Yahoo!’s new search marketing desktop tool has been improved further by a raft of updates to increase speed and efficiency.

Day-to-day account management in AdWords has just got slicker. The introduction of a new analysis toolbar in the Campaigns tab now gives you quicker access to existing data as well as making new data available. What’s more, all of this is now only a single click away!

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is becoming more in-tune with mobile search after Google Adwords launched their click-to-call (CTC) feature.

The must attend conference in the world of search is once again returning to the UK in 2010. Search Marketing Expo (SMX) is a two day conference featuring sessions led by industry experts on SEO, PPC, organic search, mobile search and many more.

In what has been billed as the “biggest change” to the Internet “since it was invented 40 years ago”, net regulator Icann has invited countries to apply for “internationalised domain names” in the non-Latin characters.

The net of opportunities for mobile advertising looks set to grow after Google bought AdMob, one of the leading mobile advert companies.

We all know that online ad spend has recently outstripped TV for the first time but where’s it all going?Before I answer that, here are some of the stats.

Over the past couple of weeks Google have conducted some studies with major international brands, Heineken and Levi’s, to investigate the value of paid for search to branding. The findings of both studies returned positive results that indicate paid for search can considerably boost brand awareness as well as increasing sales.

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Almost a year earlier than forecasted, online advertising spend has superseded television expenditure in the UK with paid-for search leading the way. This is the key finding of a study by the Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Well, it’s been a long time coming, but the expected deal between Yahoo & Microsoft has finally been announced – with one aim, being more effective at taking on Google.

A while ago, we posted about reports of US advertisers testing an early beta version of a new Google AdWords interface. Well, for the past few weeks, Google have gradually been rolling out this beta test (albeit a much later version) across more and more accounts in Europe, and here at hômejames we’ve been having a play! In this post we explain some of the new features and give you our thoughts.

In yet another move to personalise search, after Google SearchWiki dropped at the backend of last year, the mighty G has now announced the personalisation of its content network ads to individual users – in what it calls “interest-based advertising”.

Reports of impending changes to the Google AdWords web interface, to help give advertisers clearer insights into their ad campaigns, appear to be premature – however, an updated web interface is said to be in the early beta stages.

The beta version is being rolled out to a limited number of UK advertisers on February 10th 2009.

The IT, Legal & eCommerce site Out-Law have reported that Interflora is taking legal action against Marks & Spencer for bidding on the keyword 'Interflora' using Google AdWords.

In May 2008 Google allowed PPC customers to bid on somebody else’s brand name.  Previously this kind of bidding was strictly forbidden. 

Semantic Search is a term that’s been floated around the online industry for a few years now, but we’re only recently starting to see real progress in this area.

For those not in the know – it refers to the ability of a user to search in natural language phrases, and for the search engine to understand that natural language – rather than just returning results based on the main keywords within your search. To illustrate the power of semantic search – this would mean a query such as “where can I buy trainers”, would return local results of sports shops, not just websites optimised for the keyword “buy trainers”. Yes, this is big; this is the next-level of search.

Yesterday, Google announced it would open up its paid search platform for gambling related terms in the UK!

If this floats your boat, you’re probably in the industry and, therefore, this is a seismic u-turn of notable proportions.

If it doesn’t, it’s probably just another piece of online twoddle, it’s likely to be jargon-riddled and mean very little to the common man.

Google have entered the world of web browsers with one of their latest releases, Google Chrome.

Chrome is a web browser that, on the face of it, seems to be in line with most other browsers.

It's currently in Beta stage so there are certain things it still doesn't do for example, still no Google toolbar!

There are things it does above and beyond all other web browsers though.

It’s staggering to see how many PPC campaigns are still being managed through automated software and are set on position-based, automated bid strategies.

We see this every day when analysing the competition and tracking competitors’ positions.

This approach can reduce the efficiency of a campaign and, as a result, it’s important for campaign managers to take greater control of their bid strategies if they want to increase the returns.

If you believe the hype we’re 24 hours from doomsday, not Tulsa!

Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, AIG Financial, FTSE’s up, FTSE’s down, Lehman Smehman; how’s my website performing?

It was reported in this week's Marketing that PPC managers are locked & loaded, following Google's abolition of brand protection on keyword bidding in April this year, but are yet to draw their weapons.