How Does Google Make Money? The Most Expensive Keywords in AdWords

How does Google make its money? On the heels of Google's blow-out Q2 2011 earnings announcement last week, we wanted to find out the most expensive keywords - what keywords demand the highest costs per click and are most competitive in terms of high search volume.
Since the vast majority of Google's profits come from AdWords advertising, these high CPC keyword categories are responsible for a large part of Google's profits. The results of our research are illustrated in an infographic of the most expensive keywords. (Click the image to enlarge the google adwords keywords infographic.)

Table of Contents:

• Google CPC
• Expensive Keywords
• Bidding Tips
• Bid Info

The 20 most expensive keywords categories with the highest search volume (i.e. the most used keywords) and highest costs per click, thereby netting Google the most money, are:

1. Insurance (example keywords in this category include "buy car insurance online" and "auto insurance price quotes")
2. Loans (example keywords include "consolidate graduate student loans" and "cheapest homeowner loans")
3. Mortgage (example keywords include “refinanced second mortgages” and “remortgage with bad credit”)
4. Attorney (example keywords include “personal injury attorney” and “dui defense attorney”)
5. Credit (example keywords include “home equity line of credit” and “bad credit home buyer”)
6. Lawyer ("personal  injury lawyer," "criminal defense lawyer)
7. Donate ("car donation centers," "donating a used car")
8. Degree ("criminal justice degrees online," "psychology bachelors degree online")
9. Hosting ("hosting ms exchange," "managed web hosting solution")
10. Claim ("personal injury claim," "accident claims no win no fee")
11. Conference Call ("best conference call service," "conference calls toll free")
12. Trading ("cheap online trading," "stock trades online")
13. Software ("crm software programs," "help desk software cheap")
14. Recovery ("raid server data recovery," "hard drive recovery laptop")
15. Transfer ("zero apr balance transfer," "credit card balance transfer zero interest")
16. Gas/Electricity ("business electricity price comparison," "switch gas and electricity suppliers")
17. Classes ("criminal justice online classes," "online classes business administration")
18. Rehab ("alcohol rehab centers," "crack rehab centers")
19. Treatment ("mesothelioma treatment options," "drug treatment centers")
20. Cord Blood ("cordblood bank," "store umbilical cord blood")

We found that that 97% of Google's revenue comes from advertising on Google sites. In the last four quarters alone (Q3 2010-Q2 2011), Google brought in $32.2 billion in total advertising revenue.

Google CPC: Google's Highest Cost Per Click Keywords

Google AdWords is a dynamic, auction-based marketplace where advertisers bid on keywords to compete for top ad placement. The minimum bid per keyword is 5 cents, but this research shows that in highly competitive categories, Google can make up to $50 per click from PPC keyword bids. Despite a diversified product portfolio, advertising on Google sites accounts for the vast majority of its billions in annual revenue.
The google adword keyword categories with the highest volumes and costs represent businesses with very high lifetime customer value – in other words, these industries can afford to pay a lot to acquire a new customer. These most expensive keywords comprise businesses such as lawsuits, mortgage applications, and server hosting. Some high-volume keyword categories have lower CPCs because advertisers have slimmer margins to expend on PPC advertising.

The Most Expensive Keywords: Survey Methodology

We compiled data from our own trillion-keyword database and the Google Keyword Tool to determine the top 10,000 most expensive English-language keywords over a 90-day period. This keyword list was then organized into categories by theme, such as "Insurance." The largest keyword categories were determined by weighting the number of keywords within each category, as well as the estimated monthly search volume and average cost per click for each keyword.

Tips for Bidding in a Super-Competitive, Expensive Google Adword Key word Niche

If you or your client are struggling to compete in a high-volume, high-CPC keyword category such as the most expensive keywords identified in this study, the PPC best practices are the same as always, except of course, the stakes are 1000x higher if you’re paying on average $50 per click vs. $0.05 per click. Here are a few tips to consider:

• Quality Score: High Quality Scores can help lower your average Google CPC. Tools like the Keyword Niche Finder and Keyword Grouper to break up larger keyword lists into smaller, more targeted lists which will enable you to write more targeted ad text and landing pages which should help improve relevancy and Quality Score.
• Be Specific: Target specific, 3-5 word keywords. Use a keyword tool to generate specific keyword ideas, and use keyword match types to ensure you’re only paying for keywords that are very specific to your business.
• Use Negative Keywords: Use a negative keyword tool to help figure out what kinds of words you’re likely to be matched against and weed out keywords that aren’t relevant to your business.
• Be Relevant
• Landing Page Optimization: The average conversion rate for just about anything on AdWords is around 2%. But we often see landing pages converting at the 20% or even 30% range. The key to landing page optimization is to keep trying out different types of offers and testing how people respond to them.
• Grade Your AdWords Account For Free: Use the AdWords Grader to get a free, instant audit of your AdWords Account to see how your AdWords account stacks up to the competition.

