Parallel Path (Boulder, Colorado) is seeking an experienced and talented PPC Team Lead to assist in the growth and refinement of our Pay-Per-Click service offering, manage team members and build/deploy/manage client strategy.

The Pay-Per-Click Team Lead will be responsible for overseeing the delivery of the pay-per-click service offering on behalf of Parallel Path and its clients.  This position includes refining internal service delivery processes while leveraging existing tools sets and company philosophy.  Aside from process and strategy, this is currently a hands-on position with daily account management and optimization responsibilities as well as managing a team of two.  This position will report directly to the VP of Operations and will work closely with both SEO and Analytics teams to deliver high value results.

Key Duties & Responsibilities
- Client facing communication
- Team management & training
- Assist in hiring
- Develop & deploy custom domestic and international strategies across multiple engines, ensure that campaigns are tasked properly, completed as scheduled and exceed all client goals
- Continually optimize pay-per-click campaigns in Google AdWords, Microsoft Adcenter, Facebook, and other search engine marketing platforms
- Utilize bid management tools and data modeling to maximize the effectiveness of PPC campaigns
- Proactively offer strategic campaign recommendations and growth strategies
- Plan and implement keyword, ad copy, and landing page tests to produce optimal conversion results.
- Be directly responsible for meeting monthly budgeting and ROI goals for all clients
- Run weekly and monthly performance meetings with clients
- Report performance to executive staff
- Build on understanding of industry through continuous research on trends, have an in-depth understanding of each paid search engine, its functionality, and strategies for successful campaigns
- Interface with sales and marketing team members regarding business and product development
- Share your knowledge with team members to improve agency’s overall service delivery
- Periodically speak at conferences on behalf of Parallel Path (SMX, Web2.0, SES, etc….)

The PPC Team Lead will posses the following skills:

Hard Skills
- Expert Knowledge of
– Google Adwords
—- Search & Content
—- Retargeting
—- Product Ads/Feeds
– AdCenter
– Facebook Advertising
– Google Analytics
– Omniture Site Catalyst
– Excel – pivot tables, macros, formulas, etc…
– Landing Page Best Practices/Conversion Optimization
– Microsoft Products

- Working Knowledge of
– Phone tracking software – Mongoose, etc..
– Bid Management Platforms – Kenshoo, Marin, Atlas, etc…
– Google Website Optimizer
– CRM Tools – Salesforce, Sugar, Microsoft Dynamics
– SEMrush, Compete.com, etc…
– Wordtracker, Adwords Keyword Tool, Google Insights/Trends
– Past experience with or knowledge of B2B Tech or B2C Apparel industries
– Retargeting/Remarketing

Soft Skills
- Self-motivated with a keen enthusiasm for and demonstrable understanding of the Web industry and technologies.​
- Exceptional research and organizational skills a must
- Ability to multitask, prioritize workflow and meet tight deadlines
- Comfortable presenting in a group setting
- Excellent communication skills
- Dependable, loyal, and enthusiastic
- Self -starter
- Detail oriented
- Ability to work well as part of a team and individually

Requirements:
- Passion for a career in agency-side online marketing
- 3-5 years experience developing/managing B2B/B2C pay-per-click campaigns, both domestic and localized international
- 1-2 Years experience managing a team
- Bachelor’s degree in Business, Marketing, English, Journalism, Communications, Computer Science, Math, etc…
- Located in Denver/Boulder metro areas
- Looking for long term full-time on-site employment

If you feel you meet/exceed the above criteria and are looking to continue your professional development in a fast paced and exciting company please submit cover letter and resume to careers (at) parallelpath (dot) com.

A blatant case of “review spam” has hit bankruptcy attorneys’ Google Places listings in Boulder and Denver, CO. On November 9, a total of 17 different attorneys in the cities of Boulder and Denver, CO were faced with this review on their Google Place Page:

<Various Attorney> has been nothing but a nightmare for us. It all started last January 2011 and we still haven’t filed (November 2011)! We have been assigned to at least 7 different attorney’s and paralegals and no one seems to know what they are doing. The turnover of staff is despicable! That should have been our first clue…they can’t keep anyone employed here! We haven’t talked to the same person twice. We were told to give up a car by one attorney and then the next guy said we shouldn’t have surrendered the car because we could have negotiated a new monthly payment! We’ve been given a lot of bad advice and the documents that were submitted to the US Trustee were wrong and they forgot to include things like an auto payment, daycare costs,and our mortgage! These people are not professional much less educated or knowledgeable. I am sick that we didn’t run from this place! We have paid nearly $3000 and still don’t have anything filed! If you are looking for a bankruptsy attorney that will provide you with sound advice, protect and represent you, or file a solid case for you, this is NOT the office for you. I have no idea who is providing these misleading high ratings but this has not been our experience.

