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We recently re-launched our website on a new platform, PrestaShop.  Up until that launch,our website, based on the DNN platform, received several thousand clicks per month from what Google Analytics classified as 'Google/referral', and several thousand more clicks collectively from international Google/referrals, i.e. Canada, Germany, UK and France.  When the re-launched site went live, these clicks all went to zero on Google Analytics. My question is:  Did we actually lose this Referral traffic through an improper setting on our new platform, or is this Referral simply being re-categorized in some other Source category like Organic Search?

This is not going to be a long post but I wanted to get something out there that a lot of other business owners might not understand. I have several different PPC campaigns that my business partner and I personally run. The campaigns are all doing quite well with a high rate of return. Never has Google contacted me (other than for surveys, which I did wind up receiving 5 blue gym bags with the Google insignia on them) and never did I think they would. The campaign they called me on wasn’t a particularly large campaign. Right now the PPC spend is around 3000/month. I understand this isn’t a little bit of money, but at the same time it’s not in the millions like most of Google’s top sites. The thing that concerned me most was the reason for their call. A nice woman introduced herself and said that the campaigns were nicely run except for a few changes. She went on to tell me of a couple of updates in the PPC realm (this happened to me yesterday – Feb 28). She said within the past few months they were rolling out a new way to target their content network and for most people they were able to save 35% (that was a number she mentioned) with the tactics she was going to suggest. My background lies in mathematics and finance (somewhat related) and I tend to know when I am either being sold or being tricked into being sold. Through the whole list of things she mentioned that would help as she was walking me through she mentioned that it was a good idea to up the bid on the content network. That way we would have more chances of being seen and it would help with out conversions. This by itself seems like decent advice, but our bid for the content network is not cheap. If they are calling every small – medium business and telling them to up their bids, we are going to have a dilemma on our hands. The dilemma being that the AdWords placement is going to cost a heck of a lot more. She said that even if we up our bid, we are not likely to pay the full amount. She wants us to have a repeat conversation on Monday. One side of me was a little upset after the conversation but all they are doing is simply up-selling. They are raising the rates through what I guess are fair business practices. A lot of business owners might just take the advice of a Google representative and not think twice about it. This means we have thousands to hundreds of thousands of people at this very moment upping the bid on their content network. If they can even get a small proportion of people to increase their bids - let's say 10% - the other 90% will start getting less shows and eventually increase their bids. Also, the people that have higher bid amounts in but aren't paying the full amount will start getting closer and closer to the amount they put in as their maximum bid. This wouldn’t be alarming to me but this is the first and only time I have ever heard from a Google representative. I can’t say I didn’t see this coming but at the same time I was definitely taken aback. I am curious to know what the MOZ community has to say.

Hey all, Just took over SEM for my company, and noticed a bit of a problem with GA. Whereas Adwords has registered 141 clicks on paid campaigns that go to the site, GA has tracked only 5 vists in that time. Two things of note: The GA account was not linked to the Adwords account until today, and also, auto-tagging was not turned on. I understand these two things are important to having proper GA tracking, but I just want to make sure that there aren't any other things I should check right now to make sure I start to see tracked paid visits again. Is there anything else I should try? Cheers.

Hi guys, I recently read Rand's article here and tried out the exact match symbols on my keywords. However, these don't appear to be working for me as the results aren't showing up as they do in the above SEOmoz article (attached screenshot). What am I doing wrong? Google_AdWords__Keyword_Tool-20130511-115528.jpg.jpg?resizeSmall&width=832

I'm not sure if this new but I noticed it today: Some of the ads that are displayed on top of the SERPs have a title, and then their web address, separated by a vertical bar. For example (see image): Coffee Beans Online | CoffeeBeansDirect.com The same ad, when displayed in the side bar (see 2nd image) doesn't contain the web address. I expected that because if you count the letters in the ad, including the 'coffeebeansdirect.com' it exceeds the amount allowed for a google ad. My question is: How did it get there? There's no room to distinguish between top ads and side ads when you write a new a new ad in adwords so where did it come from? Plus, notice that both CoffeeBeanDirect.com and ROASTe.com use caps that are not used in the green link at the bottom. How did Google know to present the url that way? 549sR 4tAnb

example of negative keywords: -$40 driving lessons -35 dollar driving lessons The driving lessons I'm selling are $55 an hour, so I obviously don't want unqualified leads chewing through my budget when they clearly don't want to spend $55 on a lesson. I already have the price mentioned in my ads, but I want to negative out the dollar amounts because people are still stupid enough to click without reading the ad. Any help will be appreciated! Matt