This year, Google says it is going to "help businesses, great and small, get the
most out of the Internet." The company has selected five small businesses from
different areas and given them $100,000 in AdWords spend for the year, along
with free consultations with AdWords reps, and free wireless service for the
year.
But that's not all. They gave the businesses brand new laptops and smartphones,
free "green" environmental consulting, a year of free accounting and financial
services, and a free webmaster.
Good PR and marketing for Google services? Obviously, but the company does say
it will be helping small businesses like these grow their businesses online for
the rest of the year.
"We're looking forward to making big investments in small businesses far beyond
these lucky five,"
says James Croom, Product Marketing Manager with the Google Small
Business Team. "Small businesses have long benefited from Google products and
services; now our hope is that all small business owners can have greater access
to the tools and training they need to develop a cohesive strategy for doing
more business online. We started last year by creating the Google Small Business
Center and asking small business owners about their biggest wishes for 2011. We
received an overwhelming response from business owners who, like the owners of
these shops, want to do more business in the clouds in 2011."
It's almost as Google's painting itself as the "savior for small businesses,"
but that's what Groupon is,
according to CEO Andrew Mason. In case you don't get the reference, a
new
forthcoming Google product called Google Offers was discovered this
week, and it is a direct competitor to Groupon, and it looks to be an important
part of Google's strategy in the local and small business department.
AdWords advertisers who prefer not to go with the "guess and check" method when
trying to attract customers are in luck. This afternoon, Google announced some
improvements to its Ad Preview Tool, allowing users to get a good idea of how
their ads will appear without wasting any time or money.
Gordon Zhu, an associate product marketing manager, wrote on the
Inside AdWords blog, "If you're signed into your account while
previewing your ads, you'll now see integrated keyword diagnosis results. In
this example below, we've entered our keyword red roses to see if it's
triggering ads in New York:"
Zhu then continued, "[T]he
Preview Tool now specifically confirms whether your ad is showing and
links to the relevant campaign and ad group. If your ad isn't showing, the
Preview Tool will tell you why, helping you understand if you need to adjust
your bids, location targeting, daily budget, or optimize your account."
And as you may have noticed from the screenshot, it's now possible to check the
results for specific mobile devices, along with different mobile carriers.
These tweaks are sure to come in handy, and could indeed prove quite valuable to
marketers. Google, in turn, probably hopes the marketers will then be more
inclined to pay it more money.
Some Google AdWords advertisers are not pleased with what they are finding in
Google's Search Query Performance reports for their campaigns. These
reports show advertisers what keyword queries are surfacing their ads, and some
are finding some of these keywords questionable.
Are you losing money on clicks from questionable keywords?
Let us know.
You might think that an ad impression is an ad impression, but when you're
charged by the click, you want the clicks to come from people who are likely to
buy what you're selling, considering that you are paying Google for each click.
A Wall Street Journal piece has
put the spotlight on some of these advertisers, including a New York
dentist who claims irrelevant keywords have cost him nearly $3,000 over the last
year or so. The problem allegedly stems from Google's session-based broad match
feature, which shows ads to users not only for a single query, but also for
subsequent queries in the users same search session.
Google
explains the feature in the AdWords Help Center:
"When determining which ads to show on
a Google search result page, the AdWords system evaluates some of the user's
previous queries during their search session as well as the current search
query. If the system detects a relationship, it will show ads related to these
other queries, too."
"The system considers the previous
queries in order to better understand the intent of the user's current query.
The added information allows the system to deliver more relevant ads."
"This feature is an enhancement of
broad match. It works by generating similar terms for each search query based on
the content of the current query and, if deemed relevant, the previous queries
in a user's search session. Your ad will potentially show if one of your
broad-matched keywords matches any of these similar terms."
Sounds good in theory, but the advertisers complaining appear to disagree with
what Google is considering to be relevant. The dentist from the WSJ story cited
"penis enlargement" and "[Chinese characters] in Chinatown" as examples – not
exactly dentist-related. The story also cites a plastic surgeon, who counted "olivia
newton john photos" among questionable keywords.
The WSJ spoke with Google's Nick Fox:
Mr. Fox acknowledged there are "edge" cases in which search queries "does not
appear to be relevant to the ads, but the context of previous queries indicated
that the user would have a strong interest in that advertisers' ad." In
addition, he said, "a user must be interested enough in an ad to want to click
on it." He said a very small percentage of ad clicks are session-based and that
advertisers can limit the scope of their campaign to halt session-based clicks.
