Sitelinks

Sitelinks are the additional links (between two and ten, but typically three or four) that go under the main ad text. They can either be used to link to different sections of the website, allowing users to choose the most relevant content for themselves, or they can just be used to include a few extra USPs, in which case, they’d probably all have the same landing page URLs.

Suitable for: Everyone. They’re extremely quick and easy to set up, though only eligible to show for ads that appear above the organic search results & that satisfy Google’s (vague) quality requirements.

Embedded sitelinks – for ads not eligible to show full sitelinks (perhaps because the quality score is not good enough), embedded sitelinks allow advertisers to include an additional link within their ad, which still helps them to stand out from standard ads:

Enhanced sitelinks (currently US only) – massively increase an ad’s prominence by expanding sitelinks into full ads. Given the amount of space these take up, it’s likely that they will only be seen for ads with the very highest CTRs and quality scores, such as an advertiser’s own brand ads.

Local ad extensions

Depending on ad quality and placement, local ad extensions differ in appearance, sometimes just with the addition of your address and phone number, or more impressively with an expandable map, which really dominates the search results.

Note that this extension type will only appear to customers near your targeted location, or with location-specific terms included in searches, such as ‘restaurants in leeds’.

Suitable for: advertisers relying on local custom will find this ideal, those who have the goal of increasing footfall to their place of business.

Phone extensions

Phone extensions – only visible on smartphones – enable people to directly contact an advertiser by clicking the number below the ad.

Suitable for:  businesses such as local restaurants, or indeed any advertisers interested in lead generation.

Mobile app extensions

Another mobile-specific extension – and a rather new one – these appear similar to a sitelink, but unlike sitelink landing pages (which must match the domain of the main ad) mobile app extensions can take users to either the iTunes App Store or to the Google Play Store in the case of Android apps.

Suitable for:  advertisers with the goal of increasing app downloads

I hope you found that useful. Look out for part two, which will be coming shortly, to find out about some more of the new extensions available. In the mean time, what are your thoughts and experiences of the ones I’ve discussed so far?

This allows Google to bring the analytical advantage of paid search advertising to video content by applying the same bidding model. In addition the change will enable advertisers to demographically target users on YouTube.

Within the Adwords for Video reporting interface you will be able to see who’s viewing your video, how long they’re watching your videos, and what actions they made after watching your video e.g. selected ‘like’ your video.  In addition you will be able to see what videos users watched on your YouTube channel after arriving via a video ad; therefore showing the follow on viewership. You can also see how many further free views to your channel that advertising can generate by using the Downstream Analytics tool.

In order to link your YouTube & Adwords accounts you need to select ‘Link YouTube account’. Then enter your Google account email address and password associated with your YouTube account.

Adwords for video allows you to buy TrueView ads; by using TrueView you pick the audience you want your video to reach and only pay when those viewers choose to watch your video. Furthermore you only pay when a user watches your entire video ad (instead of clicking the skip button in the first 30 seconds or before the end your ad).

TrueView ads can appear in four types of format:

• In-stream: pre-roll to other videos
• In-search: in search results
• In-slate: at the end of other videos
• In-display: in the related videos section

These determine where you want your ads to appear on YouTube and the Google Display Network.

In order to set up a video ad you just need to follow the simple steps listed below:

1. Firstly create your campaign name, then select your location and language targeting.
2. Next create an ad by selecting a video already within your YouTube account. You can search for a video by channel or keyword (if you know the title of your video), or by video URL (if the video is unlisted). Select a video by clicking anywhere in the row.
3. Then you will see the network and format selector. The default setting is to run on all four TrueView formats (listed above) and all networks that they’re eligible to run on; therefore maximising the reach of the campaign. You can opt out of individual formats by clicking ‘let me choose’.
4. Next you will need to define your ad attributes: create your headline, description, select one of four thumbnails, define the website where you want to take the users once they click, and then create a meaningful name for the ad.
5. Select save and continue to targeting.
6. Targeting: Name ad group (for example all over 21), define max cost per view, define demographics such as gender and age and then you can further enhance targeting by defining the below demographics:

• Interest/Topic Targeting – This allows you to target users based on their interests and topics that they like.  Interest/topic targeting is now likely to have a broader reach now that Google’s privacy policy is now applicable to YouTube.
• Keyword targeting – target users based on their search queries
• Remarketing lists – target select users that you have included in your list e.g. all those that have landed on the homepage of your website.
• Placements – target particular websites on the Google Display Network

7. In addition if you are unsure which targeting to select you can also ask Google to search for targeting suggestions.
8. Next click save and enable targeting.

Best Practice

Video ads are most suitable for products/services that cannot easily be described by text, such as the make and model of a TV, but instead need sight, sound and motion to fully communicate their value.

To keep costs down you should make your ad as a teaser for you YouTube channel by highlighting the interesting content you have on your channel; therefore generating more downstream clicks on your channel.

When creating your video think about which TrueView format and placements you would like to us; for example In-Search ads might suit longer and more informational content whereas in-stream ads might need to be much shorter and instantaneously engaging.

In order to decrease your bids focus on increasing your view rate (like you would focus on click through rate in search) by enhancing user engagement by optimising; placements, ad timing and demographics.

Have you used video ads? If so, let me know your thoughts below.

Previously, with exact match, your ad only showed if the exact term was searched for. This is going to change. Google has announced that it is going to allow your ads to show for close variations of a keyword, even on exact match. This means that although you are bidding on a keyword with exact match, your advert could show for other variants of this exact term. Adwords has defined what it determines as close variants below:

           close variants include misspellings, singular and plural forms, acronyms, stemmings (such as floor and flooring), abbreviations, and accents

This could be good news as it means your ads should show for relevant variations of your keywords, such as plurals and misspellings, and this could result in more good traffic. It has been reported that a huge number of searches contain misspellings which means that advertisers could pick up highly relevant traffic they previously would not have.

However, it will be interesting to see how this change works in practice and if it matches to any irrelevant search terms or high-volume terms that were not included in the account for a reason. Also, having less control over plurals is slightly disconcerting. If the plural has a huge amount of volume then this could transform the performance of a keyword quite dramatically.

This change does mean that when managing a PPC account there needs to be more checks about what terms your ads are actually showing for. Below are some examples of what keywords will start picking up traffic for when the change occurs.

This is quite a large change to make from Google, as previously advertisers could be confident in the knowledge that their ads were showing for an exact term only if they set their keywords to exact match. In some accounts there will be a plural keyword separated from the singular term into a different ad group due to them performing very differently. This will make it even more important than it already is to use negative keywords in future to ensure there is no crossover and you have full control over the keywords in the account.

An important question we need to think about is: will a search query report show the alternative variations that an exact match term has shown ads for or will it just show the data for the exact term as it does now? According to Adwords the answer is that we will be able to see the actual search terms used! The match type will appear against the search queries in the report and they will be called Exact match (close variants) and Phrase match (close variants). This change makes it more important than ever to check search query reports for any irrelevant terms your ads may be showing for.

This match-type change could affect performance in Adwords accounts quite significantly, depending on its current set up. It is important to keep note of when the change is happening and monitor any changes in your results.

The good news is that you can opt out of this change if you feel it is for the best; if it has any negative effect on the performance of your account then you can simply change the settings. Within the campaign settings, in the advanced settings section, you can choose to “not include close variant” and so this change will not affect you. Not surprisingly, Google has opted existing campaigns to default to include the new changes.

What are your thoughts on this Google announcement? Leave me a comment below.

