Seasoned AdWords users know that to have successful campaigns you need to do more than simply set them up and let them run. To get the most out of your campaigns, you should consider optimization, today's (Ad)Word of the Day.
According to the AdWords Glossary, optimization is the process of modifying your ad campaigns to improve the quality and performance of your AdWords ads. This often involves changing the contents and settings of your campaigns and ad groups and editing your keyword lists and landing pages.
Optimization can be as simple as adding new keywords relevant to your campaign, or can be as involved as adjusting your CPC bids and rewriting your ad text. By optimizing your campaigns to improve your keyword Quality Scores, you can help lower your ad's costs without losing your position on a search results page.
If you'd like to learn more about optimization, here's a guide from our AdWords Help Center.
2008 is coming to a close, and we want to leave you with our favorite posts for 2008. The posts were chosen based on FrankRank, and represent the team's favorites over the last year.
Introducing Google Ad Planner
There was a ton of interest in the tool, and the post announcing it was the most read post here on Inside AdWords for the whole year.
Improvements to Ads Quality
This year, we made two big changes to how we calculate Quality Score and rank ads. This post explained the new changes in detail.
Keyword tool updated with search volume
A theme for this year's top posts is providing our advertisers with more information to make their advertising decisions. The keyword tool updates definitely fit in with this theme.
Groundhogs, Seasonality, and Trends
A fun post looking at how you could use Google Trends to plan your campaigns around seasonal traffic patterns.
Announcing the Search-based Keyword Tool
Another tool we released this year. The Search-based Keyword Tool helps you locate missed opportunities for advertising campaigns.
That's it for our top 10 for this year. We'll be off celebrating the holidays for the next two weeks, so you won't see any posts from us. We'll be back here blogging in January. Have a great holiday!
Announced by Trevor Claiborne, Inside AdWords crew
If you're not already using AdWords Editor, you can visit our website and click 'Download AdWords Editor' to get started. If you're an existing user, you'll see a prompt to upgrade to version 7.0 the next time you run the application.
Important: Existing AdWords Editor users will need to download their accounts again after upgrading to version 7.0. We've discovered an issue with the automatic upgrade feature (the 'Backup then Update' option in the upgrade prompt), so please refer to these special instructions to save comments and uposted changes when you upgrade.
If you'd like to wait to upgrade, you can click 'Don't Update' in the automatic update prompt.
To learn more about the benefits of using AdWords Editor to manage your ad campaigns offline, please refer to these frequently asked questions. Also, comprehensive instructions and tips are available in our Help Center.
Google recently announced the launch of AdWords display ad builder, and now we've made it more widely available and easier to use. Display ad builder is a tool that lets you create and customize display ads, allowing you to easily expand your AdWords campaigns beyond text advertising. We've had an overwhelmingly positive response from our advertisers so far, so we're happy to announce that the tool is now available to advertisers in the UK, Ireland, and a number of other countries.
In addition, based on your feedback, we made improvements to the display ad builder to enable greater customization and make building display ads even easier:
Image picker: You can now choose from previously uploaded images when creating your ads.
Real-time editing: See what your text and other customization edits look like, automatically -- without having to click the 'update preview' button.
Quicker way of seeing available ad sizes: You can see which sizes your ad can run in for each ad template without having to complete the ad creation process. You can also preview how your customization choices affect each size.
Additional templates: Choose from even more templates for customizing your ads.
Google think these improvements will help you more easily and efficiently create engaging display ads. As always, we welcome your suggestions on how we can improve the display ad builder.
Next week, we'll post best practices to help you build effective ads with the display ad builder. In the meantime, you can view our tutorial video or visit the display ad builder site to learn more.
We're always working on improvements that will help us show the most relevant ads to our searchers, and we're excited to tell you that we'll soon introduce two changes designed to enhance how we calculate Quality Score and rank ads. The first change helps better evaluate the precise quality of your ad - regardless of its position on the page. The second change improves how we promote ads to positions above the search results. Let's take a look at both of these changes in more detail.
More precise Quality Score calculation Clickthrough rate (CTR) is the most significant component of Quality Score because it directly indicates which ads are most relevant to our searchers. As you probably have observed, ads in high positions typically earn better CTR than those in low positions, because ads in high positions are more visible to searchers. To calculate the most accurate Quality Scores, it's important that the influence of ad position on CTR be taken into account and removed from the Quality Score.
