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Custom Columns In Google AdWords

2014-12-17T02:41:00.001-08:00

Google has launched a new feature Custom Columns to its Google AdWords interface, this feature lets you segment existing column metrics to get more detailed insights.

For example, “By selecting an existing metric like conversions and applying a segment ‘Mobile’can quickly create a new custom column that shows you ‘Mobile conversions.’

You can add Custom columns at the campaign or ad group level and along with other columns, you can sort, filter and download the data in the custom columns.

Bing Product Ads

2014-11-28T04:53:00.002-08:00

Bing has launched Product Ads in competition to the Google's Shopping Ads. The new ad format, allow advertisers to add rich images, prices and descriptions to ads appearing for e-commerce related searches across Bing and Yahoo. Here's what the new Bing Product Ads look like:

If you are online retailer and have been using Google PLA then Bing Product Ads are definitely recommended. Similar to Google you would need a Merchant Center Account, so the first step for creating product ads would be to create Bing Merchant Center. Bing Merchant Center supports the use of Google data feeds for Catalog feed files. This way merchants won’t have to redo the work already done for Google’s Product Listing Ads.

To use Product Ads you should:

Offer retail products and have at least one SKU.
Have a U.S. billing address in Bing Ads. (All advertisers with non-U.S. billing address will be manually reviewed, but you may be approved if you have a clear U.S. presence.)
Sell products online with a secure online checkout option.

Bing Ads - Bulk Edit Functionality

2014-11-27T04:32:00.000-08:00

New Bulk Edit functionality for Keywords, Campaigns, Ad Groups, and Ads are now available in Bing that gives the ability to make large scale changes to your campaigns within the web interface (UI).

This functionality can be found by clicking the Edit menu on any applicable table in the Campaigns page (Campaigns, Ad Groups, Ads, Keywords).

The following is a list of Bulk Edit functionalities you’ll find in the UI, with the latest additions italicized:

Keywords

Match Type changes

Change to Broad Match
Change to Exact Match
Change to Phrase Match

Bids changes:

Set bids
Increase bids to estimated first page or top of page bid value
Increase or decrease bids by certain % or $ value

Destination URL changes:

Set destination URL
Find and replace
Append text to URL

Status changes:

Enable, pause or delete keywords across the entire account

Campaigns

Budget changes:

Set budget
Increase/decrease budget by certain % or $ value

Status changes:

Enable, pause or delete campaigns across the entire account

Ad Groups

Bids changes:

Set bids
Increase or decrease bids by certain % or $ value

Status changes:

Enable, pause or delete ad groups across the entire account

Ads

Text changes (Coming Soon!)

Find and replace
Append Text to a field
Change Case

Status changes:

Enable, pause or delete ad groups across the entire account

Adwords Enhanced Campaigns - Good/Bad - POV

2013-03-07T02:26:00.000-08:00

The main focus of every business is to increase their profits and Google is not an exception to this and they have just proved this statement correct by introducing Enhanced campaigns.

The reason I say this is; if you look at the features offered in Enhanced Campaign, there is hardly anything for the advertiser/account manager that is beneficial. On the other hand there are a lot of things that are beneficial to Google.

First and foremost, with EC they would save a lot of bandwidth of managing millions of keywords in each account. Creating campaigns by devices and by location has been a general practice or a strategy of every search marketer/advertiser. With EC, there will no longer be such duplication. No need to create duplicate campaign by Geo location, this would mean less keyword to manage and Google can save lots of money on their server space.

What would this mean to advertiser? Managing one campaign in place of 3 campaigns would mean less work/less hassle? Let’s review some of the features one by one:

Removal of Device Targeting

Google - With the removal of device targeting, targeting Tablet devices is now default, which would mean additional revenue to Google, regardless of the fact that the traffic is beneficial to advertiser or not.

Advertiser – Not every advertiser would be willing to target tablet devices, as the same may not be beneficial to many advertisers:

· If the advertiser website is not optimized for tablet device like a flash website, the priority would be to revamp their website for tablet device. An additional cost to advertisers.

· Websites with long lead application form/checkout process, calls for rethinking their website design

· Advertisers opted for tablet devices, had a control over the traffic with budget caps and bid adjustment, now desktop bids are applicable for tablet traffic and no budget caps.

Thank fully the option opting out of mobile devices is available in EC by bid modifier of -100%. If not it would have been mandatory for the advertisers to have a website compatible to mobile devices. However going forward Mobile only campaign cannot be created and it will be part of desktop campaign and will have to be managed by bid modifier feature. This may not give the advertiser with greatest of control over the budget split between desktop and mobile devices however can still set the tone in the right direction with correct bid optimization.