• City: {lb.city:London}
• Postal code: {lb.postalCode:E3 LON}
• Phone number: {lb.telephone:02000 000000}

How Dynamic Location Insertion Works:

Google works out the searcher’s location (using ip address/search intent) and crosschecks this against a pre-defined list of all your business locations. If one matches, and you have the adverts set up correctly, the nearest business location is drawn into the advert and shown to the searcher.

The location insertion parameters work in a very similar way to the keyword insertion, so most advertisers will already be familiar with the structure.

For example, you could write this advert with location specific parameters:

Trainers in {lb.city:London}
Nike and Adidas Trainers!
Call {lb.telephone: 02000 000000} to order
www.trainers.com/{lb.city:London}

If you have set up a store – e.g. St Albans – in your Places account, and if someone from St Albans is searching for trainers and the advert shows, it should look like this:

Trainers in St Albans
Nike and Adidas Trainers!
Call 02000 123456 to order
www.trainers.com/StAlbans

If someone searches for trainers in a location where you don’t have a store, they see the generic London advert:

Trainers in London
Nike and Adidas Trainers!
Call 02000 000000 to order
www.trainers.com/London

How to Implement Dynamic Location Insertion:

There is a short process to go through to enable this in your account, so here’s the quickest way to do it:

1)      Enable location extensions – you can either link Adwords directly to a Google places account and draw all your pre-defined business addresses into Adwords in one go, or manually add each business location in Adwords. If you don’t have one, I would advise setting up a Places account as it helps with organic listings too and is reusable.

2)      Build your dynamic adverts – using the three parameters above. The same rules apply as for dynamic keyword insertion, i.e. don’t make the resulting advert so long that it won’t show up.

3)      Filtering

If a Google Places account has a lot of business locations, you need to use filters to ensure only the relevant addresses show.

For example:

You have a range of stores, but they don’t all sell the same things, i.e. if you sold trainers & clothes in most stores, but some of your stores only sold clothes. This involves a bit more set-up time, but it’s the only way to ensure the campaign runs properly. Create separate campaigns for the categories – continuing the example above, we will have trainers and clothing as two separate campaigns.

In the trainers campaign:

Check the filter box in the advert extensions and use the category filter. This should reflect the categories you have set up in Google Places.

This will ensure that only stores tagged as having trainers are able to show in your advert!

Get in touch with your thoughts on this, or leave a comment below.

So, if you have not used PLAs, can you start to use them profitably? And if you are currently running them, what changes could you make to increase profitability?

Firstly, for an overview of PLAs, see the screenshot below and also this earlier post from my colleague, who explains what they are and how she saw some great initial results from these. If you need help on initially setting up a Merchant Center feed to become eligible to show these, there are some great posts out there and a lot of in-depth info on Google Merchant Center help.

So, how to profit? A lot of early suggestions were that you throw all of your products at PLAs and let Google serve them up. Then when people click, they may buy, but you don’t pay if they don’t. But, are you losing value by throwing all of your stock at this?

Consider the following PLAs served up for the search term ‘Proform 300 Zlx Bike Exercise Bike’.

This is a very long-tail search term so, as expected, it is the same product from different retailers in each ad. Given that the price Best Gym Equipment (2^nd ad) is offering is 60% higher than the one quoted by Treadmill Fitness it could be that they are wasting time and money advertising in this way.

Now, consider the more generic search term ‘exercise bike’.

Now suddenly there is a huge difference in the products and, more importantly, prices on offer. With this generic term you have an option of what product to serve up and it looks as though GymWorld.co.uk could be taking the wrong approach.

Probably through a lack of targeting they are serving up a bike at £449, some four and a half times more expensive than the £100 model Amazon have listed. Yet Gymworld.co.uk do offer a bike at £120 which would at least be comparable to the competition in this auction and have a much greater chance of earning them a click.

So, a couple of things to think about for your product listing ads campaign:

• Do you have any items where you are guaranteed to be lower priced than your competition? If so, it may be worth giving them their own labels in your merchant account and bidding higher on these.

• Consider giving your cheapest products in each category a unique label and create a separate ad group to bid higher on these. Even if you are not the cheapest on the market, serving up your lowest priced products instead of a more premium alternative may earn you more clicks on generic search terms.

Of course, your campaign should still be optimised using the same logic as normal search campaigns – i.e. do not pay more for a click than they are worth to you. You may find though that giving special attention to your most competitive products can show more value from each click and allow you to bid more.

I’d love to hear some targeting strategies anyone has implemented with PLAs, so leave a comment.

Malcolm Slade: The new formula for search

It’s the most exciting time to be involved in search marketing. This session explored how successful SEO campaigns should comprise of a unique blend of data analysis and creativity, bringing online PR and content marketing firmly into the equation in order to improve and future proof search visibility.

Chris Rowett: Elements of paid search

An investigation into the science of paid search. We broke down the essential elements that you need to get right to build a successful PPC strategy. This session picked out some of the common problems to look for in your account and gave delegates a host of quick wins to put into practice.

Dan Peden: Search centric brands; the future shape of digital marketing

Search offers marketers a uniquely measurable tool yet 74% of the UK’s top 100 brands by advertising spend say it’s only partially or not at all integrated within their wider marketing mix (IAB). This session explored how search marketers need to pioneer a multidisciplinary approach to digital, applying the fundamentals of SEO to a broader set of marketing skills.

Gareth Battersby: How I learned to stop worrying and love SEO

A personal journey from the perspective of a designer on the impact that creativity can have on brands’ visibility and the future of search marketing. This session explored the role that designers and creatives play within search marketing strategies.

As you can imagine it can be very easy to get lost in the data and lose sight of the overall objective. For this reason PPC analysts should try to create a zen-like state of focus before analysing data to increase performance and speed. There are two methods which will greatly enhance your performance:

Set Specific Goals

First, before viewing any data, decide what your objectives are. For example what exactly do you want to achieve from analysing the data within a report? You need to go beyond wanting to improve the performance of a campaign and you need to be more specific. The more detailed the goal the more likely you are to be successful. At least three things need to be addressed: what needs to improved, why, and what methods are you going to use to achieve this? For example:

• What needs to be improved – Cost Per Acquisition
• Why – It is above the client’s goal of £20
• What methods – I will analyse the account to identify which Ad Groups have high CPA’s and find the reasons why by analysing the keywords and cost per clicks.

Construct a Hypothesis

Next you need to construct a hypothesis: a proposition or set of propositions made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation. As an example, your goal could be you want to decrease your CPA below the goal of £30. Therefore, you will want to run reports and highlight campaigns with high CPA’s to identify any issues. This will then allow you to identify which Ad Groups and keywords are hindering your performance. Then you should make the necessary adjustments in order to lower the CPA below the goal within one week.

The hypothesis for the above goal could be the increase in CPA has occurred as a result of your average CPC continuing to rise due to increased competition and there are keywords that are driving up costs but not converting.

By following the above steps you will not only have a specific goal but an initial hypothesis for guidance before you start investigating. This will not only decrease how much time you spend developing a plan but also improve the performance of your account in less time. This plan will prevent you getting lost in a sea of statistics and help you return to a zen-like state.

Any other methods to maintain focused are welcomed here! Please leave them below!

Why is this happening?

Google is possibly trying to create a better environment for both advertisers and searchers.

• Searchers get higher quality adverts
• Advertisers that aren’t giving the searchers what they want are banished. Leaving the Ad space open for the more targeted, better structured campaigns from rivals.

