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Google reported a 27% increase in revenues for the last three months of 2011, but even that was not good enough to meet Wall Street estimates, sending the shares tumbling.Google shares fell 10% in after hours trading to £370 ($575) .

It reported 3 month revenues of £6.8 billion ($10.6billion) and its net profit rose 6.4% to £1.74 billion ($2.7 billion).

“Google had a really strong quarter ending a great year,” said chief executive Larry Page.

“I am super excited about the growth of Android, Gmail, and Google+, which now has 90 million users globally – well over double what I announced just three months ago.”

But analysts were less impressed with Google’s figures.

Expectations were very high and Google have missed thier estimates.

The number of clicks on Google’s AdWords Pay Per Click networks rose significantly in the fourth quarter, but the amount that Google was able to charge advertisers for each click fell 8%.

For the full year, Google reported a 29% rise in revenue to £24.45 billion ($37.9 billion), with net profits up 14% to £6.25 billion ($9.7 billion).

After testing in Brazil, Spain, and Portugal, Google will roll out a new algorithm globally that gives more weight to landing page quality when it comes to AdWords Quality Score. This means ads with landing pages that Google deems to be most relevant to the query will be able to rank higher for lower cost per click bids.

“What we’ve seen is that there are ads available in the auction that are as good a quality as the top ads. But the landing pages — the merchant sites, the advertiser landing pages — are of much higher quality than the ads that we see at the top of our auction,” Jonathan Alferness, director of product management on Google’s ad quality team.

This, says Alferness, means the user experience isn’t what it could be. Hence the change to give more weight to landing page quality. “In the end, we believe that this will result in better quality experience for the users.”

Landing page quality has long been a factor in Google AdWords, but more as a negative signal.

If an advertiser’s landing page was particularly terrible or misleading, advertisers could have their ads rejected or their accounts suspended or revoked — depending on how bad the policy violation was.

The new change will assign landing page quality a positive value, incentivising advertisers to make sure the landing page’s keywords and content are closely aligned with the keywords for which they’re bidding.

Ads with high landing page quality will get a “strong boost” upward in the auction, according to Alferness.

Alferness says Google will crawl the landing pages associated with every ad and make a determination as to its quality.

“What we always ask our advertisers to focus on is relevance — choose a landing page or site experience that is both relevant to the keywords that you’re targeting and also a good experience for end users,” said Alferness. “This is just continuing to push on those best practices. I gives us the ability to really reward those advertisers that have been doing this, whose landing pages really are some of the best in our systems.”

The change will roll out in the next week or two. Advertisers may see some variations in ad position and keyword Quality Score at first, but things should settle down within a couple of weeks, according to Google.

From: http://searchengineland.com/google-tweaks-adwords-to-give-landing-page-quality-more-weight

Google co founder Larry Page is to become chief executive of the search company in April.
He will take over from Eric Schmidt, who has been in the job for a decade and will become executive chairman.

Google said Mr Schmidt would focus on “deals, partnerships, customers and broader business relationships”.

The surprise news came as Google unveiled strong net profits in the last three months of £1.6 billion on revenues of £5.25 billion.

Mr Page, 37, is reclaiming the job he relinquished to Mr Schmidt, 55, when investors called for a more experienced business leader.

“In my clear opinion, Larry is ready to lead and I’m excited about working with both him and Sergey Brin for a long time to come,” Mr Schmidt said in a blog posting. Mr Brin, also 37, is Google’s other founder.

Schmidt was brought in as the “adult” to complement the search company’s young leadership team. He had plenty of experience: at Bell Labs, Xerox, Sun and Novell.

His biggest achievement is how he bonded with Google’s two founders; as an executive triumvirate they appear to have managed the company with little internal friction.

In corporate terms, Larry Page and Sergey Brin have been grown-ups for quite a while. Now they are taking charge at the company that is rightfully theirs.

But Google has lost momentum recently, especially in competition with Facebook. Key staff are leaving. It will be Larry Page’s job to re-energise the search giant.

Still, shareholders will feel a tad safer in the knowledge that Eric Schmidt will carry on as the founders’ mentor.

Mr Schmidt said the management changes, which take effect on 4 April, were part of a plan to “streamline” decision making and create clearer lines of responsibility and accountability.

“We’ve been talking about how best to simplify our management structure and speed up decision making for a long time,” Mr Schmidt said.

He added: “Larry will now lead product development and technology strategy, his greatest strengths… Sergey has decided to devote his time and energy to strategic projects, in particular working on new products. His title will be co-founder.”

The managerial news overshadowed strong fourth-quarter profits that were well ahead of analysts’ estimates. The $2.54bn profit compares with $1.97bn made in the same quarter the year before.

Analysts said Google appeared to have strengthened its internet advertising machine during the pre-Christmas shopping season, sparking a 26% surge in revenues to $8.44bn. After subtracting the commissions Google pays to advertising partners, revenues were $6.37bn, about $300m more than analysts had forecast.

Shares of Google rose about 2% to $639 in after-hours trading on Wall Street. The company now has a market value of about $200bn and has turned the co-founders and Mr Schmidt into multi billionaires.

UK advertising  watchdog ASA is to extend it’s powers to include internet websites next year.The digital remit of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is to be extended significantly to deliver more comprehensive consumer protection online.