I can’t help but ask myself who would bother to go to eight different Google Place Pages just to copy and paste a disparaging review that many times. Boulder, CO is not a large city by any means –did this reviewer think that a potential customer would not wonder why this exact same review was left for almost all of the local bankruptcy attorneys on the very same day? Frankly, on the forefront this appears to be a competitor taking a cheap shot at trying to boost their own listing. Did that competitor really think this would be an effective strategy?

So far, I have found only two bankruptcy attorneys in Boulder who were not affected by this “1-star“ review. Was this just a case of one person having a very bad experience with a bad bankruptcy lawyer and deciding to make all Boulder/Denver bankruptcy lawyers pay for it? Sure: maybe this unlucky individual had the EXACT SAME EXPERIENCE with every single bankruptcy attorney in Boulder? Hmm. Not likely. Thankfully, one of the attorneys noticed this review the day it happened, and emailed the other attorneys who were hit with the same word-for-word review. One of these attorneys happens to be a client of ours.

Only one other time have I seen such a blatant case of review spam. A camera shop with multiple nationwide locations had a copied review left on at least 20 Google Places listings nationwide. I believe that the person who left the negative review did have the experience that he or she described in the review. However, once that same person copied their negative review to 20 different locations (mostly in California, one in New York and one in Washington DC), it became “review spam”. That person did NOT have that experience at 20 different stores. All the reviews were left on the same day (as in this case) and were copied word for word. Google acted swiftly in that case, and although I had crafted an apologetic response to each and every one of the reviews, Google had that specific review pulled off those listings within one week. In that case, the target was the same camera store –in this case, the target is almost every bankruptcy attorney in Boulder as well as several in Denver.

Out of curiosity, I looked at the history of the reviewer (by clicking “K” next to the date on the top of the review).  This reviewer has left only eight reviews in his/her whole Google life, and only against the various bankruptcy attorneys in Boulder. In Denver, a reviewer also known as “K” left nine 1-star reviews on Denver bankruptcy attorneys.

Overlooking the whole question of morality that comes into play when someone chooses to leave a false  and slandering review on different attorneys’ Google Place Pages, does the person who left these reviews really believe that this will help the attorney who doesn’t have this cut and pasted review? As a local search optimization specialist, this kind of flagrant disregard for what reviews are meant to accomplish frustrates me to no end.

As far as actions that I have taken: at this point I have flagged each review as inappropriate (not just my client’s review, but every review on every Google Place Page). In the description, I put the following note to Google: This exact same review has been left on 9 Denver Bankruptcy attorneys and 8 Boulder bankruptcy attorneys today. Please remove this slanderous review from this listing. Thank you. In my opinion, these reviews by this reviewer (I am looking at you, K) need to be removed from Google Places. When someone takes it upon themselves to use Google as a way to put down companies or businesses that they have not used, Google needs to deal with it swiftly and get the reviews pulled down.

Update: Less than 24 hours after these reviews showed up on Google Places, they are starting to disappear from the various Place Pages. Although I am surprised by the fact that not all the reviews have been pulled off of Google yet, I am impressed that Google reacted so quickly to a case of obvious review spam. So often, we all hear complaints of Google’s lack of response regarding reviews, but is not the case here. Way to go Google!

Boulder, Colorado (PRWEB) November 1, 2011.  Internet marketing agency Parallel Path Corporation announced today the addition of new client Intelligent Office. Parallel Path will be providing Intelligent Office and their franchisees across North America with a mix of services, including search engine optimization, pay-per-click (PPC) management, and their Aha!Local™ local listing optimization, designed to grow franchisee revenue.

Intelligent Office a virtual, professionally staffed office space for mobile executives and small businesses provides virtual office services: part-time or temporary office space; receptionist services; postal boxes; and anything else that customers require to operate in a professional environment without the overhead of actually operating an office. Not only do they provide a full range of office-related services, but they do so at some of the most prestigious business addresses in the cities in which they operate. When their prospective customers are presented with these services, the sale is easy.