This is a clever move by Google to give more power to the user to review websites. Combined with the whole +1 appearing on adverts, it creates a carrot and stick approach. You get +1 points if you are good and you get blocked if you are bad.

What to do as an advertiser?

These changes will reward better account structure. As long as your website is fairly high quality, all you need to do is follow the best practice guidelines and focus on being as relevant as possible.

Apparently not all users have this option in their search results, so it appears to only be a limited roll out at the moment.

There is no word from Google on the potential impacts of this, but I wouldn’t be surprised that if the user rating becomes a solid measure of quality, it would be integrated into the quality score metric.

What are your thoughts? Leave them below or on Twitter - @matt_buckley

As part of the changes, the calculations of impression share data will now only update once per day and unfortunately for those who live by GMT or similar, these once per day updates take place at noon Pacific Time (GMT-8). So that means our campaigns will not show impression share data for yesterday until 8pm today. This is probably too late to make bid or budget changes based on this info.

OK so to get an estimate, which is sensible, I would suggest that there are two things we need.

Firstly, we need some sort of model which represents a ‘typical’ distribution of impressions throughout the day for the account. To do this, grab some top level impressions’ data for your account and segment this by hour of the day. Then find the percentage of impressions each hour that contributes to the daily total. We should also add the cumulative total percentage for reasons which will become apparent later in the calculation.

Bear this in mind: the longer the date range is that you pull this data from, the more accurate model you are likely to get. However, you should ensure this data is ‘typical’ in that it was with the same budget and has no changes which would affect impressions, such as major keyword changes.

Next we need to collect the impression data for the day that you are trying to calculate, remember to segment by hour of day. Now, if we have significant lost impression share, the later rows may be blank. Let’s compare:

So we can see that the budget ran out a little after 10pm. For the calculation, I’m going to assume it ran out at 10pm and ignore the 1,699 impressions after this.

So to calculate, I’m going to sum the impressions received up to 10pm which is 105,094. Using our distribution model we can estimate that this relates to 91.5% of impressions we receive in a day and so, to calculate 100% of impressions, divide our total by 91.5 and multiply by 100.

(105,094 / 91.5) * 100 = 114,857

And finally, to get to get a lost impression percentage:

(114,857 – 105,094) / 114,857 = 8.5% lost impressions share.

There are a few things to bear in mind if you are going to do your own calculations this way:

• It will only work if your campaign delivery method is set to accelerate, and was set to accelerate for the duration from which you take your impressions model data.

• The validity of any result is very dependent on the quality of your impression distribution data.

• If you have campaigns that perform differently, produce a different model for each campaign.

• If you have days of the week which perform differently, produce different models for each day.

Have the changes to the impression share data affected your campaigns? Leave a comment to let me know.

This structure is typical for large organisations, those with multiple sites or fixed budgets.

You can very easily apply for an MDS (manager defined spend) account with Google Adwords, which is an MCC with invoicing that can pay for accounts that are placed inside it.  This is extremely useful as you will be billed just 1 invoice.

First create an MCC here:  http://www.google.com/intl/en/adwords/myclientcenter/  Then phone Google support to apply for invoicing terms.

The ideal structure then looks like this:

So you can now assign a budget to each account, and add/remove accounts as you see fit without having to setup any billing.  The billing is all controlled at the top MDS level.

You can even grant access at each level, so you can allow a client to just see Account 3 if they are not involved in Accounts 1 & 2.

What are your experiences and thoughts about this? You can leave me a comment below.

1)    Get the latest version of adCenter desktop (v8.2 or later). Previous versions had a character limit of 70 which caused problems when attempting to import AdWords ads with two thirty-five characters, as adCenter inserts an extra space between the two, causing errors. The latest version helpfully allows you to have 71 character ads.

2)    Export (as a CSV file) the campaigns required from AdWords Editor. Open up the file in Excel as it’s much easier to make any required changes at this stage rather than after importing into adCenter.

3)    Keyword match types should automatically map to the correct types in adCenter, except it won’t recognise modified-broad matches, so if you have any in AdWords either remove the plus-signs, or scrap these keywords altogether if you don’t want to go ‘fully’ broad.

4)    Delete any paused adgroups / keywords / ad texts etc – not a strictly necessary step but there’s no point uploading content that isn’t needed and will just slow down the upload.

5)    I also delete the rows relating to AdWords sitelinks – this step shouldn’t necessarily be required either, but I’ve run into problems here in the past so now I err on the cautious side and scrap them just in case.

6)    If required, add any URL tagging that is necessary for tracking purposes – for me this will usually be Google Analytics tracking parameters. Without adding these manually, your adCenter traffic will just show up in Analytics as organic traffic from Bing.

As a minimum I’d use the utm_medium and utm_source parameters but there are also a few useful adCenter query string parameters available to choose from, the most useful ones being {OrderItemId}, which outputs the keyword that was triggered, and {QueryString}, which gives the actual typed search phrase.

So a tagged-up example URL will look something like this:

http://myurl.com/?utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term={QueryString}&utm_campaign=campaign1

Google’s URL builder can help with this.

7)    Save as a comma-delimited CSV file and import into adCenter using the ‘Import from Google’ option:

8)    Double-check adgroup and campaign settings and targeting to ensure everything has been imported correctly.

9)    Upload!

Have I missed anything? Does anybody else have any tips for importing campaigns without errors? Let me know below.

Website testing regularly causes tracking issues and contained below are three basic checks as soon as any new test goes live:

(Assuming website test went live on = www.mywebsite.co.uk/test)

1. Is your site listed under the referrals section within analytics?

Yes – Since Implementing The Test

If a significant portion of your traffic is listed under the referrals section, it is highly likely that there is an issue with your tracking.

Yes – Including A Time Period Previous To Test Implementation

Your tracking has probably had issues for a while, and this should definitely be investigated further. At a guess, likely to be a result of subdomain/cross domain tracking issues or a combination of code placement and site speed.

No

Good, no issues so far.

2. Have you seen a sudden spike in Organic Traffic, Direct Traffic (or in fact, any traffic source) that coincides with the test?

Yes – Since Implementing The Test

It is likely that the source has been lost for an alternative traffic source such as paid search. Try navigating to the page that contains the test.

Now there are two main ways to see both test variations, use two separate browsers, navigate to the test page, and keep clearing cookies on one of them until you have a browser set to each page (an uncouth but still effective approach).

Google Analytics Specific

(The principal still applies to other tracking solutions)

Force analytics to show you a version by the addition of variables, add the following onto your URL and change the value after preview to view different versions:

# utmxid=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX;utmxpreview=1

To obtain your utmxid for website optimiser, preview your experiment and take the id from the preview URL. More details can be found here:

http://support.google.com/websiteoptimizer/bin/answer.py?hl=en-GB&answer=63841

e.g.

www.mywebsite.co.uk/test#utmxid=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX;utmxpreview=1

This should then allow you to choose which variation you are shown.

Now try adding ‘?utm_source=TEST’ into the URL, after being re-directed by the test, does the utmx cookie still contain TEST as the source value?

If not, it is likely the analytics cookie has not been set before the re-direct occurred, thus losing the original source. You need to ensure that the cookies are set before the re-direct takes place.

No

Perform the test above anyway, just in case a random traffic surge masks any spike you may have noticed (unlikely you say, at least until it happens to you).

