether or not the ad text must be in the same language as the one(s) being targeted, and the answer is no. For example, if you wanted to target French-speaking prospective customers using an ad written in English, you could choose "French" in your language targeting preferences and still submit an English ad. We can't guarantee that the ad will receive a good response, but when Google detects that a user's language preference is French, and he or she types in one of your chosen keywords, your English-language ad may be displayed.

Local, Regional, National or International?
If you sell your products or services to customers in a particular area, you may want to consider creating location targeted campaigns. AdWords allows you to target your ads to potential customers in cities, regions, territories, countries, or any area that you define by points on a map. For more detailed explanations, check out our previous post about location targeting.

Homework: you can learn more about these targeting options by reviewing these resources below.

Learning Center
Language & Location Targeting

Help Center – FAQ
Targeting by language
Targeting by location: Country or Territory targeting
Targeting by location: Regional or Customized targeting

Stay tuned for part 2 of this lesson, in which we’ll tell you how to target the search and content networks, as well as explain the difference between keyword and site targeting.

Posted by Vivian, Inside AdWords crew

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Hide deleted campaigns, Ad Groups, and more...

Here's a really short and to-the-point advertiser email that asks a great question:

I'm wondering how to really delete a campaign? You know, make it go away? Not see it any more?... - Make it gone

While everything you create within your account remains there permanently as an historical overview of your account's performance, hiding deleted campaigns, Ad Groups, ad creatives, or deleted keywords is actually quick and easy. And, should you ever decide that you want to see what you've done in the past, you may easily do so.

You may choose to hide deleted campaigns from the Campaign Summary page of your account by selecting "Show only active campaigns" (or "Show all but deleted campaigns" which will still show your paused campaigns) from the drop-down menu located near the top-center of the chart that shows your campaign stats.

Similarly, to hide deleted Ad Groups, go the campaign within which that Ad Group is located. Then, select "Show only active Ad Groups" (or "Show all but deleted Ad Groups") from the drop-down menu. In this case, you'll find this menu above and to the left of your campaign statistics chart. It's beneath the header that shows the campaign's name.

And, if you want to hide deleted keywords and deleted ads, simply make sure the check box that says "Include deleted items that were active in this date range" is unchecked. You'll find the check box above your keyword list, just below the date range tool, in the Ad Group view of your account.

For all of these settings, once you make a selection, that setting will be applied every time you log in to your account until you change it. If you do change your mind later, just select the appropriate option from the drop-down menus and/or the check box mentioned above. Voila!

Posted by Blake, Inside AdWords crew

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Reaching your customers with other Google products

Not long ago, the four of us at Inside AdWords got together for dinner at a local Cuban restaurant after work. While we promised we wouldn't talk about AdWords (we do that all day!), we found it difficult to extend that agreement to other Google products. From locating the restaurant to finding our favorite Cuban recipe online, we were reminded how Google services come in handy not only when you're hungry, but also when you’re trying to maximize exposure to your local business.

First, we found the restaurant using Google Local. Luckily for us, this restaurant was already listed in the local search results. If your business isn’t, be sure to visit the Local Business Center to learn more about how to get listed for free. Next, we performed a quick search on Google.com to locate the restaurant’s menu and ensure that there was something for everyone (check out last week's post for more about search results inclusion). To save paper, we sent the address to Sarah's mobile phone and were on our way.

The next day, both Blake and Vivian found themselves looking for mementos from our team dinner. In an effort to diversify his Google t-shirt collection, Blake searched for one of the restaurant's t-shirts on Froogle. Unfortunately, this didn't lead to what he was looking for, but if the restaurant owners had made their shirts available on Froogle, he would have been able to get pricing information and more online. Meanwhile, Vivian couldn't shake her craving for fried plantains and wanted to make them at home. So it was off to Google Base, where she found relevant recipes -- but none from the restaurant itself. Had the chef of this particular restaurant wanted to share his sweet secrets to success, he could have submitted his own recipe to Base too.

While you're already well aware of how AdWords ads can help people find your business, remember that making it accessible to users doesn't stop there. By using a variety of Google services, you may reach potential customers wherever they're searching, whether they’re looking for an address, a menu, or a t-shirt.