Google's Mr. Fox said: "It has to be
the case that the users, in the very recent history, searched for terms he's
advertising on."
It's worth noting that Google says that whenever an ad is served based on the
associated keyword's relevance to the previous search queries, the ad's
performance has no effect on that keyword's Quality Score.
It's also worth noting that not everyone is unhappy with the session-based
clicks. Jordan McClements, commenting on
a Clixmarketing post on session-based broad match says, "If you are
in a niche where there is not much search traffic, and a new client/sale is
worth a lot of money to you then it is probably a good idea to keep all your
'broad' options open."
John Lee, who wrote that post, says, "I want advertisers to be aware that in the
case of session-based broad match – you can't turn it off. My recommendation is
to remain vigilant in reporting, primarily with Search Query Reports to ensure
that the session-based query matches that do come through are relevant. If they
aren't, roll that knowledge (and those queries) into your negative keyword
lists."
Probably good advice.
Perhaps the real question is how much of the problem is Google and how much is
the advertiser?
Speaking of negative keywords, Google actually just
released a new feature this week to manage negative keywords across
multiple campaigns with negative keyword lists.
Google will be changing the way display URLs look in AdWords ads in the next
week or so. The domain portion of the display URL will always be showing in
lowercase letters. For example, Subdomain.Example.com/Subdirectory will appear
as subdomain.example.com/Subdirectory. Google suggests that the move can
actually boost clickthrough rates.
"In any given month, we experiment with hundreds of subtle variations of the
Google search results page, testing everything from font sizes and colors to
layouts and spacing, as well as dozens of other variables,"
says Lisa Shieh of Google's Inside AdWords Crew. "Recently, we found
that by standardizing the look of the URLs on the page, we were able to improve
many of our user metrics, including ad clickthrough rates."
"As you've probably figured out by now, we believe that regular website testing
is the best way to ensure an optimal user experience, and we encourage you to
test variations of your own website," she says.
More specifically, Google suggests using its own
Website Optimizer tool for such testing.
Advertisers need not worry about editing their own ads. Uppercase letters in
display URL domains will automatically be changed to lowercase when the change
goes into effect.
Google also introduced a new way to manage negative keywords across multiple
campaigns in negative keywords lists.
With the lists, advertisers can manage groups of negative keywords in their
account's Control Panel and Library, and associate them with multiple
campaigns.
"For example, say you have a set of negative keywords you always add to any
campaign running on the Search Network,"
explains Google's Dan Friedman. "Previously, you'd need to copy that
set to every new search campaign you created in your account. Now, with shared
lists, you can simply create a single negative keyword list and associate it
with each search campaign. If there’s a new negative keyword you’d like to add
to all of those campaigns, just add it to your list and it will automatically
update across each campaign. Similarly, if you create a new campaign, you can
add your negative keyword list to exclude all of the necessary terms with just a
few clicks."
Google announced that its extending its Seller Ratings extensions for AdWords
ads to mobile. These let advertisers show users when they have positive ratings,
which can of course inspire clicks.
"Everyday consumers are using their phones to search Google and a growing number
are turning to mobile to complete a variety of purchases,"
says Anna Khesed with Google's Mobile Ads Marketing Team. "In fact,
according to internal Google data, in Q3 Google searches from mobile devices
grew 130% year over year. Additionally, a Mobile Marketing Association study
found that 59% of holiday shoppers said they plan to use their mobile phones to
facilitate holiday shopping. So this year we are creating a better mobile
shopping experience by helping consumers identify highly rated online
merchants."
"Having a great online reputation is key," she continues. "Now with Seller
Ratings on mobile, businesses can extend this important information from desktop
to mobile devices. By showcasing relevant and useful rating information for your
business, the extension can help differentiate you from your competition and
guide potential customers to purchase from your site. Seller Ratings are
aggregated from merchant review sites all around the web and the extension will
only show when a merchant's online store has a rating of four or more stars and
at least 30 reviews. As seen in the example below, the ad will display the
merchant’s star rating as well as a clickable link to the seller’s reviews."
To maintain positive reviews, Google suggests starting with good customer
service (contrary to the
exposed practices of one business, which led to
Google changing its algorithm). The company also suggests reading the
reviews about your business and being proactive about resolving issues. Another
thing
mentioned on a help page worth noting:
To help ensure that customers submit
ratings to the right businesses, be sure to confirm that Google Product Search
review sites display the correct business name and website URL for your business
listing. Your business name and website URL should be consistent across review
sites, and should also be consistent with your Google Merchant Center account if
you have one. This helps customers identify the right businesses and helps avoid
ratings for other businesses being included within your own seller ratings.