Device targeting is still available for Display campaigns, which means that, if you are already not running them in separate campaign (which definitely is the best practice) then they will have to be separated to take advantage of devices features in display campaign.

Changes to location targeting

Creating campaign specific to each geographic location has been the best practice so far, however going forward a single campaign can be created targeted to multiple locations with location specific bid adjustment. This doesn’t entitle any budget cap at location level, if you wish to have control over budget spent on each location it is still recommended to have separate campaign for each location.

Changes to ad extensions

EC offers a feature of adding extensions at ad group level, quite an interesting feature as this would help compare performance of extensions of different ad group with in a campaign. My take on this is, if all the ad groups are tightly themed to a campaign, then how different extensions could you test at each ad group level? Only benefit that I can see from this feature is that, we can compare clicks on sitelinks within different ad groups. If we are seeing more clicks on sitelinks from any ad group that would mean visitors are more attracted towards site link then ad, so would call for revamp of the ad copy.

Bid Optimization

With the introduction of bud multiplier option and by bringing mobile devices under a single campaign, it is a bigger challenge if you are currently managing bids using 3^rd party bidding tools. As we switch to EC we may have to start using AdWords bid multiplier option till we have a fix in place from the third party tools. Have you ever used conversion optimizer before? No? Isn’t this a nice way to say, you should only use AdWords?

To summarize it all, I believe it is more of a business oriented strategy from Google and less of an additional feature that is beneficial to end user. EC is new to everyone and as we would start working on this more and more, we will have clear picture of its pros and cons.

Google Analytics will soon include Change History

2013-02-22T01:18:00.000-08:00

Google Analytics would soon include a the option of 'Change History'. User with administrative access can see a list of user activities of who did what and when in analytics. Change History maintains a record of activities for the last 180 days.

The new Change History tab will be available at the account level, alongside the Data Sources and Account Settings tabs.

The Change History lists:

Date column: The date and time of the activity
Email column: Which Analytics user performed the activity
Activity column: The Analytics object (e.g., account, user, profile, goal, filter), and what activity was performed on the object (e.g., added to account, created, deleted)

Update To Google Sitelink Policy

2013-02-11T04:43:00.000-08:00

With the implementation of Enhanced Campaigns feature, Google has come up with an important update for their sitelinks policy.

The character limit that they have been supporting in Sitelinks creation was 35 and they have now changed it to 25 characters. Below is a quick synopsis of Why? and What? is the reason for such change:

Why?

They are now focusing more on Mobile traffic as it is very important and hence are looking to impliment mobile Sitelinks adoption. This ties in with recent launches like the 2-line Sitelinks format on mobile and the imminent launch of 3-line
Long Sitelinks don't render well on mobile because of wrapping; so we can't just directly port the desktop UI
Long Sitelinks don't work for Enhanced Sitelinks, which is where huge incremental CTR can be found
In general, longer Sitelinks don't work as well as shorter ones. Our Best Practice has *always* been to recommend creating Sitelinks that are roughly 15 characters max. each

What?
Sitelinks character limit is reduced. What does mean for the various ways you can now create/manage them:

New Sitelinks created through AWFE will support only the new 25 character limit max. as of today
New sitelinks created through the API will be able to bypass this for now. This is a purely technical limitation and won't be updated until migration is complete (projected to June end)
Legacy Sitelinks upgraded to Enhanced Campaigns will not be subject to change/disapproval on upgrade, if they exceed the 25 character limit

Yahoo Enters a Global Advertising Alliance with Google

2013-02-08T09:51:00.003-08:00

Yahoo has announced this week that they have recently signed a global, non-exclusive agreement with Google to display ads on various Yahoo! properties and certain co-branded sites using Google’s AdSense for Content and Google’s AdMob services.

Yahoo has not disclosed the financial details of the partnership, but mentioned that Google will be just “one of its contextual ads partners”.

"By adding Google to our list of world-class contextual ads partners, we’ll be able to expand our network, which means we can serve users with ads that are even more meaningful. For our users, there won’t be a noticeable difference in how or where ads appear. More options simply mean greater flexibility. We look forward to working with all of our contextual ads partners to ensure we’re delivering the right ad to the right user at the right time," Yahoo added.

Google, which distributes similar ads to many websites, retains part of the revenue generated from the ads shown on its partners' sites. The revenue split over the Yahoo-Google advertising alliance was, however, not immediately known.

