Google had a unique way of calculating quality score keywords. Adwords would NOT display an ad against a keyword if it thought the quality of the keyword was not up to the quality standards of Google results.

In that case the keyword would be marked “Inactive for Search”. However this is changing and in the next few days there won’t be any inactive keywords. Read – Google Adwords quality score improvements.

Once the quality score improvements go live, many keywords will show the advertisers how much they need to bid to get to the first page results.

They will get a message like this for most keywords:

”Active – Bid is below first page bid estimate of $**”

It is up to the advertisers to increase the bids.

So what happens to the inactive keywords?

Though the message will not show, the inactive bids will still get only few impressions or none, because in any case the quality score will be calculated on-the-fly.

The quality score will decide the best keywords/ads to be shown and therefore the inactive bids may not get huge impressions as assumed by many advertisers.

However there are ways to get the maximum impressions out of your Goggle Adwords advertising campaigns.

You must have noticed when you type a keyword in Google search engine to search; Google offers real time keyword suggestions based on the text you have already typed. For example if you type “search”, these are the suggestions it may come up with – “search engines”, “search engine optimization”, “search and destroy”, “search people” etc.

This feature is also known as Google Suggest. More information is available here:

http://labs.google.com/suggestfaq.html

Prior to this, Google used to offer keyword suggestion in real time in their toolbar search.

http://toolbar.google.com/

But now they have included this in their normal search as well.

How can it help searchers?

You can get variations of the word you are typing and since its drop down you can select the keyword through your mouse pointer and Google will perform a search for that keyword.

Secondly it may give you a better idea of what you are looking for. It comes in-handy when you want to search for something but just can’t understand what to type beyond one word. Google suggest can help you with their suggestions.

It also tells how many results are there for that keyword in their database. Though I don’t think telling people the total number of results for a keyword is of much help.

How can it help Google?

Well it will help Google more than you can think. Since searchers will get keyword suggestions, it is more likely that they will find what they are looking for in their first or second search attempt.

This will result in the following:

 - The quality of the keyword used to search will improve.
 - The searchers will get exactly what they want fast so it is more likely that they will return to Google for more searches in future.
 - Hence Google will retain the customer base they have around the world.

Kudos to Google for being a very innovative search engine.

Note that Yahoo also offers keyword suggestions, and Live search offers “Related searches” keyword suggestions in the top right corner in the result screen.

With both Google and Yahoo you can switch off the keyword suggestions.

Today on Monday, July 28, 2008 a new search engine called Cuil was launched.

Its address is:

http://www.Cuil.com/

Cuil claim that they search more pages on the Web than anyone else, even more than Google and Live. They say they search three times more than Google and ten times more than Microsoft (Live).

The makers of the Cuil search engine say it should provide better results and show them in a more attractive manner.

I went to Cuil to search for some keywords. It was hard to reach Cuil. Initially I just couldn’t get to the server.

It said:
We’ll be back soon…
Due to overwhelming interest, our Cuil servers are running a bit hot right now. The search engine is momentarily unavailable as we add more capacity.
Thanks for your patience.

Finally when I got, I was surprised to see Cuil finding zero results for many popular keywords. Even for a keyword like “Home Loan”, Cuil returned zero results.

Though I managed to find a keyword for which Cuil returned some results. The results are shown in a different format than many search engines display.

The results are splattered in a 3 column on the screen. We have an option to make it to 2 column. When I made it 2 column, the space in the right (3rd column) was left blank. I guess in the future Cuil will only allow 2 columns as it will fill the 3rd column with paid ads.

I can’t comment on the quality of the results as it’s the web surfers who will decide how good the new search engine is.

Cuil will not rely on inbound links like Google to rank websites, but will study the content and overall relevance of WebPages to find their relevance to a search query.

The reason for this is they don’t believe in analyzing the users of the web, but the web itself.

Since user habits are not important to Cuil, they don’t collect data of what you search online.

Cuil is owned by Anna Patterson and her husband Tom Costello. Anna Patterson was working at Google in the starting years. She worked there for two years. She was responsible to build some of the formulas Google uses for its search engine ranking.

If you find any information about this new search engine Cuil, please leave a comment.

Its good news folks!

Google has changed the way it showed the results in its Keyword Tool. Instead of showing the Approx Search Volume in form of a graphical representation that looked like a green bar, it is now showing approximate number of search queries generated in the previous month on Google and the search network.

Even the Approx Average Search Volume is now showing approximate number of monthly search queries that were performed over a recent 12-month period.

Lets look at the benefit of this:

1. Eliminate Guess Work: Before search marketers guessed looking at the green bar. If it was full it meant a lot of searches, but there was no way to know how much. Now they know exactly how many searches are made and approximately how many clicks they can expect to receive every month. (Please note that Google tool offers this too, but my experience says its far more than what we actually receive. Its best to compare your results with Google’s and come to a conclusion.)

2. Plan Budget: Search marketers can now plan their budget for pay per click campaigns. Now that they can calculate approximately the number of clicks they can expect to receive, they can allocate budget for each campaign.

3. Create New Campaigns: Since numbers can be arranged, you can now arrange keywords in increasing or decreasing order of the number of searches made and make new Campaigns in your AdWords account. These campaigns can contain different AdGroups having keywords depending on the number of searches.

4. Competitors Lose: There are many online keyword tool providing companies who sell the approx number of searches made on Google and other search engines. Now that this number will come for free, we don’t have any need to buy such a service.

5. Numbers say more than Graph: I am sure there are many who left a few keywords looking at the small green bar thinking it might give them very less traffic. Now that they get numbers, they may rethink.

These are some benefits of Google keyword tool offering approx average search numbers instead of a graph. If you feel I have left out a few points, please do mention.