Posted by Arielle and Sarah, Inside AdWords crew

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System maintenance tomorrow evening -- 3/24/06

A quick heads-up from our tech team:

We will be performing routine AdWords system maintenance from approximately 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. PST on Friday, March 24, 2006. Please note that, while you will not be able to access your AdWords account during this period, your campaigns will continue to run normally.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Posted by Blake, Inside AdWords crew

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Search results and sponsored links

One of the most frequently heard questions about Google and AdWords is exemplified by this (shortened and paraphrased) post from our AdWords Help group:

We are the only "widget" company in our county. When someone does a search using, for example, "widgets my county" our sponsored link shows up at the top of the list, which is how it should be...How can I get our site to show up in the free search results too? - Not there

We're happy to shed some light on this. To start, here's a brief glossary:

Sponsored links: the paid AdWords ads at the top and/or on the right hand side of a search results page

Search results: the unpaid search results on the left hand side of the page

The most important thing to know is that there is no connection of any sort between the unpaid search results and the paid sponsored links -- so being an AdWords advertiser will neither help nor harm one's ranking within the search results.

This leaves the important question of how to get your site to appear in the search results, since being an advertiser is not a factor in being included. Well, we'd be pleased to help you on your way. You'll find some very useful information on this topic on the Google Information for Webmasters page, including answers to such frequently asked questions as "How Do I Get My Site Listed on Google?".

Also, be sure to refer to our past posts about Google Sitemaps, which allows webmasters to give Google information about their sites so that we may index them effectively.

Posted by Blake, Inside AdWords crew

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Hot in Miami, freezing in Hanover

Remember that bathing suit example from yesterday's post? Well, between the recent vernal equinox and writing about search trends on the keyword 'bathing suit,' we got to thinking...

While it might be a great time to promote a spring bathing suit sale in Miami, where today's high is 85 degrees, people bundled up in winter clothes in 33 degree Hanover, New Hamphire may not quite be thinking summer on the beach.

If the product you're selling will be received differently in different locales, you might want to think about tailoring the message of your AdWords ads accordingly. Running with the bathing suit example, you could target one campaign to warm coastal states (such as Florida) with ad text similar to the following:

Bathing Suit Sale
Spring's here! Get ready for summer
Shop our huge selection of suits
www.example.com

Because AdWords allows you to customize your ad text, you could change the message slightly for another campaign targeting cold states in the Northeast:

Sick of the cold?
Start getting ready for summer with
our huge bathing suit sale!
www.example.com

And the possibilities for ad text customization don't stop there. Once summer arrives, you could change your ad text to be more appropriate for the summer season. At that point, something like this might work:

Summer Swimwear
Look great on the beach in summer's
hottest trends - don't miss out!
www.example.com

Remember, users visit your site when they are interested in what your ad text offers. By making the connection between your target audience, your ad, and your site as seamless as possible, you'll be most likely to turn users into customers.

Posted by Arielle, Inside AdWords crew

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Keyword Tool: global trends and other new features

To improve the tools that help you make smarter keyword selections, we recently added some new features to the Keyword Tool. Here's Ann-Lee, from that team, with a quick update:

We hope that you're finding the recently added search performance data useful, because we've added even more! You can now review global traffic trends (all languages, all countries) along with search volume for all your potential keywords (same languages and countries). For example, for the keyword 'bathing suits' you'll see how search volume varies each month for the last 12 months as well as which month (June -- no surprise!) saw the highest volume.



You can access this feature from the AdWords home page as well as from within your account.

We've also added the option to add keywords of any match type, including negative keywords, directly to any Ad Group. We hope that these improvements to the Keyword Tool make your keyword performance estimates easier to understand and use.

Be sure to try out these new additions -- and as always, feel free to let us know what features you'd like to see in the Keyword Tool in the future.

Posted by Arielle, Inside AdWords crew

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'My Account' tab temporarily inaccessible

In honor of St. Patrick's day, we turned a quick notice from our tech team into a limerick:

We're doing some work on your billing pages,
So you won't be able to see them (but not for ages!),
Said our tech team, "Hang tight!
From 7 to 10 tonight
While we improve the system in stages."
And in case that isn't clear, here's the original message:

The pages under the 'My Account' tab will be unavailable tonight, Friday March 17th, from 7:00 to 10:00 pm PST for system maintenance. You'll still be able to log into your accounts during this time, but you won't be able to view invoices, change your billing address, or update your credit card during this maintenance period. Rest assured, however, that your campaigns will continue to run normally.

As always, we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Posted by Arielle, Inside AdWords crew

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Creating new campaigns just got easier

Have you ever wished you could build a new campaign by copying the settings from an existing campaign? If so, then you'll be excited to hear about the new one-page campaign setup feature. Here's Jon D. from the Campaign Management team with more info:

Next time you create a new keyword-targeted campaign, keep an eye out for the yellow box at the top of the page (see screenshot below so you'll know what it looks like).