Not sure how to portray this unusual collaboration, I would look this as a beginning of a new relationship between Google and Yahoo in lieu of their fading relationship with Microsoft?

How is this beneficial to Google?
There display market share would now grow from 67% to close to 80% and to Yahoo, which is currently struggling to maintain its market share would start seeing additional revenue from revenue split over the Yahoo-Google advertising alliance

What this mean to the advertisers?
For an Advertiser it is definitely a win win situation, as he can reach to almost 80% of the Search market share with a single display platform and since Yahoo network are all authority sites can expect more genuine traffic. Google search base would definitely increase, so would the search volume.

What this means to Yahoo?
Expanding the Yahoo-Google advertising alliance, would actually mean additional revenue from google and also this alliance would lead to increase in competition for ad space, and this would mean bid for ad space would go up and so will be the revenue for Yahoo.

We will have to wait and watch the impacts this alliance.

Exact Match Negative now in Bing/Yahoo Search Marketing

2011-11-17T21:31:00.000-08:00

Negative keywords are specific words or phrases that help to prevent your ad from being displayed to searchers who are unlikely to click on it. In adCenter, you can apply negative keywords at the campaign, ad group and keyword level and the more granular level of negative keywords will override all others within that campaign.

All these days adCenter did not offer match type feature to your negative keywords and they are all automatically considered as phrase matches. If a negative keyword appears anywhere in a search query, your ad will not appear for that search.

With the recent feature from Bing we can now add Exact Match Negative keywords in Bing/Yahoo search Marketing. This feature will now help advertiser to exclude all those searches that exactly matches the Negative keyword in the account.

Negative keywords can be easily implemented using the Microsoft adCenter web interface or Microsoft adCenter Desktop (Beta). For step by step instructions, please leverage Implementing Negative Keywords in Your Microsoft adCenter Campaigns.

Please feel free to share your views regarding this new feature.

Exact Match Negative now in Bing

2011-11-17T21:24:00.000-08:00

New feature introduced by Bing recently, now we can add Exact Match Negative to all the account.

Let me know your views on this

Microsoft adCenter Product Changes

2011-07-21T05:03:00.000-07:00

Microsoft adCenter is planning to roll out a series of improvements to its SEM platform. Microsoft is coming with several new options in their adCenter accounts, but following improvements are can significantly improve adCenter’s offerings. I have explained about each one of them in detail below:

Impression Share Reporting
Handling of Match Types
Negative Keyword Management

Impression Share Reporting – adCenter will be introducing three new columns: Impression Share, Impression Share Lost to Budget, and Impression Share Lost to Rank. Similar to Google has been offering these columns will be based on adCenter’s delivery of impressions through their auction. With these columns, you will be able to figure out your share of voice on the keywords in your account. In addition, you will be able to identify if your impressions are being limited by your low bidding or if your campaign budgets are restricting traffic.

Handling of Match Types - Match types in adCenter have always been inflexible and challenging to work with. These future enhancements will allow us to do the following:

Pause/un-pause keywords match types
Add separate URLs to each match type
Bid separately for each match type

Negative Keyword Management – adCenter’s new feature will give you the ability to add negative keywords to different levels of your account that will work together. In the same scenario, instead of having negatives work independently on different account levels, the campaign negatives will work within the ad group in a cumulative fashion. Currently, if you have campaign-level negatives and you add a negative to one of the ad groups, then that ad group will no longer use its parent campaign level negatives. Basically, negatives work independently at the different account levels.

In addition, adCenter will allow you to have exact negative keywords. Rather than using a broad negative for a specific query that you might be mapped to, you will soon be able to use an exact negative to filter out the precise queries you do not want to show up against.

These new features are really exciting to me and look forward to work on them when they are live. Please share your thoughts about this enhancement from adCenter

Google Mobile Search Traffic in 2011

2010-12-28T09:37:00.001-08:00

Although there is a large gap between the number of queries and mobile’s share of search advertising, but more and more search queries are originating from mobile devices. With more and more, smart phones coming to market (which now represent almost 20% of the US handset market) Google will do what all it can do to get more penetration in to the Google search market.

Below is a forecast on US mobile search revenue and mobile internet users. According to this report, US mobile search advertising revenues would grow from $33 million in 2007 to $1.4 billion in 2012 and the number of mobile Internet users would grow from 38 million in 2007 to 92 million in 2012.

