What's the Google Budget Optimizer(TM) tool?

The Google Budget Optimizerâ„¢ campaign management tool automatically adjusts your keyword Max CPCs on your behalf. All you need to do is set a target budget, and the Budget Optimizer will actively seek out the most clicks possible within that budget.

The Budget Optimizer helps you reach your target spend every month without requiring a lot of work on your part. You can save time, eliminate the guesswork related to setting your CPCs, and enhance your return on investment.

(Please note that the goal of the Budget Optimizer is simply to help you receive the highest number of clicks possible within your budget. The Budget Optimizer will not help you achieve a specific ad position.)

They certainly are going out of their way to make the ads as "self serve" as they possibly can. I do not manage many AdWords campaigns so I probably am not the best person to test this out, but it would be interesting to hear what effect this tool actually has on ROI.

With how far off Google is with day to day search volume / ad clickthrough suggestions it is interesting that they think people will trust a system which automatically adjusts bids for them based on a metric other than ROI. Of course some marketers do not want to share ROI data with Google.

I also believe that if a campaign is self funding there is no reason to put an arbitrary budget cap on it. Buy as many ads as you profitably can.

I am guessing that if you enable this feature you will want to enable it in ad groups where the keyword max CPCs and lead values are similar.

Mikkel spoke out against the use of budgeting tools recently (as older ones overspent on CPC), so it will be interesting to see if this one actually delivers on its claims.

A while back Danny Sullivan said search engines want to sell traffic on a per lead basis more than a per term basis, and clearly this is a step in that direction.

Real time channel stats and other fun stuff now at AdSense.

Also improved reporting: ad unit impressions vs. page impressions, & 2 new languages: Russian and Hungarian.

From the WSJ (sub req):

A group of advertisers quietly filed a lawsuit in February against Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and other Internet companies in a potentially important legal test of those companies' liability for a form of online-advertising fraud.

The plaintiffs, led by Lane's Gifts & Collectibles LLC, a Texarkana, Ark., retailer, allege that the Internet companies knowingly overcharged for advertisements they sold and conspired with each other to continue doing so. The plaintiffs are seeking to have their suit, which hasn't received widespread attention, certified as a class action.

The also named AOL, Ask, Disney, Lycos, LookSmart, and FindWhat in the suit.

The search engines have antifraud systems and sometimes issue refunds for bogus clicks. But they decline to comment in detail on the scope of the problem, exactly how they are fighting it, and any specific instances of click fraud, in part because they don't want to tip off fraudsters. That has fed some advertisers' fears that the problem is bigger than the search companies acknowledge. Estimates of click fraud run as high as 20% of all clicks on search ads.

Yahoo! has been making a strong run in the stock market for the last week, and Google is valued at 49 billion. Nobody has really challenged this issue yet. If this gets pushed it could get rather ugly quick for search stocks. Google makes 99% of their income from ads.

The Term Extraction service provides a list of significant words or phrases extracted from a larger content. It is one of the technologies used in Y!Q.

Google Blogoscoped created a free auto linker tool, which makes adding on topic outbound links exceptionally easy. Am betting some people creating fake blogs probably enjoy the offering.

Part of Google's strong brand is PageRank, which now is of little use AND rarely updated. With all of these other good ideas Yahoo! Search is coming out with I am a bit surprised they are not providing and heavily promoting a regularly updated connectivity measurement service. Whatever happened to WebRank?

None of the things posted in this post are news really, just all of them made me laugh or say WTF. From the Forums:
the ethical poor lifestyle

In 1998 we first went online after starting a brand new industry in the health field. We immediately became overrun by unethical people with savvy SEO skills. And here I am 7 years later burping and chirping on the curb, barely making payroll. With a Google page rank o 4. I want to get it to 7-8. We are determined to remain ethical (to the grave?).

If after 7 years SEO has not got them where they needed to be (and they even blame being poor on SEOs) you would think they would learn to look elsewhere?

From the Inbox (#1):
Apparently one of the more well known link brokers is sending out automated spam email. I am not going to mention their name, but if I were them I would stop that shit in a hurry before they destroy their brand.

Hi,

I noticed that you have a really high quality site, [really bad site. domain edited to protect the guilty], and that you are actively looking for link exchange partners.

If you are interested, we would like to pay you $100-$200 to link to a few of our client's quality, relevant sites.

Or, if you just want to simply exchange links, we have links on many
sites that we would be willing to trade.

Thank you for your time,
[large link broker]

From the Inbox (#2):
someone wants to list in Black Hat SEO.com. I thought this email was rather funny.

Hi
RE your website:
http://www.blackhatseo.com/html/cat17.html
.

DOORWAY PAGE GENERATOR
We have a top doorway program with an affiliate program (if ye be interested)

www.doorwaygenie.com

affiliate program is at www.ClixGalore.com

http://www.clixgalore.com/SearchMerchants.aspx

enter DOORWAY and click

Happy to send you a free copy to try

It is for webbie masta's only
it does not use templates and is NOT designed for dummies

It is however a rather powerful and simple program
3 templates, keywords and away you go (min 10 keywords)

more blurb on the website if you are keen

BTW
There is NO doorway genie PRO
This is some other crap program someone is trying to pass off as ours

Is it still illegal to shoot assholes ???
regards
James

I will get back to you with a legality status soon James...