Kerstin Baker-Ash

Does Geo-Targeting Really Work in the UK?

I'm skeptical.

In the US, geo-targeting is a given. You input a radius of a mile around a zip code or city block, and you're assured that you will be targeting the tight area you've specified. In the UK, we grapple with Victorian copper cabling throughout a lot of our landline phone system, and while Her Majesty oversaw an era of progress and innovation, running high speed internet through a system designed nearly two centuries ago seems like too much of a big ask. Trials are being performed in a couple of areas throughout the country, including Whitchurch in Cardiff, for high speed internet, but as much as Gordon Brown's government postures and poses about bringing high speed to the masses, I can't see it happening for their 2012 target.

So what does geo-targeting achieve above fancy slides and recommendations? A lot, as it turns out. While geo-targeting might not be as advanced as it is in the States, we still have a measure of certainty around an area (which admittedly has to be much larger) and the creative that you can apply to that specific area is highly targeted and relevant for the audience.

How do you determine relevance and targeting? Firstly, look at your location. Are you targeting a village next to a large city? It's not going to work properly - their IP addresses (like mine), are usually going to locate in the city, rather than in the village. Use a 3-5 mile rule - don't expect campaigns to properly geo-target in less than a 3 mile radius. Be realistic about your expectations for British geo-targeting; it's not an exact science. The beautiful city of St Albans is well within the commuter belt for London, but far enough outside the main motorways (M25, M1, A1(M)) to be geo-targetable:

You need to play around with radius targets in your custom settings within AdWords to get the right mix of city and outskirts and ensure inclusiveness for your campaign. What if the city isn't as easy as a circle? Remember fifteen years ago, when you got your first desktop computer and you could choose from Solitaire or Paint? Brush up (pun absolutely not intended) on your MS Paint skills and draw border points around your target area:

Nothing against Chiswell Green, but it could be that you've chosen to exclude them from your geo-targeting for retail delivery or competition purposes. It's relatively simple to draw map points around larger areas, and for the geocaching fanciers among you, you can even specify exact latitude and longitude points (but remember the <3 mile accuracy issue).

Putting a black hat on for a very small moment, geo-targeting can also be used to exclude certain areas (and certain competitors' eyes) from seeing your ads. It's not entirely ethical, but it certainly can work. It stops working when your competitors or affiliate managers know what the Ad Targeting Preview Tool in Google is and use it. There, I ruined your fun.

When you set realistic expectations for geo-targeting in the UK, you can achieve some pretty heartening results - not least of which an increased click through rate and lower cost per click. 

Happy geocaching.

More SEO Rapper, Please

If you haven't seen his videos, Chuck the SEO/PPC Rapper is pretty damn cool. Biggie's beats (yes, I like rap music) plus geek speak... heaven:

An oldie but a goodie, and the last video was uploaded two months ago. The SEM world needs more rapping (and possibly more cowbell, but that's for another post). 

Misinformation and Idiocy Online

In looking at where my traffic came from yesterday, I was really surprised to see a rather definitive spike in referrals from LSE.co.uk. No, it's not the London School of Economics (that would be cool), but London South East - a trading/speculation site (as far as I can make out) for the stock market. It amazes me the misinformation and idiocy that exists online, and I feel I can be a bit more cutting because the stupidity is well outside of the search engine marketing industry this time.

Flubugg, a member of the site since March of this year who only posts on the Yell boards (that's Yell as in Yell.com, not shouting), picked up my Mysterious Yellow Dot post from last Friday. According to Mr Bugg, that ominous yellow dot spells signals of doom and Google's purchase or domination of the information superstar:

Come on, buddy. Are you for real? In days gone by, Mr Bugg and his friends would be the wiry old witches in the village, divining rainfall and quantities of spring onions using a putrid goose egg and a lock of hair from a firstborn male. Checking the comments just a tad further down, Mr Bugg would have read that Dan suggested it was a bug from take a tour of the new interface - nothing to suggest that Yell and Google were entering into matrimonial bliss. It doesn't mean anything more than someone forgot to re-code a pixel or two.

