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Posts Tagged ‘PPC’

Nov 16 2012

Google Adwords Auction Insights – Analyze PPC Keyword Competition

Summary: Back in May, Google Adwords added a new filter and reporting feature called “Auction Insights”. As you might expect, the feature provides advertisers with some insight into how their competitors’ ads are performing. Insights is a great new feature, but it’s somewhat limited because while it provides some great advanced impression information about competitors’ ads, it doesn’t tell you much about how those ads perform in terms of conversions or click-throughs. In today’s post we break down the anatomy of the ad auction and discuss the setup of the auction insights filter.

Earlier this year, Google Adwords rolled out a new reporting feature called Auction Insights, which gives advertisers a glimpse into a handful of performance metrics for their competitors’ ads. I say a handful of because, as great as this data is, they aren’t giving away the farm here. It’s a nice tool, but like the new Adwords date comparison feature we discussed recently, I’m left underwhelmed and wanting much more. Before we get into the minutia, I think it would be beneficial for beginners if we briefly touch on the “auction” we’re talking about when we discuss “auction insights”…

What is the Adwords Ad Auction?

The easiest way to think about the Google’s Adwords ad auction is to consider it the ranking algorithm for PPC ads. We all know Google has sophisticated ranking algorithms for its organic (free) search results, but have you ever wondered how they determine which advertisements should be shown and in what position for any given keyword search? Well, they use what is known as their ad auction to decide. Google summarizes it this way:

Here’s how the auction works:

When someone searches, the AdWords system finds all ads whose keywords match that search.

From those ads, the system ignores any that aren’t eligible, like ads that target a different country or are disapproved.

Of the remaining ads, those with sufficient Quality Scores and bids may show, ordered on the page based on their Ad Rank (a combination of Quality Score and bid amount).

Of course, if you’re a beginner reading this and you’re just now learning what the ad auction is, you’re now probably wondering what Quality Score and “Ad Rank” are…

Google Adwords Quality Score

There are a variety of things that impact your quality score such as keyword relevancy, ad relevancy, landing page and account performance history and quality score is recalculated every time your ads are illegible for the auction (i.e. whenever someone searches for one of your keywords). Google breaks down their different QS influencers like this:

Your keyword’s past clickthrough rate (CTR): How often that keyword led to clicks on your ad

Your display URL’s past CTR: How often you received clicks with your display URL

Your account history: The overall CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account

The quality of your landing page: How relevant, transparent, and easy-to-navigate your page is

Your keyword/ad relevance: How relevant your keyword is to your ads

Your keyword/search relevance: How relevant your keyword is to what a customer searches for

Geographic performance: How successful your account has been in the regions you’re targeting

Your ad’s performance on a site: How well your ad’s been doing on this and similar sites (if you’re targeting the Display Network)

Your targeted devices: How well your ads have been performing on different types of devices, like desktops/laptops, mobile devices, and tablets – you get different Quality Scores for different types of devices

After Google’s sophisticated systems calculates your keyword’s quality score, it then uses that information to determine things like cost and ad position:

Ad auction eligibility: Higher Quality Scores make it easier and cheaper for a keyword to enter the ad auction.

Your keyword’s actual cost-per-click (CPC): Higher Quality Scores lead to lower CPCs. That means you pay less per click when your keyword has a higher Quality Score.

Your keyword’s first page bid estimate: Higher Quality Scores lead to lower first page bid estimates. That means it’s easier for your ad to show on the first page of search results when your keyword has a higher Quality Score.

Your keyword’s top of page bid estimate: Higher Quality Scores lead to lower top of page bid estimates. That means it’s easier for your ad to show towards the top of the page when your keyword has a higher Quality Score.

Ad position: Higher Quality Scores lead to higher ad positions. That means your ad can show up higher on the page when your keyword has a higher Quality Score.

Watch this Quality Score video from Google for more:

Google Adwords Ad Rank

Ad Rank determines your ad position — where your ad shows on the page in relation to other ads.

The main components of your Ad Rank are your bids and the quality of your ads, keywords, and website as measured by what we call Quality Score. So even if your competition has higher bids than yours, you can still win a higher position at a lower price by using highly relevant keywords and ads.

