AdWords

More MCC Cosmetic Changes

August 19, 2010 By Robert 1 Comment

Last week Google moved the MCC link and drop-down box up to the top of the screen and now I’m seeing these cute little icons in their own column of the MCC dashboard.

The red one is for critical alerts in your individual client accounts. In this case, a failed payment method.

The yellow guy is for the ~~annoying~~ less important alerts, such as a campaign that has ended (even though it was set to end and ended right on time).

Looks like the all-seeing eye of Google has decided to focus its gaze on the MCC interface yet again.

Filed Under: AdWords, Google, PPC Tagged With: MCC

PPC Aggregators Are Screwed

August 17, 2010 By Robert 1 Comment

As usual, Google continues to change and modify their AdWords platform and policies. The newest change (announced via the AdWords blog) was the topic of a Brad Geddes post on Search Engine Land that very clearly laid out the good and bad of the policy change. However, here is my take:

What Changed?

A lot of PPC providers out there take your money and give you back the leads/phone calls that result from the spend. If the results justify the cost they keep paying. However, these aggregators don’t usually report how much was spent on clicks and how much they pocket for themselves. Hence the policy change.

Google is just requiring that the end client know how many impressions they got, how many clicks and the total spend. This way the advertiser will know if an agency is pocketing a large chunk or not.

Why I Think It’s A Good Thing

In a word: Transparency! Agencies that are afraid to disclose their cut should be culled from the herd. If you’re good then your clients should be willing to pay the fee because you produce results. Pretty simple if you ask me.

Filed Under: AdWords, Google, PPC Tagged With: Aggregators, policy

MCC Link Moved

August 11, 2010 By Robert 2 Comments

Dear Google,

I’m a creature of habit and consider myself a very organized person. One of my greater joys in life is knowing exactly where things are and being able to find them with ease. So, as you might have guessed, moving the MCC link and drop-down has been a bit traumatic for me (see image below).

While I’m sure that you have a good reason for moving the link, please at least warn me of such changes. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Robert

PS This post written entirely in jest. I really can handle a small change.

Filed Under: AdWords Tagged With: MCC

Optimized Ad Serving? I Don’t Think So

July 30, 2010 By Robert 2 Comments

Below is a screenshot from a display network campaign that was running for about 16 hours. All the default setting were in place, meaning that ads were set to optimize instead of rotate.

So unless Google is omniscient (and the algorithm may be approaching that level) I’m pretty sure they should have showed the other ad at least a little bit before making that determination. Has anyone else seen this?

Filed Under: AdWords, Google, PPC Tagged With: optimize, rotate

AdWords Ads Now in Purple!

July 28, 2010 By Robert Leave a Comment

If you haven’t seen it yet, just run a Google search. Most likely you’ll see the new light purple background on the ads directly above organic results. It looks like this:

Subtle, isn’t it? On my monitor it’s so subtle that I didn’t see it at first glance. However, after sliding Firefox over onto my laptop screen I saw it more clearly. Rimm-Kaufman actually got the following quote direct from Google:

“Starting today and ramping up to 100% globally by the end of this week, we’ll be changing the background color for ads that appear above the search results on Google.com as well as our local domains. The ads, which currently have a pale yellow background, will change to have a pale purple background. This change is part of the ‘look and feel’ update to our color palette and logo that we made back in May of this year to keep the Google results page looking fresh and modern. This is purely an aesthetic change to our ads and won’t have any impact on the way we target or serve advertisements on Google.com.”

Look and feel? Here’s why I think they did it?

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.

Filed Under: AdWords, Google, PPC Tagged With: purple background

Broad Match Modifiers Now Available in U.S.

July 14, 2010 By Robert Leave a Comment

Google announced the feature back in May and today the Rimm-Kaufman Group is announcing that broad match modifiers are now available to all US customers. So what’s the big deal?

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.

Filed Under: AdWords, Google, PPC Tagged With: broad match modifiers, expanded broad match

AdWords Offering to Set Up First Campaign for You

July 13, 2010 By Robert 1 Comment

AdWords is famous for saying that you can reach millions of potential customers in just 5 minutes. They have taken every step possible to make signing up easy. Now, they appear to have taken it even further:

As you can see, Google is actually giving you a phone number for a free consultation and offering to set up your first campaign for you, FREE!

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?

Filed Under: AdWords, Google, PPC

How To Add Sitelinks To Your Google AdWords Ads

June 30, 2010 By Robert 1 Comment

Have you seen an AdWords ad that looked like this, with the links across the bottom?

This is an example of Sitelinks, and as of June 24th, all AdWords advertisers can use them. But in typical Google style, they’ve buried the feature so that most basic users won’t find the option. Therefore, I have put together this step-by-step guide:

Google AdWords Sitelinks

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.
Go to the Settings Tab – Along with lots of other goodies, here is where you’ll find this golden nugget.
Find Sitelinks under Ad Extensions – Click Edit
Fill in up to 10 links –
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.

Filed Under: AdWords, PPC Tagged With: Ad Extensions, Sitelinks

AdWords Reporting Keeps Getting Easier

June 24, 2010 By Robert Leave a Comment

While Google has been called out recently to release ad and campaign QS data, they have been taking steps to make other data more easily obtained in AdWords.

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.

Filed Under: AdWords, PPC Tagged With: adwords reports

PPC Poll – How Often Do You Run AdWords Reports?

May 26, 2010 By Robert Leave a Comment

Filed Under: AdWords, PPC Tagged With: adwords reports, poll