Simply selecting one of your existing campaigns from this new drop-down menu will allow you to create a brand new campaign pre-configured with many of the advanced settings from your existing campaign.

Try it out and let us know what you think!

Posted by Arielle, Inside AdWords crew

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Even small changes need review

In our continued effort to shed some light on common AdWords misconceptions, let's take a look at another frequently misunderstood nuance, using this paraphrased advertiser email as a starting point:

We run an ad in the content network that normally gets a huge number of impressions daily. However we made a very minor change to the ad and now it is getting 0 impressions in the content network. Why did this happen? We really need this ad displayed in content, and not being there has reduced our sales dramatically! - Confused and curious.

So, why did this happen? Most advertisers are aware that while new ads may run on Google.com rather quickly, they must be reviewed and approved before they may be sent to our search and/or content networks. However, it's not so well understood that editing an existing ad, even if the change is very small, will also require review and approval before the ad may be once again sent to the networks.

Why is this so? Changing a single word (or sometimes even a single letter!) can give a line of text an entirely different meaning. With this in mind, and to ensure that we're delivering appropriate and high quality ads to our search and content networks, even these tiny changes need to be reviewed.

Here's a bonus tip to consider the next time you wish to edit an ad that is already appearing on the networks (it's used by many an expert advertiser):

Rather than editing an ad, consider leaving that ad as-is -- and then create a second ad (with your desired changes) in the same Ad Group as the original ad. Then, let both ads run until the new ad has been reviewed and approved. At this point, if it turns out that the new ad is performing better than the original, it may be time to delete the original.

Posted by Blake, Inside AdWords crew

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Invalid click credits

Last week, we answered some common questions about invalid click activity. One question we didn't cover was how we reimburse advertisers affected by invalid activity. Chris, from the Click Quality team, has this info:

In addition to our automatic filters (which will catch and discard the vast majority of invalid clicks), our team proactively identifies invalid activity that may not have been automatically filtered and credits advertisers accordingly. These credits used to appear on your Billing Summary page as 'Service Adjustments.' In the interest of transparency, all credits, past and future, for invalid click activity are now labeled 'Adjustment - Click Quality.'

You may notice these credits appearing more frequently as we work hard to ensure that this advertising budget is returned to affected advertisers as quickly as possible.

As we mentioned in last week's post, if you see suspicious activity on your AdWords account and would like to request a review of clicks within the past 60 days that you believe may be invalid, you can submit them for review here.

Posted by Arielle, Inside AdWords crew

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AdWords 101: the building blocks of AdWords

Since the inception of Inside AdWords, we've been fortunate to receive a lot of feedback from our advertisers on how the blog has helped them use AdWords more effectively. One consistent piece of feedback from our newer advertisers is that they'd like us to provide more tips for AdWords beginners. Well, we've heard you loud and clear and today, we're beginning a new regular series called "AdWords 101", where we'll start from the beginning and help our novice advertisers learn more about how to get the most of our their campaigns.

For this inaugural AdWords 101 lesson, we'd like to talk about account structure, which can be thought of as the building blocks of a successful AdWords account. To better explain, we've borrowed a diagram from the AdWords Learning Center:


As you can see, your billing information is stored at the account level, along with your email address and password. An account can be made up of one or more campaigns; daily budgets, targeting and distribution preferences, and start and end dates are all controlled at the campaign level. Within each campaign, you have Ad Groups which contain your ad text and keywords.

Newer advertisers often think that it's best to fill one single Ad Group with multiple ad texts and as many keywords as possible in order to keep account management simple. In practice, however, it is much more effective to create multiple Ad Groups so that you can create targeted ad text for a specific group of keywords.

For example, let's say you sell candy and chocolates. Instead of having one Ad Group with keywords such as candy, chocolate bars, lollipops, truffles, gumdrops, taffy and one generic ad about both candy and chocolate, try splitting up your keywords into separate Ad Groups such as:

Ad Group #1: Novelty Candy
Keywords: gumdrops, taffy, jawbreakers, lollipops

Ad Group #2: Chocolate
Keywords: truffles, dark chocolate, gourmet chocolate, chocolate bars

Ad Group #3: Online Sweets Store
Keywords: online chocolate store, online candy store, mail order candy, mail order chocolate

This way, you can write targeted ad text for each of your Ad Groups that refer specifically to the topic of the Ad Group. This setup also allows you to track your campaigns more effectively because you can see which type of ad text drives more sales to your business -- do you get more clicks and sales from candy ads or chocolate ads?