Your Ad Rank is recalculated each time your ad is eligible to appear, so your ad position can fluctuate each time depending on your competition at that moment.

Google also provides this helpful, short video explaining Ad Rank:

For more, visit Gooogle’s page on “Understanding ad position“.

So, now that you’ve had your crash course on what the Google Adwords ad auction, quality score and ad rank are, let’s get back to auction insights. Having an general understanding of how the advertising system chooses and ranks ads is obviously great, but before auctions insights, advertisers were largely left in the dark when it came to figuring out what their competitors were doing. As I mentioned earlier, Google isn’t totally opening the books to let you see everything your competitors are doing, but they are now giving you a taste. Take a look at the screenshot from one of our clients’ accounts below to see what I mean (click to enlarge):

As you can see, through Auction Insights reports, Adwords now provides advertisers with five competitive metrics – data they can use to compare against their competitors. Aside from the first column, which contains competitor URLs, these metrics are as follows:

Average positionAverage position is a quick way to gauge how high your ads are ranking compared with those of other advertisers competing in the same auctions. Average position is the average rank of the ad in the auctions, which determines the order of the ads on the search results page.

Impression shareImpression share is the percentage of impressions you received divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive. Eligibility is based on your current ads’ targeting settings, approval statuses, bids, and Quality Scores. In the Auction insights report, impression share also tells you the impression share of other advertisers as a proportion of the auctions in which you were also competing.

Overlap rateOverlap rate tells you how often you and another advertiser received impressions at the same time for this keyword.

Position above ratePosition above rate tells you how often another advertiser’s ad was shown in a higher position that yours was in auctions in which you both received impressions.

Top of page rateThis statistic tells you how often your ad (or the ad of another advertiser, depending on which row you are viewing) was shown at the top of the page, above the organic search results.

Obviously this new “insight” allows you to see if/where your competitors are doing better than your own ads. It’s probably unfair that I chose a keyword we dominate for, but hey, it’s my post! At any rate, you can see the value in this information. If your competitors are performing much better than you are for certain keywords, you can take a look at some of their ads and landing pages and possibly come up with some ideas on how to improve your campaigns.

As I said, auction insights is a great new “better than nothing” feature, and this information can certainly be helpful, but it’s still very limited in what it tells us because when you break it down, it’s all really just advanced impression data – not performance data. What would be more useful would be seeing competitors’ click-through and conversion rates, but that will understandably never happen. Google can’t be giving away that level of data. There’s transparency and then there’s giving away secrets/tactics used by professional advertisers to those that are less skilled. So sadly, don’t expect to be able to spy on your competition through insights, but at least they’re giving us something…

Unfortunately “Auction Insights” isn’t something that’s set up within your Adwords account by default, but the good news is that it only takes a minute or two to set up. Follow these simple but detailed instructions (along with screenshots) to get the insights filter set up in your account. Once you’ve set it up, you can return to your normal “Keywords” tab within your account, check the box next to any individual keyword you’d like to perform competitive analysis on and select “Auction Insights (single keyword only)” from the “Keyword details” drop-down, as seen below:

And that’s how you access a report like the one seen earlier in this post. Again, this can only be done at the individual keyword level, which only makes sense.

Have you used auction insights to improve your Google Adwords advertising campaigns? Maybe you just need help setting up the filter for the first time? Whatever your experience or question, please tell us your story in the comments below.

Sep 13 2012

Google Adwords Nielsen® DMA® Regions Location Targeting

Summary: Google Adwords changes are nothing new, but when your campaigns target specific regions, it’s especially important to understand how any new geotargeting changes might impact the performance and success of your campaigns. Adwords recently made some significant changes to location targeting options for various countries around the world, including the addition of an option to target regions in the United States based on Nielsen® DMA® (Designated Market Areas) regions.

A couple of weeks ago Google Adwords released a handful of changes to their location targeting settings, including adding the option of targeting where ads will be displayed based on the Nielsen® DMA® (Designated Market Areas) regions:

U.S. metro changes
We’ve recently changed our U.S. metro targeting areas to Nielsen® DMA® (Designated Market Areas) regions. Now your online campaigns and reporting will more precisely match TV-based audience data and campaigns. If you’ve been using metros, you’ll notice that the new geographic shapes look different on a map. While you might see some increases or decreases in traffic with the new regions, we estimate the impact will be small for most advertisers.

