AdWords Adviser

Archive for August, 2009

If you’re like many Google advertisers, you’ll be very frustrated by your AdWords Quality Score.

You’ll be regularly hammering your fist against the table with anger because your score is stuck at 1 or 2 and no matter what you try, you just can’t seem to get it to rise.

But what is AdWords Quality Score, why is it important and how is it calculated?

Understand the answers to these questions and with this newly learned knowledge you’ll be able to improve the Quality Score for all your keywords and save money too.

What is AdWords Quality Score?

You’ve got to wonder sometimes, what is the purpose of Quality Score?

Over many years, Google has built its now considerable reputation by providing users with relevant search results to queries. Quality Score is their way to ensure that only the most relevant AdWords ads appear to users.

Why Is Your AdWords Quality Score Important?

The reality is that AdWords calculates a Quality Score for a keyword every time it matches a search query. In general, the higher a keywords Quality Score the lower your bidding costs and the higher the position your ad will appear.

What this means to you is that the higher the Quality Score for your keywords, the less you pay in bids.

How Is AdWords Quality Score Calculated?

If you’re like most people, when you start using AdWords for the first time you might find the way your Quality Score is calculated and keeps changing very confusing.

The reality is that when you create your brand new campaign, Google calculates a provisional Quality Score for each of your keywords based on how the keywords you choose have performed in the past when used by other advertisers and how relevant your ad is to those keywords.

The right thing to do therefore when setting up a new campaign is to divide your keywords into small ad groups of 10 or less closely related keywords. Each ad group should trigger at least one relevant ad that includes within it the most popular keyword in the ad group, ideally in the title and in the first line of the text.

The landing page of your ad should also point to the most closely related page of your web site for those keywords and not your home page.

As you continue advertising, after maybe a few days, the Google AdWords Bot will visit your web site and evaluate it. It’s worth remembering that the Bots evaluation is of your entire web site and not just the landing page for your ad.

Therefore your entire web site or at least a significant amount of the content on it needs to be on the general theme of the keywords you’ve selected.

Now, as your account starts to mature, so the Quality Score of your individual keywords will change based on their performance. If the ad your keywords trigger has a high click-through-rate then it’s likely that your Quality Score will rise, poor click-through-rate and it will probably fall.

As a rule-of-thumb you should be aiming for a click-through-rate of at least 1% for all your keywords.

What Is Google Actually Looking For?

The actual formula for calculating a keywords Quality Score is a closely guarded secret. However, we do know what Google looks at when making the calculation.

Your AdWords Quality Score is calculated differently depending on if you’re using Google and the search network or the content network.

For Google and the search network, factors used to calculate Quality Score include:)

• The historical click-through-rate of your keyword and the ad it triggers.
• The historical click-through-rate of your entire account.
• The historical click-through-rate of your domain.
• The quality of your landing page.
• The relevance of the keywords to the ads in your Adgroup.
• The relevance of the keyword and matched ad to the search query.
• Your accounts performance in the region you’re targeting.

For content network, factors include:)

• The ads past performance on the target and similar sites.
• The relevance of your ads and keywords in the ad group to the target site.
• The quality of your landing page.

The best way to improve your keywords’ Quality Scores is by optimizing your account. This entails making sure that each of your ad groups contains descriptive ads all advertising the same product or service, and that each keyword in the ad group closely relates to the ads.

P.S. If you’re having problems optimising your AdWords account then you should go to Key Searches and read about their AdWords Management Services .

Google’s recent trials with the “Product Plus Box” for AdWords is a prime example of how it’s becoming more and more important for advertisers to establish a presence for themselves in as many different parts of the growing Google empire as possible.

First The “Local Business Centre” Now “Google Base”

Just a few weeks ago, I reported how Google were adding “Location Extensions“ to their Local Business Centre tool and showed you how that new feature could help you make your AdWords ads stand out more.  

Soon, to get the maximum benefit from AdWords, you are going to need a Google Base account too.