“The challenge for Intelligent Office is that many of our prospective customers are unaware that these services even exist, so they aren’t necessarily searching for them,” said Louie Beaupre, executive vice president of marketing for Intelligent Office. “Identifying what they are searching for, and guiding them to Intelligent Office solutions, presents a unique internet marketing challenge, which is why we turned to Parallel Path.”

Parallel Path specializes in creative online marketing campaigns to tackle tough problems like that of Intelligent Office. While creative, these campaigns are very data-driven, deliver high return on investment and, as in the case of Intelligent Office, frequently involve several online marketing channels. “Parallel Path specializes in creating campaigns to solve difficult online marketing problems,” said Brian Cleveland CEO and founder of Parallel Path, “and, equally as important, then helping our clients execute those campaigns in a resource-constrained environment.”

About Parallel Path Corporation

Founded in 2005 in Boulder, Colorado, Parallel Path is an innovative and data-driven Internet marketing firm that partners with clients to grow their business through customized Internet marketing strategies. Parallel Path develops and deploys complete Internet campaigns using the entire online toolset: search, display, social, mobile, and local. Passionate about Internet marketing, Parallel Path delivers the in-depth expertise, along with implementation consulting for clients’ marketing, IT, sales, and related teams, to achieve powerful and measurable marketing results. With their Aha!Local service, Parallel Path also delivers online marketing solutions to brick-and-mortar business operators and franchisors as well. For more information, please call 303-396-1111, visit www.parallelpath.com, follow @parallelpath on Twitter or ‘Like’ Parallel Path Internet Marketing on Facebook.

Media contact:

Wendy Devine

Parallel Path Corp.

303-396-1111

Google announced this week that they are encrypting searches for users logged in by default. What that means to the search industry is that search queries won’t be available for reporting within Google Analytics, nor will they be available from referring search URLs. The data is available at a roll-up level, however term-level detail for visitors to your site that were logged into Google will NOT be available.

Danny Sullivan  over at Search Engine Land reported having spoken with Matt Cutts (Google engineer extraordinaire) and Matt estimates that the overall impact will be in the “single-digit” percentages of all Google searchers.

While this sweeping statement and generalization of impact may give some people a sense of security, I believe we need to stop and give pause to the potential impact to this change.

The vertical you are targeting and your demographic could greatly affect how your data gaps may appear. People in a more technology-driven vertical may see larger gaps, as users in that vertical tend to be the first in adopting a technology or tool like Google+.

The folks at Search Engine People have a great graph of searchers per month that utilize Google: 1 billion. So, we have a baseline estimate.

Google uses a unified log-in. So if you use ANY Google service, such as Google+ or even Gmail, you log in. Out of convenience you stay logged in. Google+ announced it’s at 40 Million users recently. At the end of 2010 Google announced that Gmail (their most-used communcations app) and other business apps are available to 3 Million businesses and 10 million students.  Based on an article last year by the BBC, estimates place Gmail usage at 170 Million  users.

Another part we need to look at is the mobile market. Based on an estimate in July, the overall user estimation is 130M in July with 500K + being activated a day. Every Android phone that searches with Google will be encrypted and their queries will not be available.

Just examining usage from Gmail alone places 17% of that estimated 1 Billion users squarely within the sites of potential “logged” in user accounts. Adding another 130 million users for Mobile, allowing for some overlap, the estimate can easily be well over 20% rather quickly.

If you use Gmail as a business service like we do here at Parallel Path, then you stay logged in all day long. Any time you search for something, no one will know what you searched for. This has huge impact potential for verticals such as B2B or Technology, where potentially large chunks of users use services from Google on a daily basis as a way of life.

Something tells me this “single-digit” exposure Matt Cutts is estimating could be a bit more when you step in and start looking closer by vertical. We will keep you posted on what we notice!

The 7 ½ week case of the hiccups has come to an end. The local listings that I manage that dropped off of Google Places results on July 19 returned to Google Maps on Friday September 9.  Seven and one half weeks later. Holy cow. To be fair, Google was right on the money with the 6-10 week estimated timeframe for the hiccups to be resolved. The good news is that all the listings regained their previous placement. If, before July 19, they were #1 for the search term “office space Melville ny,” they returned to #1 for the search term “office space Melville ny” on September 9.