Before you panic, let me reiterate that this is an OPTION they’ve added. This hasn’t replaced Adwords’ old geo-targeting options, at least not for now. If you’ve been using GAW for years, then you know the location targeting tool has evolved quite a bit over time, but generally they like to ease us in to changes before phasing out old options. It seems they’ve at least done that here, but in this case I truly hope that his remains optional and they don’t remove the other geo-targeting features. Why does all of this matter, and should it matter to you?

Adwords Nielsen® DMA® Targetting vs. Traditional

If you run a small, local business like many of our clients do, this could have a significant implications for your online advertising campaigns. Take a look at the location settings in one of our old Adwords campaigns, in which we were targeting the entire state of Vermont:

Pretty straight forward and what you would expect. Now look what happens if instead of all of Vermont I just want to target Burlington, VT:

Again, no surprises. But now when you search for “Burlington” in the new location targeting settings window, look at the new Nielsen option:

“Burlington VT-Plattsburgh, NY, United States”. Again, we’re talking about Nielsen, so this shouldn’t come as a huge shock to anyone living in this area. It’s no secret that we live in a very small, low population region and we share even our local television networks like WPTZ and Fox 44, and to a lesser degree WCAX, with Plattsburgh, NY. In fact, the Nielsen region actually extends into parts of New Hampshire:

But while we may be watching the same television channels as our friends across the lake, and in 3 different states, are we identical target audiences for advertisers? I don’t know enough about television advertising technology to say for certain, but I’m relatively sure that viewers in Plattsburgh, NY and Lebanon, NH see the same exact commercials as we do. Given that the majority of us don’t travel back-and-forth across the lake or to NH that regularly, this strikes me as less than ideal for advertisers who are forced to spend their ad dollars showing ads to a less targeted audience.

The point I’m making is that the new Nielsen® DMA® targeting feature in Adwords may not be the way to go for all advertisers. It’s going to depend on the type of business you run and where you offer your products and services. For example, if you were a real estate agent serving Chittenden County, you would probably want to avoid Nielsen® region targeting in your ad campaigns. However, if you were the FlynnTix Regional Box Office and you were running Adwords ads, you might consider having them display for Google users in a broader region, knowing that people do travel short distances to see weekend shows, etc. It all boils down to knowing your target audience.

Again, I hope this option stays an option and doesn’t replace other targeting options. But I can’t help but wonder if it might, eventually, particularly as we continue to see a blurring of the lines between TV and internet with Google and Apple “TV”, streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Instant Video, built in Wi-Fi with apps on TVs and Blu-Ray players, etc. With Google already offering TV advertising and as television and internet media sort of get jumbled together, would it be all that surprising that Google switches up their whole location targeting system to follow the same patterns as Nielsen? I suppose revenue would be the determining factor.

In closing, I just wanted to point out that when I was playing around with the Adwords geo-targeting tool in preparation for this blog post, I noticed something a little odd when looking at a campaign that targeted the entire US:

Who knew Hawaii was a long, skinny snake shaped state!? Seriously though, doesn’t it look longer than it should even if they were just going to throw a blob over the entire archipelago? I zoomed in to the northwestern end to figure out what was going on, and that revealed the problem – Google is including the Midway Islands, even though they’re over 1,000 miles from Hawaii:

I suppose if I were to argue that their population of 60 hardly justifies inclusion in Hawaii, the push back would be that they’re still a United States territory. But if that’s the criteria, then why aren’t Guam or Puerto Rico included? Populations 182,000 and 3.7 million respectively. This is all trivial, but I just found it a little strange that Adwords felt it necessary to include Midway Atoll, again over 1,000 miles from Hawaii, which itself is 2,400 from the continental US. I point it out only to highlight once again that Google isn’t infallible, so it’s important to always closely monitor your online advertising campaigns and don’t just put all of your trust in the Google Machine.

Be sure to read the full post at the Adwords blog to learn more about other new location targeting changes that were recently made, including the addition of Canadian postal codes and bringing city level targeting to additional countries.