To be fair, Yell is an AdWords reseller in the UK (as they have been in the US for yonks), but this has been going on for much longer than the yellow dot. In fact, since that little yellow dot has shown up outside of the UK and the US, the theory that it's Yell's presence in Google AdWords (which they do have, but you don't need a dinky little dot to tell you that, just a computer with internet access and knowledge of how a search engine/news site works) is pretty much bunk. But you probably guessed that already...

To clarify, there's no doom and gloom, Mr Bugg and associates. Just a coding error from a lowly engineer. Try not to take that bunny-shaped cloud as a sign of General Motors shares going up. Just sayin'...

Seattle to Portland - The Ben Farrant Memorial Cyclathon

Last year, I wrote about the cyclathon in honor of my cousin Ben Farrant. On the 3rd anniversary of his passing, I thought it would be a good idea to reiterate why the cyclathon happens and why you should donate to a very worthy cause.

Ben was a seasoned traveller. After graduating from university, he trekked through Africa (including a climb up Mount Kilimanjaro) with five of his friends. Nothing touched him more than Rwanda, and it was there that he found a love for the people and a desire to improve a country which had seen so much pain and suffering in the last decade. Together with his friends, they set up the Wellspring Foundation in Rwanda, which now boasts schools, a training center and hope for a future free from conflict.

The memorial cyclathon will see Ben's friends and family ride from Seattle, Washington to Portland, Oregon over two days. They'll be raising money specifically to fund projects for the Wellspring Foundation in Rwanda - last year's $48,000 built a secondary school building and a training center for teachers, and this year's target is $60,000. To find out how to sponsor a rider for the race, taking place this weekend (July 12 - 13), contact me or leave your details on the blog.

Twese Hamwe - All Together.

Google AdWords - The Mysterious Yellow Dot

UPDATE: If you got here from LSE.co.uk - please read this.

 

A couple of weeks ago, people started to notice that small yellow dots were appearing at the top of their AdWords interface. Sitting rather conspicuously next to the logo, the little yellow dot stares at me as if I've been marked for assimilation by the Borg collective. Speaking to our account manager in the UK, apparently nobody in the Google London office knows what it means or what it's for.

Looking around the web, nobody seems to have an answer for what that little yellow dot signifies. A gold level of spend (hardly)? A gold star for a good optimization (nah)? A gold mark because someone likes Austin Powers and jokes? All of the people I was able to find on Twitter talking about it were based in the UK with only one exception in France:

Is it contained to a UK/Europe update? If you know what it means, please enlighten the AdWords masses and leave a comment...

Who Set This Ad Live?

Come on. Fess up. Who did this?

When I clicked on this ad yesterday, it directed to a Google error page. I was in DART training at the Google offices in Victoria when I saw it, so maybe it was some kind of internal test unavailable outside of the Google network. Still, whoever set this live deserves a chuckle award for making me smile while trafficking URLs.

Canada D'eh

Happy Canada Day!

I live outside of the country I was born and raised in. It could be construed as kind of hypocritical to constantly proclaim that I'm proud to be Canadian yet I don't choose to live there, so let me explain a bit.

I'm proud that Kiefer Sutherland's grandfather made sure my parents didn't have to pay to bring me to the doctor, and that Canada's universal healthcare system is a model of relative success for other countries. I'm exceedingly grateful that my grandfather, a WWII veteran, was treated respectfully, properly and freely when he needed a hip replacement ten years ago so that he can continue to rock plaid shirts from the 60s with pride well into his late 80s. Or, that expensive treatments for cancer are covered for the elderly and not just for those with longer life expectancies.

I'm happy to have been raised in a country where racism isn't as big of an issue as our neighbors to the south. I'm fortunate to have been educated in two languages, which often comes in handy in the silliest of places. I love the natural beauty of Canada - the Jack Pines in Muskoka or the way Loon Lake looks first thing in the morning. Canadians are seasonally blessed in a way that many countries are not, and living here, I sometimes miss a proper winter (although not the -20 deathly cold) or fall colors in Central Ontario.

