Software Marketing News by SharewarePromotions

According to Net Applications, a leading IT research company, in just the past two months Apple’s Mac OS X gained almost 1.5% in the operating systems market. When November began, OS X had an 8.21% market share, and ended 2008 with a 9.63% share of the operating systems market.

OS X’s gain might seem insignificant when compared with Microsoft Windows’ 88.68% market share but it becomes less so when looked at with a little more context.

In November 2007 OS X had a 6.58% market share while Windows enjoyed 92.49% of the operating system market. OS X and Windows closed out 2007 with a 7.31% and 91.79% market shares respectively. Since that time the two have continued going in opposite directions.

During the last two months of 2008 OS X gained a record number of users, while Windows suffered its greatest decrease in users in almost four years.

Analysts attribute OS X’s growing popularity to Apple’s practice of releasing frequent updates to its operating system, as well as the fact that each new version of Mac OS X has been faster and more streamlined than its predecessor.  On the other hand, Microsoft’s newest operating, Vista, has been plagued with myriad problems and rampant user dissatisfaction.

Let’s hope that this bit of competition is enough to cause Microsoft to lose some of its arrogance and complacency so that the upcoming Windows 7 does not end up being Vista #2.

All market share data provided by: www.netapplications.com

“Thank you for advertising with Google AdWords. After reviewing your account, we’ve found that one or more of your ads or keywords does not meet our guidelines. You can see your disapproved ad(s), the reason for disapproval, and editorial suggestions, from the Disapproved Ads page within your account.”

You’ve probably seen this sort of email before, but this one isn’t from Google.

If I carefully hover the cursor over the link text, even though it says http://adwords.google.com/select/disapprovedads, I can see that isn’t where the link will take me.

I didn’t click on the email’s link, as who knows what might be installed on my system. But I’m guessing that more of these will follow.

If in doubt, don’t click on the links. Go into your account through the normal way:

1. Log in to your account at https://adwords.google.com.
2. Click ‘Tools’ on the ‘Campaign Management’ tab.
3. In the ‘Analyze Your Ad Performance’ section, click ‘Disapproved
Ads.’

There’s a lot of nastiness out there, and even having good firewall, anti-virus, and anti-spyware applications and even windows fully patched and updated doesn’t guarantee protection. Let’s be careful out there.

If you have any real experience working with PPC, you’ll already know that there are two ways to “do well” in Google AdWords.

The first way is to simply throw money recklessly at your bids. Hint: bad idea.

The second way is to work the Google AdWords system to your advantage.

Guess which is the more common strategy?

Admittedly the above is overly basic. While there are no shortage of people working or hurling money at their accounts, the biggest group are those who think that they’re working their accounts well, but are in fact wasting most of their daily budgets.

It’s a sad fact of life that one noisy household in your street can upset a great many people with their awful music. And one reckless AdWords account holder can adversely affect a lot of their competition, whether intentionally or otherwise.

Taking the analogy one step further, if the person in your street plays loud music but doesn’t even realise it, all the dirty looks from the other households will be wasted, and he won’t even hear any muttered comments.

So what can you do if your AdWords positions and performance are being pushed down by one or more clueless competitors?

Sadly, not a great deal.

On a basic level, the position of an ad is determined by two factors: the bid and the quality score.

If one of your clueless competitors has a quality score of 2, but is bidding $0.99 per click, s/he’ll have a “position score” of 198.

You, Google AdWords genius that you are, have a quality score of 9, but are only bidding $0.10; a “position score” of 90.

Clueless will be displayed above genius. Sad but true.

So what options do you have?

Firstly you can raise your bids. To be above the clueless competitor, you’ll only have to bid $0.23. While this is annoying, at least you’ll get the satisfaction of knowing that s/he is paying almost five times more to be below you.

The second thing you can do, of course, is improve your quality score. Weed out your lower-performing ads, purge the poorly-performing keywords and tweak the landing pages to make them even more successful.

And know that eventually, sooner or later, the clueless budget may run out. Eventually.

I’m not a fan of Flash websites. They tend to be gimmicky and irritating. And I’m certainly not a fan of power tools. They just allow me to cause more damage more quickly.

But Kobalt, the next generation of tough tools (apparently), have somehow managed to combine the two quite nicely.

The Product Catalog is particularly nicely done, and almost (almost) had me reaching for a 60 Gallon Vertical Stationary Air Compressor - mainly because I wanted to see what stationary air looked like, compressed or otherwise. I would give you the direct URL, but doing so is impossible with Flash. Did I mention that I don’t like Flash?

The Kobalt website proves that Flash can be effective, despite its drawbacks, and is a good example of how effective good presentation can be. When someone likes me starts looking at air compressors, then great marketing (or black magic) must be at work.