Looking at these stats it’s quite evident that there is a huge growth year on year in mobile search market. At present Google doesn’t have a separate bidding interface for mobile, both AdWords for PC and Mobile are in same interface. In terms of display ads, rates for mobile placements were much higher than on the PC in the past but ad rates have come way down over the past year. This is partly because of ad network competition and the fact that consumers are adopting the mobile web faster than advertisers and there are now many more page views than ad inventory to fill them all.

In coming years one thing to watch out would be Mobile Search. Growth in Google’s Mobile traffic has been 5X over the past 2 years. So, if you are already not using mobile search than its right time to be a part of this fast growing market.

Mobile Ad Sitelinks Now Available in Google

2010-11-08T21:45:00.000-08:00

Mobile Ad Sitelinks is a new feature that is available globally and appears on high end mobile devices, giving users the option to access multiple landing page options for your website. While functionality is similar to Ad Sitelinks for desktop, currently only two-line sitelinks will appear for searches performed on mobile devices, as outlined in the example below for searches on Oakley sunglasses.

Desktop Ad Sitelinks have been a useful tool for advertisers, leading to an average increase of more than 30% in click-through rates. Because websites may not yet be optimized for viewing on mobile devices, navigating them to find information can be more difficult. The new Ad Sitelinks feature is a great way to drive more qualified clicks to your website, helping to send users further down the conversion funnel by sending them to the page most relevant to their queries.

Implementing Ad Sitelinks is a simple process that can be done from the Ad Extensions tab within your AdWords account:

1. Navigate to your mobile targeted campaign and click on the the Ad Extensions tab.
2. Click View campaign extension information.
3. Select View:Sitelinks extensions from the drop down menu.

4. Click New Extension to add links for the ad group or entire campaign and enter the information in the Links area.

5. To edit them, place the curser over the extension and click the pencil icon that appears.

To learn more about creating Ad Sitelinks, visit the AdWords Help Centre page at: http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=188236

Google Analytics: “Site Overlay” replaced with “In-Page Analytics”

2010-10-17T23:06:00.000-07:00

Google Analytics has released a new feature “In-Page Analytics” as a replacement for “Site Overlay” with lots on advanced features.

Below is a video from Google that demonstrates how it works and gives an overview about the advanced segments of In-Page Analytics like filters, full view and options.

For more information visit

AdWords MCC: New Client Reporting Interface

2010-09-15T03:38:00.000-07:00

Google AdWords has changed the client reporting interface in MCC. Below is the screen shot of how the new interface looks like.

Key features of the new interface:

No more templates: Each report today can be a basis for another report. Just click "Create Similar" next to report, and you'll create a new report based on the one you selected.
Faster report generation: new infrastructure allows of creating complex reports more quickly and easily.
More reports: number of reports is increased from 15 to 100.
Increased security: For better control, in new interface, only email addresses that were invited to account can receive emailed reports. You can modify the access levels by clicking "Account Access" in My Account tab.

Please visit help center for more information.

Some Useful Videos About AdWords

2010-09-03T09:02:00.000-07:00

Auction means prize being sold for the highest bid. But AdWords auction works a little differently, where the winner only pays the minimum amount necessary to maintain their position on the page. That means you'll only pay the minimum necessary to beat the person below you. In fact, our quality-based pricing system ensures that you'll often pay less than your maximum bid.

How exactly does this work? Here is a video explaining the same.

Adding to this, here is an overview of Quality Score and answers to some common questions about Ads Quality are covered in this video.

New "Analyze Competition" tab in Adwords Interface

2010-08-05T02:37:00.000-07:00

Google has launched a new AdWords feature "Analyze competition" in Opportunities tab.

Google claims the ‘Analyze Competition’ feature in the Opportunities tab allows you to see how your AdWords performance compares to that of other businesses advertising on similar keyword categories. Comparison data provides a number of metrics such as impressions, clicks, CTR, and average position. All data is anonymous to ensure advertiser privacy.

Categories are based on actual Google.com search terms and are matched up against your keywords, ad text, and landing page text. For each category associated with your account, you'll see a bar graph, which shows your individual performance compared to the average performance of other advertisers in the same category. The video below will give you a gist of areas this could help you on

More information about “Analyze Competition” visit

AdWords New Product Updates

2010-08-03T23:36:00.000-07:00

AdWords Interface
New My Client Center (MCC) Feature: Labels
Labels are a new way for MCC users to organize their accounts into groups or flag clients that require attention. For example: users can identify important clients with the label "High Priority," mark active vs. inactive accounts, or identify accounts belonging to the same end client. Users can then filter the dashboard to quickly view all accounts at their current level with a specific label. For more information, please visit the Google AdWords Help Center.