In the coming days, we'll update the portion of the Quality Score algorithm that accounts for ad position. This will result in more accurate Quality Scores, ensure that ads compete fairly for position based on their quality and bid, and enable Google to show the most relevant ads to searchers by rewarding high-quality advertisers with better ad positions.
Higher quality ads above the search results
We're also improving the way we determine which ads show in the yellow region above the search results. These positions are particularly valuable to advertisers because they are prominently positioned on the page. Given their prominence, it's especially important that these ads be high quality; we therefore place extra emphasis on quality when determining which ads to show in this location.
To appear above the search results, ads must meet a certain quality threshold. In the past, if the ad with the highest Ad Rank did not meet the quality threshold, we may not have shown any ads above the search results. With this update, we'll allow an ad that meets the quality threshold to appear above the search results even if it has to jump over other ads to do so. For instance, suppose the ad in position 1 on the right side of the page doesn't have a high enough Quality Score to appear above the search results, but the ad in position 2 does. It's now possible for the number 2 ad to jump over the number 1 ad and appear above the search results. This change ensures that quality plays an even more important role in determining the ads that show in those prominent positions.
Keep in mind that these enhancements may cause changes to your ad position, spend, and performance. We're launching these updates soon so that you'll have enough time to review your accounts and prepare for your holiday season advertising. While we don't believe that any immediate changes are needed on your part, we encourage you, as always, to watch your key metrics and to make adjustments as appropriate.
One of our favorite and most useful posts from last year was an in-depth look at cost-per-click behavior during the 2006 holiday season by none other than Google's Chief Economist, Hal Varian. In the post Hal explained how CPC's and CPA's (cost-per-actions) vary over time to affect advertisers' ROI.
This year we have two new posts about CPC's and holiday trends over at the newly launched Google Retail Advertising Blog, a great source of information tailored to the needs of retail advertisers. Thefirst post is Hal's updated look at the new data from the 2007 holiday season. The second has some tips regarding scheduling and consumer behavior specifically for your campaigns this winter. Remember, it's never too early to start your holiday planning.
The AdWords Help Forum started posting weekly tips to help advertisers improve their campaigns. This got us thinking... why not share the love with our blog readers? In this spirit, we'll periodically share some of these tips and tricks with you, covering everything from new tools to optimization strategies.
Today, we'll start with unlocking the mystery behind why certain campaigns have low search traffic. First, it's helpful to understand the impression share of your ads. Impression share is a metric that represents the percentage of impressions your ad received out of the total available impressions in the market you're targeting. The Impression Share report, available through the Report Center, gives you insight into how you stack up against others in your industry, helping you make more effective changes to your campaigns and boost traffic.
With insight into potential traffic, you can make more informed decisions and get answers to question like:
Do I have room to expand in my targeted market?
Am I losing impressions due to low ad rank?
Am I losing impressions due to a low budget?
What's my impression share for the specific keywords I'm using?
Once you have an understanding of where you're missing out on potential traffic, the next step is improving your ads' impression share. So, before you start restructuring your whole account to increase traffic, get clued in by running an Impression Share report.
For many of you the fourth quarter is the busiest and biggest season, and in this economy analytics are more important than ever. With holiday traffic starting in November and peaking in early-December, now is the time to make sure your site is in the best shape to maximize holiday traffic and revenue.
To help you better analyze your campaign performance, optimize your web pages, and drive even more traffic to your e-commerce site during this crucial time, we'd like to share some tip and tools you can use in Analytics and other Google products.
Use the Analytics Funnel Visualization report to improve conversions
Learn how many shoppers drop out during each step of your shopping cart conversion process.
Then, work on the steps that lose the most customers.
Website Optimizer, our free testing tool, is a great way to improve those key pages.
Geo-target your AdWords campaigns through Analytics
Find out where your most profitable customers are coming from, and direct your advertising dollars to target customers in those areas.
Get data for region-specific keyword performance in your Analytics account.
Create more targeted AdWords campaigns by region. Watchthis video for a step-by-step demo.
