Archive for the 'Google PPC' Category

Kevin Slowey On Recent Win: ‘Now That’s What I Call Throwing A Slowey’

Kevin Slowey

KANSAS CITY – Minnesota Twins pitcher Kevin Slowey threw six innings of one run baseball during the Twins 4-1 victory over the Kansas City Royals on Friday, causing the visibly proud rookie right hander to declare his performance “a genuine Slowey.” “A couple more Sloweys like this one and I could be in store for a Cy Young this season,” Slowey told reports after the game, adding that with his cut fastball working early, he was confident in his ability to deliver a Slowey.

“The last thing I wanted to do was go out there and Hernandez up the joint.” Slowey later added that he dreams of one day throwing a perfect Slowey, though he said he is aware of how difficult it is to perform a feat requiring him to strike out 17 batters, walk three, give up one run and still get the loss.

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Wedding Bells

My fellow inter linking blogger was wed this month. In a ceremony and reception fit for the King of Spades himself, Nathaniel and Kristi publicly announced their love, and as one will now lead the charge against the phesants.

Congratulations my dear friend. You have taught me much in the ways of the female proletariat. From hair care techniques, to medium end denim to “Muffdive?” you have never steered me wrong. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness. For he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. Without you, I would still be dating band chicks I met at the Vu.

Enjoy some photos from the main event.

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A Day in the Life of a Right Wingged, Truck Driving, Career Back Up Catcher

Mike Redmond

This is meant to be a day in the life of Mike Redmond. He is the backup catcher and occasional designated hitter for the Minnesota Twins. In his 10 seasons, he is batting .290 with 13 home runs. The Twins have a double header at the Dome with the Red Sox.

 

9:00 Shakes off the cobwebs and gets out of bed.

9:01 Lets out a blistering fart and takes 60 second piss on his hands, farts 5 more times.

9:03 Drinks 3 raw eggs Rocky Balboa style and opens the fridge.

9:05 Take out leftovers from the Kowloon pupu platter for 3 he picked up last night.

9:15 Grunts at his wife and gives his kids 20 bucks each to leave him alone.

9:17 Takes a dump.

9:22 Sings Van Halen in the shower.

9:25 Shaves and leaves his goatee.

9:30 Takes 35 vicious cuts with his bat naked in front of the mirror, screams out loud “MIKIE’S GOING DEEP TONIGHT!”

9:45 Puts on his cowboy boots and tight jeans and tank-top and gets ready to leave.

9:50 Grunts at his wife and kids and tells them he’ll see them tomorrow.

9:57 Pulls onto I-35 with Led Zeppelin blaring, cuts three people off, gives the finger to all three people.

10:15 Pulls into the Metrodome, tells clubhouse parking attendant to make sure he blocks Twins starting catcher Joe Mauer in.

10:16 Puts the kid in a headlock and threatens the kid and his family’s life if there is one scratch on his truck.

10:22 Walks into clubhouse and calls Mauer a homo for the first time today and 350th time this month, asks Mauer if he misses his boyfriend.

10:27 Takes another dump, leaves door open and yells at anyone who walks by.

10:29 Looks for Louis Castillo, who was traded two months ago.

10:30 Gives Mauer a dead leg and calls him a homo. Confuses Alexi Casilla with Louis Castillo for 5th time this month. Tells ‘Castillo’ walks are for p**sies.

10:33 Stuffs Glen Perkins in a locker and pisses on him.

10:37 Goes through a 10 minute hand shake with his boy Matt Garza.

10:45 Takes Nick Punto’s headphones off and steps on them, says until he is hitting .250, no music.

10:50 Gardenhire walks by and Mikie cuts him off and says “Is Mikie D-Hing the first game?”

10:55 Mikie tells Torri Hunter if he played 162 Games his numbers would look like this: .375 average, 72 HRs, 52 Doubles, 9 Singles, 6 Walks, 220 K’S.