Of course, we understand that all of this can be difficult to keep track of for many business owners. When you’ve got a business to run, Google can hardly expect you to stay on time of things when they’re constantly changing. If you find yourself feeling overwhelmed by all of this and you’d rather have someone else manage your campaigns, contact us today to learn more about our pay-per-click advertising management services.

Sep 12 2012

Bing Ads – Microsoft Adcenter’s New Name Under The Yahoo! Bing Network

Summary: Microsoft has announced that they are changing the name of their pay-per-click online advertising platform from Microsoft Adcenter to Bing Ads. As you may know they’ve been attempting to play catch-up with Google Adwords for years, overhauling their dashboard, creating an external campaign editing tool and joining forces with Yahoo! to broaden their network. Still, they’ve lagged behind Google for a variety of reasons. Does this week’s announcement signal bigger changes are coming?

Microsoft made some pretty big news this week when they announced that they are changing the name of their PPC platform from Microsoft adCenter to Bing Ads. The announcement was made on their community blog Sunday evening, that was actually a little confusing to me the first time I read it:

Introducing the Yahoo! Bing Network

In addition to Bing Ads, we’d like to take a moment to introduce to you the Yahoo! Bing Network, the new name for the unique audience that uses Yahoo! Search, and Bing, and our partner sites. Delivering a high-quality audience, the Yahoo! Bing Network is comprised of 151 million unique searchers in the U.S. who are likely to spend 24% more than the average searcher, and likely to spend 5% more than Google searchers in the U.S.*.

I’m not going to go all “lies, damned lies and statistics” and quibble over the numbers because I’m sure different parties could legitimately spin the raw data in various ways, but the “Yahoo! Bing Network” name confused me when I first skimmed the post – Which is it, Bing Ads or Yahoo! Bing Network? Turns out these are just 2 sides of the same coin – “Bing Ads” is essentially where advertisers manage their campaigns, while the Yahoo! Bing Network refers to the audience that sees the sites/engines where ads are displayed. Essentially the “Network” is the equivalent of Google’s search network and display network, or what Microsoft refers to as their “search advertising marketplaces”:

The Yahoo! Bing Network is the combined search advertising marketplace made up of Yahoo!, Bing, and partner sites, and a must buy for advertisers.

I guess it all makes sense, and perhaps it’s even clearer to those that spend more time using Bing for their PPC engagements, but to me the way the new “Yahoo! Bing Network” name was announced within the Bing Ads announcement post was just a little unclear. My thought process – “Okay, Microsoft adcenter, where you manage ads on both Yahoo! and Bing, has changed its name to Bing Ads. Fine, short and sweet. But what is Yahoo! Bing Network, after they just shortened the name. I suspect some egos at the struggling Yahoo! wanted their brand in the mix and Bing gave in a little. They probably also figured that 2 big brand announcements were better than one, so why not?

Anyway, Barry Schwartz likes the name change, and I can’t say that I disagree, but my issues with Bing have never been about what they call their advertising platform. Aside from issues with claiming local listings and limited organic traffic, most of my complaints about Bing (at least in the past) have been about Adcenter glitches, limited impressions and issues with Adcenter Desktop, their external editor. But my biggest problem was always the account management structure.

Microsoft adCenter – The Bad

I’m not currently running any campaigns on Microsoft Adcenter…. er, Bing Ads, so I can’t say that the issues above actually apply, but basically they made it VERY difficult to manage accounts as an agency. I spent literally hours on the phone with their representatives, some who seemed to know less than I did about account structure, before eventually getting walked through a clumsy process of creating users, inviting agencies, etc. etc. They claimed that you could get access to their equivalent of the Google’s My Client Center once you met some tough to meet criteria. This was some time ago, so I don’t remember the specifics, but I recall monthly spending thresholds that had to be met for 3 months straight with single accounts using single payment types. With a few clients testing small budgets on adCenter (knowing Google’s search market share dominance), this was simply never going to be possible. Even if we had met the requirements and gotten the agency-ish account, we would only be allowed up to 100 child accounts, and we’d still have the clumsy process of adding users and multi-step inviting/confirming agencies.

I’m not even going to get into issues with posting changes from Adcenter Desktop, etc. because the point is that the account structure issues led to a lot of wasted time we’d have preferred to use optimizing Google Adwords while Microsoft got their stuff together. Have they now?

