As you’ve probably heard by now, Google are in the process of shaking up their AdWords system – inside and out.

To begin with, they’re now displaying AdWords ads in their News searches. This is more than a little puzzling. First of all, you probably assumed they were already doing so, right? Secondly, you now might be wondering why they weren’t doing so? And third of all, you’ll almost certainly be surprised to hear that they’re only doing this in the US. For now at least. Maybe they think we don’t read the news in the rest of the world?

Next, Google are pulling the plug on their AdWords Business Pages for Mobile – launched only 14 months ago. March 30th is the last date for the service, so enjoy it while you can. And bear in mind that comes only a few months after Google announced the retirement of their Print Ads program.

And from the inside, Google are still experimenting with their new AdWords interface, as written by our own (unusually) excited Aaron Weiner almost a month ago: New AdWords interface – very cool!

What do these changes mean for users of the AdWords system?

Google usually focus both on expanding the reach of the ads, and also refining the inner-workings of the system. The cogs that drive the wheels that drive the machine. For example adding new features, adjusting the quality score, making our lives a little more stressful and so on.

Yet this is the first time that I’ve ever seen them not only trimming some of the system’s tentacles, but also working on a major new interface.

Hopefully this is the start of Google making some genuine effort to improve the AdWords experience for their advertisers – both in terms of quality of placement and ease of use. The next few months should prove to be interesting.

Having your website content stolen is a growing problem. But when you find out about it, what can you do?

Finding the content is quite easy, getting the “borrower” to remove it might prove to be difficult. But all hope is not lost.

The Google AdSense blog recently made a posting on methods of reporting copyright infringement by AdSense users.

So the next time you see some of your content being used without your permission, have a look and see if the copy violator is making money with AdSense ads. If they are, this would be in breach of the AdSense rules, and you can then lodge a complaint through the AdSense policy violation report form.

And if they are not making money from AdSense but they are in the Google index? You actually might be able to get them removed from the index. If they are in violation of the Google Webmaster Guidelines, you can fill out the Spam Report form. Guard your work. Guard your rankings.

On November 14th, 2008, I posted my first ever tweet:

“Trying to work out how to use twitter“.

104 days later, I’m still trying to work out how to use it. But I’m getting there.

I keep reading about how vital Twitter is for businesses. Having run a business for more than ten years and a Tweeter account for more than 100 days, I am quite certain that it isn’t particularly vital for most businesses at all.

In fact, I think that many people are missing the point. Twitter is nothing more than a medium. If you have something to say, and other people are going to be interested in hearing it, then Twitter is one more means of communication. And in that sense it’s quite useful.

At the time of writing this, I am following 747 people, and have 1,033 people following me. The 747 people I follow are in turn following many thousands more, and the 1,033 running to catch up with me are not only pursuing many others, but have their own mobs trying to keep up with them too.

It doesn’t take long to realise that in this way, everybody is more or less connected. It’s like one big web, for want of a better word.

But how can we use it for our businesses?

I know one person who believes that Twitter is revolutionary. This same person believes that people sign up for their company’s services after stumbling across them through Twitter. I find that hard to believe. Especially when I read their posts.

Twitter is supposed to be a social networking service. There’s supposed to be social interaction, yet for many people it’s a one-way process, used as little more than a platform to stand on, rant and shout.

Having something to say isn’t enough. We all have lots to say. You have to say something interesting, and you need people to be interested in what you’re saying.

Our company website gets a decent number of visitors from Twitter each day, yet 99% of them don’t go beyond the main page. Probably because most of the people following me aren’t interested in our company’s services.

But I’ve been given an invite to a music service, received good recommendations on software, and received some useful ideas and advice through Twitter, so it’s proving to be worthwhile. Mostly.

So far I’m 100 days in to the experiment. I’ll post an update when I clear 200 days.

See you out there. @thedavecollins

A biannual job fair in New York City entitled “Women For Hire Career Expo” attracted a segment of the population which it had never before interested- men.

One attendee, Kevin Greene, 37, was reluctant to attend an employment event geared specifically towards women, but that his desperation to find work  forced him to put aside his reservations.

“It’s so hard to get to talk to people face-to-face when you’re looking for work, but it’s so important,” Greene said. “Anything to avoid the black hole of e-mailing a resume.”

A former software company employee, Greene unexpectedly lost his job shortly before Christmas.

Like many at the job fair, Greene was willing to consider almost any job opportunity, “I’ve never been laid off for this long, I always found someplace to go before my time was up,” he said. “I think the economy is the worst it’s ever been — at least in my lifetime.”

Organizers of the 10-year-old employment event said that the expo usually attracts approximately 1,500 attendees, a number which which was surpassed within the first hour of this event.

The unemployment rate in New York City is 7.2%, compared with 7.6% for the US as a whole.

We all enjoy convincing our peers that our gadgets/toys/business communication devices are better than theirs. Betamax vs. VHS, IE vs. Netscape, PC vs. Mac, IPAQ vs. Palm and so on.

A surprising number of people are nowadays arguing the BlackBerry – iPhone debate, and if you step aside from the bulging-eyed fanatics of each, it’s actually quite interesting to watch them battled it out.

First of all, not surprisingly, they all believe that their own device is the better one.

Secondly, none (or very few) of them have actually owned the other device. They’ve usually just picked up a friend’s and sneered at it for a minute or two.

Thirdly, they are all completely blind to the failings of their own device. Objectivity goes out of the window.

Fourthly, they are wasting their time trying to convert the other person. It isn’t going to happen, and they know it.

As an owner of a BlackBerry Bold, I of course know that my device is far better than any iPhone toy.

If you’re smiling and nodding your head, you have a BlackBerry, probably within a metre of you right now.

