Car insurance Channel

We’re pleased to announce that professor registration for the 2012 Google Online Marketing Challenge (GOMC 2012), our global student competition, is now open!

Student registration, however, will open January 31, 2012. In order for student teams to participate in the competition, their professors must first register.

But what is this challenge, you ask? 

The Google Online Marketing Challenge is a global online marketing competition for students from any higher education institution in the world. Students must develop and run a successful online advertising campaigns through Google AdWords for a real business or non-profit organization, exercising advertising and consulting skills and summarizing them in the campaign reports.

Once the campaigns finish running, Google and a panel of independent academics from all over the world will select the winning teams. Their selections will be based on the success of the campaigns and the quality of the competition reports.

There are exciting prizes awaiting the winners:

• Trip to Google Headquarters in Mountain View, California for the Global Winners
• Trips to local Google offices for Regional Winners
• Opportunity to win donations worth $30,000 for the non-profit organizations the students partner with 
• A brand new award category for GOMC 2012 - The Best Social Media Page Award - more details to follow!

Last year’s challenge featured 50,000 participants representing 100 countries, and this year’s challenge is expected to boast even more. Students, here’s your chance to make a global impact!

To learn more about the Google Online Marketing Challenge, please visit our website: www.google.com/onlinechallenge.

Posted by AJ Pascua and Anndrea Moore, GOMC Team

Think With Google's December Adventure finishes this week with tips on measurement and analytics. We hoped you enjoyed our insights and daily tips this month on the Think with Google Plus Page. If you missed them or wanted to review, here are the previous weeks' recaps for:

• Week 1: Search insights and tips
• Week 2: Mobile insights and tips
• Week 3: Display insights and tips

Here are the three tips and insights covered this week (and a bonus treat):

#1. Monday - According to the Google ebook Zero Moment of Truth, consumers now consult an average 10.7 sources before making a purchasing decision.
Use Multi-Channel Funnels reporting in Google Analytics to see a user's interactions beyond the last click prior to conversion.

#2. Tuesday - 44% of searches for last-minute gifts and store locations are predicted to be from mobile devices
See how well your mobile site is facilitating conversions with mobile reporting in Google Analytics.

#3. Wednesday - Use Real-Time reporting to see the impact of your holiday promotions within seconds
Use Real-Time reporting in Google Analytics to monitor the immediate impact of email offers and other campaigns that drive customer purchases.

And as a bonus holiday treat...
Holiday measurement tips - straight from the source!
As our final posting for Think with Google's December Adventure, we've wrapped up a handy video from Google's Digital Marketing Evangelist (and best-selling author) Avinash Kaushik on how to measure your holiday campaigns.


To see future insights and tips, please follow Think with Google on Google+.


Happy holidays from Google!


Posted by Andrew Truong, Inside AdWords Crew

Last month we introduced Google+ Pages to provide a new way for you to build a public identity on Google+. We’ve been listening closely to your feedback and today we’re introducing several new tools and controls to help you better manage your pages. These new features will start appearing in Google+ accounts over the next couple days; so if you don’t see them today make sure to come back and look for them later this week.

Multiple Administrators and Ownership Transfer
Starting today, you’ll be able to add up to 50 managers who can login and manage your page with their own accounts. Managers can publish posts, respond to comments, add photos, change profile information, and even add/remove other managers.

We've also added the ability for you to transfer page ownership. Ownership of a page can only be transferred to an existing manager. To do so, click the ‘Transfer Ownership’ link in the new Page Settings panel and then choose one of the managers you’d like to transfer ownership to.

Notification Settings
Another feature we’ve added is a way for you as a page owner to get notifications about actions on your page. With this change, you’ll be able to customize the notifications for your business page separately from your personal profile, allowing you to choose the level of detail that’s most appropriate for you. These new settings allow you to change the email address where page notifications are sent, customize what you’d like to be notified about, and adjust how you’d like to be notified.