Bing Ads – New & Improved?

Without actually managing any active campaigns, I can’t say for certain, but I can look at some old paused accounts and say that they’ve at least changed the look of their back-end. My hope would be that this is an improvement but to me it just represents a new learning curve because it’s significantly different than the last time I used it:

And just to prove I’m not all negative on Bing’s advertising solutions, I will say that over the years that I was using their Adcenter, I noticed significant improvements in Adcenter Desktop. Of course its worth noting that anything they got right was usually something they copied from Adwords (specifically Adwords Editor), but better late and copied than never at all. Big improvements, although I would still get errors that shouldn’t have been flagged as errors, I’d say they were few and far between.

If they’ve improved their account structure for agencies/clients, as they sort of indicate here, then they may have something. As I mentioned earlier, it was tough in the past to justify splitting up budget when we’re having success on Google Adwords and the traffic on Bing is so limited, but they have a couple of things going in their favor. For starters, despite very limited traffic (compared to Google), the conversion rates I’ve seen were often higher than for duplicate campaigns on Google. At the same time, lower traffic often translated into lower competition and lower costs. So conversion rates and costs always looked great, often better than Google, but the traffic was so limited it was hard to justify keeping campaigns active. Why spend $20/month for 10 clicks ($2/click) for a single conversion (10% conversion rate), when you could get more aggressive on Adwords. You may spend more per conversion on Google, but if the traffic on Bing means you’ll never get more than a single conversion a month, it hardly makes sense to spend the time/money.

Keep in mind the rough scenario laid out isn’t exactly a case study, and some of the issues involved were related to advertising for niche products and services, meaning Bing’s limited traffic just wasn’t going to lead to enough total conversions, even if the few they did were cheap. But if the products/services you’re advertising have a broad enough reach, I would absolutely recommend testing on Bing Ads. It’s all boils down to search volume.

Aug 29 2012

Google Keyword Tool “Important Note” Disclaimer/Warning Message

Summary: Google recently added disclaimers to all of their keyword and placement research tools. The “important notes” essentially state that individual advertisers are responsible for their own decisions and that Google never guarantees any success. But isn’t that common sense? What are these messages all about and why is Google posting them now? I suspect the goal is to make it more difficult for those with litigious tendencies to bring frivolous (and costly) law suits.

I haven’t made any secret about issues I have with the current Google keyword tool, as compared to earlier versions, but a seemingly new disclaimer strikes me as more puzzling than irritating. If you scroll to the bottom of the keyword tool, you’ll now see the following message (h/t Katie @ iMarket Solutions):

Important Note: We cannot guarantee that these keywords will improve your campaign performance. We reserve the right to disapprove any keywords you add. You are responsible for the keywords you select and for ensuring that your use of keywords does not violate any applicable laws.

(Screenshot preserved for posterity)

The reason I call this puzzling is because the statement is pretty basic, boiler-plate CYA stuff that any Google Adwords advertiser should be aware of . So why add it now? It’s essentially Google’s statement on personal responsibility: Ride at your own risk and we can change things at any time if we have cause.

Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of issues with the Google Keyword Tool making it harder and harder to dig for long tail keywords over the last few years, and trying to over-automate things with the new “ad group ideas” option being selected by default. These changes seem geared toward driving up average CPC (costs-per-click), because if advertisers are only able to build small lists of the most competitive keywords, they’ll be forced to pay more to be in positions that will generate any clicks. But this new “Important Note:” seems to be a common sense statement, and it just strikes me as odd that they’ve added it now.

If you have any ideas about why Google made this change, please comment below this post. My best guess is that they’re simply trying to avoid frivolous lawsuits. Again, nothing in the statement is anything we shouldn’t already all be aware of, but Google is no stranger to lawsuits. Just do a search for ‘adwords lawsuit‘ to see what I’m talking about. A few headlines from just this year:

Google Adwords Traffic Estimator

Important Note: We cannot guarantee that these keywords will improve your campaign performance. We reserve the right to disapprove any keywords you add. You are responsible for the keywords you select and for ensuring that your use of keywords does not violate any applicable laws.