If you’re shaking your head, then you either have an iPhone or you think the whole debate is absurd. Probably because you have a BlackBerry and know I’m right.

The question you should ask yourself is whether I’m qualified to tell you which is the better device.

I’ve been using various BlackBerry devices for a few years, and have used an iToy iPhone for about five minutes. So of course I’m not qualified to tell you which is better.

But if I had owned an iPhone for a year and then ditched it for a BlackBerry, wouldn’t my opinion carry a little more weight?

Many software company websites use a table that compares their product with those of their competition.

The table usually comes in one of two flavours:

(1) A long list of features, with your product ticking each and every box. Your competition are noticeably less represented.

(2) A more cunning approach whereby your product has some empty spots. These are from your product missing features such as “slow and time consuming data importing” and “additional add-ons required”.

Assuming your product really is better, comparing your product with your competition is a good idea. Visitors to this page want to know why yours is better.

But if you really want to make the page work, you need details, and you need third-parties.

The more specific an advantage you can present to your potential customer, the better.

If Competing Product A takes 30 minutes to import 5,000 entries, and your product takes less than a minute, this will impress the visitor.

If Competing Product B takes 2 hours to crunch through the data and spit out a report, and your product takes 15 minutes, this will really impress the visitor.

Better still, if you have testimonials from users who switched from your competition to your product, this is the time and place to use them.

Match it up with a competitive discount, and you can almost hear them reaching for their credit cards.

Oh and the BlackBerry does use cut, copy and paste, is better for entering text and is the better device.

Gmail is down and has been for some time. I’m glad our business doesn’t rely on it.

And I’m waiting for the inevitable eruption of fury.

Personally, I’m a firm believer in the idea that you get what you pay for.

So users of Gmail should have no cause for complaint. They’re using a free service with all the caveats that go with it.

But will users of the service see it that way? Probably not.

If a software company offers a free version of their software, they still need to ensure quality control, and they still need to maintain a basic level of support.

Failure to do so may result in angry users, damage to the company’s reputation and even lost sales for the company’s commercial offerings.

And if a service offers free advice, they need to ensure that it is as reliable as their paid-for words of wisdom.

Here’s my free advice for the day. Be careful what you put out there for free; be it software or information.

Good reputations take years of hard work to grow, yet can be undone with nothing more than a throwaway comment or a line of damaging code.

Be careful.

Ever since recently rereading Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, the world appears to have polarised into good and evil. Right and wrong.

Politics has become about doing what’s right, wars are declared against tyrants, and countries led by bad men are branded as evil.

Businesses have grown to realise that being good not only looks good, it is good. And good can be good for business.

Parents strive to do the right things for their children. Good parents want their children to grow up into good people.

Some time ago, Google realised that their AdSense system was being abused by many websites. Thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of websites were setup to make their visitors click on ads without realising it. Google tightened up the rules – but was this because they were morally opposed to the deception, or because their advertisers started to realise that the content network was producing low-quality traffic?

If a PR company doesn’t believe in a product, should they take on the client?

As a matter of course, SoftwarePromotions turns away more companies than we send price quotes for. Last time I checked, we turned away three companies for every company we decided to work with.

But was this a moral decision,or a business one?

If a company doesn’t benefit from our services, the client loses and so do we. We get paid, but we also get another entry in our unhappy customer file.

The truth is probably somewhere between the two – a decision influenced by business and ethical considerations.

Our company has taken on products that we really believed in at lower cost. We worked with a company selling a beautifully simple financial management tool for a fraction of our lower rate. We believed in the product, and we thought that the initial investment would prove to be worthwhile.

And we’ve turned away products that we are morally opposed to, including gambling applications, violent games and more.

But these fall into the clear categories of good and bad. What about the examples that make you go hmmm?

If your company is in the business of selling, do you really believe in your product?

Do you believe in the claims that you make on your website?

Do you believe that your customers should be buying your product, and not those of your competition?

If so, does your website communicate your belief, your unwavering faith in your products and your absolute conviction that what you sell is best?

The world’s a lot simpler in two colours. So is selling your product.

The internet is big. Vast, even.  Mainly, it’s full of written text. Chances are that some of it is about you and your business – but is it good, bad or even downright ugly?

Online reputation management is a phrase that seems to be popping up all over the place at the moment. We’ve been spending some time on this lately, making use of the excellent tools that are available nowadays.  While we haven’t yet come across anything worthy of a lawsuit, it only took us twenty minutes to discover that someone had been using our content, without permission and without linking to our site.

If you’re running a business online, you should definitely consider setting some time aside to finding out what’s being said about you. This collection of resources and tips is an excellent place to start.

Inside AdWords recently announced a new change to their AdWords policy on display URLs:

“In an effort to provide more relevant results and a high quality experience for our users, we’ve made the decision to disallow multiple display URL domains within a single ad group. Going forward, all display URLs within an ad group must have the same top-level domain. Please note that this amendment to our policy applies to all advertisers, regardless of previous exceptions or acceptability of any ad groups.”

The crucial point here is that they must have the same top-level domain.

So, for example, the following domains within the same ad group would comply with the new policy:

• www.example.com
• blog.example.com
• www.blog.example.com

If you want to use different display URLs, you can still do so, but these now have to be in separate ad groups.

I remember the good old days, when you could use any display URL that you owned. Food was cheap, and people were more friendly and polite…

A change to our display URL policy

I was recently convinced that we should allow comments on our blog.

In fact the more I thought about it, the more I realised that some interesting ideas could come from the dialog.

So if you have any thoughts on what we say here, please click the comments link at the foot of the post. No registration required.

A lot of people say “your comments are welcome” but we really mean it.