1. Appear to have a small spike yet cannot find an issue?

Segment your traffic. If a specific traffic segment is causing the spike it is likely that that particular segment has an issue. It may be that your site breaks for all mobile traffic, does not work in IE, Chrome, Firefox or even the tracking above could be breaking on a single segment. Segmentation should help you narrow down any analytics problem to the source, not just for website testing.

Any questions or comments? Please leave them below or on Twitter -@JamesMHolding

According to adCenter themselves, the enabling of this feature will both increase traffic volume, while at the same time bring more relevant traffic to your website. While both of these are perhaps admirable goals, it’s tricky to imagine how both could be accomplished at the same time. Given that by definition broad-match can match to a fairly wide range of search queries and should be used with caution as it is, broadening its scope so that it can match to an even wider spectrum of queries seems to make it more likely that only the first of these goals (increased volume) is going to be accomplished, and probably at the expanse of relevancy.

adCenter’s own advice – which seems mostly sensible given the potential increase in irrelevant traffic – is to closely monitor account performance in the coming weeks, and consider taking the following actions:

• Increase daily budget limits (this is the first recommendation they give, but of course should only be done if conversions increase along with the increase traffic);
• Run search query reports to discover new irrelevant queries and add new negative keywords to filter out where necessary;
• Adjust bids so that you’re bidding more for phrase and exact match keywords than for broad;
• Consider switching from broad match to a more restrictive match type, either phrase or exact.

If nothing else, keep a close eye on traffic and spend levels to see if you get any sudden spikes across your accounts in the next couple of weeks.

Has anybody else noticed any traffic spikes or increases in irrelevant search queries as a result of this change yet? Please share them below.

It is very useful to monitor these metrics, especially the Lost IS (Budget). This shows what percentage of impressions your campaign did not receive because of budget restrictions. If a campaign is showing a level of lost impressions, the advertiser can then decide what changes to make to improve performance, either reducing bids to get cheaper clicks for the same budget or increase the budget.

According to the Google Adwords blog, the impression share metrics will soon be available at ad group level. The Lost IS (Budget) will not be available as budgets are not set at ad group level, but we will be able to see the impression share, lost impression share due to rank and exact match impression share. These three column options will soon start to show in Adwords accounts at ad group level.

Exact Match IS and Impression share have been available through the dimensions tab previously but we will soon be able to see all three in the ad groups tab.

This will give us more insight into where a campaign is losing out on impressions. We will be able to see if a very strong performing ad group is missing out on impressions compared to other ad groups in the same campaign, and make adjustments to improve the performance.

Once this becomes available I will use it to see how I can make improvements to ad groups and will report back any findings in a future blog post! – @aimee_roberts

Like most tools, its usefulness depends on your ability to analyse the data presented to you and selecting the options most relevant to you or your business.

Let’s take the current trends in the UK over the last 7 days (if you’re not sure how to do this, simply leave the search term field blank and change the date range to ‘Last 7 days’ and hit search):

Why are these topics trending? Netflix as a result of their online movie streaming service launch in the UK, Georgia Salpa is a contestant on Celebrity Big Brother (I’ve had to Google some of these to find out I swear!), Beyonce Baby due to the birth of her first child Ivy Blue Carter… all very interesting I’m sure you’ll agree, but not massively relevant for most digital marketers.

Instead, here are some scenarios and uses of the tool that could be extremely useful.

Scenario 1 – The Electronics Store

Let’s say I own an online electronics store and I’m quite keen to gauge how interest for 3D TVs has been increasing in recent years.

If I wasn’t aware already, it’s clear that interest is on the increase year on year and I could expect this growth to continue going into 2012. If my range of 3D TVs on my site isn’t that comprehensive, it’s probably about time I started increasing it! Or from an SEO/PPC perspective, this is certainly an area I need to start investing some time and money in.

Scenario 2 – The Travel Agent

An online travel agent will clearly know that they operate in one of the most seasonal industries out there, but what can Google Insights for Search tell us more precisely?

We can clearly see a pretty standard seasonal pattern year on year here – a spike at the beginning of the year as people start to research holidays for the upcoming year. This tails off quite quickly, before a gradual increase each month leading to a spike once again around August time at the height of summer (or most likely, the summer holidays for kids). Clearly this is extremely useful data – digital marketers can use this to plan out their promotional activity across the year, whether that be in email, PPC, SEO or display advertising.

Scenario 3 – The Newspaper Publisher

The way people are reading their news is changing. The rise of smartphone and tablet devices has inevitably lead to greater visits ro online versions of newspapers and magazines. Can Google Insights for Search show this shift more precisely?

As you can see above, I’ve compared two trends in this example. The blue line represents searches for newspapers, whilst the red line signifies ‘newsnow’ which is an online news portal/search engine. Clearly you can see that as newspaper searches have been on the decline, news searches have been gradually increasing year on year. This data would certainly show the importance of investing heavily in optimising online newspaper sites or downloaded app versions for people to read on the move.

Scenario 4 – The DIY Store

You’re a huge stockist and always looking to increase your range to meet potential customer’s needs on your site. Furthermore, the ‘real estate’ space on your homepage is a key area of the site, so you’re always looking to display the key types of products users are looking for.

You adjust the filter on this occasion to ‘Product Search’ instead of ‘Web Search’ and instead of all categories, select ‘Home Improvement’ with it being most relevant to your business.

On this occasion, we don’t need to focus on the trend line graph, as it’s too general in this instance. Instead, if you focus on the top searches and rising searches in this category, it can provide a wealth of data.

All the products mentioned above indicate users’ needs at present, so it would be worthwhile to ensure these types of products are featured heavily on the site and in any promotional activity.

Are you running a PPC campaign and are you bidding on these types of product categories? If not, now would be an excellent time to start.

The scenarios above are just a few of the ways the Insights for Search tool can be incredibly helpful to business owners, digital marketers or online advertisers in a wide range of industries. I’d be really interested to hear about other ways you’ve used the tool for your business or clients, so feel free to drop me a comment below or tweet me @PeterGould83

For those of you that don’t know about the story, find out more here.

Whilst the public and the paparazzi are in a frenzy to get hold of pictures of Blue Ivy Carter, the search marketing experts amongst us see this as an opportunity.

The search volumes around terms such as ‘Beyoncé’s baby pictures’ are huge at the moment. A quick search on Facebook for ‘Blue Ivy Carter’ confirms there are already way more groups then I can fit into a screenshot:

Facebook advertisers that are up to date with the latest news trends can potentially exploit the huge interest to expand their current campaigns. Here’s how:

1. Keep an eye on a news feed, scanning it regularly for potential stories big enough to have an impact on your Facebook campaign.

2. Work out if your target market corresponds to the latest search trend. For example, people looking for stories on Antony Worral Thompson stealing some cheese might not fall into one particular category. We can be fairly certain that people searching for pictures of Blue Ivy Carter are female and interested in both pop music and celebrities.

3. Armed with this knowledge, you can expand your Facebook target demographic to include people with an interest in the news story. E.g. if you were selling a subscription to a celebrity magazine, the Blue Ivy Carter story would be perfect.

4. Test performance- not every story will add huge volumes to your campaign like the Blue Ivy Carter one will, but testing out each opportunity is the best way to ensure your campaign never goes stale.

N. B.

This blog post is a perfect example of the power of current trends, with such huge search volumes around “Beyonce” terms; this blog post received roughly 10x more traffic than other posts published in January.

- @matt_buckley

Product Listing Ads are made up of an image of a product related to the search term with a brief description of the product, the price and the company selling it.