New Ad Formats
Image Search redesign and launch of Image Search ads:
Google has launched a new interface for Google Images, and a new Ad format to complement it. You can now run ads specifically on Google Images with this text + image format. This new ad format can be created using the Display Ads Builder's “Image Search Ad” template and will show only on Google Images results pages. By combining an image with text, your clients can offer rich and relevant targeting to increase engagement and click-through rates.

Use these ads as a complement your client’s main search campaigns to reach users early in the purchase process as they are browsing and comparing products.

For more information, including how to create an Image Search Ad and best practices on optimizing performance, visit the Google AdWords Help Center

How is PPC Campaign Affected with Yahoo/MSN Merger?

2010-07-20T23:35:00.000-07:00

Here is a very interesting article from Joseph Kerchbaum on 'How the Yahoo/MSN Merger will affect your PPC campaign'.

As part of the transition, Yahoo and Microsoft also have come up with joint editorial guidelines

Distribution Channel Selection and Reporting

Unlike other PPC distribution options such as search partner networks or content (display) networks where you can opt-in or out, you will not have the option to choose whether your ads appear on only Yahoo or Bing; it's all or nothing.

Within your newly merged adCenter account, your PPC advertisements will be displayed on both Bing and Yahoo search results pages (SERPs).

You may have discovered from your own historical performance, Yahoo and Bing have different audiences and their ROI can vary greatly. I have worked with clients in the past where our results in one of these search engines were strong and the other was lackluster. When this occurred, we adjusted our budgets accordingly to gain the best results.

After the merger, you won't have this option. You either display ads on both search engines or neither of them.

I guess it make some sort of twisted sense that if you can't opt-in or out of either search engine, why provide this level of reporting? The data displayed within your merged adCenter account will contain an aggregate of your Yahoo and Bing performance for each keyword and ad text. You won't be able to monitor the performance of a keyword specifically in Yahoo or Bing.

Keyword Match Type Transition and Mapping

The Yahoo Search Marketing interface provides two matches: standard and advanced. AdCenter provides three match types, similar to Google AdWords: exact, phrase, and broad. When keywords are moved from Yahoo to adCenter, their match type will have to be transitioned.

In Yahoo Search Marketing, the keyword match types are managed at the campaign and ad group level. So, in one ad group all of your keywords are the same match type.
Standard match type keywords will be transitioned to exact match in adCenter. Advanced match keywords will be transitions to broad match keywords in adCenter.

If your Yahoo account is transferred directly into adCenter you'll need to make significant changes to your keyword strategy.

For example, the canonicalization of keywords in Yahoo Search Marketing maps the singular and plural variations and common misspellings to the primary form of the keyword.

Within adCenter, the singular, plural and common misspellings are treated as individual keywords and need to be bid upon and managed separately. If you bid on the keyword "truck," you will also need to add all of the variations to your account.

Excluded Keywords Options

Both interfaces allow you to implement negative keywords. However, they offer different limits on how many negative keywords you can add to your account. AdCenter offers a wider range of options for this tactic. If you transfer your Yahoo directly into adCenter, you can expand your negative keyword list.

For example, Yahoo's limits on negative keywords:

Account level = 500
Campaign level = 1,250
Ad group level = 500

AdCenter limits on negative keywords:

Campaign level = thousands
Ad group level = thousands
Keyword level = 1,024 characters

When moving a Yahoo account into adCenter, excluded keywords will transition over at the same level, except account-level excluded words, which will be set to the campaign level in adCenter.

Geo-Targeting Differences

The tactics for which you can target specific geographic locations differs between the two PPC interfaces. Therefore, when you transition between accounts, you should make adjustments accordingly.

In Yahoo Search Marketing you have the ability to target campaigns and/or ad groups by:

Market
Country
State
DMA
City
ZIP code

Within Yahoo Search Marketing the location of a user is determined by:

Geo-modified queries
ULM/registration data
IP address

Geographic targeting and user location determination functions differently in adCenter. With adCenter, you can target campaigns by:

Country/region
State/province
Metro area
City

Also, the user location for an adCenter visitor is determined solely by IP address.

Ad Copy Length Differences

In Yahoo Search Marketing, your headlines can be up to 40 characters in length. In adCenter, headlines are allotted only 25 characters.