Submit your products to Google Product Search
Google Product Search enables shoppers to search for and find products to buy online, and enables you to submit your products for free and target users shopping on Google. Google Product Search is currently available to merchants in the U.S., U.K., and Germany.
If you've never used Google Product Search, you can start submitting your products using feeds you've already prepared for other shopping engines.
Visit our Google page on holiday success to see a full list of tips. We hope these tips and tools help you make the most of your holiday season!
Google Analytics is full of insights that can benefit your AdWords account, and your business. To help you make the most of this information, we've started an introductory video series called “Google Analytics in 60 Seconds.” The first two videos explain two easy ways to refine your targeting. You can find them below and as part of the Google Analytics Conversion University playlist.
Location, Location, Location
Now, you no longer are flying blind when you target your campaign by location in AdWords. Use the Map Overlay report and location data within Analytics to see, geographically, where your visitors are coming from – or where they aren’t coming from. You can then use this information to refine your AdWords marketing with location-targeted campaigns to build your business.
Note: You can also use the recently launched Geographic Performance report within AdWords to see similar information, but it currently does not have a visual component nor includes some of the metrics available in Analytics, such as time on site and bounce rate. Improve Your Placement Targeting
The Google content network is the largest contextual advertising network in the world, comprised of high-quality websites, news pages, and blogs that partner with Google to display targeted AdWords ads. And within AdWords, you can hand-pick which sites you'd like your ads to run on by creating a placement-targeted campaign. But how do you know which sites to pick? If you knew which sites were already sending you high value traffic, why not run your ads on these sites? This video will show you how to use Google Analytics to identify the best sites by using the Referring Sites report.
More to come!
There are a number of easy and effective ways to use Google Analytics with AdWords – whether you want to identify the best keywords, save money on bidding, expand your business or refine your campaigns – and we’ll post more of these videos soon!
The Internet has had an enormous impact on people's lives around the world in the ten years since Google's founding. It has changed politics, entertainment, culture, business, health care, the environment and just about every other topic you can think of. Which got us to thinking, what's going to happen in the next ten years? How will this phenomenal technology evolve, how will we adapt, and (more importantly) how will it adapt to us? We asked ten of our top experts this very question, and during September (our 10th anniversary month) we are presenting their responses. As computer scientist Alan Kay has famously observed, the best way to predict the future is to invent it, so we will be doing our best to make good on our experts' words every day. - Karen Wickre and Alan Eagle, series editors
Google's advertising business was founded on the core principle that advertising should deliver the right information to the right person at the right time. This is very similar to our mission in search, and, like our colleagues in search, those of us on the ads team are constantly striving to achieve better results. We have hundreds of thousands of advertisers who collectively have millions of products and services, and out of that vast amount of information our goal is always to show people the best ads, the ones that are the most relevant, timely, and useful (and, from the advertiser perspective, measurable). Achieving this ideal has been difficult since the early days of ads, but now, with the Internet, it is within reach.
What does it take to do this? We need to understand exactly what people are looking for, then give them exactly the information they want. Timing is an important component. For example, when a person is looking for a specific item (like those table lamps I got a couple of weeks ago), the best ads will give more specific information, like where to buy the item online and locally, along with other relevant information such as style, size, availability, and pricing. Regardless of the timing, the best ads might include images, videos, or other formats about products and services to provide the most relevant information to people to make their purchasing decision.
In other cases, ads can help you learn about something you didn’t know you wanted. For instance, a few weeks ago I was researching roller coasters for my son when I saw a great text ad for software that actually lets you design your own roller coaster! It turned out to be the perfect gift (and I now have a budding roller coaster engineer in my house). So in this case, I was doing some basic research, and the ad helped me discover something I didn't know existed.
As we look forward, one way to make ads better would be to customize them based on factors like a person's location or preferences. If you're in a particular neighborhood using your mobile phone to look for a specific type of restaurant or shop, ads from local vendors are likely to be very useful to you.
Finally, it is very important that anyone be able to advertise. People benefit when they see ads from any type of business or organization regardless of its size or geography. The right product for a user might be from a company they had previously never heard of, so it needs to be very easy and quick for anyone to create good ads, to show them only to people for whom they are useful, and to measure how effective they are.