The screen shot below shows two of these ads and from what I have seen, there is usually between one and three of these types of ads shown at one time.

I have been using these new ads for a while now and have seen a very good performance from them so far. The click-through rate and conversion rate have been higher than other campaigns using text ads within the same account, and has had a very positive effect on the overall account performance.

Interestingly, they have also performed better than text ads with product extensions included. This has been tested during a peak period so it will be interesting to see how it performs during times with lower volume.

I would recommend testing this for advertisers with a Google Merchant Account and a good product feed. You need to ensure the account is linked to your Google Adwords account.

Go into your Google account and select the Auto Target tab and select add product target. You can either select All Products or break it down to into more targeted groups. Many people have recommended starting with All Products and then trying to be more targeted once you have more experience and data with these new ads.

If you have any feedback of your own on these ad formats, please do share it, as it would be interesting to hear how they are performing for other accounts.

@aimee_roberts

When it doesn’t work too well, you often have no choice but to turn it off, until now.

Google doesn’t make it easy for you to see which search partner sites you appear on.

But there is a way to find the poor performing websites in your search partner’s campaign and have them switched off.

Here’s how:

Step 1: Identify the Problem

Dive into your Analytics and create a new filter using the settings below. Here is a quick guide to creating a filter (if you have never done it before). This filter will allow you to see the referring website from the search partner network.

This filter only works prospectively, so you will have to allow a week or so for it to collect data (depending on your volumes).

Once you think you have collected enough data, open up the Adwords campaign report in Analytics. Pick the e-commerce tab, then select the campaign drop down box (just above your campaign names) and change this to User-Defined Value.

Now, find the high-traffic, low ‘per-visit value’ websites that stand out. In my case, it was Amazon and EBay.

Considering I am paying about 20p per click on the search partners network, I would like a per visit value of at least 30p+ to be making any real return. The other search partners have a per visit value of £1+, so I feel I could benefit from having these two switched off entirely.

Step 2: Solve the Problem

A quick call or email to Google highlighting your issues with particular search partners should be enough for them to review your targeting, send them your findings and you should be in a good position. They can manually switch off certain search partners, but be warned, it can take a couple of days to get things sorted.

Step 3: Review the Results

If your account is anything like this one, it will see an improvement for most metrics. The most noticeable being: Revenue Per Click

Return On Investment

Let me know if you have any success with this @matt_buckley

We asked our SEO and PPC experts for their thoughts on what the next year will have in store for search marketers. Let us know what your predictions are.

PPC Predictions…

• Images will come into the Google search results on a larger scale to promote products, and the improved merchant center will drive better relevance and options for more shopping oriented results.

We’ve seen Google launch product extensions and now product ads, so it is likely this will continue to grow.

• Mobile spend on paid advertising will continue to grow, and reach a point where it becomes essential to plan a mobile site.

Over the years we’ve been told time and again that it is the year of mobile search, but until recently it has barely been worth splitting out mobile search into separate campaigns because volume was so low.  Now it is common to optimise mobile search separately, and the volumes are increasing to the point where an investment into a mobile site is worthwhile.

• Tracking of social media will improve, and this will start to become a regular part of the digital marketing mix.

We are running more Facebook campaigns than ever before, and actually tracking the impact on brand and sales, so this is going to become a part of many company marketing plans.

Chris Rowett – Head of PPC  @ChrisRowett

• Mobile PPC will become more competitive.

At present, conversion rates are frequently lower, and bids/average positions can reflect this. However, as more people search on mobile devices, it will become increasingly commonplace to split campaigns by device ‘type’. With the increasing popularity of sale attribution across multiple touchpoints, it will become more apparent whether visits via mobile devices result in significant sales volumes via computers – if so, then bidding will become more competitive.

• Google Analytics will take market share away from paid analytics options.

The introduction of conversion path data in Google Analytics is more than just a useful feature – it’s a statement of intent. This feature will be expanded over time, in order to make it more useful and user-friendly (such as allowing users to apply weightings to see adjusted revenue and sales data for different traffic sources). At some point (potentially in 2012), Google will launch a more complete bid management tool – at this point, the value of paid analytics solutions will become very limited.

• Google will continue to ignore the flaws and limitations of Adwords, focusing on new functionality rather than their core product.

Sitelinks will still only be set at campaign level (rather than Ad Group level) with no meaningful tracking, you will still be forced to use the same bids for Google and Search Partners and 50% of Search Queries will still be ‘Other Search Terms’. You still won’t be able to see historical Quality Scores, and contextual targeting on the Display Network will still be spectacularly inaccurate.

Steve Baker – Chief Analyst

• More Visual Search Results

Images and video to be utilised in PPC ads as well as text.

• Google will continue their push to try and automate bidding.

This will includes more effective tools to change bids based on conversions.

• PPC Adverts will be more ‘shop-like’ showing a range of products available in a store front style, rather than the usual listing.

Google will see these improvements as ways to increase click-through rate and improve the amount of advertising revenue it earns.

Matt Buckley –PPC Analyst @matt_buckley

SEO Predictions

• Google to give a much stronger indication that Googlebot can now read pages more like a normal browser than a text-based browser.

We know that Google can now execute Javascript and the instant preview tool shows that it can detect where the fold is – I predict that an announcement that will be made that will lead to usability outwardly becoming a much bigger factor with regards to ‘onpage’ SEO.

• Schema.org to become more widely supported.

The semantic web is on its way and major search engines have made signals for supporting this in the SERPs but an industry wide standard is very much in its infancy. I expect major developments in 2012 with big changes in the way the SERPs look for the three major search engines.

• Further development as to how Google views text within links.

There is definitely more that can be done with this, with regards to improving results by giving more value to natural links. This will go beyond keyword specific links etc. in a more noticeable way. For example you can be 90% sure that image links with an alt attribute that contains the word ‘logo’ (whether combined with a brand term or not) are going to be paid sponsor links and Google’s weighting will (or should!) begin to reflect this.

Richard Lawrence – SEO Manager @richlawre

• Exact match domains (not attached to a brand) will lose favour in Google.

There have been rumblings in the industry regarding the benefits of using an exact match domain (EMD) for years and some minor updates happened in 2011 to reduce the positive effect of using an EMD.

If Google can go further to identifying brands outside of how many searches there are for their brand name (domain name) they should be able to completely remove the benefit of using an EMD in cases where the domain and brand are not aligned.

• Refocus on SPAM.

Google openly admitted that they had taken their eye off the ball with regard to SPAM so expect a surge in anti-SPAM activity in 2012 in terms of content and back-links. If you haven’t already got your house in order you may be in for a bumpy 2012 as new boundaries are applied to penalty filters and links begin to get devalued.

• The shift to social

Google is gathering a huge amount of data from Google Plus and Google +1 button usage. I would but stunned if they don’t attempt to integrate this in some fashion into their ranking algorithm next year. Maybe not full blown social integration but a few under-the-radar tweaks and tests look a dead cert for 2012.

Malcolm Slade – SEO Project Manager @SEOMalc 

• Social monitoring tools will be in demand

All forms or marketing need to be measured in some way and social is no different. Right now social monitoring tools are far from average but as the demand for more data and insight into this area has grown I fully suspect the focus and requirement for these tools will become huge in 2012. With Google Analytics launching ‘social data hub’ which allows you to integrate social data into your analytics this puts social monitoring and measurement tools on a huge number of marketing manger’s radars.