Google Adwords Placement Tool

Important Note: We cannot guarantee that these placements will improve your campaign performance. We reserve the right to disapprove any placements you add. You are responsible for the placements you select and for ensuring that your use of placements does not violate any applicable laws.

Google Adwords Contextual Targeting Tool

Important Note: We cannot guarantee that these ad groups and keywords will improve your campaign performance, or that your ads will appear on the specific placements shown in the details view section. We reserve the right to disapprove any added ad groups or keywords. You are responsible for the ad groups and keywords you select, and for ensuring that your use of ad groups and keywords does not violate any applicable laws.

They even snuck the disclaimer into some help documents for Google Adwords Editor:

Important note: We cannot guarantee that keywords generated through the Keyword Opportunities tool will improve your campaign performance. We reserve the right to disapprove any keywords you add. You are responsible for the keywords you select and for ensuring that your use of the keywords does not violate any applicable laws.

Have you seen these “notes” anywhere else? Any better theories on why these are popping up now? Comment below, I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas.

May 3 2012

Microsoft AdCenter Advertising On Google Adwords and Vice Versa

I got a message on Skype this morning from Katie at iMarket Solutions chuckling about the fact that Bing was advertising on Google, using Google Adwords:

It does seem kind of pathetic, but at the same time, Bing has to do something because they’re getting steamrolled along with all other search engines that dare to go toe to toe with the big G. Also, as strange as this might seem, it’s not unheard of. Struggling cable networks run advertisements during prime time shows on their biggest competitors. The objective is simple – put your ad in front of the most eyeballs. It may be a desperation move, but the alternative is fading into oblivion without even putting up a fight. Besides, Microsoft isn’t exactly low on cash, despite the fact that only 3% of respondents to March Pew Study chose Bing as the search engine they use most often, versus 83% who chose Google (screenshot of the bloodbath below). So, even though each new version of Internet Explorer seems to be worse than the last, Microsoft has always brought in most of their revenue through other channels. So while they may currently be failing at teh internetz, they’ve got the cash on hand to stay in the game. And yet…

Oooof… That’s right, the same number of people who chose Bing as the search engine they use most often, chose “don’t know” as their answer to the same question. So, while it seems a little strange, it’s clearly understandable why Microsoft would be advertising its own search engine/services on Google, rather than just on Bing itself. If you were running a traditional offline advertising campaign, would you run ads only your own billboards in Canandaigua, NY, or would you advertise in Times Square, assuming you had the finances?

What might seem even more odd is the fact that Google is running ads on Bing through Microsoft Adcenter. While Bing desperately needs to get its ads in front of Google’s march larger user base, Google must have a different motivation for advertising on one of their biggest competitors (heh). My guess would be that this is more of a domination play. More specifically, ensuring continued dominance. Sure, few people are using Bing, but Google would prefer if no one was. What’s the next best thing? Having links to Google at the top of search results. All of that being said, each search engine seems to be bidding only on very specific phrases on the other’s advertising network, but I’m sure there’s a lot more to it than you’ll see in the examples we discuss in this post.

Keywords Searched on Google & Bing

When reviewing the screenshots below, keep in mind that these are all anecdotal examples and very subjective because different ads show based on time of day, advertiser budget, ad rank, impressions, and countless other factors. Just don’t be surprised if you attempt to reproduce any of these Google or Bing searches and see completely different PPC ads. The first search discussed below is a perfect example.

Ads for “PPC” on Google & Bing

As you’ll see, Google Adwords and Microsoft AdCenter are both running ads on both search engines. As I mentioned, the ads displayed change constantly so you’ll see that I actually had to supply 2 separate screenshots of the Bing search results to show you that both Advertising networks are running ads on Bing, whereas you can see both in high positions in the single Google screenshot:

Ads for “Pay Per Click” on Google & Bing

The ads that display when you search for “pay per click” are basically the same as what you see for “ppc” searches on both search engines. The main difference you’ll see here is that I was able to trigger the ads for both AdCenter and Adwords in a single set of Bing results:

Ads for “Adwords” on Google & Bing

It looks like both Adwords and AdCenter are bidding on this keyword on MS AdCenter because you can see both of their ads in the Bing results, however I don’t see AdCenter running ads on Google. I’ve actually supplied 2 Google screenshots because at one point there were a handful of advertisers, but at the moment I’m only seeing Adwords itself.