The ASA’s present remit online includes ads in paid-for space and sales promotions wherever they appear. But from next year, the rules in the UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising, Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing (the CAP Code) will apply in full to marketing communications online, including the rules relating to misleading advertising, social responsibility and the protection of children.

The remit will apply to all sectors and all businesses and organisations regardless of size.

The Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP), the body responsible for writing the CAP Code, has decided to extend the digital remit of the ASA in response to a formal recommendation from a wide cross-section of UK industry.

CAP yesterday published a document detailing the new remit and sanctions.  The new remit will ensure the same high standards as in other media and will cover:

* Advertisers‟ own marketing communications on their own websites and;
* Marketing communications in other non-paid-for space under their control, such as social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Journalistic and editorial content and material related to causes and ideas – except those that are direct solicitations of donations for fund-raising – are excluded from the remit.

In addition to the ASA‟s present sanctions, which already achieve a high level of compliance, CAP member bodies have agreed new sanctions to apply to the extended remit such as:

* Removal of paid-for search advertising – ads that link to the page hosting the non-compliant marketing communication may be removed with the agreement of the search engines.
* ASA paid-for search advertisements – the ASA could place advertisements online highlighting an advertiser‟s continued non-compliance.

The industry has agreed to apply the standard 0.1% levy on paid-for advertisements appearing on internet search engines through media and search agencies. This is an extension of the existing funding mechanism in other media that pays for the ASA and it will be supplemented initially with seed capital from Google.

The remit will come into force on 1 March 2011 after a six month period of grace to allow the ASA and CAP to conduct training work to raise awareness and educate business on the requirements of the CAP Code, particularly amongst those who may not previously have been subject to ASA regulation.

Website owners and agencies are urged to sign up to CAP Services to receive guidance and training to help ensure their sites comply with the new rules before 1 March 2011.

ASA Chairman Lord Chris Smith said, “This significant extension of the ASA‟s remit has the protection of children and consumers at its heart. We have received over 4,500 complaints since 2008 about marketing communications on websites that we couldn‟t deal with, but from 1 March anyone who has a concern about a marketing communication online will be able to turn to the ASA.”

CAP Chairman Andrew Brown said, “Extending the online remit of the ASA has been a top priority for UK industry over the last couple of years. Our aim has been to extend further in the online world the principles that are already well established in our system, namely those of effective consumer protection and fair competition.”

Dr Search wonders whether this is a sledgehammer to crack a nut over a few websites or a genuine plan for UK websites to lead reputable online marketing.

Eitherway it breaks the UK coalition goverment’s promise to reduce red tape on UK companies.

This video explains how to maximise your Pay Per Click (PPC) ROI with examples of Google’s AdWords PPC matching requirements to target your budget effectively- broad, exact and negative keyword bidding phrases are the key to saving your wallet from taking a battering. I have saved one client 93% of his Adwords budget- and he’s still getting the same amount of traffic. The only loser is Google.

This is the seventh part of 11 videos on how to promote your website using the most cost effective elements of the marketing mix.

This video series was made from the lecture Simon Dye Dr Search the Principal Consultant at the Search Clinic’s made at the University of Gloucestershire on online marketing to to businesses, professionals including Members of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, Chartered Managers and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and students at the 5th annual Gloucestershire Professionals conference in June 2009.

More than 300 people attended the conference with over 60 attending Dr Search’s lecture on Online Marketing Tips, Strategies and how to use the most cost effective tools for your online marketing business.

Of the 12 seminars during the day Dr Search received the top rating with 93% of the attendees saying that he was relevant to their needs and 86% of attendees rated the content as highly rated.

Please have a look at the other videos as they become live on the Search Clinic YouTube Channel

Please let me know what you think of the video. Have you found it useful? Was there anything else that you would like to learn about? Please contact Dr Search by clicking here now.

Google has reported double digit gains in first quarter profit and sales, indicating that it is an early beneficiary of the rebound in online advertising.

The company posted net profits of £1.31 billion, or £4.04 a share, an improvement of 38 per cent on the same period last year. The performance exceeded analysts’ expectations.

The company, which controls around two thirds of the US search engine market, said that revenue in the first quarter totalled £4.51 billion, up 23 per cent from last year.

Net revenue, which excludes sums paid to partners, stood at $5.06 billion, up 2.2 per cent from the seasonally strong fourth quarter and above analysts’ average estimates of $4.95 billion.

Patrick Pichette, Google’s chief financial officer, said that an improving economy and a return of large advertisers helped the company to a “very positive” start to the year.

Mr Pichette said the company expected to hire aggressively through the year. In the last quarter it had increased its workforce by nearly 800 employees, the biggest growth since the first quarter of 2008.

Despite the results Google shares slid 3.1 per cent to $576.92 in after-hours trading last night, reversing a 1.1 per cent gain notched up earlier in the day and reflecting continuing uncertainty over the company’s acquisition of the mobile-advertising company AdMob, as well as concerns over its censorship dispute with China and its ability to add revenue from new formats or platforms.

The company’s shares have fallen by nearly 5 per cent this year, against a 10 per cent rise in the Nasdaq index.

Mr Pichette said last night that the company was still working on the AdMob deal, despite a review of the acquisition by the Federal Trade Commission.

• 1. The website: Development/Design & Maintenance
  

• 2. SEO – Search Engine Optimization

• 3. PPC – Google AdWords and Other Search Advertising

• 4. Affiliate Marketing

• 5. Social media, Email marketing & Ad Networks