Note: there is actually a downloads section of the website, but sadly there’s no try-before-you-buy, nor can you download any actual tools.

Kobalt

Update: The more I look at this website, the more I feel I live in a different world. “Gas Lift Shocks” sounds like a newspaper headline to me, or some form of torture device?

The end of the year is marked by many events: time off work, over-eating, festivities, spending time with friends and families and data anomalies.

If you’re currently in the “slow zone” between Christmas and New Year, then chances are that you’ve been looking at your Google AdWords account and/or web server logs.

Doing so might have left you puzzled. Even more than usual.

All AdWords accounts and web servers see very clear seven-day cycles, and most will also see assorted seasonal trends.

Many websites will have consequently seen a drop in traffic over the last week, and may now be seeing a sudden surge of visitors. Yet for many, the quality of the new visitors is low.

Why? Because a lot of people are in the “no-real-work” zone right now, and it’s a lot easier to click on ads and explore websites than do any real work. That can wait until the New Year.

If you’re seeing any such trends, don’t lose any sleep over it. It’ll be business as usual by next week. See you in 2009.

Even the most enthusiastic of online marketers need some time-off.

From myself, Aaron, Karin & Michael, I’d like to wish all of you a happy, healthy and restful holiday. I hope you manage to get away from your desks and PCs, and spend some quality time with family and friends.

See you next week… yes it’s brief, but better than nothing!

MediaPost’s SearchInsider has an interesting article outlining three four reasons not to touch PPC with a bargepole.

1. “There’s no faster, easier way to lose money”.

I don’t agree. I think that not engaging in PPC (or any other form of marketing) and missing out on potentially vast sources of targeted traffic and sales could be a far easier and faster way to lose money. I suppose burning it might be faster?

By the writer’s logic, driving a car has to be one of the most dangerous and high-risk activities that can be legally undertaken today. Obviously this has nothing to do with the person driving.

2. “Dabbling in search is dangerous”.

Sticking with what you know best is safer. Expanding a business is positively foolhardy.

3. “There’s very little low-hanging fruit left.”

I confess that my knowledge of fruit-picking history is somewhat dated, but surely it’s been a long time since we only ate the fruit we could reach? The ladder has been around for some time now.

The author also points out that “ PPC search is difficult, daunting, complex, and expensive”. So is dental surgery and accountancy. I can’t perform either, but I know some people who can…

What really grates me, however, isn’t just the over-simplification, the ignorance or the questionable judgement in giving such potentially damaging advice. It’s the attitude of “…well it didn’t work for me, so you shouldn’t do it either”.

Is Google AdWords for everyone? Absolutely not. Will it always work? No, not always.

But most companies who either take the time to learn the system or outsource to a qualified agency will soon see that Google AdWords is a phenomenally effective source of qualified visitors and sales. Dismiss it at your peril and loss.

Oh and there is no number four. I was going to add something along the lines of the end of the world approaching, but there are limits as to how much sarcasm should be squeezed into one post.

Common-sense is usually a good rule of thumb when it comes to all things related to Google AdWords, and the AdWords Agency Blog has official confirmation on what I’ve long suspected:

“A few bad days of test performance will not ruin your Quality Scores. If you find that the changes you’ve made don’t perform well after a few days, you can revise your experiment or delete those changes and the short term impact on your Quality Score will soon be outweighed by the positive performance you have accrued in the rest of your client’s account.”

In other words: feel free to experiment, and don’t worry too much about the potential damage that may be caused.

Effective Google AdWords management involves a great deal of experimentation. Even though your company’s agenda will often differ from Google’s, you both have much to gain by tweaking, experimenting, monitoring and improving your keywords and ads.

Microsoft announced that it has moved back the final availability date for their XP operating system to May 31, 2009.  The last date on which PC builders and distributors could sell machines with XP was originally set for July 31, 2009, then pushed back until January 31, 2009, and it has now been extended until May 31, 2009.

The extension is undoubtedly an answer to the highly unfavorable consumer response to Windows Vista. Due to a myriad of problems with Vista, many PC owners have chosen to stay with XP rather than risk “upgrading” to Vista.

With Windows 7 set to be released sometime in early 2010, the extension of XP’s availability might signal that Microsoft is beginning to give up on Vista and searching for stop-gap solutions to stem the bleeding until Windows 7 hits the shelves.

Good news for the software industry: prison for pirating software:

“Three defendants were sentenced to prison today for their roles in an online copyright infringement scheme involving the sale of counterfeit software worth $2.5 million, Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton for the Western District of Texas announced.
…
The court also ordered the forfeiture of the Web site domain names - “valuesoftwaresales.com,” “allsoftwaredownload.com,” “esoftwarevalue.com” and “priceslashsoftware.com” - used in the sale of pirated software.” - backgroundnow.com