If any ad's headline exceeds this 25 character limit at the time of transition, that headline will be truncated and transitioned as inactive. I'm not certain how the headline will be truncated so this is something you'll certainly have to monitor. The adCenter team may completely rewrite your headline or they may just cut out a few words. Either way, it's a bad deal for your ad and you need to act accordingly.

Hopefully, all of the account transitions will go smoothly and advertisers won't feel too much discomfort during the change.

However, I have one tip that is pretty straight forward and should save you a lot of headaches. To avoid all of these account merger issues, you should just open an adCenter account now and build it exactly how you want it. If you already have an adCenter account, then you're already covered and you won't need to do anything.

In August or September, when you log in into your Yahoo Search Marketing account, you'll see a screen similar to the above. On this screen, you'll have three options. If you already have an active adCenter account, then you won't need to do anything.

If you choose option three for the transition (and you should) then you should receive a notification when your Yahoo Search Marketing account has stopped distributing ads and these search queries have been transitioned to your adCenter account.

Is Quality Score a gimmick by Google to make money?

2010-07-19T10:16:00.000-07:00

Somewhere in the mid of 2005 as a revolution towards stressing on the fact of relevancy, Google came up with the concept of Quality Score. As per Google below are some of the factors that influence QS:

Historical clickthrough rate (CTR) of the keyword.
Your account history, which is measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account.
Relevance of the keyword to the ads in its ad group.
Relevance of the keyword to ad and to the search query.
Your account's performance in the geographical region where the ad will be shown.
Other relevance factors.

Since then Google has added lots of factors that would influence Quality Score, such as the inclusion of landing page quality and landing page load time and so on not to forget ‘other relevance factors’. Above all one question that hunts all SEM professionals is how is Quality Score Calculated? What are those ‘other relevancy factors’?

To all readers I would like to share the result of a test conducted across multiple accounts regarding QS. For a test period of 15 days bids were reduced drastically for all keywords with low QS (1 to 4), leading to which keywords that were consuming almost 60% of total cost of the account dropped to just 18% of the total cost contribution impression and clicks from keywords with low QS dropped by almost 80%. CTR for all these keywords went from bad to worst during this period. (Point to note: apart from bid changes no other changes such as ‘Ad Copy changes’, ‘Landing Page changes’ were done to the account). Strangely by the end of the test period QS of almost 55% of keywords with low QS (1 to 4) in the account had gone up to (6 to 7). This sudden change in Quality Score trigger’s certain question in my mind.

What made Google to suddenly change the keywords QS to that high?
Did Google suddenly realize that Keywords and Ads were very relevant in that ad group and it has assigned low QS and raised the QS?
Did the past 15 days CTR (worst ever in the history of that account) match to the industry standards and hence raised the Quality Score? Finally important one
Quality Score for these keywords were increased just because Google stopped making money on these keywords? If yes then the whole concept of Quality Score from Google is just a gimmick to make more money?

If anyone has an answer to these questions, your comments are welcomed!

Going Back to Basics - Google AdWords

2010-06-08T10:07:00.000-07:00

Today i have tried to answer some of the frequently asked questions in Google AdWords.

What is Ad ‘Rank’?
Ad rank is a score that your keyword receives when the quality score is multiplied by the max CPC. Formula: Ad Rank = Max CPC Bid x Quality Score

Advertiser A. Max CPC of $1.55 with a Quality score of 7 = assigned rank is 10.9 = position 1
Advertiser B. Max CPC of $1.65 with a QS score of 4 = assigned rank of 6.6 = position 2
Advertiser C. Max CPC of $1.30 with a QS score of 5 = assigned rank of 6.5 = position 3

What is the difference between ad rank and ad position?
Position is the actual position of your ads on the results pages. Rank is the score a keyword receives based on it’s quality score and Max CPC and this Rank is what determines your position and what you pay per click.

How do I raise my Ad Rank?
Ad rank is determined by Quality Score X Max CPC, so if you raise one of them your ad rank will improve. But just increasing Max CPC might not directly increase your ad position, as keywords should also qualify/exceed certain quality threshold set by Google. (Hence QS has the upper hand among them)

How is Actual CPC calculated?
Actual CPC is calculated by dividing Ad Rank to beat (Ad Rank of the ad showing beneath you) by Quality Score + $0.01. Formula: Actual CPC = (Ad Rank to beat ÷ Quality Score) + $0.01

Take B’s rank of 6.6 and divide it by A’s QS of 7 – 6.6 / 7 = 0.94 cents. 0.94 is what Advertiser A has to pay + 1 cents added to place it above B’s position for a total of .95 cents.
Take C’s rank of 6.5 and divide it by B’s QS of 4 – 6.5 / 4 = 1.62. 1.62 is what Advertiser B has to pay + 1 cents to place it above C’s position for a total of 1.63 cents
This process repeats until the end of the auction where the last bidder pays the minimum bid required to be active in the action.