11:17 Writes back response to fan’s Letter “Hey P**sy, I don’t wear a cup because they are for p**sies like your boyfriend Mauer.”

11:30 Walks out to batting practice with a tank-top on. Tells Cuddyer he should be buff like Mike.

11:45 After no stretching steps into the cage, ignores the 5 bunts standard procedure.

11:47 Takes 25 cuts, hits 17 over the wall and misses the other 8.

11:48 Calls the batting practice pitcher a homo and tells him to go bang Mauer for mixing in a curveball.

11:55 Tackles Pat Neshek and gives him wedgie, calls him a pickle smoker.

12:00 Mikie’s daily order of Double Chicken Parm arrives.

12:07 Mikie finishes Chicken Parm and pours the rest of his sauce into Mauer’s locker.

12:15 Gardie posts lineup, Mikie sees he is not the DH, calls Gardenhire a p**sy.

12:25 Mikie gets naked and takes 25 swings in front of the clubhouse mirror, announcing “MIKIE IS GOING DEEP TONIGHT!”

12:45 Takes yet another dump, uses Mauer’s $350 silk shirt to wipe.

1:05 Game starts, Mikie tells Gardenhire he is not going to the bullpen to warm up pitchers.

1:25 Mikie announces in the bottom of the first that he is ready to pinch hit for Mauer.

1:45 Jason Kubel comes in, Mikie tells him he sucks and will be back at AAA Rochester by 7 tonight.

1:55 Mikie’s 4 Dome Dogs arrive, pays with Mauer’s credit card.

2:15 Finishes shopping with Mauer’s credit card, maxed it out at Auto Zone.

2:30 Dozes off.

3:30 Sees they are losing and goes back to the dugout and tells whole team they suck except for him and Garza.

3:33 Announces himself ready to pinch hit in the ninth.

4:30 Twins lose game, Mikie tells Gardenhire he should have DH’ed him.

5:00 Mikie tells Mauer singles are for p**sies.

5:30 Mikie takes batting practice again, refuses to bunt.

5:33 Mikie hit 22 pitches over the wall 11 fair, 11 foul, all pulled, he missed 15 pitches.

6:00 Mikie see’s name in lineup, calls Gardenhire a p**sy for batting him 8th. Asks Jason Bartlett if he is Mexican.

6:05 Mikie demands to bat cleanup.

6:25 Announces that Mikie is going deep tonight.

6:30 Dinner arrives, 2 steaks. Mikie pours steak juice into Mauer’s locker and makes Carlos Silva eat the fat.

6:35 Mikie gives Scott Baker an atomic wedgie.

7:00 Tells Garza to show some balls tonight and don’t throw anything in the dirt.

7:10 Scoreless first. Mikie tells Gardenhire it must be the catching. Asks Boof Bonser if he knows any Mexicans. Boof says no, Reyes runs and hides in the bullpen.

7:25 Mikie tells fans in on deck circle he is going deep.

7:27 Mikie screams at pitcher, tells him he is a p***y and he is taking him deep.

7:30 Mikie hits bomb off the wall, coasts into second. Almost gets thrown out.

7:31 Tells pitcher his fastball sucks. Tells shortstop and second baseman that he “didn’t get all of it.”

8:15 Man on first, no one out. Mikie says “Smell those RBI’s.” Mikie ropes a rocket to third, third baseman takes all day and still turns a double play on Mikie.

8:16 Fans boo Mikie.

8:17 Mikie tells family of 4 to get lost and steals some kid’s hot dog on way to dugout.

8:18 Mikie is tired and is happy he hit into a double play, as he did not want to run the bases anymore.

9:10 Mikie strikes out on inside pitch after crushing 4 foul home runs. Calls pitcher/catcher/ump all p**sies.

9:30 9th inning. Mikie is exhausted. Walks out to the mound and calls Joe Nathan a p**sy and tells him to just bring the heat. Mikie wants to get home.

