Enhanced AdWords Sitelinks: Google rolled out a nice upgrade to AdWords sitelinks on Feb 14, 2012. Straight from the horse's mouth: "We've talked before about how useful ad sitelinks can be. They give users more options, and deliver advertisers more clicks. On average, the clickthrough rate is 30% higher for ads with sitelinks than those without. And we've continued experimenting with new ways to make sitelinks even better. Today, we're taking the covers off one of our strongest performing experiments. It works by incorporating text from ads in your account that are related to your sitelinks."

adCenter Ads Local Extensions: Microsoft adCenter announced the inclusion of local extensions for ads on March 1, 2012. Better late than never. Local extensions are a big plus in Google AdWords for our clients and we're glad to see adCenter making them available. Here's what they had to say in the announcement "Location Extensions, a new local Microsoft Advertising adCenter offering, allows you to do just that. Location Extensions enables advertisers to display the business address and phone number in their text ad. Even before a user clicks, they can see additional details about your business in the ad results. These details encourage users to click on your ad and bring them to your door."

Google AdWords Preview Tool: Did you know that searching google.com to gauge the placement of your own ads, or those of your competition, is very inaccurate. There are a number of reasons why you may see entirely different results than most of your target audience. The only way to see if your ad appears, and where it appears, is by using the free Google AdWords Ad Preview & Diagnosis Tool. Don't forget to set the Location when you try it.

Avoid This Costly Mistake: One of the more common, and more expensive mistakes we see from new users of the Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter programs is not using negative keywords. This mistake is sometimes compounded by using broad match keywords which are too general and not monitoring actual search term reports. This trifecta of errors has caused many a business owner to declare "I tried AdWords and didn't get anything from it." Pay attention to these three areas and your chances of success are greatly improved.