To adjust these settings click on the Page Settings link and look for the “Set delivery preferences” section. There, you can set what actions you'd like to be notified about and optionally specify a different email address (than your personal email address) for your page notifications. If you have multiple managers on your account, you might want to change the address to a team address that everyone will have access to.

Unified +1 & Circle Count
We’re also making a change to the +1 count shown on your Google+ Page. Starting today, the bold count on your page will include both your +1’s on Google+ and across the web, as well as the number of people who have added you to a circle. This change will not affect the way +1’s are counted or displayed on ads or search results.

We believe that this simple change will better highlight the number of ways people have chosen to recommend and follow your business with Google.

You can learn more about these new features in the Google+ Help Center. We’re working on even more ways to improve the Google+ experience for your business, so please keep sending us your feedback and stay tuned in 2012!

Michael Nestler, Google+ Pages Engineer

Think With Google's December Adventure finished its third week with a focus on display and trends from 2011.

Here are the five insights and tips we covered this week:
Click on the titles to view the original posts and comments.

#1. Monday: Rich media ads are 2.7x as effective in driving purchase intent vs. basic Flash

• Be sure to make video a core component of your display advertising mix to maximize holiday sales.

#2. Tuesday: 96% of people visiting a website leave without completing a transaction

• Use remarketing to follow-up with targeted shoppers who browsed your products and left, or abandoned their shopping carts part-way through the purchase process.

#3. Wednesday: Rich media ads grew 66% last year and are predicted to be over 50% of all display ads by 2015

• Browse our Rich Media Gallery or our new ad formats for mobile to check out some of our "best of" examples to get your creative juices flowing.

#4. Thursday: Use Google Zeitgeist 2011 to see the hottest gifts and trends for holiday shopping lists

• Our year-end Google Zeitgeist launches today, and it's chock full of fascinating tidbits about what's been burning up the search queries this past year

#5. Friday: The search for holiday gifts is on!

• Find out what's burning up the search charts as we approach the holidays with this week's top shopping queries.

To learn more, follow Think with Google on Google+ or add this helpful holiday calendar to automatically see these tips on your Google Calendar.

Posted by Andrew Truong, Inside AdWords Crew

Is your online campaign performing as well as it could be? Do you want to get more out of your digital marketing campaigns and increase your ROI?

We’ve heard from many of our users that with so much data, it can be hard to know where to begin. If you’d like to get a deep dive on how to increase your conversions, then please join us on Thursday for a Learn with Google webinar:

Webinar: Driving Conversions Using Google Products 
Date: Thursday, December 15
Time: 11am - 12pm PST / 2pm - 3pm EST
Sign up here! 

This webinar will teach you how to optimize your AdWords account for conversions on Search, Display, and Mobile. Learn to navigate Conversion Tracking, Search Funnels, and the many product features that can help you get your ad in front of the most relevant audience to drive more conversions.

The webinar will be presented by Tiffany Bristol, a Google account manager, and will include Q&A.

Posted by Dora Nagy, Product Marketing Manager

Think With Google’s December Adventure continued this week with a focus on mobile.

Here are the four mobile-related insights and tips we covered this week (and a fun factoid):
Click on the titles to view the original posts and comments.

#1 Monday: Search from mobile devices up 5x in the past two years!

• Capture the mobile opportunity with separate campaigns targeting mobile devices only. Advertisers with mobile-optimized sites and mobile-targeted campaigns have seen an average 11.5% increase in mobile CTR.

#2 Tuesday: 59% of users visit a business and 40%+ make a purchase after using their smartphones to find local information

• Use AdWords location extensions to showcase key business information, including your address, phone number and driving directions.

#3 Wednesday: 65% of tablet owners use their tablets at least one hour per day

• Target tablet devices as part of your AdWords campaigns and, if you have tablet specific products or services, create tablet-only campaigns.

