Review Score Panel:

Under review: Google Goggles

Publisher: Hexatrack

Price: $97 one-time, plus $14 per month (including a Hexatrack subscription)

Score: 6 out of 10

Read the full review now…

Review:

OK so having got past my log-in problem, BIG THANKS to Jim in Hexatrack support who sorted me out within about 2 hours (seemed like eternity not being able to play with my new toy of course) which is pretty good considering how many orders they must have had coming in at launch today .

Here are some results of Google Goggles in action.

Case Study:

Being a monkey, I naturally decided to jump on the Google Goggles buzz wagon and set-up an Adwords campaign for it. Shameful!

I ran the Goggles over my landing page (the previous article) and it said overall it was OK. It was GREAT for 2 of the keywords, OK/Great for 1 other, and POOR for the remaining 2 keywords.

Naturally I jumped to the report and watched the video.

My Google Goggles report from my test campaign

As you can see, my (blog) campaign wasn’t too bad apart from domain name, landing page and video.

The domain name, I couldn’t do much about as it was a blog post. I could have made a standalone page and added a sub domain or folder, but IMHO the blog architecture should do a similar thing to the domain name, or certainly something similar to a sub folder version of it. My blog is indexed under category (not date, etc.) plus I use a blog SILO linking system. So the URL had the keywords in the category as well as the article blog title. We’ll have to see how we go with that. But otherwise my option is to take it off the blog and do a standalone web page with a sub domain. I may do a split test for this, but if I’ve blown this domain for quality, I won’t be able to use this same site for the test Which is obviously what Google Goggles should help me to avoid!

The video help:

The “zaney” video advice for the video score bar, was to have one! Erm WOW thanks guys! OK so I added one as no harm no fowl. I will be making my own video for it using VennList shortly, but for now, Emily is strutting her stuff

The landing page score was the most disappointing. It was quite a long article and I had genuinely written it to be relevant and on topic. What could have gone wrong?

I eagerly played the on screen help video and they said along the lines of “hmm your landing page sucks badly, probably because of keyword density”. OK but what about it?

I created the PDF report hoping for more clarification, and ended up hunting for it on my desktop.

The landing page advice? Yep check my keyword density and it listed a site I could use. I couldn’t get there for some reason (probably my ISP), so I Googled up another keyword density score site.

The Density Result?

Seems I have used the product name too much. That’s something I think GG could have told me itself. Too much or too little seems pretty basic to me.

Anyway the “goggles” score was 11% at 22 times.

Another offender was “quality” at 5% (10 times).

And possibly “hexatrack” which I don’t remember saying that much, but at 8 times it was 4%.

Here was the rest of the top percent rundown;

And for dual word length phrases;

I haven’t yet re-written the article. My plan I think will be to add some extra content to make the spread wider. Trying to think of things to say which are more related.

But so far I’m getting a 13% CTR, so I don’t feel like panicing quite yet.

So overall I didn’t have to change much from what I normally do, except add a video. But I learnt I need to talk a bit more off topic to spread my semantic language wider. So I presume you will understand if I suddenly start talking about how that although GG is about paid traffic generation, it can also analyse a website page for natural organic search too. It’s not a true web page optimiser, but it will give you quite a good clue in the areas that the bars measure. You coud probably remembe rot check if you have added video amrketing manualy, simply by looking if your HTML includes a video or not. But as video content forms quite a large role in Universal Search and UGC (User Generated Content) and so does help you to appear in the top ten organic results, as some of those slots are dedicated to these alternative media.

Conclusion:

In it’s current state I only give it 6 out of 10, because whilst it is a handy gauge of what your quality score will be, the remedies aren’t so easy. So mainly you know what NOT to do, but not so much what to do.

I appreciate the guys have spend quite a lot of money testing the “algorithm” with live campaigns over a long period, but the basic rules of engagement of what content to include, are not really brain surgery.

If you have a lot of sites to makeover, you have a problem. But that isn’t Hexatrack’s fault, it is just down to you to learn to do your sites properly from the start the next time.

Even though I’ve given it 6/10 I’d still say BUY Google Goggles, for 4 main reasons.

1. $97 one-time and only $14 per month isn’t a lot of money in the scheme of things. If you are tight for cash. then it is certainly a tool you can live without. But then you probably can’t afford to be doing PPC either. PPC is not an easy or cheap activity, not on a tight budget.
2. The access to Hexatrack itself for Keyword research and Adsense competitor spying is well worth $14 (normally $69 apparently).
3. The ease of use to check your pages is handy. Not only should it save time, but it might actually make you do it!
4. The “education” of the kind of things Google look for, is also useful;, although NOT comprehensive. It’s the sort of info you can get for free from the Internet, but it would have been nicer in one central place.

Hexatrack offer a 30 day guarantee, so you can afford to try it for yourself.

But don’t expect too much! It’s useful. But it isn’t essential. But if it does lower your rates down by 50%, on a $200 per month campaign that pays for it immediately. On month 22, the saving is pure profit. With the Hexatrax research account included, that may well happen, as you;ll be able to spy on the competition and see any gaps in keyphrase word usages, or any other weaknesses. Equally it may show you areas which are too strong, and you can save your money to spend on other entry points.

BTW if you buy it through my link, I will give you what I think is essential for half the normal price when it launches. So if you’re going to buy Google Goggles anyway, you can save yourself way more than its cost by buying it throuh my link.

Buy Google Goggles

And don’t forget, you get the Hexatrack access in the deal as well.