More AdWords PPC Keyword Bid Info

Visit the "Where's Google Making Its Money?" infographic for the full list of the top 20 most expensive Google CPC keyword categories and to embed the graphic on your own site.
Update (July 22, 2011): Check out the follow-up article to this study: Where's Mesothelioma, What Is Cord Blood & Other FAQs About Our Most Expensive Keywords Study.
Update (July 27, 2011): Click here to download a PDF version of this infographic.

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Free Backlink Generator, Search Engine Submission and Bulk Ping Service BulkLink.org

BulkLink.org is a service free of charge and geared towards SEO professionals, webmasters and internet marketers. It has a limited server capacity that allows on average ~5 parallel users. In case of a connection interruption, the site is designed to automatically re-connect and continue the submission process after the last successfull entry. All URL's are evaluated and verified before submission in order to avoid spam and/or illegal activity. BulkLink.org provides you at the submissions end with a PDF report that lists results summarized as well as in greater detail. If you like this service, please share and spread the word. Thanks! :)

http://www.bulklink.org/ 

BulkLink.org is a multi-URL, multi-submission service. It will expose your URL's to a huge amount of web-crawlers/spiders and speed up the time of getting listed and indexed on search engines. BulkLink.org does submission of multiple URL's in three categories: Pseudo Search Engine, XML-RPC Ping Service and Pseudo Backlinks.

Pseudo Search Engine Submission: It enters your URL's in the respective search engine search bar. Typically these entries get stored in an internal database and evaluated later on. A direct URL entry increases your chance to get your site noticed and then crawled by a spider.

XML-RPC Ping Service Submission: Submits your URL directly to a wide list of blog listing services that keep track of the current web ecosphere. An XML-RPC submission increases your chance to get crawled and noticed by the important services, leading to a potentially faster indexing of your content.

Pseudo Backlink Submission: Creates simple lookup requests on internet service related websites like Info, Statistics, About or Whois domains about your URL. After the submission, an URL gets usually added to an internal DB that itself gets crawled in short intervals by search spiders.

A "Bulk" is a generalized term for a submission to one of the services.

BulkLink.org passively assists in search engine indexing. Search engine indexing is the process of a search engine (e.g. Google) collecting, parsing and storing data for the later use by itself. Search engine spiders ("Crawlers"), are the means how the index retrieves information. Spiders visit websites and send the content found to the index. This "Index" is the place where all the collected data is stored. It provides the results for entered search queries. Pages that are stored within the index can appear on the search results page.

Without the index a search engine would be required to conduct a tremendous effort each time a search query is initiated. To ensure that it is not missing something, the search engine would have to search every web page and piece of information it has access to. The index is therefore the central element to keep web search feasible.

As the web grows, the index does so too: Google's index was estimated to be as big as 100 million (!) gigabytes in mid-2015. The index's architecture consists of 2 major components: "Design" is about how data is stored, "Structure" about how data is accessed and processed. Both determine the way the crawler's input is written to the index: Into account are taken the file format (html,pdf,...), language detected and meta data available. A SE like Google will also look into compressed archives as ZIP or RAR.

A user entering a search query orders the index to output a given amount of matched entries towards the next higher layer where "Ranking" takes place. Ranking is the process of sorting the results in order to display the most relevant on top. At Google, ranking is based on 6 major categories:

Site Quality	e.g. PageRank, Bounce Rate, Unique visitors
Freshness	Especially important on events happening right now
Safe Search	Removes adult, spam and harmful websites
User Context	Takes into account a users search history and location
Translation	Tailors results according to a users language
Universal Search	Decides on coresponding news, images, videos or maps

Google does also a manual evaluation of search results (called "Precision Search", processing a volume of ~40.000 sites/year). After ranking is complete, results are being shown to the user. BulkLink.org assists you in the first step, namely notifying the SE spiders to crawl your site.