The extensions will automatically transfer to mobile when advertisers are using
them for the desktop, but they must already be showing campaigns to users of
"high-end devices" with full Internet browsers. The extensions are only
available for Google.com, Google.co.uk, and Google.de thus far.
The extensions can also only be used for advertisers with paid godos or services
or those that enable the buying and selling of goods or services. The ratings
only apply to the merchants, as opposed to products themselves.
To use the extensions, you can't use another extension plus box (like product
extensions, location extensions, etc.) or sitelinks.
One month ago, Google invited marketers to create short videos in celebration of
AdWords's tenth birthday. Now, the company's finished piecing together a
YouTube-centric tribute of sorts, and the creation might also act as free
advertising for more than a few companies.
People who head to
http://www.google.com/adwords/birthday will wind up on a special
YouTube channel reading the message, "10 years ago Google launched AdWords,
transforming online advertising. To mark the occasion, advertisers have been
sharing their stories with the world. Meet them and join the celebration."
Then, if the visitors choose to click through, they'll be confronted with a
globe covered in markers.
This is where things start to get interesting. Each marker corresponds to at
least one AdWords user's story. Sometimes these are just a couple of
paragraphs, or maybe only a sentence. Sometimes they come in the form of
videos.
Either way, the stories provide a unique way of learning about businesses - and
AdWords's impact - around the world.
This effort may convince a few more people to use AdWords, and could also earn a
few companies new customers. Finally, we should note that advertisers who are
feeling left out can still submit a video - or even just a written story - and
join the collection.
Google made some announcements aimed at getting businesses to use Google to
reach a global audience. These include a new resource site for doing just that,
and a new tool called Global Market Finder, designed to help businesses identify
markets with high demand for their products or services.
"Imagine you're a men's tailor in Bangkok, and you sell custom suits to
travelers passing through Thailand,"
says Srinidhi Viswanatha with Google's Global Advertisers team. "You
start a website to sell your suits online and begin to notice that the majority
of your website traffic comes from overseas. How do you respond to this
international demand?"
"Businesses of all sizes face a number of obstacles when they want to expand
internationally," adds Viswanatha. "First, they must identify the right market
to sell their products or services, such as custom men’s suits. Then they have
to create versions of their website and ad campaigns in the language of the
market they want to reach. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, they need to
reach new customers who may be interested in their products and services."
The new resource site,
Google Ads for Global Advertisers, is what Google calls a "central
hub" for businesses to find help expanding into foreign markets. The site says
that there are 1.9 billion Internet users worldwide, boasting that Google's
search and content networks will help businesses reach over 80% of them.
On the site, users will find success stories, a step-by-step guide for finding
new markets, translating their websites, translating ads, translating their
business, and optimizing campaigns, location tips, a translator toolkit, tips
for customer support and payments, etc.
The
Global Market Finder tool automatically translates keywords into 56
languages, and uses Google's search trends data to find where people would
search for products and services based on that. "It helps businesses evaluate
new markets by showing the volume of local searches, estimated price for
keywords and competition for each keyword in each market," explains Viswanatha.
Going global is one of the biggest challenges businesses face, so it stands to
reason that these tools and resources from Google will become quite popular as
businesses look to expand into new markets.
Google has made changes to its advertising policy on alcohol for AdWords. The
company now allows ads to promote the sale of hard alcohol and liquor.
Over two years ago,
Google revised its alcohol policy from not allowing alcohol ads to
begin permitting beer, champagne, and wine ads. A couple months later the
company revised its policy again to allow the promotion of hard liquors and
liqueurs. Now Google has revised it once again.
"Since then, hard alcohol advertisers have been able to promote websites that
offer information about their brand, their products, or drinks that can be made
with their products,"
explains Dan Friedman of Google's Inside AdWords crew. "Now, they can
also promote websites that sell hard alcohol online, direct users to retailers
where their products are sold, or feature sales promotions."
"To comply with the policy, the ad and website must abide by certain advertising
restrictions, including (but not limited to) not targeting minors, not implying
that drinking alcohol provides certain advantages, and not showing inappropriate
content," adds Friedman. "They are also subject to any further restrictions in
the countries that they target."
