Microsoft Advertising adCenter
Dear Keeton,

Microsoft and Yahoo! have now received regulatory clearance to form the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance in the United States and European Union. This milestone is an exciting step in our effort to give your business a time-saving and cost-efficient way to connect with a larger combined audience of potential customers.

How the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance benefits you
After the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance is implemented, you will:

Reach more potential customers: Search ad inventory from both the Yahoo! and Microsoft networks will be joined in a new, unified search marketplace powered by Bing™ , with a combined audience of over 150 million searchers in the U.S and nearly 577 million searchers worldwide.1
You’ll use a single platform—Microsoft adCenter—to manage your campaigns easier and faster. With just one buy, your search ads will reach users on Bing, Yahoo!, and other premium partner sites and networks, such as The Wall Street Journal Digital Network, msnbc.com, FoxSports.com, Facebook, and Buy.com.

What’s ahead
For now, it’s business as usual; there is no change to your account or service. Your ads will continue to serve on Bing search results pages, and you will continue to receive the same great service from Microsoft.

Both companies are committed to making this transition a seamless experience. Our goal is to bring the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance to the U.S. by the end of 2010, prior to the crucial holiday season, with additional countries following on a staggered schedule beginning in 2011.
As our transition dates approach, we will contact you with information about what to do next. In order to ensure you continue to receive important service updates, please verify your contact information is current in Microsoft adCenter. View our help topic: Change contact information.
How to learn more
In the meantime, you can familiarize yourself with the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance by visiting our new resource, searchalliance.com, where you’ll find plenty of additional details, including press releases, FAQs, and more!

We appreciate your business and look forward to bringing you the benefits of the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance.

Sincerely,

The Microsoft adCenter Team

Recently, my account was placed in a mysterious “under review” status that resulted in a complete freeze of my entire AdWords account (no impressions, clicks, etc.) and no notification via email or status message that anything was wrong.  My only indication was a complete stop of all account activity on otherwise healthy and active campaigns.

After searching the internet for cases similar to mine, I discovered the “under review” scenario that a few other advertisers have experienced.  After reading several horror stories of accounts under indefinite review, I was worried that my account would never be re-activated and that AdWords would no longer be an advertising option.  I’ve since resolved the issue and am documenting my communication with Google to help other advertisers in a similar situation.

Since there was no indication from Google that something was wrong, I had to contact them.  Phone support for my account was unavailable, so I took the email route.  Here is the first response, received approximately 12-24 hours after my request:

Hello Keeton,

Thank you for your email. I understand you’re concerned about your AdWords account not working. It appears your account is under review, which may be the reason for this issue. We periodically review accounts for security purposes and to verify billing information. I’ll consult a specialist team regarding the status of the review and will provide you with an update shortly. I sincerely appreciate your patience.

If you have additional questions, please visit our Help Center at http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/, where you’ll find answers to many frequently asked questions. We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available.

Sincerely,

Sricharan
The Google AdWords Team

This form response didn’t provide any helpful information, so I was resigned to wait.  I used the time to clone my pay per click campaigns to Microsoft Adcenter for display on the Bing.com search engine.  24 hours after the initial email, I received the following:

Hello Keeton,

Thank you for your patience.  As mentioned in my previous email, your AdWords account has stopped running as your account was under review. Our AdWords specialists have confirmed that our system is having difficulty processing your credit card.

Our AdWords Specialists and engineers have worked to resolve this issue. Please re-submit your credit card number or enter another credit card number to process your charge. Your ads will start running as soon as our system successfully processes your payment, usually within the 24 hours following your credit card re-submission.

To edit your credit card information and re-enable your account:

1. Sign in to your account at https://adwords.google.com
2. Click the “Billing” tab.
3. Click “Billing Preferences.”
4. Click “Edit” next to the Primary Payment Details section.
5. Fill in all fields on this page, including your credit card number.
6. Click “Save Changes” when you’re finished.

If you have additional questions, please visit our Help Center at http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/, where you’ll find answers to many frequently asked questions. We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available.

Sincerely,

Sricharan
The Google AdWords Team

This answer was far more helpful and reminded me that I had recently updated my credit card information on the account.  Why I didn’t receive an email that there was a problem with the billing, I will never know.  After updating my credit card information, my account started working after four or five hours.

If you’re investigating your own “under review” account, I hope you find this information helpful.