As a quick recap, I called Google at the end of July about one of the business listings I manage because it had suddenly just “disappeared” from Places results.  I was told that the listings had been “reset” in the system and would be back up in 6-10 weeks. The actual time that the reset took was 7 ½ weeks –right in the window of when I was told the listings would be back up. I was also told that making any changes to the listing during this “hiccup” could result in a longer wait time for the listing to come back up. Luckily, that was not the case as I did make a couple of changes to a small percentage of the listings and they all returned to the search results on September 9, along with the listings I did not touch. I was also specifically told to not change the account which the Place Page was located in or I would be “reset in the system”, and the cycle would start over. Once again, I disregarded this fairly reasonable advice (out of sheer desperation for instantaneous results). Thankfully, that listing also came back up on September 9.

I was able to tell which listings had been hiccupped by searching on the business name with a city modifier (such as Intelligent Office Alexandria VA). In this particular instance, during the hiccup I got a result with 3 other Intelligent Office listings that were near Alexandria and did not see the Alexandria listing in the regular Google map results. I did see the Alexandria listing if I clicked “Places” to pull up the Places results and scrolled to the bottom of the list. At that time, I would see the listing for the Intelligent Office in Alexandria, showing me that the listing was live but it was just, for whatever reason, not displaying in the main page of results. Now that the hiccups have seemingly ended, performing the same search (Intelligent Office Alexandria VA) results in the ideal one-box for the Intelligent Office located in Alexandria, VA. I was also able to see the hiccup by looking at the analytics. The complete drop-off of impressions on July 19 for multiple listings that I control was what prompted my original phone call to Google.

Current screenshot of results when searching on “intelligent office alexandria va”

Here are examples of the end of the hiccup:

Office Space Rental Agency in Alexandria, VA

Office Space Rental Agency in Toronto, Ontario

Office Space Rental Agency in Melville, NY

Note: Although it appears that the impression numbers are slow to recover, September 9 was a Friday, and historically there are many fewer searches on the weekend for these specific businesses.

 There are a few helpful nuggets that I can pull out of this extremely vexing experience. First of all, there will be times that your listing may disappear from Google for weeks at a time, but as long as your listing is “Active” and not tagged as “Rejected” or the ever ominous “We do not support this location,” you will most likely come back up within 2 months. When Google makes big changes to Google Places, such as the major change to the Place Pages in July, there most likely will be future “hiccups” to deal with. I have heard rumblings of more big changes on the horizon, so be prepared. I also believe that the more active you are in updating your listing, the more likely your listing will be hiccupped during major updates. The Office Space Rental Agency clients were newer clients at the time of the July 19 hiccup, and I was very active in making changes to each of the listings during the entire month of July. Although not every listing that I was active in updating was hiccupped, a much larger percentage of them were than listings that were more “mature” and I was not as active in updating.

At the end of the day, if you are a small business owner, placing well on Google Places is very important and not something to discount or overlook. There will be more bugs, there will be more hiccups, and some days you will question whether or not Google Places is worth the time it takes to continually maintain your listing – after all, you’ve got a business to run! Let me assure you that it is. More people than ever are performing searches on Google and they’re using Google in place of the Yellow Pages they used to rely upon to find local businesses.  Even after being hiccupped for over 7 weeks, these businesses will still have 45 weeks this year up on Google Places where their potential customers will be able to find them.  So ask yourself;  can your potential customers find you there?

Managing local listings for clients is the type of job that leaves you feeling like a superstar one day and a complete moron the next. I have experienced the highs and lows of local listing optimization for clients over the last 3 years – including inexplicable sudden drops in the rankings, duplicate listings appearing from thin air (taking months to get rid of), missing hours, wrong phone numbers (coming from who knows where), missing reviews, missing descriptions, missing additional details, etc. Of course, because Google Places is not monetized, there is not and never has been the kind of support that business owners are accustomed to from other vendors. When a small problem comes up (gee –I have no reviews today when yesterday I had 87), I can post in Google’s help forum so that I can get numerous responses from other users having the same issue, which always makes me feel a bit better. I have always felt like I just needed to ride it out and my listing would revert to its rightful (in my mind) place in the Google Universe and all would be well for my clients.