What does ‘below first page bid estimate’ mean?
Below first page bid estimate indicates that you need to increase your bid to be placed on the first page of search results. Reasons for this could be quality score of that keyword is too low or you may be in a competitive market and your bid is not meeting the minimum bid requirement to qualify for first page.

What does ‘Rarely shown due to quality score’ mean?
This message indicates that you have a problem with your Keyword Quality, Landing Page Quality Score or possibly both. Your quality score needs to be addressed immediately.

What does ‘Low Search Volume’ mean?
“Low search volume" keywords are keywords associated with very little search traffic on Google properties. Keyword can have low search volume for a various reasons, including a lack of relevance to users‘, keyword obscurity, specificity or a significant misspelling of the intended keyword.

What is Bid Optimization/Management?
Bid management is the process of optimizing paid search / sponsored search campaign by modifying the bids to get the desired rank by specifying the maximum amount you are willing to pay per click for a keyword in order to maximize return on Investment.

How is Bid Optimized?
At present most of the PPC campaigns are optimized by manual optimization or by using bid optimization tools.

Manual Optimization enables dynamic bid changes at any given point based on the performance metrics and client goals. It is more dynamic then Bid Management tools because click trends are not uniform throughout the month/day so based on current situation and real time data analysis instant action can be taken in order to maximize ROI

Bid Optimization Tools enables maximize efficiency of spend in order to reach client goals. Bid Management Tools make Keyword-level bid recommendations based on historical data for each keyword, using sophisticated statistical algorithms within parameters / strategies set for each set of group or keywords. Most of the tools available in the market work with the concept of

Max Bid
Min Bid
Target ROI %

Updates that will soon be available in Google AdWords

2010-04-29T21:37:00.000-07:00

Campaign Management Updates

In the coming days couple of new enhancements is proposed to be released under campaign management:

Filter by image ad name: The ad text filter on the Ads tab now also returns any matching text from a display ad name. (Combine it with the new filter on ad type to quickly identify display ads across an account!)

Compare two date ranges in the graph: Use the graph options button on the analysis toolbar to compare to a previous date range. You'll see a new "Compare to" drop-down in the graph options panel that allows you to choose between comparing two metrics or comparing two date ranges. Mouse over the points on the graph to get a quick idea of before/after data.

Keyword Tool Traffic Estimates will be soon available at Ad group level

Google is planning to introduce a new form of traffic estimates in the Keyword Tool that lets you receive traffic estimates within the context of a specific ad group.

You will be able to select specific keywords from the list of suggestions and click on the 'Estimate Search Traffic' button where you'll be taken to a window that prompts you to select an ad group for traffic estimates. This enhancement enables you to see how keywords might perform in a specific ad group as opposed to the context of a full keyword list and will give a more accurate picture of how often your clients ads might show and how they might perform.

Remarketing now available through Google AdWords

2010-03-31T03:59:00.000-07:00

AdWords advertiser can use Remarketing to reach users as they’re browsing the web on sites within the Google Content Network. Remarketing is a simple way to connect with users, based on their past interactions with your website.

Google launched its own display re-targeting program this week, enabling advertisers to serve ads through the Google content network to visitors that had previously interacted with their site. Remarketing had been part of Google’s internet-based advertising beta since last March, and includes a variety of customization and targeting features to serve ads based on the specific actions customers have taken. For example, if you’re a search advertiser, you can use remarketing to create an integrated campaign strategy. After driving traffic to your site with search ads, you can then remarket to those users who reach your site by showing them tailored ads on sites throughout the Google Content Network.

You can easily set up and create a remarketing campaign through the new “Audiences” tab in AdWords. A remarketing campaign allows you to take advantage of the same features and reports you can use today in AdWords - it’s just a new way to reach the best audience for your ad.

Remarketing is a great way for businesses to reach users who are likely to be highly receptive to their ads and special offers. It helps advertisers and websites get higher returns.

Get more information on how to Get started with Remarketing

Google Introduces Starred Search

2010-03-07T00:52:00.000-08:00

Google introduced a new feature this week called Starred Search that allows users to select sites from Google’s results page. The service then automatically archives the links into the user’s Google account bookmarks.