Ads for “AdCenter” on Google & Bing

It doesn’t appear that Google has any interested in bidding on the branded keyword that is the name of it’s Microsoft competitor – “adcenter”. This seems a little odd given that they are trying to compete on many of these other terms, but if I were to speculate I’d say that they probably tested and found that clicks on ads generated by these searches produced lower quality leads for Adwords.

Ads Showing for Searches Unrelated to Advertising Services

The 4 example searches above we were clearly advertising related searches, but you’ll recall that we opened this post with a screenshot with an ad displaying for the search “Bing Maps” on Google. That wasn’t an isolated incident. As you’ll see below, Bing is running ads for a variety of “Bing” specific searches on Google, from videos to shopping:

This goes back to my point about desperation – Bing understandably feels the need to run ads on Google if they want anyone to see them. The odd part about running ads for these other services is that Bing’s pages already rank #1 organically and they aren’t competing against anyone else in AdWords. They may not be hurting for money, but this seems like a rather stupid waste of it, IMO. They even take it to an extreme, bidding on just the “Bing”. But again, note how that triggered Bing’s ad when I searched it at one point, then only a competitor ad, and then no ads:

By contrast, I didn’t find any examples of Google running ads for more generic searches like these on Bing, however I do find it funny that Google Maps ranks #1 for a generic “maps” search on Bing. (Their own map service ranks #4):

Yeeeesh… Self esteem problems, Bing? Man, I hope they don’t read this post! Seriously though, they should probably be given credit for this because while they would probably like to consider their maps better than Google Maps, they seem to be recognizing that Google Maps is superior or at least that it’s the service most users are probably looking for when doing a web search for “maps”. They could easily argue, as the alternative to Google, that other results should rank higher because they’re more relevant to the “Bing audience”, but I think they’ve made an ethical choice here, worthy of praise.

Why You Should Be Using Microsoft AdCenter, Despite Limited Impressions

Setting aside the appearance of desperation Microsoft AdCenter displays by having to advertise on Google, it’s not a bad PPC service. The interface and account structure leaves a lot to be desired, but AdCenter has come a long way over the years. In many cases I’ve actually seen AdCenter campaigns produce higher conversion rates than Adwords. Unfortunately, the lack of search volume on Bing and Yahoo! is a limitation for the success of those campaigns. High conversion rates are the goal of anyone advertising online, but with only a fraction of internet users naming Bing or Yahoo! as their browser of choice, the total number of visitors/conversions you’ll actually be able to bring in is going to be limited. At the same time, it will help you get your ads in front of as many people as possible, so I always recommend expanding out from Adwords to AdCenter if you have the available budget. The best part is that you can export your Adwords campaigns and import them to AdCenter relatively easily, usually with just a few minor tweaks.

Note: Given that we all know that Adcenter powers PPC ads on Yahoo too, we decided not to clutter things up with additional, unnecessary screenshots. Given impressions, budget, etc. the ads won’t ever be exactly the same but they’re rarely the same even sticking with one engine and performing the same search multiple times.

Apr 19 2012

Ad Group Ideas (Beta) – New Google Adwords Keyword Tool Feature

Whether I’m doing research for on-page SEO, optimized content writing or building pay-per-click keyword lists, I generally turn to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. Mind you, I don’t love this tool, but it’s the most consistent/reliable free tool currently available, in my opinion. Now, I could cry all day long about how much I miss the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool and how much better it was for drilling deep for long tail keywords, but it’s been nearly 4 years so I think it’s time to move on. Seriously though, the ability to harvest so many great long tail keywords with Overture’s tool was very valuable to me as far back as 2002 (millennia ago in the world of internet marketing), because I’ve generally found that long-tail keywords can be among the most targeted yet allow for lower PPC bids because the competition is lower.

Side Note: As the search marketing world turns… Over the past decade we’ve seen Overture acquired by Yahoo! Search Marketing, who later retired the Search Term Suggestion Tool. And then just about 18 months ago Yahoo! gave up on it’s own PPC offerings all together and began to partner with Microsoft (Bing) Adcenter. Since then, ALL pay-per-click ads on both Bing and Yahoo! have been powered by Microsoft Adcenter.