BulkLink.org is a service free of charge and geared towards SEO professionals, webmasters and internet marketers. It has a limited server capacity that allows on average ~5 parallel users. In case of a connection interruption, the site is designed to automatically re-connect and continue the submission process after the last successfull entry. All URL's are evaluated and verified before submission in order to avoid spam and/or illegal activity. BulkLink.org provides you at the submissions end with a PDF report that lists results summarized as well as in greater detail. If you like this service, please share and spread the word. Thanks! :)

 

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Top hidden features tips and tricks of Windows 10A

Windows 10 is out and millions of people are already running it, let’s take a look at some of the best hidden features, tips, and tricks in the operating system. If you’re still on the fence, take note: You really do want Windows 10, despite a lot of the gripes we’ve shared over the past several months. It’s worth getting on the list for (or downloading the Windows 10 ISO directly). 


It combines the best of Windows 8 — super-fast startup, improved security — with much of what made Windows 7 familiar and easy to use, and without trying to force you to buy a touch screen or learn a whole set of hidden UI gestures.

And if you’re a computer nut like me, tweaking the OS is always the fun part. Discovering and implementing power user tips are my favorite part of getting a major new version of an OS. I still remember back when DOS 5.0 came out, and I was running DOS 3.3, and I got to try all these new things to optimize my 286. And when I upgraded from Windows/286 to Windows 3.0, I felt like my life had changed. (We’ve come a long way.) Nostalgia aside, here’s what you need to know to amp up your Windows 10 install and take it to the next level.

Set up GodMode

The awesomely named GodMode brings up a special menu that puts lots of settings together in one place. To enable it, create a new folder anywhere on your root drive and rename it GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}. It will create a special icon that when you click on it shows you a beautiful advanced control panel.

Task view and virtual desktops

One of the best things about Windows 10 is how it handles virtual desktops. The fact that it finally handles them at all, out of the box, is a great step, since Mac OS X and Linux users have had that capability for a long time. It lets you set up a series of tasks and windows on your desktop, your email and Twitter window on another, and a third for general Web browsing and research. To get started, click the Task View icon on the taskbar (immediately to the right of the Search box), or hold down the Windows key (abbreviated throughout as Win) and Tab. You can also drag an app to a new virtual desktop by bringing it over to the +New Desktop option at the lower right. (Click to read more on Task View and Virtual Desktops.)

Configure privacy settings

When you’re first setting up Windows 10, make sure to select a Custom install so you can modify the privacy settings, instead of going with the Express install. (If you already installed it, no worries; you can fix it all in Settings). Otherwise you’ll find yourself agreeing to all sorts of private data sharing — and while Windows 10 is free for Windows 7 and Windows 8 users, it’s not a free product in and of itself — so there’s no reason to share your personal information when it’s not required.

Make the desktop more stylish

Windows 10 lets you personalize your desktop more thoroughly than before. Head to Start > Settings > Personalization > Colors, and choose Show color on task bar and Start Menu. You can also tell it to automatically pick a color from your wallpaper and apply it underneath icons of open apps, and you can remove the Start Menu’s translucent option.

Print to PDF

You can finally print a document (or rather, save it) as PDF without using a third-party utility. This makes it much easier to save and distribute documents that aren’t easily modified. Another long overdue feature makes it in under the radar.

Make sure WiFi Sense is off

You may feel differently about this, but I certainly don’t like the idea of allowing access to my WiFi network unless I specifically give out the password. Here’s how to make sure your computer isn’t doing that — and if it is, how to turn it off.

Schedule Windows updates

Instead of getting ambushed whenever Microsoft decides to push out a patch, you can schedule restarts to install updates by going to Start > Settings > Updates and Recovery > Windows Update. You can do this for future updates as well by selecting Notify to Schedule Restart.

Run it in a virtual machine

If you’re thinking of taking the Windows 10 plunge, but don’t want to disturb your machine that’s currently running just fine, here’s how to install Windows 10 in a virtual machine first. Note that this is different than the virtual desktops I mentioned above; it’s virtualizing the entire OS within another OS (your existing one).

Windows Explorer Home tab and Quick Access

Windows Explorer windows are a lot more useful this time around, thanks to a new Home tab (pictured above). It makes file copies a cinch. If you look at the top left of the window, you’ll see a new Quick Access group that lets you navigate to recently accessed folders. That makes it much easier to maintain a fast workflow as you navigate around your computer’s file system. And while File Explorer defaults to the Quick Access view, if you don’t like it, you can set it back to This PC by choosing View > Options > Open File Explorer > This PC.