9:50 Twins win. Mikie showers and walks around the clubhouse naked.

9:55 Mikie shaves and leaves a goatee.

10:00 Knocks Mauer off his exercise bike. Calls him a homo singles hitter and leaves clubhouse.

10:10 Cuts off 4 Twins fans. Gives the bird to everyone near him.

10:25 Arrives at Chinese Restaurant on Hennepin.

10:45 Sits down at bar and digs into his pupu platter for 3.

12:00 Stumbles home and parks truck on the front lawn, goes for a dip in his above ground pool.

12:10 Leaves tighty whiteys on his neighbor’s windshield.

12:15 Walks into the house naked and screams “WHO SAW THE BOMB I HIT TONIGHT?”

12:30 Wakes up the whole neighborhood.

12:45 Takes 35 swings naked and orders porn.

12:55 Pulls out a bucket of KFC and gets ready for the movie.

1:15 Mikie passes out on couch.

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The Last Straw

As all my readers know, I have been a die hard Minnesota Twins fan for many years. I still remember when Dan Gladden touched home plate in game 7 of the most exciting World Series ever played. I have left Minnesota but still travel to see the team when I get the chance. I put up with all kinds of trash speak from the friendly folks of ‘Cardinal Nation’ (pictured below) day in and day out. But I have always loved Twins baseball and stuck by it.

Cardinal Nation

But I am afraid it might be getting time to jump ship. I just can’t take it anymore, watching the games is just too painful. The lack of any offensive at all is enough to make me want to mix Benadryl with some of those delicious new Miller Chills and spend the entire game in a sort of comatose state. But it is not that the offense is so bad that bothers me. It is that there is absolutely no sign that will turn around in the future.

What’s sad about this, is that the taxpayers of Hennepin County are going to build the Twins a brand new $522 million stadium financed by a sales tax increase. The lawmakers of Minnesota generously approved the legislation, with no vote from the taxpayers. In addition, they used good old eminent domain to claim the land for the ballpark. You know, because it ’servers the public good.’

Metrodome

But I am not even upset about that. I will be the first to admit that the inflatable toilet known as the Metrodome has got to go. It is probably the most outdated stadium in the major leagues, and going to games there feels kind of like walking into Johhny-On-The-Spot at a tailgate party. The Twins needed a new stadium, and though the way they got it was underhanded, still I can live with it.

The problem is that of course the new stadium came with promises that the Twins would field a team that would be able to win. A competitive team. But I simply do not see any movement by the Twins management to make this happen. Case in point, here are the events surrounding the trade and waiver period of the 2007 Minnesota Twins.

First, they trade Louis Castillo for a few minor league prospects. I can’t figure out this move. He was the only player on the Twins roster hitting above .300. At the time, they were about 6 games out, but GM Terry Ryan still says that he thinks they can compete. This move even managed to upset the ever quiet and easy to please Johan Santana, arguably the best, most consistent pitcher in the major leagues over the last 5 years. He makes the point that the Twins are always planning for the future, and will never pay to win now. Well this is bad news. The best pitcher in baseball correctly believes that his team will never be a serious contender.

And he is right. I understand that the Twins have to have prospects because they can’t go out on the free agent market and lock up marquee players. But there comes a time where you have to try to win now. With Torii Hunter gone after this season, and now Santana will obviously leave, that time was now. And what do they do? Trade their leadoff man and starting second baseman.

Look, you don’t trade your leadoff man if you are in a playoff race you think you can win. Period. Don’t tell me that you think you are going to compete for a division title and then trade one of your veterans and team leaders.

SideNote: If I have to watch another at bat from Rondell White I think I will lose it.

Ryan said he felt they could replace Castillo with Alexi Casilla and Nick Punto. Let’s look at this reasonably. Casilla was a nightmare when was up earlier in the year. He swings away and misses more wildly than a first timer at the Playboy Club. His stats certainly have not improved; currently he is hitting a mean .250 with 5 RBI’s. Punto on the other hand is barely able to keep his batting average above the Mendoza line.

