The AdWords ecosystem (not a biology lesson)

In our last post, we linked to one of many useful lessons from the Google Advertising Professionals Program, but the lessons are just one part of what the program is all about. Today, Sumit A., Product Manager for Google Advertising Professionals, tells us more:

Since the launch of AdWords, a large ecosystem consisting of customers, service providers, developers and other industry experts has sprung up around the product. We created the Google Advertising Professionals program last year to provide support and recognition to those service providers who have dedicated their businesses to helping others become successful with AdWords. These service providers range from the largest multinational advertising agencies to the small home businesses managing AdWords for their neighbor’s plumbing business. What they all have in common is experience in using AdWords. The Google Advertising Professionals program aims to validate this expertise.

The main components of the program are training, testing, qualification and marketing resources such as promotional credits. The free Learning Center contains in-depth tutorials on every aspect of AdWords. After passing the exam and meeting other criteria, Professionals become qualified and receive a logo. Professionals also have access to a professional status page and marketing tools to help them build their business. Companies in the U.S. that have multiple qualified individuals may also be eligible for company level qualification.

One of our goals is to empower anyone who has AdWords expertise to participate in the AdWords ecosystem (and make a living, too). For our advertisers, we hope that the high standards that we have set for Qualified Google Advertising Professionals will help you, should you ever need to hire someone for your AdWords needs.

Posted by Vivian, Inside AdWords crew

Everything you ever wanted to know about negative keywords

For those of you looking to refine your AdWords campaigns and improve your return on investment, we have some helpful tips on negative keywords for you.

A negative keyword is a special kind of keyword matching option that allows you to prevent your ad from appearing when the specific terms are a part of the user’s search.

Some advertisers have told us they’re nervous about using negative keywords because they fear it will reduce the traffic to their sites. If your goal is simply to increase traffic, then you may not want to use negative keywords. But if your goal is to find qualified leads, negative keywords will help filter out some of the traffic that you may not want. For example, if you're selling clothes, but you don't sell shorts, you can make ‘shorts’ a negative keyword. That way you won’t show your ad to a shopper looking for shorts (which may help you save money). You can learn more about how to choose negative keywords here.

Negative keywords can apply at two different levels: campaign-level and Ad Group-level. You can learn more about how to add negative keywords to your account here. If you want even more info, check out the advanced Google Advertising Professionals lesson on Exact Match vs. Negative Match optimizations.

Posted by Andrew, Inside AdWords crew

See you after the long weekend

We just wanted to take this opportunity to wish you all a happy Fourth of July weekend, full of tofu-dogs and fireworks. For you Canadians out there: happy Canada Day!

Posted by Andrew, Blake, Jon and Vivian (the proud Canuck), the Inside AdWords crew

Holiday sales

As U.S. Independence Day approaches, we wanted to mention to you that it's easy to create campaigns promoting specific seasonal items or sales. Just create a new campaign with a holiday flavor – like sale-priced stars and stripes napkins – and choose the date you want your campaign to end (so that you stop showing ads when your promotion ends). It's a great way to boost traffic to your site without having to worry that shoppers will see your advertised sale prices after the sale is over.

And if you're super organized and want to prepare the campaign ahead of time, you can simply pause the campaign until you're ready to begin.

Posted by Andrew, Inside AdWords crew

Has anyone seen Ian Turner? [updated]

We're passing on a very important message from software engineer Matt Cutts, who posted this on the Google Blog:

Last week I got back from the WebmasterWorld conference in New Orleans. I just found out that Ian Turner, a well-known moderator and search engine optimizer, hasn't been seen since last weekend. If you've seen Ian more recently, could you contact his family? There's more information here.

Everyone is hoping that he's safe and sound somewhere.

Update: Ian's okay! He's safe and well in Atlanta.

Posted by Jon, Inside AdWords crew