Customize the Start Menu

The new Start Menu is such a huge improvement over what came with Windows 8.1 that it’s almost impossible to describe the relief. It combines the best elements of Windows 7 and Windows 8. And it’s also fully customizable. You can resize tiles in the Start menu by right-clicking them and choosing Resize, and then selecting a size from the pop-up menu. You can also unpin them or uninstall them completely. I admit the first thing I did is unpin all of Microsoft’s tiles and then shrink the size of the menu so it looks a lot like Windows 7 (pictured).
For a while, during some of the Windows 10 Technical Preview builds, you could pin the Recycle Bin to the taskbar, which makes it a bit more like OS X. Unfortunately, that functionality seems to be gone in the release version, though you can still pin it to the Start Menu as a tile.

Command prompt tweaks

A lot of Windows 10 utilities underneath the service still look the same as they did in Windows 7 and Windows 8. But one of the hidden tweaks is in the Command Prompt — head over to Properties and you’ll suddenly find you can enable a host of customizations, including a transparent background, resizing the window, and word wrap.

Battery saver

If you’re on a laptop and your battery is running low, Windows 10 is smart enough to begin throttling back background services and other threads so that you can squeeze the last bit of battery life out of your machine. To enable Battery Saver, click the Start menu, and head to Settings | System | Battery Saver.

Background scrolling

Ever notice how when you hover your mouse cursor over a window and try and scroll, you still can’t, because the window wasn’t active? Turn this feature on in Settings | Devices | Mouse and Touchpad and you’ll be able to do just that.

Keyboard shortcuts

Here are some keyboard shortcuts you may want to be aware of — ones that will really help your daily workflow:

• Windows Key-Tab (Task View)
• Windows Key-Right-Up (Moves app to top right quadrant)
• Windows Key-Ctrl-Left or Right (virtual desktop)
• Windows Key-Ctrl-D (new virtual desktop)
• Windows Key-Ctrl-C (Cortana listening)
• Windows Key-S (Daily Glance for weather, news, sports)
• Windows Key-Ctrl-F4 (closes virtual desktop)
• Windows Key-Up and Down (snap apps to top or bottom of screen or maximizes)

OneDrive integration

Free cloud storage is a godsend these days, and Microsoft makes it super easy in Windows 10 with OneDrive. You can use it to store files for mobile device access from iOS or Android, and you can even set it to let you access any file on your PC remotely — not just the ones you drag over to your OneDrive folder.

Amp up Cortana

If you’ve got a laptop, or a desktop with a microphone attached, click the search field and select the Notebook icon on the left. Then click Settings and click “Let Cortana respond to “Hey Cortana.” Now Cortana will listen for your commands. Cortana can also use Google instead of Bing, even though Microsoft really wants you to use the latter. Install the Chrometana extension in Chrome, or just install Firefox and make that your default browser; both will accomplish the task of removing Bing from Cortana’s brain.

Use Maps offline

The new Maps app lets you work offline (Remember those old Microsoft Maps programs?); click Settings > Download or Update Maps, and then select the continent and country you want.

Xbox Streaming

Windows 10 finally shows some real Xbox integration, and you can use it to log into your Xbox Live account. But more importantly, you can use it to stream Xbox One games locally on your PC. You’ll have to enable it first on the Xbox One under Settings | Preferences | Allow game streaming, and then on the PC in the Xbox application. (Interestingly, Microsoft is also going the other way and adding keyboard and mouse support to the Xbox One — not that you’ll need that, since you’ve already got a PC.)

Record games and app videos

You can now record videos of apps or games using the Game DVR function. Press the Windows Key + G, click ‘Yes, this is a game box,’ and then you’ll see options to manipulate the recording.

Find the original Control Panel (and other goodies)

The new Settings panel is easy to navigate and makes more sense than the crufty old Control Panel, but you’ll still need the latter to access some deeper options in the system. It’s easy to call up, even though it’s hidden; just right click on the Start button on the bottom left of the screen and choose it from the pop-up menu, or type Control Panel in the Search bar at the bottom left in the taskbar. When you right-click the Start button, you’ll see all kinds of useful things there, such as Computer Management and Disk Management; for what it’s worth, those options bring you right back to the familiar Windows 7-style apps in each case.

Tone down Notifications

Notifications are a giant pain in Windows 10; there’s just too many of them, and some are unnecessary. Turn ’em off by heading to Start > Settings > System > Notifications and actions, and turn off Windows tips and specific app notifications (you’ll need to scroll down for the latter).

Fix the Office ads

Are you sick of the occasional Office ads that pop up on the desktop? So are we. To kill them, right-click on Get Office in the Start Menu and uninstall it.

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