Nick Punto

But here is what really takes the cake. The very next day they allow Arizona to claim third baseman Jeff Cirillo off waivers. They didn’t even try to get anything for him, just gave him away to ‘make space on the roster.’ There are about 5 players hitting around .200 they could cut to make more space on the roster. Granted, Cirillo is not very good either, but he is better than Punto and Casilla. Furthermore, you just said that Punto would be moved to play second base, what, yesterday? Now you have to move Punto back to third, and your only option for second is Casilla. Essentially, if Ryan actually believed what he said that Punto could be moved to second, then after Cirillo leaving, the competitive them the Twins would field would not contain a third baseman.

Did I mention that White is batting .143 with 2 RBI’s? Can you believe that? And he is the designated hitter. I would vouch that whoever is pitching could hit better than that. A competitive team? Can you imagine the Tigers or Red Sox fielding a team with Mike Redmond or Rondell White as the DH?

So don’t blow smoke at me telling me that you are going to field a competitive team. The Twins management will never pay for it. And Cirillo was only due to make $1.5 million this year. Apparently still he was expendable because that is too much to ask to have a team with a third baseman on it.

This just in, apparently White is considering retirement at the end of the season. Considering retirement? Can you really retire from something when you should have been designated for assignment a year ago? Apparently he is considering retirement because he is terrible at hitting and provides no value to the team. His other option is playing out his career in AA Fargo. Yeah, I’d say retirement is the way to go on this one.

The end result of this was probably one of the worst Twins games I have ever seen yesterday. Of course Garza was a stud and pitched the lights out, but he was beaten by Kyle Davies because the Twins didn’t score a single run. They have scored 1 or fewer runs in 3 of the last 4 games. I mean it’s one thing if a Jason Verlander throws a gem against you, it’s entirely another if Kyle Davies does it.

And so the season drags on. Off to the west coast where they will return from with a sub .500 record and we can officially put a fork in the 2007 Minnesota Twins.

If the management doesn’t spend the money to beef up the lineup during the off season, the taxpayers should revolt over the stadium they are paying for to have this alleged competitive team. And they won’t and we will be left with a couple of players who would struggle to be on most teams AAA club.

Golf Shot

But, alas, it is another beautiful summer day outside. May I suggest you take some life advice from my good friend and get outside and enjoy it. I recommend hitting the links for a quick 18. There are more important things in life than debating the middle infield of the Minnesota Twins.

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Notes From the Desk of an Intern

That’s right boys and girls, I can’t do it all myself. Fortunately I live in a town of 75,000 people, and 35,000 are college students, so there is always an endless supply of cheap labor. However, finding a diamond in the rough of self indulgent underachieving college students can be quite a daunting task. Fortunately, I was blessed with the excellent work and ideas from two students at good ole Mizzou.

One of them wanted to share a bit about her experience as a SEM intern. She is an up and coming one, watch out for her at PubCon 2012 my friends…

In my recent internship interviews, the one thing every potential employer always narrows in on is what I have on my resume as a search marketing assistant. They usually then proceed to tell me how impressive and rare it is to see someone, especially my age, with experience and knowledge in online search ads and programs such as those in Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing. For the first time, I have learned real skills from a job that I can carry with me throughout my career in advertising. As the internet marketing industry grows at an almost alarming rate, these skills will only be more beneficial as time progresses.

There were many other aspects that I enjoyed about this job as well. For one, I had the opportunity to express a form of creativity through landing page testing and Google advertisement testing. While these tasks sometimes felt tedious and repetitive, I take pride in the fact that I was able to continually think of new words and strategies every time. In a way, this taught me that no matter what, ideas are never-ending and something new will always be out there.

That’s right my friend, great ideas are everywhere.