In Marissa's post on Wednesday, she talked about how the science of search is still in its infancy, and how we still have many breakthroughs before us. The same applies to advertising. In coming years, as people find new ways to use the Internet and new devices with which to access it, we have the opportunity to get even smarter about the ads we show. As always, we will use the best and most innovative technologies available so we serve relevant ads for you. We will do so in a way that safeguards user privacy by honoring our commitment to transparency and choice. And most importantly, we will continue to live by the philosophy that has guided our work from the outset: getting the right ad to the right person at the right time matters.
Announced by Susan Wojcicki, VP, Product Management
URL redirects are like Angel in this respect; they start off as one thing and end up as something else. In the process, Adwords auto-tagging (the "gclid") frequently gets "slain". Let's look at how we can address the resulting reporting problems.
First, a quick review of the back story.
Adwords auto-tagging makes it possible for you to see Adwords information in your Google Analytics reports without manually tagging each keyword. You simply enable auto-tagging in your Adwords account. The auto-tagging option is located on the My Account tab, on the Account Preferences page (click image to enlarge):
If you select this option, Adwords automatically appends a "gclid" parameter to your destination URLs:
www.example.com/?gclid=123xyz
If you already have query parameters in your URL, it will look something like this:
www.example.com/?param=a&gclid=123xyz
(Note that in the first example, "gclid" is preceded by a "?" and in the second example, it is preceded by a "&". Remember this distinction because it will be important later on.)
What if you're also using a third-party tracking system such as DoubleClick, or your destination URL redirects to a second or even third URL before Adwords users arrive on your site? Will the gclid be retained or get slain?
That depends on the tracking system or behavior of your redirects. This is a very important question to address before you enable auto-tagging.
Some redirects strip the gclid. While Google Analytics still records the visit and the subsequent user activity, it doesn't have the information necessary to properly attribute the visit to your Google ad. As a result, some of this traffic will be included in the "direct" category while other visits may show up as "not set". Furthermore, your Adwords Campaigns report in Google Analytics may show cost metrics, but your visits columns may show zeros (click image to enlarge) Ugh! Can you prevent this from happening?
Absolutely! Performing a simple test before you enable auto-tagging will ensure that you receive valuable information on your Google campaign performance. Here are the steps for two URL scenarios:
Scenario 1 If your destination URL has no query parameters and looks something like this: www.i_will_redirect_you.com/:
Paste this URL in your browser's address bar, but before you press Enter, append "?gclid=test" to the end, like this: www.i_will_redirect_you.com/?gclid=test.
Now press Enter.
If the gclid is present on the final landing page URL, you're golden. If not, keep reading to learn about your alternatives.
Scenario 2 If your destination URL already has query parameters and looks something like this: www.i_will_redirect_you.com/?param=a¶m2=b:
Paste this URL in your browser's address bar and before pressing Enter, append "&gclid=test" to the end, like this: www.i_will_redirect_you.com/?param=a¶m2=b&gclid=test.
(This is why the "?" and the "&" distinction were important to note earlier. It's a matter of URL syntax. Luckily, auto-tagging knows the difference.)
Press Enter.
If the gclid is still there, you're in good shape, and need only to enable auto-tagging. If not, what are your options? Read on.
If the gclid is not retained during your test, you're not out of luck. Here are a couple of suggestions:
Suggestion 1. Ask your friendly admins or third-party contact to please configure their servers to pass the gclid. If you're not sure what this means, don't worry, your server admin does. It's like repeating something in a foreign language you don't speak. If your pronunciation is good, a native speaker will understand you and all will be perfecto!
Suggestion 2. If suggestion 1 isn't possible, you'll need to manually tag your destination URLs instead of enabling auto-tagging. (This is one of the very few circumstances in which you should manually tag destination URLs in AdWords.)
The best way to get started with manual tagging is to use the online URL Builder. You'll need to fill in your landing page URL and fill in the campaign name, source, medium, and term (keyword). Then, press "Generate URL" and you'll have a URL that will correctly report campaign information to Google Analytics.
You probably already know how to use this tool based on an earlier post we made, but here is an example followed by step-by-step instructions on a recommended way to use i:
Step 1. Put the final landing page URL in the Website URL field. The reasoning behind this is that since the gclid is stripped by the redirects, the manual tags will most likely be stripped as well. In our example above, www.example.com is the URL to which Adwords users are redirected.
