BTRIPP (btripp) wrote,
BTRIPP
btripp

What a difference a "-" makes!

One of the irritating things I ran across in trying to set up that Google AdWords account was that you really need to use Latitude/Longitude numbers to set up a geographic area (yeah, they say you can use an address, but it wouldn't recognize any that I plugged in). They provide links off to a couple of UK mapping sites that will give your lat/lon specifics for map coordinates (why they don't just add this to Google Maps, I don't know), but no explanation on how to use those. In fact, the raw numbers I got were wrong, somehow dropping off a "-" before the longitude figures.

Well, I went ahead and set up my geographic parameters and then started looking at keywords and traffic estimates ... all of which were running "< 0.1" per day. While this made for a very cheap ad campaign, something told me that there was probably some problem. I ended up in a chat session with a tech who suggested (again, why don't they have this in Google Maps?) the Lat/Lon version of Mapquest. When I plugged in the numbers (and zoomed out on the map), it became pretty clear why the projected traffic was so small ...



Now, I don't doubt that there are some Internet users in Xinjiang Province in north-west China, but that really wasn't the customer base that we were shooting for! So, I went back and (on a guess, the "-" appeared on the decimal version of the Longitude) plugged in the minus, and got this ...



Needless to say, the keyword traffic estimates for a six-mile circle centered on the intersection of Clark St. and North Ave. were considerably higher than those out by Ürümqi!


Visit the BTRIPP home page!



Subscribe
  • Post a new comment

    Error

    default userpic

    Your reply will be screened

    Your IP address will be recorded 

    When you submit the form an invisible reCAPTCHA check will be performed.
    You must follow the Privacy Policy and Google Terms of use.
  • 1 comment