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New Google Analytics

Google is doing all kinds of updates these days, they rolled out the new Google Analytics last week. Occam’s Razor had a great post on a lot of the new features, check it out.

My only beef is that they got rid of the dynamic content report. Anyone have any ideas on how to access the information that used to be in this report?

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Our Last Blue Dance

Well, it’s official. I have been cancelled. Despite all arguments to the contrary, apparently it is possible for a blogger to be cancelled. Now I know what it would feel like to be on The OC. One day you are living the good life in the blue, making fun of the chicks in Mission Viejo, and the next day you are yesterday’s reef sandals.

In early April Google announced they would be switching the blue adwords background to yellow, leaving my ‘lifeintheblue’ domain about as useful as Brent Musburger’s commentary about the game of college basketball or the west coast offense. I had been seeing some blue and some yellow for the past month, but it appears it is all yellow all day now, leaving me rather…well…blue.

The part I don’t get is that now you have to click on the title of the ad in order to be taken to the lading page of the ad. Before you used to be able to click anywhere on the ad. I would think this would lower the overall CTR of pay per click ads. But perhaps it increases the amount of quality clicks, since it would be much harder to accidentally click on a PPC ad, resulting in fewer bounces.

Of course I can only assume Google has my best interests in mind. With no real way to do some sort of control testing, it is hard to tell if the new gold way is making a difference in click thru rate. But I trust Google. I trust Google to watch me while I sleep at night, take care of me when I am sad, or protect me from the evils of life in the real world. I am sure they know what they are doing. There has got to be either an increase in CTR, or decrease in bounce rate with the gold set up. Google doesn’t do things just because they woke up and felt like doing work just for the sake of work.

So, lifeintheblue readers, this is our last blue dance. Enviseo tells me that blogging is uncool anyway. It was a passing fad around here that came and went just as fast as America’s fascination with Hanson. And I trust Enviseo too. People follow him to know what jeans to wear, food to eat and music to listen to. So it is probably best to follow his advice on when and when not to blog as well.

I will still be around, to lend my help, advice and tender loving care here and there. I considered doing a 301 to lifeinthegold, but some people haven’t had success with that, so I think I will stick with this domain, it has grown on me.

So if you can’t sleep at night, still check it out, and hopefully my continued mastery of the English language and written word will sooth your otherwise restless soul.

Point being, if three years ago you had told me I would be maintaining a blog, I would have called you a monkeys uncle. So I don’t view this as a failure. This is a success. I aimed so low, that even since I succeeded, no one cared. Abandon hope all ye who enter.

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If You Will…

SES in New York this week. Be sure to keep an eye on my boy Enviseo. He will be providing us with a Bill Simmons style rundown of the proceedings.

He makes a great point about the names on badges situation. I don’t know why SES doesn’t print those titles. Nothing gets my eggs cookin’ like when I am involved in a Quality Score discussion with someone whose tag says Owner/Founder/CEO while he stares at mine that says ‘Janitorial Services’ or ‘Color Commentary.’

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Put Up Your Dukes

Very informative post from sitening today. The quick jest is Google will allow advertisers to bid to pay per action (conversion) on the content network. Publishers will only be paid when the traffic they send converts on the advertisers website.

This is obviously a huge advantage for the advertiser, but I don’t know why any publisher would like it. I mean I have gone on rants about worthless websites on this blog before. Those that exist for no other reason than to generate clicks on AdSense ads, so I am all for it. But from a publisher standpoint, most people have websites and conversion rates that blow. And like a wise man once told me, if you can control the conversions on the site, I wouldn’t want to be sending traffic there to get lost in the depths of websites with text over images or something.

It was also be interesting to see how Google determines who ‘wins’ the bidding. If I pay $100 for a really valuable conversion but happens so very rarely, while someone else pays $1 for a conversion that happens all the time, I don’t know how they will decide who wins. Hopefully we get to put up the dukes and fight each other at 12 AM in the street, Double Dragon style.

