Google Is All About The Money

Don’t forget that Google makes billions of dollars in advertising revenue EVERY MONTH! Even the smallest change can have a huge impact on their bottom line and they test a lot. Based on what I see, this helps the top ads blend into the organic results. That means more people, even ad-averse people, will click on search ads, thus padding Google’s pockets.

As a PPC advertiser I like it a lot. Accounts with high QS will get rewarded even further by showing above organic results and getting an even higher CTR. For companies in competitive spaces (where high bids are also needed to hit the top 3) it sucks. They’ll have to work that much harder to make their PPC work.

But make no mistake, even though Google says this is “purely an aesthetic change”, I’m sure that dollars and cents made a difference.

Say what?

Okay, lot’s of fun pencil drawings and clever animation…blah, blah, blah…”WE ALSO MAY CONSIDER POSTPONING THE TRANSITION TO EARLY 2011″. What? Go back to the 1:30 mark and listen to it again. What you hear is Microsoft giving themselves an escape hatch to push this implementation to next year.

Dang! Six more months of Yahoo’s crappy interface.

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My Experience

By no means am I a power user. Actually, Ann might not even give me the title of Regular User. However, I have utilized the service both ways with great results. I needed a few posts to help me keep my blog going over a vacation and I easily got a couple quality posts. I also found a couple blog owners looking for content and was able to get some articles of my own out there.

The site is dead simple and it’s easy to make arrangements through private messages. You can even ask for some social media promotional love in the Help Needed thread (a big help if you don’t have thousands of friends and followers on every social media site). Give it a try and let me know how it goes.

What are “Broad Match Modifiers”?

Ever since AdWords went to expanded broad match (that’s Google-speak for “we’ll show you ad if we feel it is within 100 miles of being relevant to a search”) advertisers have been adding using more phrase match, exact match and negative keywords to avoid less qualified impressions and clicks. Frankly, experts have been bitching about this since it was pushed system wide. Of the 13 Deadly Sins of PPC, I rank it #3. Broad match modifiers is Google’s response to all the complaints.

This visual should help explain, but basically you add a plus sign to let Google know which word(s) are required.



Basically, if you add a plus sign in front of every word you can revert to the basic broad match. While most most beginner/intermediate users will go this route, advanced users will continue to test and optimize to find the best combination. I hate on broad match plenty, but Google has a lot of data and may help you discover profitable keywords you might have missed.

Why now?

Google is somewhat famous for not having good customer support. Sure their products are free, but if you needed help good luck actually getting a person on the phone (unless you had an account rep, which translated to “if you spend enough money”). Now they are volunteering to talk to you and even lend a hand?

This is all about the money. AdWords is the engine that drives Google’s profit. Google obviously is looking for some more revenue, so they will help advertisers set up new accounts. Pretty simple.

My only concern is the quality. I have gotten quite a few campaign and ad groups from Google reps and I haven’t been impressed with the results. They group the keywords tightly (good) and use the keywords in the ad copy (also good) but they don’t usually do enough research to write compelling ad copy. You get cookie cutter ads that get decent CTR and send generic traffic to your homepage. Not a real recipe for success.

Has anyone out there took them up on this deal? How did it go?

Google AdWords Sitelinks

1. Choose Your Campaign – This feature exists at the campaign level, so login to your AdWords account and select the campaign where you’re going to add sitelinks.
2. Go to the Settings Tab – Along with lots of other goodies, here is where you’ll find this golden nugget.
3. Find Sitelinks under Ad Extensions – Click Edit
4. Fill in up to 10 links –
5. Click Save

The Catch

For now Google claims that sitelinks will only show for “the single top-ranked ad for a given user search” (but lower position ads also have been seen with sitelinks too). So make sure and take the time to add these valuable little guys to you campaigns, but remember that the links should be relevant for the entire campaign.

More Reports in the Interface

I was a big fan when the Search Query Report functionality was moved into the interface. Not only did it make obtaining the information so much easier, it made it easier to act on that data by adding new keywords, new match types and negative keywords.

Google is continuing to build on that success by moving even more reporting functionality into the interface. A recent post from Inside AdWords blog details the changes, which includes the ability to “segment your data by things like keyword match type and day of week, and email and schedule downloads of the data you want to share.”

If you haven’t been using reports, don’t blame Google, because they’re making it easier all the time.