Step 2. Fill in each of the additional fields as follows:
Campaign Source: "google" in lower case
Campaign Medium: "cpc" for cost-per-click campaigns or "cpm" for our cost-per-impression campaign model
Campaign Term: fill in your AdWords keyword
Campaign Content: if tagging your keywords individually, leave this field BLANK. If you're only tracking Google ad unit performance, as in the case of running a campaign that is running exclusively on our content network, fill in an ad unit identifier, such as a text ad's headline or the name you've given your display ads.
Campaign Name: this is the name of the campaign you've set up in the Google ad system. Assuming you've linked your Google Analytics and Adwords accounts, it is important to type in the campaign name exactly as it appears in our ad system. Otherwise, the Clicks tab of the Adwords Campaigns report in Google Analytics will have multiple entries for the same campaign. Cost information such as impressions and clicks will be listed next to the campaigns that are running in our ad system, while visit information will be listed next to the campaign names you've typed into the URL Builder, and that would just be confusing!
When you generate the URL, you will end up with something like this, personalized with your keyword and campaign, etc.:
Once a person clicks on an ad and finishes her journey through the land of redirects, she'll see the URL above in their address bar. Also, in the case of third-party redirects, this is the URL you'll want to send to your vendor to convert into tracking tags.
If you're running a campaign with many keywords, here's a helpful tip: Only use the URL Builder for the first URL. Then, use Excel's handy "concatenation" function to create an Excel worksheet that generates the rest automatically.
Even if your campaigns are free of redirects, it's still a good idea to test for auto-tagging compatibility before enabling it. You may still need to have that cryptic conversation with your server admins about "configuring the server to pass the gclid." In any case, never use auto-tagging and manual tagging in the same Adwords account. Even though your users won't be affected, your Google Analytics reports will not be accurate and you'll spend more time trying to make sense of the numbers than optimizing your Google campaigns.
Google Analytics has been re-designed to help you learn even more about where your visitors come from and how they interact with your site.
Discover. Share. Act.
The new Google Analytics makes it easy to improve your results online. Write better ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives, and create higher-converting websites. Google Analytics is free to all advertisers, publishers, and site owners.
Test your website and increase conversions.
You can now use your Google Analytics login to access Website Optimizer. Find out which page designs, headlines, and graphics convert the most visitors.
Google Analytics offers a host of compelling features and benefits for everyone from senior executives and advertising and marketing professionals to site owners and content developers.
Fast Implementation
Paste the Google Analytics tracking code into each of your website pages and tracking begins immediately.
Keyword and Campaign Comparison
Track and compare all your ads, email newsletters, affiliate campaigns, referrals, paid links, and keywords on Google and other search engines.
Custom Dashboards
No more digging through reports. Put all the information you need on a custom Dashboard that you can email to others.
AdWords Integration
Buy keywords on Google AdWords and use Google Analytics to learn which keywords are most profitable to your business.
Internal Site Search
Find out how your visitors search your site, what they look for, and where they end up.
Benchmarking
Find out whether your site usage metrics underperform or outperform those of your industry vertical. Opt-in benchmarking compares your key metrics against aggregate performance metrics while preserving the confidentiality of your data.
Trend and Date Slider
Compare time periods and select date ranges without losing sight of long term trends.
Ecommerce Tracking
Trace transactions to campaigns and keywords, get loyalty and latency metrics, and identify your revenue sources.
Funnel Visualization
Find out which pages result in lost conversions and where your would-be customers go.
Site Overlay
See traffic and conversion information for every link as you browse your site. (no download required).
Email reports
Schedule or send ad-hoc personalized report emails that contain exactly the information you want to share.
GeoTargeting
Find out where your visitors come from and identify your most lucrative geographic markets.
Google Analytics helps you find out what keywords attract your most desirable prospects, what advertising copy pulled the most responses, and what landing pages and content make the most money for you.
Free.
Spend on marketing, not on web analytics.
Sophisticated Analytics.