The exact criteria are:
- do not target minors
- do not include endorsements from
athletes, cartoon characters, or any other icons/people appealing to minors
- landing page must have an age gate
and include statements about drinking responsibly
- do not imply that drinking alcohol
can improve sexual, social, or professional standings
- do not imply that drinking alcohol is
relaxing or therapeutic
- do not indicate that drinking alcohol
in excess is good
- do not show people consuming alcohol
while doing anything illegal, violent, or dangerous; or being inappropriate in
other ways, such as acting in a degrading manner
- do not contain sexual content
Google says it made the changes simply to "help more advertisers use AdWords for
the promotion of their products."
Google has added a new kind of report to AdWords called "Click Type". This is
designed to help marketers measure how different elements of AdWords ads impact
their clicks, clickthrough rates and conversions.
AdWords ads have more options for advertisers than they used to. Advertisers can
now use a product ads format, which lets them display different offerings in the
same ad, sitelinks, which lets them feature different links in a single ad, or
click-to-call, which customers can click on and call the business. All of these
options, while incredibly helpful in advertising, can complicate things when it
comes to measuring effectiveness.
The "click type" report shows the kind of data that its name would suggest. It
lets you measure the performance of each click type you're using. "You can think
of a click type as how your customers interact with your ads,"
says Google's Nathania Lozada. "Did they click on the headline, a
sitelink, or some other aspect of your ad?"
"With this added data, you'll now have the ability to compare performance of
each click type side by side," she adds. "If certain click types perform well
for your business, you may want to consider expanding them to other campaigns.
Comparing click types by campaign, ad group or keyword will also highlight areas
that need work."
"Given the success we've seen searchers and businesses have with more
interactive features in ads, you can expect to see more of these types of
features in the future. With the new click type report in AdWords you can
measure the impact of these new features and continue to get the most out of
your ads."
Google says to expect to see more interactive features in ads in the future.
What this will entail is unclear, but it would appear that product ads,
sitelinks, and click-to-call are just the beginning, so the new reports should
also prove even more useful down the line.
For quite some time, AdWords has been good to Google and a lot of other
companies, and Google would now like some outside help as it celebrates that
fact. Advertisers have been asked to contribute YouTube videos or written
pieces in recognition of the tenth birthday of AdWords.
Admittedly, this may sound a little self-involved on Google's part, but it's no
worse than the tradition of a person accepting presents at a birthday party.
Also, depending on how Google decides to use and/or highlight the videos, this
process may amount to free advertising for some companies.
Anyway, Jason Shafton, who's a product marketing manager at Google, wrote on the
Inside AdWords blog, "The story of AdWords is literally the story of
you, our advertisers and partners. . . . So . . . . [t]his December, as part of
our AdWords 10th birthday celebration, we'll be publishing a global map
featuring businesses who are happy to tell their stories."
Shafton then continued, "Join us by creating a short (three minutes or less)
YouTube video or written piece (750 characters or less) telling us your story:
who you are, what your business is about, how it's grown, and the role AdWords
has played in your success."
You can find more details, look at sample videos, and submit your own clip
through this
page.
Happy birthday to AdWords (and congratulations to the people behind it), by the
way.
When creating a form for customers to fill out, it's easy for business owners to
slip in a question asking who referred them. Finding out how someone got a
phone number is a more delicate matter, though (it's important not to waste
customers' time or act like they called a private line), and AdWords call
metrics represents Google's potential solution.
To be clear: the AdWords call metrics tech has been in testing for a while, and
it still won't be available to everyone anytime soon. Today, Google just wanted
to acquaint everyone with the project and announce that a more complete rollout
will occur in the next few months.
Surojit Chatterjee, Senior Product Manager over AdWords, explained in a post on
the
Inside AdWords blog, "Using the technology behind Google Voice, call
metrics assigns your campaign a unique phone number which is automatically
inserted into your ad on both desktop and high-end mobile devices, where the
number is clickable."
Then he continued, "When a user calls the number in your ad, the call is
automatically routed to your business, and AdWords notes that this call took
place. Then, when you look at your AdWords reports, you'll see the number of
calls generated by each campaign, call duration, and in the near future, caller
area code. You'll still only pay for clicks on your ads, but we intend to
charge for call metrics in the future."
This is an interesting idea with a fair amount of promise. Depending on what
Google sort of fees Google decides to attach, lots of business owners might do
well to use AdWords call metrics to measure their campaigns' effectiveness.
Some people should even be able to visit
Google Ad Innovations and find the feature enabled on their accounts
now.
Google introduced a new feature to its AdWords Search Funnels today: the
Top Paths (Query Paths) report. Search Funnels are a set of reports
that describe ad click and impression behavior on Google.com that leads up do a
conversion.