Homework: to learn more about how to set up your account more effectively, check out these resources in the AdWords Learning and Help Centers.

Learning Center

• AdWords Account Structure


• What is an Ad Group?

Help Center - FAQ

• All about Campaigns


• All about Ad Groups

That's all for the first session of AdWords 101. Stay tuned for more lessons, which will put you on the path to advertiser success!

Posted by Vivian, Inside AdWords crew

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New demographic site selection

Looking to show your ads primarily to college age men? Or perhaps you want to focus your advertising budget on parents in their thirties who have a lot of disposable income? If so, you'll be happy to hear that the site tool now provides demographic site selection for advertisers who are targeting users in the United States.

How does this work? We're using comScore Media Metrix panel data to help you find sites in the Google network that have a high audience-base composition of the demographic profile you would like to reach. You can select from 22 demographic options to create the profile of your ideal customer. Use this in conjunction with site URLs and site topics, in our newly updated site tool, to reach more of your target customers.

So, the next time you want to target your ads by gender, age, ethnicity, annual household income, or children in the house, look no further than the site tool for suggestions.

Posted by Sarah, Inside AdWords crew

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Quick system maintenance Friday evening

This just in:

On March 10, 2006, the AdWords system will be unavailable from approximately 8 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. PST due to system maintenance. While you won't be able to log in during this brief period, your campaigns will continue to run normally. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Posted by Arielle, Inside AdWords crew

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About invalid clicks

For some time, we’ve provided information for advertisers about invalid clicks on the AdWords site here. We thought the notice of today’s invalid click settlement might prompt some additional questions about this issue, so we had Shuman Ghosemajumder, Business Product Manager for Trust & Safety, address them.

What is click fraud? I often hear the term “invalid clicks,” too. What’s the difference -- or are they the same?

The term "fraud" implies deliberate deception. Our aim in fighting invalid clicks is broader and includes clicks that we suspect may have been deceptive or malicious, as well as clicks that we deem invalid for other reasons, such as accidental double clicking on an ad. The usage of the word "fraud" in this context has caused a great deal of confusion, as it's practically impossible to "prove" that an impression or click was caused by deliberate deception. Our servers can accurately count clicks on ads, but we cannot know what the intent of a clicking user was when they made that click. When we identify a click as invalid, it simply means a click we won't charge for, in order to deliver the best ROI to advertisers.


Why not say more about the specific methods used to identify invalid clicks?

There are many things we do to detect invalid clicks, including looking at duplicate IP addresses, user session information, network information, geo-targeting and browser information. These are all important signals for detecting invalid clicks.

The technology we use to detect invalid clicks is highly sophisticated and was developed by some of the world's leading experts -- PhDs in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and statistics. We’re reluctant to share more about our technology and methods, however, because doing so would make it easier for fraudsters to try to defeat our systems.


How big a problem is invalid click activity?

We take it very seriously and have devoted significant resources and some of our best talent to this. By far, most of the invalid clicks we see are detected and discarded by our automatic filters even before they reach advertisers accounts. If an advertiser is monitoring click activity, these automatically filtered clicks may show up in an advertiser's logs, but not in their bills. When invalid clicks are detected after an advertiser is charged, we reimburse for them. Because of our detection efforts, losses to advertisers from invalid clicks are very small.


But don't advertisers report invalid clicks to Google which weren't detected in advance?

We do receive reports from advertisers and we look at them very closely. When we believe those clicks are invalid, we reimburse advertisers for them. Some invalid clicks do make it through our filters, but we believe the amount is very small.

Also, we often find that the clicks are legitimate, but from unexpected sources such as broader targets the advertiser has set up for their campaign. And, as I mentioned earlier, some of the invalid clicks advertisers see in logs are clicks we've already caught, discarded and not charged. Most investigations we conduct concerning invalid clicks are cleared up with the advertiser after explaining the source of the traffic increase or showing them that the clicks were never charged.


Does Google have an incentive to allow some amount of fraud because it means more revenue?

Actually, it is the opposite of that. We have much more of an incentive to do a better job of handling invalid clicks than our competitors -- and we believe we do. Fighting invalid clicks aggressively is in Google's best interest and essential for us to maintain a viable business. In addition, we offer free tools to advertisers so they can monitor their return on investment -- which is a helpful way to determine whether too many clicks coming through are not resulting in sales. Those free tools help advertisers manage to a bottom line value of their ads.


