It is often said in medical circles that prevention is better than cure – advice that the folks at Google Inc. have apparently taken to heart, preventing a lengthy legal wrangle by making one of the largest legal settlements ever seen in the US. Google has agreed to pay $500 million to settle claims that the company allowed Canadian pharmacies to place online advertisements targeting US consumers.

US law (specifically the Controlled Substances Act) forbids the importation of prescription drugs from pharmacies beyond the country’s borders, and the Department of Justice reports that the pharmaceutical AdWords campaigns led to illegal shipments of medication from Canada to US customers. Google’s payment of $500 million (the equivalent of £305 million) is a reflection of the revenue generated by the search giant and the pharmacies as a result of the AdWords advertisements. According to the Justice Department, Google was aware of the legal restrictions, and paying the penalty for “improper advertising practices” will allow the company to avoid criminal charges. This follows a 2-year investigation into the matter.

The upgraded keyword tool is making waves in and around the worldwide SEO community. The new ‘lower’ rankings for keywords that once commanded high positions on the keyword list are taking some getting used to. Although, if you scratch deeper under the surface of the new Google keyword tool then you will find gold – Google issued this statement regarding the AdWords keyword tool, “the previous version of the Keyword Tool provides search statistics based on Google.com search traffic and traffic from search partners, while the updated version of the Keyword Tool provides search statistics based on Google.com traffic only”. This sheds some light on the situation.

Pay Per Click advertising in the UK is about to change dramatically following an updated Google AdWords trademark policy. The change allows advertisers to use the trademarked name of the products they are selling – without owning the copyright or obtaining the owner’s permission. The new AdWords trademark policy initiated in the US last year allows users to bid on trademarked keywords, provided the advertised site actually does stock and sell the corresponding goods.

The AdWords policy update rolled out in the US in June 2009 and will become effective in the UK, Ireland and Canada on September 14. Most European countries will also be able to use trademarked text as of September. This is huge news for the PPC advertising industry, as the new AdWords trademark policy will increase the relevance of UK advertisers’ campaigns and allow them to compete with the larger companies who own the trademark rights. While advertisers will be pleased by the news, trademark owners will most likely not share their excitement about the AdWords trademark policy updates, as the bidding for their trademark name pushes up the cost per click.

In the past we’ve had moments where it has been easy for us to contact Google account managers to do the unlinking and linking for us, however we recently had to get this organised while our account manager had gone AWOL.

It’s been ages since I’ve worked on AdWords myself (hands on, besides the training I do), and I’ve spent the last few weeks getting back onto the bicycle and stuck in again. In most cases it is easier to work on a project from the beginning VS coming in at the end and having to figure out what the goal/strategy was for an account setup.

There are a number of reasons for starting a new fresh PPC/AdWords account for clients, such as:

Google Adwords recently released a new search-based keyword tool that will help advertisers discover which keywords relating to their services and/or products that they are not optimising their website for, and which may cause them to miss out on additional business as a result.

It’s a handy tool in that its results eliminate the terms you are already optimising for. If you have an Adwords account, and are logged in, then it will only display those keywords that your account is not currently advertising. One of the most convenient things about the tool is that you insert your URL and it then searches your site for missing keywords, as opposed to sitting on the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and going through hundreds of possible keyword options, which will then need to be checked against your site to see if they are already optimised for.