"Broad match keywords in your AdWords account may be matched to a variety of
keywords your users are searching for,"
explains Gordon Zhu of Google's Inside AdWords crew. "You bid on
certain keywords, but what about the actual queries that these keywords were
matched to? You can see Keyword Paths within Search Funnels - and now, you can
see Query Paths as well."
To access them, simply go into the existing Top Paths reports and select the Top
Paths (Query Paths) option in the Dimension drop down menu to show the actual
queries that were matched to ads and clicked before a conversion.
The option only shows queries for search ads that were clicked (not for
impressions).
"This data gives even more insight into the searches users make before finding
and then purchasing on your site," says Zhu. "With this information, you should
be able to better target these users by seeing how they find you, and gain
confidence in bidding on keywords that convert or assist in the conversion
path."
Earlier this month, Google
launched longer, customizable Conversion History windows in Search
Funnels, as well as the ability to only show complete conversion paths.
Google announced that AdWords Campaign Experiments (ACE) is rolling out
globally. ACE was
announced in June as a tool designed to optimize AdWords accounts by
letting advertisers test and measure changes to keywords, bids, ad groups, and
placements.
ACE, as Google says, is designed to reduce guesswork and risk involved with
making changes to a campaign. It provides a split-testing approach to give
measurements regardless of changes in demand, competitor movements, or other
activity that can complicate things.
§ You’re considering adding (or pausing) a bunch of new keywords, but you aren’t sure how it will affect your overall campaign clicks, costs, and conversions.
§ You have a few keywords that account for a significant fraction of your total AdWords clicks, conversions and cost. You’d like to know what happens if you raise (or lower) bids by 10%. Do your clicks and conversions change by 10% -- or maybe less than that? How would your cost per click and cost per conversion change?
§ You want to easily test a new landing page design tailored for a few high-value keywords against your existing landing page*.
§ A colleague suggests you might improve your Google Display Network campaign performance by adjusting keywords and adding some placement-specific bids, but you’re concerned you might wind up with fewer conversions and no improvement in cost per conversion.
Advertisers can access ACE by signing into AdWords and going to the Campaign tab under Settings. Those outside of the U.S. should be able to access it within the next week or so, as it rolls out.
Google announced today that it is introducing a monthly charging limit for
AdWords campaigns, which is automatically calculated based on advertisers' daily
budgets.
"Over the years, many of you have told us that you'd like to be charged a
consistent amount each calendar month," Google's Dan Friedman
says on the Inside AdWords blog.
"When your daily budget is unchanged throughout an entire calendar month, we'll
set a monthly charging limit for that campaign by multiplying your daily budget
by 30.4, which is roughly the average number of days in a month
(365 days in a year / 12 months = 30.417 days/month)," he explains. "For
example, if your daily budget is US$10 throughout a month, you won't be charged
more than $304 during that month (US$10 daily budget * 30.4 average days per
month). As usual, actual daily spend may vary."
Google says it will transition to monthly charging limits over the next several
weeks. When an advertiser edits their budget in the campaign settings, they will
get a description of the change.
Google has an FAQ on the monthly charging limit
here.
Google shareholders who have a few extra thank you notes sitting around might
consider sending them to AT&T, the Apollo Group, and Expedia, along with a
handful of other companies. New data identifies these organizations as the
biggest AdWords spenders in June (and pins down the dollar amounts involved).
Michael Learmonth apparently obtained "an internal Google document,"
and it showed that AT&T spent a whopping $8.08 million with Google in June
alone. The Apollo Group, which owns Phoenix University and several other
institutions, spent the next largest sum: $6.67 million.
Then, thanks to the graph Learmonth created, you can pretty well see how the
rest of the lineup worked out.
One atypical thing worth noting is that BP doesn't usually rank so high; its
spending was mostly an attempt at damage control following the Gulf oil spill.
Otherwise, Learmonth noted, "The document shows 47 advertisers that spent more
than $1 million in June; 71 that spent between $500,000 and $1 million, and 357
that spent between $100,000 and $500,000. These are direct-billed customers
only, not the many thousands of small self-serve advertisers that make up
Google's long tail, a key component in its $23 billion global annual revenue."
Maybe scratch the thank you note idea, then, since stamp costs could become
quite high.
Google announced that mobile advertisers can now use multiple addresses in local extensions This way, customers can get the right address for businesses with multiple locations.
The feature is available on Google Maps for Mobile versions 4.4 and above on Android devices.