• Cookies will be a hot topic

In May 2012 the UK government will pass an EU directive that outlaws the use of cookies without permission – this is a monumental change to the web. I fully suspect that very few websites will change and the first court cases will make interesting viewing.

• Year of the TABLET

Every year is ‘year of the mobile’ but 2012 could be year of the tablet. With more accessible tables such as the Kindle Fire coming to market this will make web development projects and all online projects consider tablet and mobile use from the start rather than the ‘add-on’ culture we have today.

 Dan Peden – SEO Manager @danpeden

What are your predictions for 2012? Please leave them below or tweet us @epiphanysol

At first look, it appears at least 40% of the screen is wasted! Where is all the information?

There are at least 15 campaigns on the left hand side and I can only see data for the top one. I know AdWords data is presented on different levels, but the same issues are apparent for each level.

This is the data age, with millions of amazing infographics floating around on the web; it seems there are great examples of design and data visualisation everywhere. You would have thought Google might invest some of its billions into creating a more user friendly interface for us?

I know a lot of the features are there to ensure we can see all the data we need within a few clicks. But surely there is a better way of presenting this data. Adobe Creative Suite has the right idea with resizable areas. You select which boxes you need and just click and drag to resize the area those boxes takes up. Imagine an AdWords interface with only the information you actually wanted!

The amount of redundant space on the screen is the main issue. Everything in orange is wasting space for me:

I didn’t want to complain about the AdWords interface without providing solutions, so I redesigned the interface myself.

I’m not known for my Photoshop skills, so please excuse the rough layout, but I think this is far superior to what Google currently offers.

Just think how this would look if you combined it with some new fonts and a bit of a colour overhaul. Google would have something at least twice as usable as the current layout.

Now all it takes is for Google to realise the limitations of the current interface and actually do something about it.

What are your thoughts? - @matt_buckley

AdWords Tracking

This is relatively simple to implement and well documented within several Google help centres. AdWords tracking should ideally be placed on a page that is representative of your websites goal. For many sites, the goal is usually a purchase/sign-up, thus the AdWords code will be placed on a transaction/sign-up confirmation page.

AdWords conversion code is required in the body text of the page, and once implemented, I recommend testing the code to ensure that conversions are accurately picked up.

When creating the code, there are a different options (first navigate to >>Tools & Analysis>>Conversions within AdWords, then “New Conversion”):

1. Decide if the code is to be placed on a web page (the majority of cases) or in a few cases, to track calls from mobile phones.
2. Then decide a conversion category (purchase, sign up, lead etc)
3. Choose the page security level (make sure this matches the page you are planning to place the code upon, otherwise the page will likely alert the user of a security issue).
4. A fixed conversion value can be added (e.g. if you were to drive leads worth £10 each, then a fixed £10 could be assigned to each lead).
5. As default, the AdWords tracking code adds a link that informs users they are being tracked, and explains how and why. This can be removed, but should only be done provided you have covered this in your website’s T+C’s.
6. A dynamic order value can be inserted, modifying the following line of code, so that the value 0 is replaced with the value of the sale: var google_conversion_value = 0;

Testing

The best way to test AdWords conversion tracking is to go through one of your paid search adverts, proceed to the conversion point and then check to see if the conversion has been recorded as expected.

As many conversion points are located on confirmation pages, this usually involves purchasing an item for it to be refunded (or if you’re lucky, using test credit card details that will allow you through the checkout process).

Further checks can be performed for the more technically minded, using a headers program (such as HTTP fox) to look for the response request generated on the confirmation page. This should tell you if conversion tracking is working (it will look along the lines of: www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion/xxxxxxxxx/).

Ghostery is a useful web browser plugin (at least for Firefox but it may be available for more browsers). The Ghostery plugin scans pages for tracking code, and lets you see what is in use by the page you are currently viewing. It also allows you to block certain tracking scripts if required.

AdWords & Google Analytics

If you are using Google Analytics to track AdWords stats, then it is possible to link together AdWords and Analytics accounts (see this article for more details on how to achieve this). Once the accounts are linked, ensure that auto-tagging has been enabled within the AdWords’ settings page. This will add a tracking variable onto the URL (?gclid=test) which will enable analytics to distinguish source data for AdWords driven traffic.

IMPORTANT

Testing Analytics Tracking

Again, the best method of testing is to complete the goal (usually purchase something) and ensure that your purchase tracks against the correct source.

If you append ?gclid=test onto a URL of your site that you plan to use as a landing page, then this should then be recorded within the analytics cookie (called UTMZ). A further check can then be performed, examining the cookies set for the page to ensure that the source is recorded as a test. Furthermore, this source should then remain in the cookie for subsequent pages that are viewed. If this is not the case, then it is likely that you have traversed through a page that did not have the analytics code present, or the analytics code has not been correctly set up to track across the site.

Once AdWords and analytics have been linked, it is possible to import goals from Google Analytics. Thus if you have a site already running analytics, you could import a goal into you AdWords account, rather than having to request code to be added to a page. This ability is also useful if any goals have been customised in any way, such as onclick actions, time on page, virtual page views etc.

There are further customisations that can be made to Google’s analytics code to track a variety of sources be it display, Yahoo, Bing, affiliates etc., although this is a discussion for a different blog post.

Useful Programs

HTTP Fox – https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/httpfox/

Ghostery – http://www.ghostery.com/

What are your thoughts on tracking? - @JamesMHolding

Nearly all of the companies in the screenshot below are relying on their brand to attract clicks. They have huge offline advertising campaigns that support brand awareness, but what if you don’t? How can you compete with these giants without paying over the odds for your clicks?

There are a few things to consider from a searchers point of view. When they search for “car insurance” they expect to see a list of policy benefits, figures and facts. But does anybody honestly expect people to be able to absorb all this information in the milliseconds that they spend reviewing the adverts. In most cases, people will just click on the advert that stands out, or on the brand they recognise.

For all intents and purposes, these top three ads are exactly the same. They use virtually the same layout, are all jammed with figures and are pretty standard these days. Yawn.

To differentiate yourself, try the following:

1. Use Your USP

So, which advert from that original search actually draws my attention?

It’s probably not the best advert overall in terms of wording, but it stands out hugely because the first thing you see is that its specifically for “Over 50s”. Most people will only read the titles of adverts before moving on. You can guarantee that if you are over 50, you are going to click this advert above everyone else’s.

The point I’m getting at is that Saga has a selling point and they are using it to their advantage. It differentiates their advert from the rest. Truthfully, they are probably putting off 70% of searchers from clicking this advert because they aren’t over 50, but the basic principle is good.

2. Use Popular Headlines

What better way of finding out what attracts attention then by going to a news aggregator and taking ideas from the most popular articles.

I suggest going to Digg.com, specifically because you can see how many times each article has been viewed (and thus its popularity), or alternatively head over to Reddit.com and see what is appearing on the homepage.

Grab a list of the top five articles and use the headline structure to create a set of adverts of your own. Try and copy their layout and language as much as possible.

It can be hard to convince clients of unconventional wording, but any client should agree to at least one out of the box advert test that may improve their click-through rate.

3. Research What Really Works

Combine your other improvements with tried and tested methods for increasing CTR. Below is a short list of my favourites:

• Use embedded site links to allow bolding of keywords within your adverts. Hardly anybody does this, so it’s an easy way to differentiate yourself from the competition.
• Use symbols such as © ®™
• For brand terms, try using “Official Site”
• For the display URL, use “Sale.website.com” instead of “website.com/sale”

There are obviously a lot of differences between online and offline advertising, but what are the similarities? Let’s take a look at one online advertising platform, Google AdWords, and see how some of its options can be compared to techniques used in offline advertising.