Hello Keeton,

Thank you for your email. I understand you’re concerned about your AdWords account not working. It appears your account is under review, which may be the reason for this issue. We periodically review accounts for security purposes and to verify billing information. I’ll consult a specialist team regarding the status of the review and will provide you with an update shortly. I sincerely appreciate your patience.

If you have additional questions, please visit our Help Center at http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/, where you'll find answers to many frequently asked questions. We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available.

Sincerely,  

Sricharan
The Google AdWords Team

If you have a free account and would like to upgrade using PayPal, just log in to your account and look for the “Upgrade to a Premium Account” link.  Premium users who wish to switch their billing to a PayPal account, just look for the “Update Billing Profile” link.

Thanks to everyone who requested this feature.  If you have any questions or need more information, please feel free to drop me a line anytime.

Thanks again,

Keeton

Thanks Linktrack! I’m happy to be here. Let me just start by saying that without linktrack, I wouldn’t have a clue that social networking even actually worked for me.

For example, I hosted a give away on my blog today. I made four links going to the same place, but I uploaded them in different places. I put one on my twitter feed, one on my facebook, one on contest websites, and one in a mass email I sent out to my subscribers.

I checked on my links right now, and I just discovered that my link on twitter got 250 clicks, the one I did on the contest website only got 16. So, what have I learned from this? Dude, don’t waste my time with that contest website anymore.

Which means that Linktrack just saved me a serious amount of time.

Now, I know that there are people out there who do this social media thing as a business. I just think it’d be really nice to show the linktrack page to your boss and say, “LOOK! That stupid contest website you have me posting to isn’t actually working! Can we try something else?”

Let’s face it, in this whole crazy technological day and age, it’s all about the data, and that’s what linktrack gives us. Real time data about who is clicking our links and where they’re clicking in from. Without it, I wouldn’t have a clue if that stuff was working or not.

Thanks Linktrack, I promise to always use you for all my link tracking needs! You guys Rock!

This week we’re introducing http://vlt.me, the first of many new domain names that can be used with Linktrack. We’re calling this feature “custom domains” and it’s available to professional account holders starting today.  If you’re already a professional account holder, you don’t need to do anything to start using custom domain names. Just look for the “Address” drop down box when you make a link to choose which domain you want to use with your tracking link.

Here’s where we’re keeping track of all the custom domains available.

If you’re using one of our free accounts, this is a great reason to try out our professional service.  There’s no contract or obligation, so check it out today!

So why did we choose the vlt.me domain name? Does it mean anything special?

Not really. We choose vlt.me because it was short and easy to say (over the phone for example), but also doesn’t imply that that the link is for tracking purposes (something that a few of our users have mentioned).

If you REALLY need vlt.me to stand for something, here are some ideas:

Virtual Link Tracking
Very Large Turtle
Vacation Lobster Trap
Vaccinate Live Turkeys
Vacuumed Last Time
Vain Life Test

If you have any others, please let me know.

Thanks,

Keeton

http://urlfollow.com/

Thanks to everyone who requested this feature, and keep the feedback coming!

Linktrack shortens links and provides comprehensive click-through statistics for every visit they receive. Users have access to lots of options like password protected links, links that expire automatically, and more!

We make it simple and easy to track clicks or split test virtually anything – Google Adwords, Craigslist.org ads, Twitter links, your Facebook status, affiliate programs – ANYTHING. Our data is extremely comprehensive and accessible via online display, sweet charts and graphs, or downloadable reports.

http://topsy.com/tb/linktrack.info/
http://topsy.com/twitter/linhktrak
http://dataopedia.com/linktrack-info
http://www.statbrain.com/www.linktrack.info/
http://www.backtype.com/url/linktrack.info
http://twitter.com/linktrak
http://social.implu.com/t/linktrak
http://topsy.com/twitter/linktrak
http://tweetmeme.com/user/linktrak
http://twitreferral.com/profile/linktrak/
http://www.pagesinventory.com/domain/linktrack.info.html
http://www.ownmine.com/results.php?query=linktrack.info
http://www.myrealtwitterscore.com/linktrak
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/linktrack.info
http://www.quarkbase.com/linktrack.info
http://twittercounter.com/linktrak
http://builtwith.com/?linktrack.info
http://www.twaitter.com/linktrak.aspx
http://www.netsyssec.com/domain/linktrack.info
http://twitrak.com/default.asp?Username=linktrak