Google Analytics has all the features you'd expect from a high-end analytics offering. It also provides tightly integrated AdWords support, so you can view AdWords ROI metrics without having to import cost data or add keyword tracking codes.
Easy to use.
Google Analytics is easy to use for novice marketers, while delivering all of the capabilities that experienced web analytics professionals expect.
Scalable for any size site.
Google Analytics is a hosted service that runs on the same servers that power Google. From large, high-traffic corporate sites to small sites, Google Analytics delivers consistent service.
Integrated with AdWords.
If you have an AdWords account, you can use Google Analytics directly from the AdWords interface. Google Analytics also calculates ROI metrics from automatically imported cost and keyword tracking data, saving you time.
Tracks all campaigns.
Google Analytics tracks all online campaigns, from emails to keywords, regardless of search engine or referral source.
Safe.
Google takes the trust people place in us very seriously, and is pledged to safeguard the privacy of your corporate data. We understand that web analytics data is sensitive information, so we accord it the ironclad protection it deserves.
As with its technology, Google has chosen to ignore conventional wisdom in designing its business. The company started with seed money from angel investors and brought together two competing venture capital firms to fund its first equity round. While the dotcom boom exploded around it and competitors spent millions on marketing campaigns to "build brand," Google focused instead on quietly building a better search engine.
The word quickly spread from one satisfied user to another. With superior search technology and a high volume of traffic at its Google.com site, Google's managers identified two initial opportunities for generating revenue: search services and advertising.
Google grows and business blooms
Over time, these two business lines evolved into complementary networks. Google AdWords advertisers create ads to drive qualified traffic to their sites and generate leads. Google publishing partners deliver those ads targeted to relevant search results powered by Google AdSense. With AdSense, the publisher shares in the revenue generated when readers click on the ads.
For sites wishing to have more control over their intranet or site searches, Google developed the Google Search Appliance, a scalable and secure appliance that delivers accurate search results across any number of documents.
Google continues to think about ways in which technology can improve upon existing ways of doing business. New areas are explored, ideas prototyped and budding services nurtured to make them more useful to advertisers and publishers. However, no matter how distant Google's business model grows from its origins, the root remains providing useful and relevant information to those who are the most important part of the ecosystem – the millions of individuals around the world who rely on Google search to provide the answers they are seeking.
Google AdWords for Advertisers Google designed AdWords for advertisers who want to reach a qualified audience as efficiently as possible. Advertisers select their own target keywords and only pay when customers click on their ads. It's easy to create ad text and manage online advertising accounts with no large upfront payment required. All that's needed is five minutes and a credit card. The ads appear across Google's growing roster of partners, including thousands of sites from America Online to the Washington Post, and are targeted to relevant search and content pages.
Google's experienced sales and service team optimize campaigns for our larger advertisers. Our staff of AdWords experts work with advertisers to select the appropriate keywords and generate the matching creative, then carefully monitor the campaign to improve its performance over time by winnowing keywords and rewriting copy based on what is most effective. There's no limit to the number of keywords that an advertiser can select and each keyword can be matched with a different creative execution. Recent advertisers include Amazon, Cisco Systems and Staples.
Google provides all of its advertisers with a full complement of reporting services to enable fine tuning of campaigns and real-time intelligence about which components are performing best. Advertisers can further increase efficiencies by targeting their campaigns to specific geographies or languages.
Google believes relevant advertising can be as useful as search results or other forms of content. And that advertising can enhance the experience for visitors to a publisher's website, while helping publishers recover some of their investment in creating content of value. Google AdSense™ combines Google Search technology with our base of keyword advertisers to deliver ads that precisely target search results or the content on a site's pages, no matter how specialized the subject matter. Advertisers, publishers, and information seekers all profit as a result.
Signing up for AdSense is easy -- it only takes a few minutes to apply. And our sales team helps customize the program for sites receiving more than 20 million page views a month.
AdSense serves relevant ads on content pages search result and content pages as well as dormant domain pages.Google Search Services enable publishers to provide Google web search on their own pages – results that can be used to generate revenue with the AdSense for Search program The Google Search Appliance, a scalable and secure device that provides Google quality search across an individual website or intranet.
Google Wireless Services deliver Google search results via PDAs, wireless phones and other mobile devices powered by many of the world's leading wireless service providers.
