SEOmoz.org member StuPrice analyzes the keyword "Viagra" to see how the word, one of the most spammed in the English language, has managed to rank No. 2 in Google and Yahoo search queries for the past two-plus weeks. He looks at the domain medical/technical name for the active ingredient in Viagra and identifies a black-hat tactic that has more than 8,000 links from reputable sites linking to it. Along with the "invisible" links, the age of the site and the number of pages Google has indexed helps to boost the site in the SERP ranking. Citing Wordtracker numbers, …

Know your range and stretch it when it comes to local advertising, according to Mary Bowling. Some people might travel a little farther to make some purchases compared with others. For example, someone may travel farther to seek a medical specialist, rather than a general practitioner. Consider your niche and location, and then think about how to entice people to travel that extra mile to buy it, Bowling writes. She believes communicating benefits to prospective buyers in local paid search can get them in the door. She also provides tips on how to get started.

Dennis O'Reilly says the first thing he noticed when booting up his computer yesterday was that Google had prevented his default search setting from being changed. He writes it took about two seconds to realize Windows Search Service had attempted to change his search default; he walks through instructions on how to discover the problem if you find your search default has been changed unexpectedly. Chrome, Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox all have slightly different methods for changing your default search engine. O'Reilly provides step-by-step instructions for each. He writes that there is no easy way to …

A successful paid search campaign requires that marketers continually reevaluate goals as needs change to balance efficiency and volume. Revenue, orders, applications, ROI, or cost per lead are a handful of metrics marketers may want to consider. Don't just think about the effect of one action, but rather a variety of variables, because all will influence the outcome, according to Jason Tabeling. Tabeling points to Newton's Third Law of Motion that reads "for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction." He writes that there are methods to evaluate the trade-off and forecast results, and provides an example …

If you have been looking for the text on the proposed CLRB Hanson Google class action settlement, you can find it posted the U.S. District Court document on the PPC Hero Web site. Joe writes that PPC Hero and Hanapin Marketing do not have an affiliation with the settlement regarding Google AdWords, nor can the site offer legal advice on the subject.

Gian Fulgoni, chairman of comScore, tells eMarketer that "Search works, but it is the last step in the purchase funnel." He believes the click rate only provides "a short-term view" of how advertising works, as a direct-response rather than a branding tool. He says "Publishers would be out of their minds to take an average click rate of 0.1% to an advertiser or an agency and say, 'Here's an indication of advertising effectiveness.' It's not the right metric." Fulgoni says viewing the Internet as a direct-response medium is "nonsense," and lays out a "provocative theory" for eMarketer. "Is …

SEO Roundtable reports that since early February some Firefox users have seen a Google AdSense security error that reads: "Security Error: Content at http://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/ may not load data from example.com." The post suggests it may not be Google-specific, but it appears the error message occurs in Firefox attached to image ads on a variety of sizes. There is more discussion around the issue at forums on Google AdSense and WebmasterWorld. A link in the SEO Roundtable posts to an article on How-To Geek that describes how to fix the problem.

If you use Google AdWords to target by country outside the U.S., Steve Loszewski lists a few tips and tricks you may need to know. For starters, he suggests setting up different campaigns for specific countries and regions, so you can set different bids for specific regions. Loszewski writes that AdWords offers pre-defined bundles for setting up targeting ads in international campaigns. After it is live you can run a geographic performance report to get the status. The report offers Country/Territory, Region, Metro, and City fields, so that you can see how your ads are doing by location. …

How do you compete for budget for your SEO project versus PPC campaigns? Eric Enge lists several reasons why SEO is a "better investment than PPC." The most compelling, he writes, is SEO "drives more than 75% of all search traffic and PPC drives less than 25%." Another consideration is that PPC campaigns have become increasingly competitive. He writes that more studies show the brand impact of search. Other studies show how search interacts with a variety of marketing channels. For example, someone may discover your business through a paid search ad, but buy from you offline. The result: "the …

Jason Burby points to several reasons why marketers might get better click-through rates on Bing after reading an article about sponsored links attracting about 80% more attention on Bing, compared with Google. That same article also notes that Microsoft search ads got 170% better click-through rates in June 2009, compared with the prior year. Burby analyzes the possible reasons for these facts from the perspective of Microsoft, advertisers, and searchers. He cautions that marketers shouldn't get caught focusing solely on the click-through rate, but look for ways to adjust, improve and target messaging to lift the conversion …