I will always be Canadian. My status in my adopted country might change (very soon, to be exact), but I will never give up my blue and gold bilingual status symbol or pull a Madonna and lose my accent. I'm grateful to the country that raised me, that allowed me to think critically about what it means to be a citizen, what it means to disagree with your government and what equal rights really means. I'm proud to be a representative of Canadian values, tolerance and integrity abroad, eat grapes with peanut butter and crave Swiss Chalet sauce fortnightly.

Is being a patriotic expat hypocritical? Absolutely not. Personally, living in the UK makes a lot of sense to me, for very obvious reasons. I can and will always be grateful for the lessons I learned as a Canadian which have shaped my outlook and hopefully made me a more tolerant and open human being.

Happy Canada Day, Hosers.

Exporting More Than 500 Results in Google Analytics

If you're a Google Analytics super-user-junkie, you'll sometimes run into problems exporting large keyword lists for your own entertainment or actual client work. There's a quick and slightly dirty solution to this (thanks to Matthew Attwell for the tip):

Firstly, go to the bottom of the Traffic Sources > Keywords list:

 

You'll likely have more keywords than the "allowed" 500 - look at the end of the URL:

Where it says &trows=500, simply change it to 50000:

Don't expect the visual result (i.e. more than 500 keyword rows) to change. Instead, export the document to a .CSV file:

Unfortunately, 50,000 rows is the maximum that a comma separated value sheet will allow - once you've changed the limit, you'll be able to export a relatively full keyword list. 

Simples.

Update (23/06/09): Rob mentioned in a comment below that changing the trows parameter didn't work for him. If you're having problems getting it to change, set the limit parameter to 50000 instead of trows.

Marketing Fail - Bacardi Breezers

In 2008, McCann Digital launched a new social media campaign for Bacardi Breezers, aimed squarely at women who accessorize and drink girly drinks which taste like sweat. Want to look amazing this summer? Why not spice up your wardrobe with an ugly girlfriend? Keeping her by your side makes you "the most desirable piece of meat on the grill," so why not choose from a range of situations and pick the ugly friend most suited to your outings.

I half suspect that this might've been a poorly thought out, local viral; Lucy's number (above, +972 3 606633) doesn't work. Also, who would put a country code (and miss out the local "03" for Tel Aviv) at the front of a telephone number when the target market is squarely within Israel's borders? While there was a Facebook page in Hebrew and a dedicated bilingual landing page, it seems like someone who didn't have the sense before this was kept live had the sense after this weekend's backlash (went the English-speaking blogosphere picked it up) to take it down. 

For those of you looking to pair up with Sally, whose "97 kilograms of femininity, strength and double chins" can help you get play on the beach, I'm afraid you're out of luck.

Layar: Awesomely Cool

This neat app for Android (sorry, no iPhone yet) is über-cool, brought to you by the techy folks at SPRXmobile. They're calling it an "Augmented Reality Browser", which basically means that you point your cell phone at your surroundings (outside, please), the camera in your cell phone captures images which communicate with your GPS system, which then parses where you're standing and what you're looking at. Then, as if by magic (really, it is magic), Layar inserts a visual information layer on top of your camera view, telling you where to look for ATMs, bars and even houses for sale.

According to Engadget, the app will roll out to the US later this year (as well as the UK and Germany), and target the iPhone 3GS. A missed opportunity for many of us (and a reason to switch to Android - gasp!), as O2's idiotic contracts and stubborn upgrade policy mean that even when the app launches in the UK, most iPhone users won't be able to test it because we're stuck with 3G iPhones until our ridiculously long 18-month contracts run out (or we want to pay £500 to upgrade early). 

/iphonerant

It's a pretty amazing innovation; it definitely needs to work in practice, but just as GPS has helped me find client meetings or the nearest gas station, the real world practice potential of Layar's Augmented Reality browser is huge. Another app designed to make mundane tasks appear cool and time-worthy. Bravo, SPRXmobile.