#4 Thursday: 51% of consumers are more likely to purchase from mobile-optimized websites

• Get best practices and personalized tips on how to make your website more mobile-friendly at www.HowToGoMo.com.

#5. Friday Fun Factoid: One, Two, Dial my Smartphone

• Sign of the times: We agree with this article and predict that more kids will know how to use a smartphone than know how to tie their shoes. Watch endearing video on the post to see just how important it will be to market your content to the four screens: mobile, tablet, laptop and TV.

To learn more, follow Think with Google on Google+ or add this helpful holiday calendar to automatically see these tips on your Google Calendar.


Posted by Andrew Truong, Inside AdWords Crew

If you’re focused on conversions and CPA (cost-per-acquisition), you may already be using Conversion Optimizer or Enhanced CPC to optimize your campaigns to get you more conversions at a lower cost. To ensure that your campaign settings are also in line with your conversion goals, we plan to migrate existing campaigns using Conversion Optimizer or Enhanced CPC with “Optimize for clicks” ad rotation to “Optimize for conversions” ad rotation. Our studies have shown that campaigns moving from “Optimize for clicks” to “Optimize for conversions” see a 5% increase in conversions on average. This migration is scheduled for February 2012.

To get answers, we partnered with Ipsos to measure the relative and combined effects of YouTube in-stream ads and TV ads on ad recall and brand metrics across six advertiser campaigns.

After conducting tests of 15- and 30-second spots on YouTube pre-roll instream ads and TV ads, the results revealed that YouTube and TV ads work better together. People who watched both YouTube and TV ads showed a 2X increase in brand recall than people who only saw TV ads. Those that only watched a YouTube ad had a brand recall rate 1.5X those who only watched a TV ad.

In March, we introduced the +1 button on search results to make it easier for people to get recommendations from the people they trust right when they’re searching. Then in early October we expanded that to include Google Display Network ads across the web on both desktop and mobile.

Today, we’re excited to expand this capability to publishers who sell their ad space directly to advertisers using a new creative template available in DART for Publishers and the new DFP. Using the Image or Flash with Google +1 custom creative template, publishers can now add the Google +1 button to their ads so that people can share your offers with others across the web.

If you’d like to learn more about how publishers can integrate the +1 button on your direct-sold ads, please visit the DART or new DFP help centers.

Posted by David Flinner, Product Manager.

As we announced earlier this week, we'll be sharing insights and daily tips this month on Think with Google's Plus Page, to help you make the most of your holiday marketing.

Here are the four search ad related insights we covered this week (and a fun factoid):
Click on the titles to view the original Google+ posts and comments.

1. Monday: 57% of shoppers still plan to do most of their holiday buying after Cyber Monday – Prepare for the big shopping days ahead by scheduling budgets to meet demand. Learn how in the "budget scheduling" section of this helpful article to learn how.
2. Tuesday: Online ads are surprisingly under-served during the holidays – Take a look at the seasonal spike in shopping queries versus the level supply of ads. Grab people's attention with ads at the top of the page by taking advantage of our newly launched options for Automated Rules.
3. Wednesday: Searches for "layaway" are heating up – Layaways are catching fire again with budget-conscious consumers at retailers such as Wal-Mart, Target and Kmart - especially in the Southern US. Geo-target your campaigns to areas where holiday shoppers are looking through the Location Targeting Tool.
4. Thursday: December has arrived, bringing eight projected $1 billion+ online shopping days – Target those last-minute, undecided buyers with keyword terms such as "quick and easy gift ideas." The rush to purchase gift cards has also started, so make sure you have relevant keywords and ads.
5. Friday Fun Factoid: The Cold Truth – Did you know people in the US catch an average of three colds a year, per person? At about 1 billion colds annually, that's nothing to sneeze at. And this year's cold season could be worse than usual: Cold- and flu-related searches on Google are up by 61% so far over the same period last year. That means we'll see 14.1 million more cold- and flu-related searches this December than last December. So wash your hands before hitting the keyboard and bundle up, folks!

