When you are trying to optimise your Google AdWords campaign so that your ads rank high for less money, you usually are sharpening your ad copy, improving your landing page, playing with the bid and so on. If you worked at Google Maps, you wouldn’t need to work so hard.

At least in Australia if you search for <placename> <word>, e.g. Toorak dentist, Werribee cafe, Narre Warren restaurant, the first (almost always) AdWords result is an ad for Google Maps.

You can see this in the image on the right. Another interesting discovery are the two Menulog ads - one is the gTLD .com and the other is the ccTLD .com.au. Nice technique to remember if you need to display more than one ad. Just buy a few ccTLDs, since the algo won’t know if the various domain names in different “countries” are the same entity.

My next search was for a cafe in my old stomping ground, San Mateo, CA. Both Google and MenuLog were confused (click image on the left). I wasn’t logged in, but both remembered my previous search. Google Search showed the right results, but AdWords didn’t want me to leave these shores, choosing to show me an ad for Toorak cafes, and Menulog.com.au hedged its bets by showing me an ad for Armadale cafes, and Menulog.com showed me Toorak cafes. OK, these are broad match ads for the word “cafe”, but why show an irrelevant city in the wrong country? Since Google isn’t paying for its top-ranking ads, I think it could have shown a PSA or none at all.

Yes, cafes are in a tough category for AdWords. Either you phrase match <placename> <cafe> for thousands of placenames (not practical) or load a whole bunch of negative keywords (not practical) — I’d rather not see this prime position taken up by Google Maps ads at all. You can see these ads for many location searches, such as dentists, restaurants, etc.

eBay can’t handle the place name Narre Warren, a Melbourne suburb. Search for Narre -Warren (that’s a negative Warren) and eBay will exhort you to buy a Barre, whatever that is. MyLocal gets too familiar — look for Narre Warren cafe and it will tell you to go to Narre Restaurant. Local search doesn’t seem easy for some companies. TrueLocal still wants me to go to the solitary cafe in Redfern. Menulog wants me to go to Barre, WA - apparently there is a cafe/restaurant of this name in Perth.

Popularity: 32% [?]

I just returned from Pubcon 2007 today so am too tired to blog it all, but here is a link to my Pubcon pictures on Flickr. I was one of the Webmasterworld conference speakers, so it was a new experience for me. More later.

Popularity: 26% [?]

I have been in Noida (outskirts of New Delhi) for the past two days in 43-47°C temperatures. The PC I am using is in a non-AC room, but when an AC room feels hot, you know it is hot! I heard that Melbourne is cold - not sure which I prefer.

Popularity: 29% [?]

Five of us went out to Abuelo’s at 10909 E 71st St South in Tulsa. We turned right off the freeway instead of left and managed to view all the other restaurants on the other side of the street, including one of my favourite chains - On the Border.

Didn’t have long to wait, being a table of 5, but there were lots of couples who seemed to have been there fore ages. They kept refilling our free corn chips and salsa (four different varieties). I picked the Monterey burrito specialty ($13.99), which includes four different burritos on a huge plate. Of course I couldn’t finish it, but I took home a doggie bag which was breakfast the next morning before our meeting.

Everyone agreed that it is one of the best American Mexican restaurants they had been to. Sadly, the chain is mainly East Coast and does not extend to NV or CA where I tend to go a lot.

Popularity: 25% [?]

This morning I spoke to about 100 ladies at the Australian Birth and Post-Natal Services Conference at the Sofitel in Collins Street. The three-day event had been put together by Kelly Zantey of bellybelly.com.au. She has done well ranking for her site for the word “pregnancy” and is now on page 1 of Google.

The topic of my presentation was “How a Website Can Work for You”. Over 75% of the audience had a website and the rest were thinking of getting one.

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I was one of the judges for a couple of categories for the annual Sun Microsystems IT Journalism Awards, better known as The Lizzies. I judged the following:

Finalists: Best Technology Media Website

• CNET << Highly Commended
  
• ZDNet << Winner!
• Whirlpool
• Smh.com.au/technology
• Pcworld.idg.com.au
• Atomicmpc.com.au

Finalists: Best Personal Technology Title

• APC
• PC Authority << Winner!
• PC User
• Choice
• Atomic
• Home Entertainment

Gusworld has scooped the full list of winners. Congratulations to all the winners and

Popularity: 29% [?]