Google

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

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

AdWords Certified Partner

July 22, 2010 By Robert Leave a Comment

On a point of personal privilege, I wanted to take the opportunity to announce that Righteous Marketing is now an AdWords Certified Partner. According to Google, “This qualification demonstrates that the company employs individuals with deep AdWords knowledge, and has experience in assisting clients with their AdWords campaigns.” The small print says that I’ve managed over $10,000 in spend over the last 90 days and have passed the new, more rigorous certification exams.

(Imaginary award speech)I’d like to thank Paul Allen for getting me started in PPC during my college internet marketing class. I’d also like to thank Robert Stevens of WriteExpress for taking me on as an intern and then giving me great experience managing a large PPC account, Vizad for letting me manage multiple accounts, and all my current and former clients for trusting me to spend their money (and lots of it) wisely. Oh, and my mom and dad, and my friends, and God for giving me this talent. (Queue music that kicks me off the stage)

Filed Under: Google, PPC Tagged With: adwords certified professional

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

R.I.P – Google AdWords Professionals

April 29, 2010 By Robert Leave a Comment

“She’s a goner.”

“Time of death?”

“Monday, April 26th, 2010 at 3:01 AM.”

And thus was the end of the Google AdWords Professionals (GAP) program.

New – Google AdWords Certification

Before the body was even cold, Google already had their new bride at the altar; Google AdWords Certification. According to the post on the Official AdWords Blog “the new program provides agencies and their employees with more up-to-date, comprehensive, strategy-focused training and certification on the latest tools and best practices for managing AdWords accounts.” Here are the highlights:

More training materials for agencies so they can sell AdWords more effectively
Tougher certification tests
Advanced-level tests
New badges that link to a verification page

And here is what I think of them:

Training agencies better produces an army of volunteer AdWords sales reps who already have relationships with the clients. They’ve been trying to do this with Agency Land but this has a much larger scope. Makes great business sense.
The test is tougher than the previous test. The test browser doesn’t let you access the internet to teach, it’s 120 questions long and you only have 2 hours. However, I took the Fundamentals test in less than 1 hour, with no studying and passed easily. This should be no sweat to experienced PPC wizards.
I like this idea because it allowed them to ask very in-depth questions about more advanced features of AdWords. Still passed the test without studying, but it was a better test in my opinion.
New badges. Cool. Click to verify option. Cool. Anything that helps me sell my services to a client I welcome.

What have been your thoughts/impressions on the new Google Certification Program?

Filed Under: AdWords, Google, PPC Tagged With: Google AdWords Certification, Google AdWords Professional

PPC Farming – Soil Prep

April 27, 2010 By Robert 3 Comments

Just like farming starts with the soil, PPC starts with your keywords. The first step in achieving a successful PPC harvest is to prepare your soil through appropriate keyword research.

Keyword Research

Your first step is to figure out what type of soil you have. First, look at your web content, promotional materials, marketing pieces, etc. to find the keywords that you are currently using to describe your service/product/offering. Open up a Word doc or pull out a pad of paper. Write these keywords/phrases down.

Second, log in to your analytics account (ie Google Analytics, Omniture, Statcounter). Run a report on your organic traffic for the last 3 months or so. Look at the top non-brand terms and add the best ones to your list.

Lastly, if your site has a search bar, look at your search log to see what people are typing once they are on your site. This is gold because these terms are exactly what users are looking for ON YOUR SITE! Add these to the list (if they aren’t already there).

Helpful Tools

This picture is a Troy-Bilt Horse; a 1HP tiller that chews through the toughest soil and leaves behind a path of soil nirvana. Tools like this allow you to prepare more soil with less time. Here’s a list of my favorites:

Google’s Keyword Tool(s) – Google currently has 3 versions of their keyword tool, but their info is based on the most search data and so I recommend starting with Google.
SpyFu - They show you the ads, the natural results and give estimates of how much clicks are costing advertisers. This is great for seeing what your competitors are doing.
Wordstream – Easy to use, great UI and they’ll email you your keyword lists.
Wordtracker - They don’t have as much search data as Google, but this will help you get insight into searches being done outside of Google.
Suggester - This is a newer tool, but kicks out some pretty good results. Warning: Their servers are in Texas, so some of their Top Terms are biased.

Proper keyword research will help you create an environment where the seeds of your PPC efforts can grow. So how do we get started planting?

UPDATE: Just yesterday Brad Geddes wrote a great piece on 7 keyword tools. Great supplement!

Filed Under: Google, PPC Tagged With: Google Keyword Tool, keyword research, keyword tools

Google Places = New Revenue Source For Google

April 21, 2010 By Robert Leave a Comment

Just yesterday Google announced that their Local Business Center would be renamed to Google Places. No big deal really. Even my dad’s grass-fed beef has a listing. But what is Google’s motivation?

Follow The Money

Questioning Google’s motives has become a hobby of mine. Working with AdWords has taught me that Google is always looking out for their bottom line. Regardless of how altruistic they try to paint themselves, they are in the business of making money. Lots of it. Using this point of reference it was easy to see the reason for Google Places.

A new, simple way to advertise: For just $25 per month, businesses in select cities can make their listings stand out on Google.com and Google Maps with Tags. As of today, we’re rolling out Tags to three new cities – Austin, Atlanta and Washington, D.C. – in addition to ongoing availability in Houston and San Jose, CA. In the coming weeks we’ll also be introducing Tags in Chicago, San Diego, Seattle, Boulder and San Francisco,

How magnanimous of Google to give SMBs a new way to spend money.

Filed Under: Google Tagged With: Google Places, Local Business Center