To learn more, follow Think with Google on Google+ or add this helpful holiday calendar to automatically see these tips on your Google Calendar.
Posted by Andrew Truong, Inside AdWords Crew

(Cross-posted from the Google Analytics Blog)

Is your website performing as well as it could be? Do you want to get more out of your digital marketing campaigns, including AdWords and other digital media? Do you feel like you have gaps in your current Google Analytics setup?

We’ve heard from many of our users who want to go deeper into their Analytics -- with so much data, it can be hard to know where to look first. If you’d like to move beyond standard “pageview” metrics and visitor statistics, then please join us next Thursday:

Webinar: Reaching Your Goals with Analytics
Date: Thursday, December 1
Time: 11am PST / 2pm EST
Sign up here!

During the webinar, we’ll cover:

• Key questions to ask for richer insights from your data
• How to define “success” (for websites, visitors, or campaigns)
• How to set up and use Goals
• How to set up and use Ecommerce (for websites with a shopping cart)
• How to link AdWords to your Google Analytics account

Whatever your online business model -- shopping, lead-generation, or pure content -- these tools will deliver actionable insights into your buying cycle.

This webinar will be led by Joe Larkin, a technical specialist on the Google Analytics team, and it’s designed for intermediate users of Google Analytics. If you’re comfortable with the basics, but you’d like to do more with your data, then we hope you’ll join us on Thursday!

Posted by Sara Jablon Moked, Google Analytics team

A few months ago, we launched top of page bid estimates to provide additional assistance in optimizing your ads to show above the search results. Today, we wanted to let you know about ways to more easily and scalably take action on these bid estimates, now that they’re supported by Automated Rules and AdWords Editor 9.7.1.

Setting up top of page bid rules with Automated Rules

You can use automated rules with top of page bid estimates to raise the bids of your keywords to the recommended top of page bid, and run this rule on a daily basis.

To create this rule:

1. Click All online campaigns in the left panel of your AdWords account.
2. Click the Keywords tab.
3. Click the Automate button, and select “Raise bids to top of page CPC when..." from the drop-down. 
4. Fill out the form as desired.

Note: Be sure to specify a maximum bid, In addition, you might want to only raise bids for keywords that have a good quality score (for example, Quality score >= 6), so as not to bid up keywords that need to be optimized.

What you can do in AdWords Editor 9.7.1

AdWords Editor 9.7.1 launched last week with support for managing bids based on top of page bid estimates.  New functionality was added to allow:

• Viewing “Top of page bid estimates” on the Keywords tab
• Raising bids to “Top of page bid estimates” using Advanced bid changes
• Filtering keywords based on “Top of page bid estimates” within Advanced Search and “Find duplicates”

For more details on AdWords Editor 9.7.1, please see the release notes and the download center.

Posted by Andrew Truong, Product Marketing Manager

Today the Think with Google team launches December Adventure, where every weekday between now and December 23, they’ll share useful, surprising and delightful insights and opportunities for sparking your online holiday sales via search ads, mobile and more. It’s prime time for online shopping, so follow Think with Google on Google+ for daily tips! You can also add this helpful holiday calendar to automatically see these tips on your Google Calendar.

Our December Adventure is just beginning - so bundle up, log on, and get ready to grow your holiday business day by day. Click here to visit Think with Google on Google+. To share the glow of these holiday insights, use #decemberadventure.


Posted by Andrew Truong, Inside AdWords Crew

There’s no debate that the world is going mobile. Mobile web searches have grown five times over the past two years. YouTube mobile now gets more than 400 million views a day, representing 13 percent of our total daily views.

For advertisers, this opens up more opportunities to reach customers. And in some cases, it can amplify existing campaigns. In a recent study conducted with Nielsen research, we found that promotions perform better together when displayed across multiple screens. In fact, brand recall jumps dramatically to 74 percent for people who saw ads across TV, PC, smartphone and tablets, up from 50 percent for those who saw ads only on TV.