"Featuring your business location alongside your mobile ad is a powerful method to drive foot traffic and in store sales," says Google Mobile Ads Product Manager Surojit Chatterjee. "For instance, if a potential customer is looking for a wireless communications store like Sprint, an ad within GMM can display all Sprint locations near them. This not only delivers a relevant search experience, but also enables customers to visit the closest and most convenient Sprint store location.
AdWords will display a clickable banner to users with the option to show all
locations for the business. This is based on the user's search and location
signals. When they click "show all", the map will display just the locations of
the business. Some businesses will be able to
use their logo as their icon.
When a user clicks a location, they'll get more details about the business, like
ad text, directions, click to call, and a link to the site.
As an advertiser, to use the feature, you must be a primary business owner and enable location extensions in Google Places. Campaigns must target iPhone and other "high-end" mobile devices with full mobile browsers. You'll be charged when users click on the website URL or the phone icon.
A couple months ago,
Google introduced the "Analyze Competition" feature for AdWords
advertisers. This can be found in the "opportunities" tab.
The feature was initially only available to a small number of advertisers using
the English language AdWords interface. Today, Google announced that it is
expanding. Now the feature is available for all English language accounts.
The feature examines the account's activity over two weeks, and lists categories
that represent the products/services you're advertising. These are based on
search terms and are matched up against your keywords, ad text, and landing page
text. For each category associated with the account, users will see a bar graph
highlighting individual performance compared to the performance of other
advertisers in the category.
Google's Jason Shafton
explains, "In addition to the feature’s core functionality, you can
now also see the Google search terms that triggered your ad for each of the most
specific sub-categories in your account. Click a category name to see more
specific sub-categories. When the category name is no longer a link, you’ll know
you’re at the most specific sub-category -- this is where you’ll see a "See
search terms" link. Seeing the search terms that triggered your ad can serve as
inspiration for new keyword ideas or help you understand if your keywords have
been miscategorized by our system. If you see that the search terms listed for a
given category are not related to the keywords in your ad groups, you may
consider making keywords more specific or adding new negative keywords."
Google says it intends to bring more features to Analyze Competition in the
future.
Google has launched a section in the AdWords Help Center aimed at helping small
businesses improve their campaigns. It's called
Small Business Corner.
"The Small Business Corner is designed to give those of you who are running your
own AdWords accounts the opportunity to share best practices in discussions with
your peers so that you can make sure your AdWords account is doing all it can to
support your business goals,"
says Google's Miles Johnson. "This new category is not about
troubleshooting specific account issues, but rather about sharing and learning
from the experiences of others."
Johnson throws out: choosing the right tools to measure results, how to write
great ads, and finding the right frequency to sign in to AdWords as topics of
discussion.
There are already more topics to discuss in there, and given that AdWords are a
pretty popular small business marketing tool, I'd expect this forum to get a
great deal of discussion going, which should make for a very useful resource.
Google has announced the launch of Enhanced CPC, a new automated bidding feature
in AdWords, aimed at helping users improve ROI on campaigns with manual bidding.
It uses the campaign's historical conversion tracking data to automatically
adjust the Max CPC bid based on the likelihood that the ad will convert.
Google says this should lead to more conversions while reducing the overall CPA.
Take a look at this video:
Google points to the following as examples of what Enhanced CPC can do:
§ Adjust your bid depending on how well a particular search or display network partner site in the Google network has converted for you in the past
§ Recognize when specific words within a keyword (e.g. 'kits') convert well and adjust your bid when users search on variations of these terms (e.g. 'model airplane kits for children')
§ Detect attributes such as the user's location, language settings, browser, and operating system and analyze how these attributes may impact the likelihood of your ad converting
Conversion tracking must be enabled on you campaigns if you want to use Enhanced CPC. The feature can be found in the "Bidding and Budgeting" section of the settings tab.
Google has announced the launch of new AdWords Alerts and more options in Custom
Alerts in Google Analytics Intelligence.
If a user has their Analytics and AdWords accounts linked, Intelligence will
provide important changes in AdWords campaigns performance within Analytics.
"So, in addition to the alerts you are used to getting, such as time on site and
revenue, you’ll now receive alerts about your AdWords campaigns and the traffic
they are bringing to your website,” Google
explains. "You might already be familiar with custom alerts in Google
AdWords, which alert you when important changes you specify happen in your
account. With AdWords alerts in Analytics Intelligence, you benefit from
automatic detection of significant changes, with no extra work for you to
configure these yourself."