Now the whole idea behind searching for a specific product or service, and being presented with a list of companies or providers is old news. Think directory books like Yellow Pages, pick your keyword from the index, turn to that page and there are your search results!

So what options within AdWords could you say are borrowed from older offline techniques? How about location targeting? After all, regional yellow pages meant I was always looking for local suppliers. I didn’t look up a mobile car repair service, a builder and a vet from the other side of the country that time I swerved my car into my garden wall whilst trying in vain to avoid my neighbours escaped dog.

How about the option of advanced bid changes? Do you ramp up your bids to 130% of their default between 2 and 4pm because that’s when most people are searching for your product? Does a sandwich shop send out someone holding a sign advertising their new thinly sliced ham with homemade mustard between 12 and 1pm because that’s when most people are looking for sandwiches? My sandwich shop would.

Do you run on the display network? This is a network to get huge impressions for your ads from people who may or may not necessarily be looking for you or your product, possibly as a way of building up brand awareness. Sounds like those carefully placed billboards I pass every day on my way to work.

What about mail shot remarketing through your letterbox? I once ‘showed an interest’ in being updated with the latest developments in the world of Lego (I was mainly in it for the free lego astronaut they were offering in exchange for my address) and some years later I’m still being updated on the new Lego Atlantis range. Some of the best campaigns now include some sort of remarketing i.e. a way to display your ads your message across again to those who showed an interest by visiting your site but maybe didn’t convert.

No matter how many adverts you see and how many third party endorsements they put on there, you’re always weary that their ultimate aim is to make money from you. So are advertisers trustworthy? Sure they are governed by certain standards, but no better endorsement exists than word of mouth. When one of my friends recommended a local barbers for their discreet and professional nose hair trimming service, I knew I could trust them.…. +1 on your AdWords ads?

These are just some ways in which older offline advertising techniques may have influenced current methods of online advertising. Can you think of any others? -@Nastino

The blog claims that, on average, ads at the bottom of the page performed better than when the adverts were shown on the right hand side of the page. This was based on click-through from tests they previously ran. I wrote a blog post on this, which you can read here. Please see screen shot below of how it looks.

This means Google is also changing the Top vs. Side split in your Adwords account. This will now be Top vs. Other, and the other will include ads shown on the right hand side and the bottom of the page.

I am curious why Google has started doing this. It seems to me they are clearing space on the right hand side for other adverts. I have noticed the Product Listing Ads appearing more and more recently. These ads don’t include a message but just show a product image with the product name and price. These ads come from an advertiser’s Google Merchant Account. A screen shot below shows how these adverts look on the results page. This could mean that Google feels these product ads are more relevant to users than the paid search ads not in position one to three.

I am dubious of whether this will increase click-through rate or not but I will be monitoring the effect, if any, very closely.

If you have any of your own insights from this, please do share! - @aimee_roberts

1)    Going into battle without the knowledge and tools of the trade at your disposal isn’t a good idea. You may be able to hack and slash your way through a few bandits, but you’re going to get your posterior handed to you a number of times as you learn what you’re doing. There are plenty of guides to help you to avoid the common mistakes in AdWords (and a book for Skyrim), and it’s a much less painful way to learn the ropes.

There are obvious similarities between a good shield or defensive spell, and understanding how to adjust your bids to reflect the value of your clicks. If things aren’t going well, cutting your bids intelligently can be as effective as a top quality shield to protect you from losing money if your conversion rate dips (or somebody tries to cut your head off).

2)    Dragon slaying isn’t just a child’s dream anymore – you really can do it (well – not really, but you know what I mean). On Skyrim, the dragons are standing between you and progress through the game. In AdWords, the dragons are more metaphorical – big advertisers with long teeth (financially speaking).

AdWords gives you the tools you need to bring them down – if your clicks generate more revenue than the dragons, you can outbid them, and if you can write more compelling adverts, you can level up your Quality Score.

3)    It has to be said, it’s very easy to lose sight of your goal in Skyrim. Whether you’re chasing butterflies, beating up bandits or simply accosting innocent travellers (come on – we’ve all done it), you can spend days heading off in completely the wrong direction. If you’re going to kill the big scary dragon that’s causing all the trouble, you’re going to have to keep your eyes on the prize.

AdWords is very similar (sort of). You are advertising in order to make money. There are lots of distractions, like Quality Score, maximising your click through rate, the various advertising options, search query reports, bidding options and others. But whilst you should be taking advantage of these things if they push you towards your objective, they should never be mistaken for the objective – to make money.

4)    I loved Oblivion (the previous Elder Scrolls game). I put many, many hours into it, and I wasn’t totally convinced that improved graphics on Skyrim would add much to the experience. It’s a bit like watching a football match in high definition – you love the picture quality for the first couple of minutes, but after that, you completely lose yourself in the game, and don’t notice it any more.

However, so far, I haven’t become used to the improved detail in Skyrim – it’s still impressing me, and I think it’ll continue to do so for a long time to come. And again, this is comparable to AdWords.

The level of detail that you can get on the performance of your AdWords account is improving all the time, and it’s really improving the user experience. It wasn’t that long ago that you couldn’t split out the performance of Mobile Phones, see how your adverts performed in the top positions compared to the side positions, or see an hourly breakdown of conversions. To be fair, on Skyrim the differences don’t actually make it any easier to achieve your objective as far as I can see, whereas on AdWords it can potentially help you to improve your performance.

5)    The scope of each successive Elder Scrolls game is a step beyond what I’ve seen previously. I had thought that the size and scale of Oblivion was staggering, but already it’s looking limited compared to what I’m seeing on Skyrim.

AdWords is a bit like that – over time, it’s becoming bigger and bigger. At first, you simply advertised on Google Search, but over time, they added the Display Network, Search Partners, Remarketing, YouTube, Interest Targeting, Topic Targeting and many others to expend the reach and targeting of your advertising.

I recently blogged (on another site) about how AdWords could threaten the big banner advertising networks, if they can persuade advertisers to view the Display Network the way that they do the rest of their advertising spend. Who else can put your adverts on Google Mail and You Tube?

6)    There’s nothing more enjoyable than a jaunt into a mine (on Skyrim, not AdWords). There are treasures to be uncovered, and who knows what manner of beasties and baddies you may come across.

Obviously, this is just like looking at a list of your search queries. Who knows what little gem of a profitable search query you may find, and add to your keyword list? And those nasty little goblin-esque irrelevant search queries that waste your money and attack you (metaphorically speaking).

Mining your searches is clearly similar to searching mines – whilst you can achieve your objective without doing it, it can be a profitable and enjoyable way to spend some time.

Clearly, there are many more ways in which optimising AdWords accounts is just like playing Skyrim – these are just a few examples. Hopefully these comparisons will be helpful to you whether you are playing Skyrim, optimising an AdWords account, or both.

What are your thoughts? Please leave them below.

The campaign goes live, and within a few weeks, you’re seeing click data for a number of your terms. However, a large majority of your long-tail keywords haven’t even registered a single impression which surprises you. As a result, you run a couple of test searches for some of the terms, and find that your adverts aren’t even showing in results. You push your bids up a little, assuming they were previously too low to trigger a first page search. You search again, and still no sign of your adverts. Is quality score an issue, you ask yourself? Nope – all of the terms are 7/10 – certainly high enough to trigger your adverts. So you ask yourself, what is the issue?

