Rob’s Recommended Reading of the… um Last 2 weeks or so

I’ve been a busy boy the last couple weeks with new clients coming online and the end of my semester at school rapidly approaching. I’ve been keeping a list of good stuff for you guys, it just hasn’t exactly made its way to the interweb until just now.

Does This Campaign Make My Ad Group Look Fat? An exploration of how Adwords is kind of like a Psycho girlfriend and what you can do to cope. I wrote this for my Adwords Monster Blog, it's been floating around the office for a month while we tried to figure out if it would be funny to people that aren't us. I think it's awesome personally :)

12 Reputations Every Company Should Monitor Online Some good tips from Andy Beal who will probably visit my website now that I mentioned him. Hi Andy! He gets into some things you might not have thought to monitor like key executives and PR people.

10 Reasons Why Everyone Should Love PPC I thought this was a great take on the upside to PPC. I really like the control you have over the medium, the ability to split test easily, and the ability to start and stop at will.

The True Cost of SEO I have to try to explain to somebody at least once a week that SEO is not free. The traffic is free, but what is your time worth? How much do you have to pay an SEO to get you started? How much did your web guy charge you to implement changes? That stuff costs money even if the clicks don’t!

Study Shows Targeted Ads Make Users Uneasy There they go again proving things that don’t need to be proved. Of course people feel a little weird when they stop and think about it. But if an ad is properly targeted a user shouldn’t notice it.

Best Practices When Moving Your Site (by Google) Google’s Webmaster Central Blog gives out some pointers on moving a site to a new domain without nuking your rankings.

Where are all the Google Data Centers? I’m such a cool guy I found you a map!

21 Reasons Why Twitter is Bullshit I’ve come to like Twitter, but I’ll admit at least 2/3 of this is basically true. I’m personally having problems with number 17: “Just ‘cos you work on the internet, and Twitter happens to be on the internet, does not mean Twitter is work.”

While I’m talking about Twitter, Check out this Video with the Twitter Founders. Notice towards the end when asked about monetization there is a 4 minute diversion about being a global resource first and the money will follow or some crap. They did however launch Twitter Japan with an ad block in it. Sign of things to come that actually turn a profit?

6 Ways That Bloggers are Like Rappers Pure genius :) Can’t wait to see Shoemoney on Cribs, he better have a Lambo or at least a Rolls.

The Web 2.0 Site Screw You Coefficient You didn’t know we did math here did you? A fun explanation of how unpopular features that might make money get implemented into websites.

Do You Have My Stapler? I didn’t realize Milton was on LinkedIn  And by the looks of things, his LinkedIn question drummed up at least 24 leads in regards to the whereabouts of his stapler.

Danish PM Finds Running Partners on Facebook How cool is that? Honestly. It’s stuff like that that makes me want to move back to Scandinavia.

You Walk Wrong! As somebody that logs 20-30 miles a week on foot this was really interesting to me. Plus it explains a lot of the weird aches and pains I get in my knees and hips. If I could walk around barefoot and not be looked at like a crazy person I’d be all about it. I would still buy shoes out of force of habit though. The Vivo Barefoot shoes they shout out in the article are kind of interesting to me, but I don’t think I would part with $150 for shoes that are barely shoes.

Organic Results in Google's Right Hand Column?

Today I saw a story on Sphinn from Search Engine Roundtable about Google serving up video ads in search results. Don't worry, I'm not out to rehash this development for the 50th time today... I saw something similar last week -organic video- in the sponsored links column!!! Notice that they aren't ads at all, but youtube videos and some Google book results.

If I had to guess, I'd say Google is experimenting with the effective use of dead space to keep it in people's reading zone. "Tomorrow" isn't really worth bidding on so there is always free real estate on the right hand side that might as well be filled in with relevant content.

I'm really curious to see if organic video will be mixed with Adwords text and video ads. Would it decrease revenue by blocking out spaces on the front page, or encourage more people to look to the right hand column for relevant results?