"For example, you might see an alert if the CTR for one of your campaigns
increased unexpectedly," Google adds. "Or you might find that revenue from one
of your destination URLs has dropped significantly from the week before. In both
cases, you didn’t need to know ahead of time what to look for. These important
changes are automatically detected and brought to your attention.
With Custom Alerts, Google has added options in the Alert conditions drop downs,
like goals you've configured (with their actual goal names). There are also now
e-commerce and AdWords metrics, more traffic sources, and more content page
metrics.
Google has announced that it is rolling out
AdWords Campaign Experiments to all U.S. advertisers. This is a free
tool that the company says makes it easier to test and measure the impact of
changes to keywords, bids, ad groups, and placements.
"Over the last two months, advertisers in our beta have reported that ACE has
helped them feel more confident in the impact of their campaign changes, making
it easier and less risky to try different strategies and optimize more
frequently,"
says Helen Schindler of Google's Inside AdWords Crew. "Without ACE,
you might evaluate optimizations by comparing key metrics before and 2-4 weeks
after making campaign changes. Differences in those key metrics are assumed to
be the result of the changes. But fluctuations in demand, shifts in competitor
tactics, and even changes in the weather can complicate things."
"With ACE, experimental campaigns run side-by-side with the original campaign in
a simultaneous split test," she continues. "This approach lets you run shorter
tests that start and stop whenever you like, with less concern about your
results being affected by seasonality or other factors. You get more precise
impact estimates and more chances throughout the year to test and improve
performance."
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More on AdWords Campaign Experiments can be found
here.
Updated Policy
In Canada, the UK, and Ireland, Google will
extend The changes let some advertisers use third party trademarks in
their ad text even if they don’t own them or have explicit approval from the
trademark owners to use them. This applies to resellers and sellers of
component, replacement, or compatible parts corresponding to the trademarks
displayed. The changes also apply to informational sites.
Google is also updating its policy to enable advertisers across Europe to select
trademarks as keywords. These policy changes will go into effect starting
September 14.
oogle has announced some upcoming changes to the way its third party partners
provide reports and information about AdWords to their clients.
"In order to provide the best online marketing experience, we want to make sure
that you understand how each dollar you invest in AdWords is performing,"
says Jason Shafton of Google's Inside AdWords Cew.
"If you work with another company to manage your AdWords campaigns, you should
be able to find out how much of your advertising budget (cost) was spent on
AdWords, how many times your ads appeared (impressions) and how many times users
clicked on your ads (clicks)," he adds.
These requirements will be included in Google's legal terms and agreement
starting in February.
Google says that while most partners already provide advertisers with the proper
information, some will need to make adjustments.
More info about the changes can be found in the
AdWords Help Center.
Google has launched Mobile ValueTrack for advertisers to track clicks on mobile
devices.
"The ValueTrack parameter has long allowed you to track the clicks that you get
via search and the Google Display Network separately,"
says Miles Johnson with Google's Inside AdWords crew. "We know that
many of you would like to be able to see the clicks you get from mobile ads
separately as well."
The new mobile version works the same way as the other, adding a tag to the
site's URL. To utilize the feature, advertisers can add the Mobile ValueTrack
parameter to the destination URL field, when creating a text ad.
Advertisers can use automatic re-directs to mobile optimized sites or
third-party tracking tags. "Note that non-Google-ads traffic to your site won’t
have the ValueTrack parameter, so it’s still a good idea to send all users to
your mobile-optimized site," says Johnson.
He goes into more detail about third-party tracking tags
here.
Mobile ValueTrack works for WAP mobile ads, as well as regular text and image
ads in iPhones and other mobile devices with full web browsers.
·
Google Launches New Image Search Ads
Google
began rolling out a new design for its image search today, and along
with that came a new ad format. The format is called (appropriately) Image
Search Ads.
"These ads appear only on Google Images, and they let you include a thumbnail
image alongside your lines of text,"
explains Google Images Product Manager Nate Smith. "we hope they’re a
useful way to reach folks who are specifically looking for images."
Advertisers can review specific performance metrics for their ads on Google
Images. They are priced the same as standard AdWords ads with cost-per-click
pricing.
Advertisers can create the ads using
Google's Display Ad Builder. They can use a template to pair relevant
ad text with targeted images.
To create an Image Search Ad, simply go to your AdWords account, select the
campaign or ad group where you want to create it, click the Ads tab, select
Display ad builder from the "new ad" drop-down menu, then select "templates for
search" and choose Image Search Ad.
Google recommends that advertisers create a new ad group so that they can target
keywords, adjust bids, and track performance for ads specifically on Google
Images.