Some people suggest that click fraud may account for as much as 30 percent of traffic -- what do you say to that?

We believe the methodology behind that particular estimate is flawed -- and that many who have cited the figure have done so irresponsibly by using it differently than it is characterized in the report.

Here's a link to a .pdf version of the study where that figure originated. We encourage you to read the report and evaluate it yourself. Some things we think you will see that undercut those who use this estimate carelessly:

Even the report does not say that click fraud is 30% of all clicks. What it does say is that of three ad campaigns (only three ad campaigns were examined in this study), evaluated over a ten day period, one had questionable clicks of 8%, another 10% and a third 30%.

So, the 30% figure comes from analysis of a *single* ad campaign, not a study of many. This means that the figure of 30% that is used to characterize click fraud for the whole search and advertising industry comes from the analysis of *one* ad campaign looked at for ten days. Even in that campaign, it is not clear what methodology they used to determine which clicks are "bad" and it is possible that they marked legitimate clicks as "duplicate."

Moreover, the study does not indicate whether the advertiser was actually charged for any of the clicks, only that the traffic analysis suggested that the clicks may have been invalid. As I mentioned above, it’s very possible that clicks recorded in an advertiser's logs have already been caught by Google’s detection systems and not charged. (I should also note that when invalid clicks are detected and discarded before they are charged to an advertiser they are also not recorded as revenue.)

When considering the validity of this exaggerated 30% figure, you should also consider who is most aggressively using it: it is those who have the most to gain from hyping the problem. Those who are throwing around this figure are doing so as part of their marketing efforts to sell products they claim detect click fraud. The more they can convince others that click fraud is a problem, the more they hope to see increased sales. In other words, these companies have a huge financial incentive to make people believe invalid clicks are a larger problem than they really are.


What else on this topic should we be aware of?

Whether it’s online or offline, advertising should be about ROI and results. It is in our interest to serve the interests of our advertisers, which means delivering superior ROI. Our efforts to combat invalid clicks are an essential part of that.

What we have seen so far is that advertisers continually increase the amount of money they spend, which suggests that they are pleased with the return delivered by their ads. We encourage advertisers to track ROI and contact us when they see something that doesn't appear to add up. If you see suspicious activity on your AdWords account, please contact our click quality team.

Posted by Arielle, Inside AdWords crew

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Search your site

You know that AdWords can be a great way to drive targeted traffic to your site. But what happens after users arrive there? If you have multiple products for sale or a significant collection of content, it's likely that visitors to your site rely on search to find what they want.

How's your site search? Studies show that most users (85%!) can't find what they're looking for through site searches, and they tend to go elsewhere if a site's search functionality doesn't return relevant results.

So, what can you do about it? This week, the Google Enterprise team launched a lower-cost version of the Google Mini that indexes up to 50,000 documents. If AdWords get users to your site, the Mini helps ensure people have the best experience once they're there by making your site as easy to search as Google.com. Also, be sure to check out the customer map to see what other users are saying about the Mini.

Posted by Arielle, Inside AdWords crew

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Use Google Video to showcase your products

Recently, we had the chance to catch up with one of the original Inside AdWords bloggers, Jon, to learn more about his new role on the Google Video team. After reminiscing about the old days as part of the Inside AdWords crew, he shared his insights on how Video can also benefit advertisers:

After spending a year learning the ins and outs of AdWords, even though I now work on Video, I often see things from the advertiser perspective. I always loved reading stories from advertisers who had used AdWords to help their businesses become more successful. The surprising thing about Video has been that we get the same type of letters. So here are some things that people have done on Video to help their businesses become successful.

For advertisers with video content, Google Video is a great way to expand your reach into an entirely new segment of the online community. If you have commercials or demos of your product that you'd like the world to see, you can upload your videos now (for free!). As with all things Google, you'll be able to monitor your stats, which are fully broken out for you within your Video account. That way, you can see the results and know exactly how many times a specific piece of content was watched. And, if you really want to improve coverage, you also have the option of embedding the streaming videos on your site, with no download required for your users -- you just copy the 'put on site' code.

If you're selling videos on your site, you can use streaming to provide users with a preview. Use the power of motion -- add an embedded live demo -- to sell a product that words and pictures can't describe. Or, share that funny branding video with the world by placing it in our index. The opportunities are out there; as always, let us know what your experiences are, so we can continue to make Google Video even more useful to you.

Posted by Sarah, Inside AdWords crew

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