Here are a few ways you can extend your mobile reach with YouTube:

YouTube’s Promoted Video ads on mobile

Do you use Promoted Video ads to reach viewers searching for relevant products and potential customers browsing videos on YouTube.com? You can also use Promoted Videos to reach viewers on the go. Promoted Videos are featured at the top of the video search results on m.youtube.com, YouTube’s mobile platform.

Advertisers pay only when the viewer chooses to watch the video, and all mobile and desktop view counts are summarized into one complete view count on your channel page. Mobile Promoted Video ads are auction-based campaigns that can be managed in your Google AdWords account. All Google AdWords campaigns are opted into “all devices” by default, but creating separate mobile campaigns helps optimize your mobile advertising efforts and the performance of your brand channel.


Promoted Video ads have recently joined YouTube’s family of TrueView ad formats. Soon, your Promoted Video ads will become TrueView in-search ads and TrueView in-display ads. TrueView in-search ads show up in display ad units against search results on YouTube, whereas TrueView in-display ads show up in display ad units against suggested videos on YouTube and across website content on the Google Display Network. These TrueView video ads can be set up and managed in any Google AdWords for video account and purchased on a cost-per-view basis.

YouTube mobile in-stream ads

YouTube mobile in-stream ads are 15-second pre-roll ads that appear before the video begins to play. Similar to your desktop experience, mobile in-stream ads may show before videos produced by YouTube partners. In addition to the Android YouTube app, in-stream ads are also available to viewers accessing m.youtube.com from their iPhone.

You can optimize your mobile in-stream ads to reach specific audiences, locations and content. In-stream ads are priced on a CPM basis and can be arranged via ad reservation through your Google sales representative.


YouTube mobile roadblocks

YouTube Mobile roadblocks give brands 100% share of voice on the YouTube home, browse and search pages on m.youtube.com. According to recent Nielsen data, these roadblocks add 17 percent incremental impressions for advertisers.


Mobile brand channels extend your online presence


Many advertisers use banners, background images and gadgets to customize their YouTube brand channels. Extend your brand presence to mobile users by creating a customized mobile brand channel. Accessed through m.youtube.com, mobile channels offer the same high level of customization, including the use of gadgets. You can drive traffic to your YouTube mobile brand channel by running ads on the AdMob network or on m.youtube.com.


For more information about YouTube mobile ads, connect with your Google sales representative or visit www.youtube.com/advertise/mobile.html.

Posted by Nicky Crane, Product Manager

The busiest shopping days of the holiday season are just around the corner! As you're thinking about ways to get more results from AdWords this season, consider investing in Product Listing Ads, which allow shoppers to see the exact products you offer before they even reach your site, leading to more clicks, higher quality leads, and higher ROI for your search ads.  In fact, users are twice as likely to click on Product Listing Ads than on text ads in the same location for shopping queries.

Here are a couple of recent enhancements we’ve made to Product Listing Ads to make them even more effective this season:

• More featured products - Product Listing Ads (in the top ad location) can now show up to 5 products at a time, giving users more shopping choices and allowing more advertisers to promote their inventories in all countries with Product Listing Ads.

• More traffic - Since launching Product Listing Ads in AdWords to all US advertisers, we’ve seen significant growth with an overall 600% increase in traffic to retailers from Product Listing Ads compared to last year.  With the holiday season approaching, we expect even more users shopping and searching for products on Google.

How can you take advantage of this opportunity?

