A discussion of earning with the Best Affiliate Programs, SEO, Wordpress Blogging and General Motivational Ideas for Internet Publishers and Affiliate Marketers.

Past and present Google Adwords customers - check your email! You should be receiving an email notice regarding settlement of the Adwords class action lawsuit for $20 Million. If you were an Adwords customer between January 1, 2002 to February 28, 2009 and your account was charged more than your daily budget you may be eligible for piece of class action.

If you are not a Reseller, you are a member of the Class if: you reside in the United States, have paid Google for advertising pursuant to Google’s AdWords program and either (a) became an AdWords advertiser between June 1, 2005 and February 28, 2009, inclusive, and were charged more than your per day Daily Budget on any day during that time period; or (b) paused your AdWords advertising campaign on any day during the period from January 1, 2002 to February 28, 2009, inclusive, and during the same billing period when your AdWords advertising campaign was paused, were charged more than the product of your per day Daily Budget times the number of days that your AdWords advertising campaign was not paused during that billing period.

The settlement was for $20 million to be distributed between class members who meet the criteria for disbursement.

Pursuant to the settlement described herein, $20,000,000, in a combination of cash and AdWords Credits, have been created for the benefit of the Class. These funds have been placed in an interest-bearing escrow account. A Class member’s distribution from the net Settlement Fund will be determined by a Plan of Allocation to be approved by the Court. An explanation of how each Class member’s distribution will be calculated for purposes of the settlement is set forth in the proposed Plan of Allocation which is summarized in Part VI of this Notice below.

Google has denied any wrongdoing in the case.

Google, while continuing to deny all allegations of wrongdoing or liability, desired to settle and terminate all existing or potential claims against it without in any way acknowledging fault or liability.

The lion’s share is going to the lawyers but there will probably be a lot of other people who get a piece…

Representative Plaintiffs’ Counsel for the Class intend to apply for: attorneys’ fees of not more than $5,000,000, plus a proportionate share of the interest earned on the Settlement Proceeds, for reimbursement of expenses incurred in connection with the prosecution and settlement of this litigation, not to exceed $250,000; and for an incentive compensation award to the two Representative Plaintiffs, not to exceed $20,000 each.

You can get more information about this class action lawsuit at :
http://www.adwordscustomersettlement.com/

So what do you think? Are any of you reading this going to get a big windfall from this class action? Affiliate marketers are bread and butter for Adwords so there would have to be quite a few affiliate marketers in line for their settlement.

         

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Be on the lookout. Phishing schemes are no longer limited to scammers trying to steal your bank account or Paypal account details. The latest phishing scheme hitting inboxes across the web is targeting Google Adwords users asking them for their login and contact details for their Google Adwords account.

I’m not really quite sure why somebody would want to hack an Adwords account? They can’t withdraw any money from it and if they use it to buy advertising for a site, there’s a trail a million miles wide. The most it could cause is a serious inconvenience for the account owner if the account is compromised.

Always remember, companies like Google, eBay or Amazon will never send you an email asking for account details and most companies will never send you an insecure (http://) link instead of a secure (https://) link.

Here’s a copy of an email I received today…

Dear Google AdWords customer! In order to confirm your contact details, please click the link below: http://adwords.google.com/accounts/VE?service=adwords&c=33785003324529761 This should take you directly to the Google AdWords Form. Thank you for choosing AdWords. We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available. Sincerely, The Google AdWords Team

When hovering over the link in the email, the real url is …

http://adwordsgoogle.com.idir170.eu/accounts/VE?service=adwords&c=3

Which is a page disguised to look like a Google webpage, except if you enter your account details, more than likely you’re account will be compromised.

Tagged: Adwords, Phishing Scheme

         

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Insights for Search is a fantastic tool released by Google that provides a wealth of search related data and information for internet marketers and SEO’s. Insights for Search allows you to easily compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, and time frames. The information provided in the search results is a goldmine for affiliates who might be running seasonal campaigns, geo-targeted campaigns or if you’re just looking for targeted keywords to add to an existing campaign.

As an example, let’s look at how Insights for Search could be used for a “Halloween Costumes” campaign. In this example, I’ve set the search to compare by search terms, entered “halloween costumes” as the search terms and set the search filter to Worldwide -> 2004-Present -> All Categories. Glancing at the screenshot below, we can see several useful bits of information that could be utilized in our campaign.

As you can see, search volume for “Halloween Costumes” starts rising in July and August and spikes in September and October each year with searches going flat in November. To the right of the traffic graph, you can see the leading news stories from each year which contain several keyword ideas such as WWE Halloween costumes, Divas Halloween costumes, fancy Halloween costumes and last-minute Halloween costumes.

All of this information could be saved for future use if you were planning on running the same campaign from year to year. On the other hand, if you’re doing SEO work for a website that is marketing costumes, the information can invaluable for optimizing pages for a seasonal spike in traffic.

If that’s not enough, Insights for Search also returns a wealth of related search terms as seen in the screenshot below.

Of particular interest might be the breakout search term “2008 halloween costumes” which doesn’t appear in the Google Adwords Keyword Tool because apparently Insights for Search has a hook into fresh, trending data that is not represented in the Adwords Tool. All of the other top 5 keywords are not found in the Adwords Tool as well, which shows that Insights for Search could be utilized by PPC marketers to get the latest keywords for their campaigns as well as organic SEO experts who want to setup longer term taps into Google search results.

While I’ve only touched on some of the most obvious uses for Insights for Search, you can see how this could be one of the coolest tools Google has ever released for both marketers and SEO’s alike. If you haven’t tried it already, visit the link below and give it a test run…

Insights for Search : http://www.google.com/insights/search/

         

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Most affiliate marketers will eventually turn to the power of PPC advertising once they’ve figured out that you can make a lot of money if you know how to use it effectively. For those of you who are interested in experimenting outside of SEO and into SEM (Search Engine Marketing), almost every PPC program has an introductory offer to entice you into using their services. That is, if you know where to look.

Here are a few examples:

Service Name	Free Credit	Minimum Deposit
Google Adwords	$50	$5
Yahoo! Sponsored Search (use: code USDMO181)	$75	$30
Enhance	$25	$0
Bidvertiser	$25	$0

Good luck with any of these offers if you decide to try them !!

         

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