I am sure Google will set up some sort of quality control to prevent this somewhat. Just like AdWords. Ads with very few conversions and low payouts will lose out to better performing ones.

On a related note, the 1991 World Series Championship defending Minnesota Twins had their game in Chicago cancelled today due to bad weather. Apparently cold and wind. I have received reports of 17 degrees in Minneapolis today? I just find it hard to get into baseball when I have to wear a parka to work in the morning. Looks like it will be an NHL weekend.

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Unlce Buck Needs Your Help

A SEO friend asked me about the content network yesterday. Content network is a hip word people like to throw around when they are hanging out with thier friends, kind of similar to geotargeting. Really, most know little about the content network and view it as a black hole that sucks away thier budget. In many ways, they are right. When I hear the words content network, I cringe. Sometimes I think of the content network as a bunch of Black Donnellys mobster types sitting around a dingy bar all day counting their cash and talking about where is the best place to hide assault rifles.

Disclaimer – There are many fine publishers who work to provide relevant advertisements embedded within unique content. This article does not apply to you. I have nothing to say but good things about what you do, and sirs, do not change a thing.

That out of the way, his question was this - “My Uncle Buck is doing some PPC for his site and is getting some non-converting traffic. For example, one site has referred 24 total visits, with an average of 1.0 pages viewed per visitor, and another site with 133 total visits and an average of 1.02 page views per visitor. Neither site has any conversions. Is this from Adsense or Adwords, and what can he do about it? Basically he doesn’t want to pay for referrals from these crappy sites.”

My friend, I was once like you. There was no way to identify where the traffic was coming from, or to stop traffic from those sites. The easiest way to identify possible click fraud or fraudulent sites is to look at the number of pages viewed per visitor. Sure, it’s possible that every now and then someone will come to your site, be totally uninterested and leave without viewing another page. But look at the first site; it had 24 visitors without a single person looking at another page. And the second site was equally as bad with an amazing 133 visitors, but no one is browsing past the landing page the site. This data alone should be enough to report to Google and ask for a refund from obviously fraudulent clicks. That can be a timely process with little benefit, so the best thing is just be sure to shut them off totally.

When Buck looked back as his log files, he was able to identify which sites were sending the non converting traffic. One of the sites as just listed as an IP address - 67.29.139.199. I later found out that other people had problems with this as well, and it was actually an IP owned by click fraud ridden ABCSearch. Read more about there spammy practices here.

The other site was another crap site I have never heard of called SearchFeed. Take a look at this site. It provides nothing for the user other than a search box that returns only PPC ads. I can’t see any legitimate customer coming from this site with the intention of buying whatever you’re selling.

So to answer his question, this traffic is coming from the content network, so it’s adsense ads. If Buck goes to an adgroup and clicks on the summary tab, it will show him the separation between what is coming from the search network (Google Adwords) and the content net work (Adsense).

If Buck wants to turn off the content network for the whole campaign (you can’t do it just for the adgroup) go into Edit Settings for the campaign and uncheck the box next to content network. If he still wants to run some content ads, I would recommend he check the box for content network, then check the next box for “let me separate prices for content clicks.” Then on that summary tab of each ad group, he can click ‘edit’ next to his content network bid and lower it. This is a good idea because usually content bids are lower than search bids.

Finally, at the top of the page that lists all of his ad groups in a campaign, there is a link at the top that that says “add excluded sites.” Then a box comes up where he can put in the URL of sites he doesn’t want traffic from. This will block your ads from those sites for the entire campaign. Buck would have to do this for each campaign in the account.

So there you go Uncle Buck. LifeintheBlue at your service. The point is that there are worthless sites all over the internet. They exist for no other reason than to display PPC ads and steal legitimate advertising dollars. Advertising on these sites will leave you with a depleted budget and no conversions. The greater issue here is that Google and Yahoo need to work to shut down this practice all together, but, in the meantime follow my advice and you will be living a life in the blue.

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