• Optimize bids and plan for budgets for holiday season - Bid competitively and appropriately for your expected holiday sales. Also, ensure that your budgets aren’t limiting your ability to capture the growing holiday traffic.
• Feature all of your products - Use the "All Products" product target to ensure you are running Product Listing Ads on all of your inventory.
• Review Merchant Center data quality errors and suggestions - Check the Data Quality tab in Merchant Center to ensure you are providing us with enough information to help us match your products to more and better customer queries.
• Use promotional messages to highlight special promotions - Messages such as “Free Shipping,” coupon codes, or “Extended Warranty Special” can help your ad stand out. 

Looking for more ways to get the most out of Product Listing Ads? Visit the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Andrew Truong, Product Marketing Manager, Product Ads

Last week, we announced Google+ Pages, which provide a new way for businesses, brands, products, organizations and other entities to build a public identity on Google+. We’re encouraged by the number of pages that have been created and brands’ enthusiasm for building better relationships with their customers on Google+.

Businesses can create and manage their pages directly through Google+. We are committed to working on enhancements and innovative features to offer businesses more flexibility and power to run their pages. We also recognize that some businesses use social media management companies to manage their presence across multiple social networks. So today we’re announcing that Google+ is enabling six companies to test Google+ functionality in their management tools -- Buddy Media, Context Optional, Hearsay Social, HootSuite, Involver, and Vitrue.



These companies will offer a subset of their clients the ability to manage circles, publish to Google+, and monitor usage. To learn more about their services and pricing, check out this page.

We are currently working with these companies so that we can experiment and get feedback. They were selected based on their extensive experience helping brands and businesses manage and analyze their presence on social networks. If you’re a social media management company interested in working with Google+, get in touch with us.

Follow the conversation on Google+.

Posted by Sara McKinley, Product Manager, Google+ Pages

Posted by David Weisman, The Google+ Team

This week we introduced Google+ Pages, a new way to get closer to your customers online. At that time we announced that you’d be able to link your Page to your AdWords campaigns, so that all your +1s -- from your Page, your website, ads and search results -- get tallied together and appear as a single total. We’re happy to announce that starting today, and rolling out to all advertisers globally over the rest of the week, we’re making this functionality available with a new AdWords feature called Social Extensions.

With Social Extensions, consumers will be able to see all the recommendations your business has received, whether they are looking at an ad, a search result or your page. This means your +1’s will reach not only the 40+ million users of Google+, but all the people who come to Google every day.

Currently (and for campaigns that don’t have Social Extensions enabled) your AdWords ads only show +1’s from people who have +1’d that ad’s landing page. This limits the likelihood that someone who sees your ad will have a friend or contact who’s recommended it. By enabling Social Extensions on your ad campaigns you’re able to leverage all the +1’s your brand has received, whether it be on a search result, on your Google+ Page, your website or on your ads, making it more likely that someone who sees your ad will have a friend or contact who has recommended it.

We believe that this has the potential to improve your overall ad performance. In fact, 71% of shoppers say that recommendations from friends and family impact their purchasing decisions.* These additional recommendations may result in more conversions and deeper engagement with your business overall.

Not only have we enabled you to serve more personalized ads, but we’ve also added a new reporting segment that will help you better understand the impact that social annotations are having on your campaigns and ads. Starting today you can segment any campaign, adgroup, keyword or ad by a new +1 annotation segment.

This segment will breakout your performance metrics into three categories

• Impressions with personal annotations - (impressions where the viewer had a friend or contact who had +1’d your brand.)
• Impressions with basic annotations - (impressions that included an anonymous count of people who +1’d your brand)
• Impressions without any social annotations

Note that this segment works on all campaigns, even ones that don’t leverage the new Social Extension (since +1 annotations can come from a number of sources, and not simply Google+ Pages).

To enable Social Extensions on your AdWords campaigns simply click the Ad Extensions tab in your account and select Social Extensions from the drop down menu and choose new extension. You’ll be prompted to add your connected Google+ Page URL and click save.


To learn more about the AdWords Social Extensions please visit the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords Crew

*Harris Interactive, June 2010

Yesterday, we opened up Google+ to businesses, a way for businesses to get closer to their customers. We’ve already seen many brands using Google+ in unique and exciting ways, such as hangouts out with Miss Piggy and style bloggers from Macy’s.