Google has rolled out, and continues to roll out changes to their Places pages. I understand why and where all the changes are taking place and continue to adapt my strategy to ensure client success. Within the last 2 weeks, I have noticed that a very small percentage of my clients have no impressions as of July 19. Even when typing in “business name city st,” these listings are not displaying. Each of these listings is approved and meets Google’s ever changing guidelines. At least two listings that are experiencing this dramatic drop in ranking have been running the product formerly known as Google Boost – currently known as AdWords Express. Both of these users have been using AdWords Express for a couple of months, so neither received the $100 free advertising credit that Google was offering to new users. Because one of the biggest selling points of AdWords Express is that you get support for local listing issues, I calmly called up 1-866-2GOOGLE to find out why I am getting no impressions and to see how this support would work.

The conversation went something like this.

Me: Hello. I am running AdWords Express and as of July 19, my local listing seems to have gone into
Google Places purgatory for no reason. Will you please take a look at my account and help me understand what is going on?

Google: Sure. Can I confirm the login email for this account?

Me: Sure (I share it).

Google: Great. Let’s see here –did you make any changes to the account on that date?

Me: No, I haven’t made any changes to the account for awhile. I am, however, running the paid ads that you are selling.

Google: Oh, I see. Yes, there was a hiccup on our end that day. Don’t worry, it is nothing you did. You should see your local listing come back online within 6-10 weeks.

Me: Oh ok -6-10 weeks huh?

Google: Yes, basically your ad was reset in our system. It is now going to be just like a new listing, so you need to go through the cycle.

Me (trying to keep calm and collected): I see. Ok. Can you please confirm for me that I didn’t do anything to cause this hiccup?

Google: Yes, I can confirm that your listing is experiencing a hiccup and will be back online in 6-10 weeks.

Me: OK. Should I create a new account and reclaim the listing?

Google: Oh no. Then you will just be reset again.

Me: Ok. Thank you for your help.

Google: Please stay on the phone and answer the survey questions. Goodbye.

Me (hearing the survey questions start): Hang up the phone.

Hiccup Examples:

Location in Alexandria, VA (who is running AdWords Express)

Location in Melville, NY (who is running AdWords Express)

Location in Troy, MI (who is not running AdWords Express)

(Note that the actions continue to “occur” even though I am getting no impressions. I have found that for the most part, actions in Google Places are a notoriously unreliable statistic. In this example above (a virtual officing solutions company) every action that is “occurring” is a request for driving directions. When I report to clients on impressions and actions, I have been discounting driving direction requests now for nearly 2 years –I don’t believe that they are true actions being performed on the listing.)

Location in Arroyo Grande, CA (who is not running AdWords Express)

I had a similar conversation last month with a different representative while running the product previously known as Google Boost for another client.  I was told that because I changed a business phone number from an 800 number (a big Google no-no) to a local number, that my listing had been “reset” and would require going through the cycle before displaying on Google Places again. Unfortunately, this same listing is going through a 2^nd cycle (hiccup?) after being live for 8 days.

Location in Melville, NY (who had a “hiccup from June 8 – July 8 and is now having a 2^nd one)

This “hiccup” issue is more vexing to me personally than all the other inconveniences that I have experienced. I made no changes on July 19. I was told by the helpful Google employee to make no further changes to the account until it “cycles through the hiccup.” It is not (from my side anyway) limited to only clients running AdWords Express, and it appears to be affecting less than 5% of my total listings. I do believe that while other local listing sites are important to pay attention to, Google Places is the absolute place that local businesses need to be listed. I also believe that Google is making good changes to their product and making it better for everyone. However, it is very frustrating to think that there will be random hiccups that will affect whether or not listings continue to display –maybe even for months at a time. Until Google can get the “hiccups” worked out of their system, it is time to stop rolling out improvements to Google Places and start fixing the bugs.

The Pay-Per-Click Specialist will effectively develop, build, and manage client’s pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns including set up, support, reporting and analysis on projects of various sizes.  Responsibilities include conducting in-depth client and competitive research, designing campaigns around customer goals, keyword research, writing ad copy, data mining, statistical analysis and much more.