Google is introducing a new way of personalizing search results, which should really come in handy for those who usually do a search instead of typing a URL to get to a site. With the new search 'stars,' users will be able to save the results they preferred for future reference, in a way bookmarking them so that they show up at the top of the results whenever they make the same search.

The starred results are synced with the Google Toolbar and with Google Bookmarks so you can review and manage them in one place. If you have the Google Toolbar installed, you can star any web page you are visiting and it will show up when a related search is performed. With the introduction of the star feature, Google is retiring Search Wiki, the feature that enabled you to customize the search-result ranking and make annotations.

Google Analytics Ecommerce Tracking Not Working?

2010-03-06T22:54:00.000-08:00

When it comes to tracking ecommerce transaction in Google Analytics, people usually have complaint that they have problem in tracking ecommerce transactions or data is not tracked properly. In this post I have tried to answer the following.

1. How to track e-commerce transactions?
2. How to track a 3rd-party shopping cart?

First step for tracking ecommerce transactions is generating Ecommerce tracking pixel in the prescribed format and placing it at the right place.

The actual ecommerce code to be placed on the thank you page of the website would be.

<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>

<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-xxxxxx-x");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
pageTracker._addTrans(“”,””,””,””,””,””,””,””);
pageTracker._addItem(“”,””,””,””,””,””);
pageTracker._trackTrans();
} catch(err) {}
</script>

Below is the brief explanation of generating the above code.

For the normal analytics code, you will have call 2 functions “_addTrans() and _addItem()” after pageTracker._trackPageview(); We need to call the _addTrans() functions. (details are explained below)

<script type="text/javascript">

var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); </script> <script type="text/javascript"> try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-XXXXX-1"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); pageTracker._addTrans( "1234", // Order ID "Mountain View", // Affiliation "18.28", // Total

"1.29", // Tax "5", // Shipping "San Jose", // City "California", // State "USA" // Country ); pageTracker._addItem( "1234", // Order ID "DD44", // SKU "T-Shirt", // Product Name "Green Medium", // Category "11.99", // Price "1" // Quantity ); pageTracker._trackTrans(); } catch(err) {}</script>

If your website initiates a purchase checkout process on a different subdomain (for example, if you send customers from www.bangaluru.com to shoppingcart.bangaluru.com):

Add the following line (in bold) to your tracking code on both your store site and your shopping cart pages:

Google Analytics can track data from a shopping cart on your own domain, or even on other domains, with the addition of some code. If your store site is on a different subdomain or domain than your main site, follow the instructions below to configure your pages.

If your website initiates a purchase checkout process on a different subdomain (for example, if you send customers from

www.mystore.com to shoppingcart.mystore.com):

Add the following line (in bold) to your tracking code on both your store site and your shopping cart pages:
<script type="text/javascript"> var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); </script> <script type="text/javascript"> var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-xxxxxx-x"); pageTracker._setDomainName("mystore.com"); pageTracker._setAllowLinker(true); pageTracker._trackPageview(); </script> If your website initiates a purchase checkout process on a separate store site (for example, if you send customers from http://www.mystore.com/ to www.securecart.com):

Add the following lines to your tracking code on both your store site and your shopping cart pages. This code must occur above the code in Step 2.

<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); </script>
<script type="text/javascript">
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-xxxxxx-x");
pageTracker._setDomainName("none");
pageTracker._setAllowLinker(true);
pageTracker._trackPageview();
</script>
Change the links from the main site to the secure site to use_link as follows. Please note that your analytics tracking
code and calls to _gat._getTracker (shown in Step 1) must be placed on the page above the call to_link. If your current links look like:
<a href="https://www.securecart.com/?store=parameters"> Purchase Now </a>
change them to:

<a href=" https://www.securecart.com/?store=parameters" onclick="pageTracker._link(this.href); return false;">Purchase Now</a>

Google Ad Planner is now DoubleClick Ad Planner

2010-02-25T20:50:00.000-08:00

Google Ad Planner is now renamed to DoubleClick Ad Planner. The product remains free and open for everyone and can continue to use Ad Planner regardless of whether or not you are a DoubleClick customer.

Google's DoubleClick products enable the end-to-end planning, buying, serving and measurement of display ads across the web. Since Ad Planner's media research and planning tools are a significant part of these it is brought under the DoubleClick brand.

URL still remails the same, you can visit Ad Planner at www.google.com/adplanner.