After Overture broke my heart and ran out on me, I did the only thing I knew how to – I rebounded with the Google Adwords keyword tool. I had always thought she was much better looking, but she lacked the substance I was looking for. Still, where am I going to meet another keyword tool? In time I grew to tolerate the Google tool and figured out ways to build large keyword lists.

A couple of years back, Google overhauled the tool leaving us all learning a new tool (or being forced to make an extra click for the old version. Sound familiar?). Eventually the old version link disappeared and we were all forced to learn the new tool. It’s never been great in my opinion, but it’s been adequate. Then today I noticed the helpful folks at Google Adwords are testing a new (optional) feature in the keyword tool – “Ad Group Ideas (Beta)”.

“Ad Group Ideas” is exactly what it sounds like – suggestions for ways to group your keywords. As you’ll see in the screen shot below, your normal keyword research results now show up under a “Keyword ideas” tab and Google has added an “Ad group ideas (Beta)” tab. Essentially you just click over to the “Ad group ideas” tab and you’ll see your keywords grouped how Google’s robots feel they’ll work best. The trouble is AI (artificial intelligence) is still far from perfected, especially when it comes to PPC advertising online.

I can see how this might seem (and possibly even be) useful for the small business owner who is trying to manage their own campaigns with minimal time invested. But this level of automation will never come close to being able to understand your business and customers like you do. If you’ve ever used Google Adwords at all and looked at the “opportunities” tab, you’ve undoubtedly seen a lot of poor suggestions for keywords Google thinks you should add to your ad groups. There will be some good suggestions (which makes me wonder where those suggestions were in the keyword tool when creating initial keyword lists), but you’ll definitely find there are limitations to Google’s understanding of your ad groups.

So here’s what this all boils down to for me – Why add in the imperfection Google usually brings to the table after your campaigns are set up and running (new keyword suggestions under the “opportunities” tab) at the initial keyword list building stage? My guess is that this will lead to a lot of inexperienced Adwords users allowing less targeted keywords to slip through (or be grouped in less than ideal ways). I’ve personally witnessed how money is wasted when other PPC managers accept all of Google’s recommendations (without review) on the back end to save time. I can appreciate the appeal, but I prefer to spend the time up front so my campaigns are well optimized before I even activate them for the first time.

Besides, I already have a not-so-secret weapon for organizing keywords in a pretty efficient way – Google Adwords Editor:

AdWords Editor is a free Google application for managing your AdWords campaigns. Use it to download your account, update your campaigns with powerful editing tools, then upload your changes to AdWords.

This thing is loaded with a lot of great features, but it’s the filtering and drag-and-drop functionality that I find most impressive and useful. You can filter large lists of keywords, ads, ad groups and campaigns by word, phrase or partial word. So, you can set up a campaign (before posting from the tool to your live account) with a all keywords in a single ad group within that campaign. You can then begin to filter and then group your keywords by dragging and dropping filtered lists of keywords. As I said earlier, you’ll know how to group things better than Google’s automation technology ever will. You’ll be able to see if after creating an ad group, whether you can actually split that ad group in to smaller and even more targeted ad groups, allowing you to customize your ad text in a more targeted way. Over the years, the flexibility this tool offers has allowed me to easily work with massive keyword lists and build well optimized campaigns and ad groups.

I should point out that others have higher hopes for “Ad Group Ideas”, while acknowledging the limitations at least during beta testing. In the end, I still personally recommend creating and organizing your own ad groups and always carefully reviewing all of Google’s suggestions before changing anything based on them. As amazing as modern technology is, I think we’re still a ways away from this level of automation working as well as human management when it comes to PPC advertising. You’re a human, so it stands to reason you understand better how other humans think. It all boils down to the fact that computers rely far more on logic than most people so they’re incapable of “thinking outside the box”.

Let us know what you think of the new “Ad Group Ideas” feature of the Google Adwords Keyword Tool in the comments below. Also, if you’re tired of trying to manage your own PPC with limited knowledge or you’re only now considering PPC as an option and you don’t know where to begin, drop us a line today.

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