Key Duties & Responsibilities

- Develop and build custom campaign strategies
- Manage both domestic and international paid search campaigns across multiple engines, ensure that campaigns are tasked properly, completed as scheduled and exceed  all client goals
- Continually optimize pay-per-click campaigns in Google AdWords, Microsoft Adcenter, and other search engine marketing platforms
- Utilize bid management tools and data modeling to maximize the effectiveness of PPC campaigns
- Keyword generation, testing, and landing page optimization
- Proactively offer strategic campaign recommendations
- Plan and implement keyword, ad copy, and landing page tests to produce optimal conversion results.
- Manage campaign budgeting and ROI
- Deliver weekly and monthly performance reports/analysis to clients
- Report performance to executive staff
- Build on understanding of industry through continuous research on trends, have an in-depth understanding of each paid search engine, its functionality, and strategies for successful campaigns
- Interface with sales and marketing team members regarding business and product development
- Share your knowledge with team members to improve agency’s overall service delivery

Hard Skills                               

- Working Knowledge of:
- – Google Adwords
- – Adwords Editor
- – MSN Adcenter
- – Google Analytics
- – Proficiency across all Microsoft Windows Products
- – -Excel: pivot tables, macros, formulas, etc.
- – Basic Understanding of HTML, Java, CSS

Soft Skills

- Self-motivated with a keen enthusiasm for and demonstrable understanding of the Web industry and technologies
- Exceptional research and organizational skills a must
- Ability to multitask, prioritize workflow and meet tight deadlines
- Comfortable presenting in a group setting
- Excellent communication skills
- Dependable, loyal, and enthusiastic
- Self-starter
- Detail oriented
- Ability to work well as part of a team and individually

Requirements:

- 4+ years experience developing/managing B2B/B2C pay-per-click campaigns
- Understanding of Web architecture fundamentals
- Technology Background a Plus
- Bachelors Degree
- Looking for full-time, onsite employment

If you feel you meet or exceed the above criteria and are looking to continue your professional development at a fast paced and exciting company, please submit your resume and a cover letter to careers (at) parallelpath (dot) com.

Why Parallel Path?
Employees enjoy: Working with seasoned industry experts, enjoyable work environment, competitive compensation, health coverage, paid vacation, company iPhone & MacBook Pro laptop, ongoing training, career advancement & more!

Bryan Connally recently wrote a blog posting on Google’s new social recommendation tool, +1. In particular, he addressed whether your site should implement +1. While his analysis was fairly broad (i.e. should your site participate or not), I’d like to take a narrower look at +1’s effect on pay-per-click advertising with Adwords.

Google presumes, and we agree, that users will be more likely to click on ads that others within their social circle have recommended by previously clicking on the +1 button. Therefore, Adwords advertisers should care about +1 and its effects. Given that there is no way to opt out of the program, they should also take the necessary actions to maximize its value.

Adwords advertisers should recognize that the +1 recommendation is attached to the landing page, not the ad. Clicking on the +1 button next to the ad will subsequently show that recommendation anytime Google serves that landing page URL in a paid or organic search result.

If users are more likely to click on ads with +1 recommendations, then +1 will have an indirect effect on quality score, by improving clickthrough rate. Given the potential for abusing +1, and the importance of quality score within Adwords, we believe Google will limit the impact on quality score of the +1 effect on CTR. How will they do that? It’s too soon to tell, and we may never know for sure.

Some search marketers even believe that +1’s social signal will be strong enough to have a positive effect on landing page conversion. While we believe that may be possible, we’ll wait to see evidence in the data.

Adwords ads may not request users to click on +1 in their ad copy. According to Google Adword’s creative guidelines:

“Your ads may not direct users to click on Google +1 buttons. Your ads and landing page should not imply or directly promote offers, prizes, monies, monetary equivalents, services or deals in exchange for +1 clicks. Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings.”

However, firms could certainly promote +1 in other media, particularly word of month. Just ask.

In addition, firms can place a +1 button on their website so visitors can recommend directly from the page they’re viewing. In fact, site operators should consider adding a +1 button to all relevant pages of their site, and all of their PPC landing pages, to maximize the likelihood of capturing recommendations. As Bryan pointed out, there is no “-1’ or negative action, so there is little risk in doing so.

When a user clicks on the +1 button next to an ad, the advertiser is not charged; it’s a free action. Although Google has stated that they will start reporting +1 actions in the Adwords interface [under Dimensions tab, Free Clicks selection], we have not yet seen evidence that it is active.

Conclusion: Let the data be your guide

At Parallel Path, we’re big believers in testing. We’ll test the +1 button on a few landing pages and see if it drives improved CTR. If it proves to be valuable, we will recommend that Adwords advertisers take the time to place +1 buttons on every landing page to take advantage of the ‘compulsory’ +1 program.