Next to a number of these long-tail terms, you notice the term ‘Low search volume’. Upon hovering over the keyword status icon, the following pop-up appears, which explains why:

Users don’t search for this term very often on Google properties, so it’s not eligible to trigger your ads. If this is a term that you expect to increase in popularity soon (like a new brand name), then you don’t need to do anything; the keyword will start triggering ads automatically.

So in a nutshell, you won’t start seeing impressions for quite a lot of your terms, until people start searching for them on a more regular basis. Well that’s a bit annoying, isn’t it? Particularly when you have a few thousand keywords that could easily fall into this category, and combined, could represent a large portion of click spend (and potentially conversions).

In my opinion, whether someone searches for a term 100 times a day, or once every three months, you want to see my advert appearing for that term. When you’ve put a lot of effort into your keyword research and account structure, it is very frustrating when your perfectly good adverts aren’t appearing for searches that are highly relevant to your business.

What’s most surprising to me, as an advertiser in paid search, is the potential revenue Google will be missing out on by adopting this approach.

More impressions = More Clicks = More Revenue

So why do Google do it?

There are a couple of theories. First: with billions and billions of terms out there, to minimise the strain on server space, Google restricts advertisers from bidding on every single type of keyword, particularly those that are infrequently searched for. When a term reaches a certain threshold of searches, it is upgraded to allow PPC activity.

Second (and the one I personally feel is most likely): Google prefers for advertisers to bid on shorter tail terms, particularly those on phrase of broad match.

For example, imagine you are bidding on the following term on exact match: “cheap televisions 42 inch freeview built in”. A term you wouldn’t expect a great deal of impressions for, but when they do come, a tailored advert and landing page with 42-inch televisions with freeview built in could well entice a few conversions over time. It’s highly unlikely that such an exact term will have much competition from other advertisers, and as such, average cost per clicks could be very low – perfect from an advertiser’s perspective. However, it’s for this reason, that Google is unlikely to enjoy advertisers bidding on such keywords. Instead, they’d much prefer that you bid on ‘cheap televisions 42 inch’ or even ‘cheap televisions’ on phrase or broad match. Not only would that term be picked up using that method, but you’re going to show for even more terms that way.

Here are those SERPs:

With a range of adverts mentioning 42-inch televisions, cheap televisions or even just televisions in a general sense, this would certainly seem to back up the theory that most of these advertisers are using short-tail terms on phrase or broad match. I cannot be completely certain, but I would imagine that if I were to bid on ‘cheap televisions 42 inch freeview built in’, I would see the dreaded ‘Low Search Volume’ message. Instead, my only hope of showing in results for this term, is by being more broad, as seen above.

Broader terms = Greater Impression Numbers = Greater Click Numbers = Greater Revenue.

Very disappointing – particularly as a well-structured AdWords campaign with highly relevant ad groups, adverts and tailored landing pages is the key to delivering a high ROI.

So what can you do about low search volumes in Google? Not a great deal I’m afraid! Either go broader, or hope that these terms naturally increase in volume. I hope however that this post has helped educate about the issue, and to tell you that you’re not alone in being frustrated about it!

Have you seen similar patterns in your Adwords campaigns? What steps have you taken to combat them?

-@PeterGould83

Account Level Settings

Bulk edits of account-level settings other than just negative keyword lists are now possible. Budget and conversion tracking settings can now be edited en masse, and website exclusions can be added similarly. Unfortunately this bulk editing option still doesn’t seem to extend campaign location targeting options or scheduling, which must be set individually.

Lower Level Settings

The old interface created frustration as there was no way to see stats for all your campaigns’ adgroups (or keywords or ad texts) in one place, without having to painstakingly go through each campaign one by one. You could always run a report, but it was not possible to get around the fact that it didn’t allow you to edit status or bids all in one go. To be honest, it still might be easier to make bulk edits such as these using Microsoft adCenter Desktop, but it’s nice to have the option (which I’m pretty sure we’ve always had for AdWords). This is one of the best new features.

Improved Charts

Charts on the home screen make identification of trends across campaign an easier and altogether more pleasant experience.

Click here for the full release notes from Microsoft.

What’s your favourite feature of the new and improved adCenter interface? Please leave your comments below.

Jerry Dischler, director of search ads product management at Google has stated “ads that have previously shown to the side of the results may in some cases appear below them. We dynamically optimize each search page, including its ads, to provide the best experience for our users.”

There is a lot of concern around how this change will affect click through rates and definitely an element that we will monitor very carefully.  Google has provided a segment, ‘top versus side’, to go alongside this update. It will allow you to monitor where your advert has appeared on search results pages allowing you to analyse how the advert placement is affecting your campaign.  You can then optimise your bids according to this.

Google has been tested this update before rolling it out and has said that on average the adverts placed at the bottom of the page performed better than the adverts at the side of the page – in terms of click through rates. There is no visible data to back this up at present but it’s definitely something that we are going to be analysing over the coming months.

What are your thoughts on the new advert placement? Please leave your comments below.

Used in a contextually-targeted display network campaign, the ad will feature the most relevant products from your stock feed, based on the website where the ad is being shown. The example that Google gives is that the ad should show a dress on a fashion website and a backpack on an travel-themed site.

In a further and potentially very interesting development, CDC ads can also be used in conjunction with remarketing. To date, remarketing via AdWords has been limited compared to the offerings of specialist remarketing companies, in that there has been no opportunity for personalisation. Without this beta, the best that you can do is uniquely tag each sub-category of your website, and re-market with ads featuring example products or best sellers from a category that visitors have viewed.

However for large e-commerce websites,  implementation could be complicated and it would be completely impractical to do anything at the product level.

With a CDC ad, a single tag (implemented site-wide) would be all that is needed. If someone visits the site without purchasing, the ad that they will then see around the Google Display Network will automatically be composed of a selection of products that they were specifically viewing, massively increasing the relevancy and potential click-through rate of the ad.

Has anyone managed to get onto this beta yet? What kind of results have you seen? Please share them below.

There are many metrics a campaign may be optimised to such as CPA, clicks and profit so choosing the right metric is critical to how well the campaign performs in the long term.

Essentially you need to know what the true value of a click is so that you can pay the correct amount for it. There are two variables to define:

• What is the true value of the click?
• What is the correct amount to pay for it?

There are more sophisticated tracking systems being developed all the time and one such system is the new multi-channel funnels from Google.  This feature records each visit from an individual up until they convert, so you can see if they typed multiple keywords and arrived at the site via different channels before finally converting.  Analysing this kind of data helps us to understand how much each click really contributes to a conversion so that each click is assigned a more appropriate value.

The question of what model should be applied to your click paths is largely unknown, and realistically the answer would depend on the business model.  It would be very difficult, but the next step is to test different click attribution models to find the most profitable one to your business.

The next consideration would be lifetime value.  If you are generating repeat business from customers, then working to a profitable CPA may not be the best idea.  You should be optimising based on how much the customer is worth to you in the long term.  No doubt this will allow you to pay much more per sale (customer) and will allow you to grow ahead of the competition.

This is by no means the end of the story, but if you consider these extra factors, you can get to a better value per click.

Finally, how much should you pay for a click relative to its value?  This is where you need to start looking into sweet spot analysis.  I will not go into that here, but there are many great blogs you can read including my colleague’s here.

Any questions on PPC, feel free to leave a comment below or on Twitter - @ChrisRowett

(Photo: PSD Graphics)