How can you best use Google+ to grow your business? We have set up a number of opportunities for you to learn how to get started:

ad:tech New York keynote: Getting Closer to Your Customers on Google+
Wednesday, November 9, 5:30pm - 6:15pm ET
Join Google’s Head of Social Advertising Products, Christian Oestlien as he maps out the company’s vision for putting people at the center of the web experience and the opportunities Google+ creates for marketers to engage customers in new, better ways. If you can’t make it in person, you can watch the live stream or follow the reaction by searching for #gplusbiz on Google+.

ad:tech New York booth
Wednesday November 9 (10am - 6pm), Thursday November 10 (10am - 4pm)
We’ll also have Google+ experts on hand at ad:tech to answer questions and help you create your own page. We’d love for you to stop by and meet the team!

Learn with Google Webinar: Getting Your Business on Google+
Wednesday November 16, 2pm ET. Register here.
Join our live webinar hosted by Google+ experts to learn more about how you can bring your company and customers closer together using Google+. Key topics that'll be covered include:

• Setting up a Google+ Page for your business
• Best practices and early use cases for using Google+
• Promoting your Google+ Page
• Improving the performance of your ads with +1 annotations

Help Desk Hangouts
Thursday November 17, 12pm - 3pm ET. Visit our Google+ Your Business page.
Still have questions? Talk face-to-face with a Google+ expert using our group video chat product, Hangouts. Learn technical tips, content strategies, and potential use cases for your business.

In the meantime, you can check out our Getting Started Guide on our Google+ Your Business site. To keep up to date on the latest tips, add the Google+ Your Business page to your circles.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Since the initial launch of Google+ just a few months ago, we’ve welcomed over 40 million people and introduced more than 100 new features. For all these people, one important part is still missing - your business.

We want to help you make the same kinds of lasting connections with your customers online the way you can in real life. That’s why we are introducing Google+ Your Business, a collection of tools and products to help you get closer to your customers. At the heart of this is Google+ Pages, your business’s identity on Google+.


Google+ Pages: Have real conversations with the right people

To get your business on Google+, you first need to create a Google+ Page. On your page, you can post updates and news about your business, engage in conversations with your customers, send tailored messages to specific groups of people, and see how many +1’s you have across the web. Here are a few features of Google+ Pages that we think will help you build relationships:


Hangouts
Sometimes you might want to chat with your customers face-to-face. For example, if you run a bookstore, you may want to invite an author to talk about her latest novel, or if you market a cosmetics line, beauty specialists might want to hold how-to sessions for makeup tips. Hangouts make this easy, by letting you have high-quality video chats with nine customers, with a single click. You can use Hangouts to get product feedback, help solve problems or simply get to know people better, all in real time.


Circles
Circles allow you to group followers of your Page into smaller audiences. You can then share specific messages with specific groups. For example, you could create a Circle containing people who are your most loyal customers and offer them a special discount.


+1 button and Google+ badge: Inspire current customers to recommend new ones
Google+ Pages also help you deliver your great content to users in a way that’s easy to share with their friends. We introduced the +1 button as a way for your customers to recommend your business across the web - on Google search, in your ads, on sites across the web and on mobile devices. Now, your customers can +1 your Page, recommending your actual brand -- not just an individual ad or a site -- directly to their friends.

To help your customers find your page and start sharing, we have two buttons you can add to your site by visiting our Google+ badge configuration tool:

The Google+ icon is a small icon that directly links to your Page.

In the coming days, we’re introducing the Google+ badge, which lets people add your page to their circles, without leaving your site, to start getting updates from your business via Google+.


Make your +1’s count, improving the performance of your ads
Coming soon, we will also make it possible to link your Page to your AdWords campaigns for your site, so that all your +1s -- from your Page, your website, ads and search results -- will get tallied together and appear as a single total.