Google said this week it is launching its broad match modifier tool for AdWords
globally after a successful beta test in the UK and Canada.
"The broad match modifier is a new AdWords targeting feature that lets you
create keywords which have greater reach than phrase match and more control than
broad match," writes Dan Friedman, on the
Inside AdWords blog.
"Adding modified broad match keywords to your campaign can help you get more clicks and conversions at an attractive ROI, especially if you mainly use exact and phrase match keywords today."
Friedman says if you mainly use broad match keywords, that changing your current
broad match keywords to modified broad match will probably lead to a hefty
decline in click and conversion volumes and will not improve quality score.
To remedy this Friedman writes "To maintain volume, keep existing broad match
keywords active, add new modified broad match keywords, and adjust bids to
achieve your target ROI based on the results you see."
There is a new
Keyword Diagnosis option in the Keywords tab in AdWords. This can
give advertisers detailed diagnostic info for multiple keywords at a time.
"Whether you have ten keywords or ten thousand, making sure your ads are showing
is a top priority,"
says Miles Johnson of Google's Inside AdWords crew.
To use the feature, simply select "Diagnose keywords" from the "More actions"
menu on the Keywords tab:
"After clicking 'Run test,' you'll see the real-time results appear in the
Status column next to each keyword," explains Johnson. "If all is well, you see
'Ad showing.' If not, you'll see a brief summary of the problem (for example,
'Low bid or quality score')."
Users can hover over speech bubble icons to get more details on the status of
any keyword. You may find more info on quality score issues, for example.
According to
the Wall Street Journal, YouTube is looking to launch skippable ads
in YouTube videos later in the year. Google reportedly talked about this in a
press conference at its "Real-time Bidding, Banner Ads, Google’s Newest Big
Business and Burgers" event.
WSJ quotes senior product manager Baljeet Singh as saying, users would be able
to skip pre-roll ads, that advertisers wouldn't be charged for skipped ads, and
that Google's "been playing around with it for the last three quarters and
seeing really great results." He reportedly said that this would encourage
advertisers to invest in compelling ads.
Meanwhile, Google is also testing more cost-per-action strategies. Pete Barlas
with Investor's Business Daily
says the company has stepped up testing in this area over the last
six months.
He quotes a Google spokesperson as saying, "As we are currently in the process
of collecting and analyzing data from this ongoing beta, we don't have any
metrics or much more to share on this topic at the moment."
Meanwhile, Google has certainly been making plenty of refinements to its cash
cow, AdWords. This week,
Google launched new Goals options, and has recently added the "
Analyze Competition " feature to the opportunities tab. They also
launched a new
click-to-call from Apps format, announced the
Google Display Network, some
changes to reporting, and the
availability of sitelinks in all AdWords campaigns.
Google has released three
new options for advertiser goals in the AdWords opportunities tab.
These are:
1. Maintain or Decrease Cost - Identify
ideas that might help you maintain or decrease your current spend.
2. Increase Traffic - Identify ideas
that can help you get more traffic at varying cost levels.
3. Balance Cost and Traffic - Review a
mix of ideas that are aimed at either increasing traffic or decreasing costs.
It has been a pretty busy month for the AdWords crew, it seems. The company
recently added the "
Analyze Competition " feature to the opportunities tab. They also
launched a new
click-to-call from Apps format, announced the
Google Display Network, some
changes to reporting, and the
availability of sitelinks in all AdWords campaigns.
·
Google Makes Sitelinks Available in All AdWords Campaigns
Google has launched Ad Sitelinks for all AdWords campaigns. The feature was made
available late last year for advertisers' top performing ads, but is now
available via a one-line format for all campaigns.
Google says advertisers who have used the format in the past have experienced
big gains, and have boosted clickthrough rates by over 30% (on average).
"When a user's query matches a keyword in your Ad Sitelinks-enabled campaign,
Google will automatically determine if your ad qualifies to show Ad Sitelinks
and whether to show the two-line or the one-line format based on the quality of
that ad,"
says Dan Friedman of Google's Inside AdWords Crew. "Ads that
currently qualify for the two-line format will not be affected by the addition
of the new one-line format."
"You should keep in mind that Ad Sitelinks is a campaign-level extension, so the
links you create should be relevant to any ad in that campaign," Friedman adds.
Advertisers can set up ad sitelinks for their campaigns by finding the option in
the Campaign Settings tab in their AdWords accounts. It's listed as "Show
additional links to my site" in the "Ad Extensions" section.
