Car insurance Channel

Today, we announced that we're partnering with Bloomberg TV to offer their national inventory to advertisers through the Google TV Ads platform. Bloomberg TV is a 24-hour business and financial news channel, reaching over 54 million households in the US.

This builds on our partnership with NBCU, announced earlier this month, and will provide advertisers with broader audience reach and access to desirable viewer demographics. Starting later this year, Google TV Ads advertisers will have access to premium inventory on Bloomberg TV, so stay tuned for further announcements. Currently, advertisers can target Bloomberg TV through our DISH Network inventory available on the Google TV Ads platform. Our partnership with Bloomberg TV means that advertisers will be able to reach all Bloomberg TV viewers in the US.

For more details on our partnership with Bloomberg TV, please see the announcement on on our Traditional Media blog.

Posted by Amanda Kelly, Inside AdWords crew

If you currently use or have considered using AdWords conversion tracking, we have news that may be of interest to you. Conversion tracking users are no longer required to display the "Google Site Stats" logo on the conversion pages of their web sites.

Previously, a small but visible text block that read "Google Site Stats" automatically appeared on the page where the conversion tracking code was placed on your web site. The logo would appear only after a conversion occurred via your AdWords ad, and it provided converting visitors links to information about AdWords conversion tracking and instructions on how to block the tracking.

However, many advertisers have told us that the logo was redundant with their own privacy policy, where they already notify users about the tracking technologies in use on their sites. As a result, we're now giving you the option of not showing the Site Stats logo on the conversion page(s) of your site.

If you currently have conversion tracking tags installed on your web site, the Site Stats logo will continue to display unless you take further action. If you choose to remove the logo, please inform users about the tracking methods you employ on your site by modifying your site's privacy policy.

For those of you who are new to conversion tracking, it's a powerful tool that allows you to measure conversion metrics for your AdWords campaigns. An added benefit of using conversion tracking is that it allows you to use the Conversion Optimizer, a bidding feature that uses your conversion tracking data to optimize the performance of your campaigns, helping you make the most of your advertising dollars.

For more information about conversion tracking, please visit our Help Center.

Posted by Emel Mutlu, Inside AdWords crew

Last month, we posted about upcoming Quality Score improvements -- and today, we're following up to notify you that these changes will take effect in all advertisers' accounts over the next few days. In addition, we'd like to answer a number of the more common questions we've recently heard from our advertisers.

To briefly summarize our earlier post, we have incorporated three main improvements to Quality Score:

• Quality Score is now more accurate -- because it is calculated at the time of each search query
  
  
• Keywords are no longer marked 'inactive for search' -- all keywords are active because they are evaluated for every relevant query
  
  
• 'First page bid estimates' replace 'minimum bids' in your account -- providing a more actionable and useful metric to advertisers

Below are answers to the most common questions we've heard, in each of these three areas:

Quality Score

Many advertisers wanted to know specifically how this launch affects the way we calculate Quality Score.

We will still consider your account's history, which consists of the clickthrough rate (CTR) of all the ads and keywords in your account. We will also consider your landing page quality. Although your overall Quality Score is evaluated at the time of each query, landing page quality is evaluated less frequently.

Inactive for Search Status

We received three main types of questions about Inactive for Search Status. You've asked why we were doing this, how this would affect your traffic levels, and how this would affect the number of ads shown.

Through all our Ads Quality changes, our goal is to improve the search experience by showing only the highest quality, most relevant ads -- and this change further enables us to meet this goal. By making all keywords active we will be able to evaluate keywords for any query where they may be relevant. Previously, keywords that were marked 'inactive for search' would never show ads on Google.com, even if they would have been a high quality match for certain queries.

Most keywords that are 'inactive for search' today will continue to accrue very few (or no) impressions due to their low Quality Score. For some currently inactive keywords, however, we may find that they perform very well for certain queries or in certain circumstances -- in which case, these keywords may begin to receive impressions.

Stated another way, this change does not mean that that every ad will be shown or that every query will show ads.

First Page Bid Estimates

Finally, for first page bid estimates, many of you were interested in learning how these would compare to your old minimum bids.

For queries without many advertisers competing for placement, the first page bid estimate should be relatively close to your existing minimum bid. However, queries with a high level of advertiser competition may have significantly higher first page bid estimates, because you'll likely need to bid above the old minimum bid to rank higher than your competition and show on the first page. Remember that you can bid less than your first page bid estimate and still show on subsequent pages -- as long as your keyword is relevant to our users.

Advertisers familiar with the competitive landscape for their keywords may indeed notice that the first page bid estimates provided are in line with the CPCs that they had been bidding to appear on the first page prior to the release of these Quality Score improvements, although this is not a given.

We hope this information helps answer your questions. And, as you become acclimated to these changes, we hope you will keep in mind their underlying purpose. These improvements are part of a continuing effort to deliver relevant ads to our users, and also to provide you with more control over your bidding and more insight into the quality of your ads and keywords.

For further information, please see these frequently asked questions.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Inside AdWords crew

In this installment of Google Analytics 101, we'll take a brief look at another important statistic visible from the Dashboard: Traffic Sources. When you first set up your account and sign in, Analytics shows a Dashboard module containing a pie chart of all of your Traffic Sources. These sources include any that are unrelated to your AdWords advertising, as will be explained in this post. The pie chart is a breakdown of the different kinds of ways that traffic reaches your site. (If you don't see it right away in your Dashboard, just click on Traffic Sources in the left-hand navigation. It'll appear at the top of the report.)
Posted by Christian Yee, Inside AdWords crew

On Saturday, September 13th, 2008 the AdWords system will be unavailable from approximately 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT, for maintenance. While you won't be able to sign in to your accounts during this time, your campaigns will continue to run as usual.

AdWords system maintenance typically occurs on the second Saturday of each month from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT.

We'll continue to update you via the blog as we always have, but please make note of the September 13th date and our scheduled maintenance further down the road.

Posted by Heather Lane, Inside AdWords crew

Today, we announced the beta version of a new open source web browser: Google Chrome. Google Chrome features a simple and intuitive user interface and an entirely new architecture designed for speed, security, and stability while browsing the Internet. For more information on why we built Google Chrome, please take a look at the Official Google Blog.