Consumers will be able to see all the recommendations your business has received, whether they are looking at an ad, a search result or your page, meaning your +1’s will reach not only the 40 million users of Google+, but all the people who come to Google every day. In the coming days. you'll be able to link your page to your AdWords campaigns by following the instructions in the AdWords Help Center.


Bringing Google+ to the rest of Google
Our ultimate vision for Google+ is to transform the overall Google experience-- weaving identity and sharing into all of our products. Beginning today, with a select group of websites at launch, we’re rolling out a new feature, Direct Connect -- an easy way for your customers to find your Google+ Page on Google search. For eligible pages, when someone searches for your business with the ‘+’ sign before it Direct Connect will send them directly to your page. For example, try searching for ‘+YouTube’ on Google. Users will also be prompted to automatically add Pages they find through Direct Connect to their circles. Direct Connect will not work for everyone.


Just the beginning
We wanted to help you get your business on Google+ as soon as possible, so we’re opening the field trial for Google+ Pages to everyone today. Creating a Google+ Page only takes a few minutes. To get started, you’ll need a personal Google+ profile. If you don’t have a Google account, it’s very quick and easy to join. And if you are looking for inspiration, check out some of the companies that are already starting to set up their Pages:


To learn more about how Google+ works for your business, check out the Google+ Your Business site. We’re just getting started and have many more features in the coming weeks and months. To keep up to date on the latest news and tips, add the Google+ Your Business page to your circles. If you have ideas on how we can improve Google+ for your business, we’d love to hear them.

Posted by Dennis Troper, Product Management Director, Google+ Pages

Missed the Think Mobile webinar on Nov. 2nd? The recording is now available here on the Google Business Channel on YouTube.

In this video, Avinash Kaushik shares some best practices regarding mobile marketing strategies, and points out some strategies that you should be aware of. He also shares a framework for bringing fast, innovative measurement to your mobile data (including a special downloadable report).

We hope you enjoy the webinar!

Posted by Jaime Mayer, Marketing Manager

Our recent webinar on Tuesday, Finding Your Target Audience with Google Display Network, was a huge success. With Audience Solutions on GDN, we are helping to get the right message to the right target customer, at the right time.  Ads can no longer be generic in nature – they have to truly resonate to make any impact. In this webinar, we talked about how you can use Audience Solutions such as remarketing and interest categories today to optimize your campaigns, tailor creative, and improve conversions. We then talked about the revolutionary new targeting strategies launching soon, including Demographics, Similar Users, Share of Users, and Dynamic Remarketing and how they will help you reach and scale your audiences more effectively.

If you missed this webinar, you can watch the recording here!

There was a live Q&A during the broadcast, but you can can continue the conversation on your own time on Twitter; just mention @GoogleDisplay and/or use the hashtag #GDN.

Posted by Desiree Motamedi, Product Marketing Manager, Google Display Network

Over the past few months, we've been updating the design and experience of Google Search and all of our other products to give users a more seamless and consistent online experience. As part of these look and feel changes, we are now introducing new ad placements on Google Search.

Starting today, ads that have previously shown to the side of the results may in some cases appear below them. We dynamically optimize each search page, including its ads, to provide the best experience for our users.

In many cases, we have found that displaying ads below search results fits better into the user's flow as they scan the page from top to bottom. On average, this placement performed better than side ads in terms of click-through rate in our tests.



If you're interested in comparing the performance of your ads in the top positions versus all other positions, you may use the "Top vs. Side" segment. With this launch, all side, bottom and experiment impressions will now be classified as "Other" so you can more easily see how your top ad placements perform against placements on the rest of the page. In the coming weeks, "Top vs. Side" will be renamed to "Top vs. Other."

Visit the AdWords Help Center to learn more about ad positions.

Posted by Jerry Dischler, Director, Search Ads Product Management