Now I can almost hear your mind saying, what has Google’s free tool to encourage you to advertise your products on their Product Search Engine (Beta) got to do with paid search using AdWords?

Text Ads With Pictures

Imagine what it would be like if you could display a picture of your product right next to your ad!

Just suppose, for example, someone was to search on Google for a High School Musical lunch box for their child to take their packed lunch to school in. You’re an online retailer and happen to sell such a product. How much more powerful would your ad be if you could show a picture of that lunch box next to your ad?

If you’re like me, you’ll already be familiar with Google including shopping results in with the natural search results. And most of us will have often seen a small picture of the product when our query is very specific.

Select Advertisers Already Testing

I discovered recently that Google are currently allowing a select number of advertisers in the USA to test the addition of a product plus box with their AdWords ads. They’re able to link an image from Google Base with an ad in AdWords to show a product image next to their ad on the results page.

Everyone wants their AdWords ads to have the maximum exposure available. It has therefore never been more important to get your online precence set up in as many different places within the Google network as possible.

What do you think readers, could your AdWords advertising benefit from a Product Plus Box? Leave a comment with your point of view.

P.S. If you really want your AdWords advertising to join all the dots in the Google empire, then you must look at what Key Searches can do for you!

Resources Used In Writing This Article:

Google Tests Top Right AdWords Product Ad

Google has been experimenting with various ways to integrate products from Google Base (Google Shopping) into the AdWords spots. We have seen at least two forms prior to this, including the plus box method and the quick text links …

Product Details in Google AdWords Plus Box » JGSullivan …

One of the most interesting opportunities for advertisers is the AdWords Plus Box for product details. It links together your AdWords account with your Google Base account to allow you to display product photos, descriptions and prices …

Adwords – New Contextual Product Datafeed Ads on YouTube – 5 Star …

AdWords Product Plus Box in Adwords. To replicate, search for luggage and then under the Ebags ad click the + sign and link that says “Show products from eBags.com” or under the Luggage.com ad, the link that says “Show products from …

Google Testing New PPC Ads & Google Caffeine

New Google Product advert test. click to enlarge ‘google adwords test’. Ads like this stand out a mile from other text based adverts and give a significant advantage over the other adverts on offer. … That plus box is actually fed through from Google Product feeds – been out in the wild for a little while already. The image stuff is definitely new though. Not sure I like this insertion of these things into the SERPs though. It’s already getting a bit unwieldy with all …

Google AdWords: Now With Images

Some AdWords ads on Google are now showing associated images — and getting much larger in the space they take up — through a Show products from Plus Box.

How To Show Google Base Products in Google AdWords Ads

The ability to create this “Product Extension” is not available in all AdWords accounts. So, while you can link your Adwords and Base accounts, the plus box is still not available to all advertisers. Posted by KevinSource at April 23, …

I’m angry – my ads aren’t showing on Google because the budget has run out!

Does this sound familiar to you?

Wouldn’t it be nice if AdWords had some kind of custom alerts feature that could tell you when something like this happens?

Okay, you’re probably thinking that, you’d be glad of Google stopping your campaign if the reason was that you’re bid costs are rising and sales are poor. You don’t want to blow your entire month’s advertising budget in a day do you!

But just imagine that your average bid costs were rock bottom and sales were up. Google stopping your campaign when you reach your daily budget limit could be costing you sales and loosing you money.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if AdWords could alert you when your daily budget limit was getting close and let you make the decision on weather to continue advertising or not.

What About When You Try Out New Keywords?

Can you remember the feeling of frustration you had when you added those new keywords to your campaign? They turned out to be more popular than you expected and searchers started frantically clicking on your ads.

The last thing you wanted is for them to take off big time and suck your entire budget dry, unless of course they’re bringing in sales hand-over-fist.

Just suppose AdWords could tell you when your spend on these keywords exceeded a certain limit. You could then take a look at your account and decide if you wanted to continue using them.

The New AdWords Interface Now Includes Custom Alerts

Just think about it, timely reminders that let you make sensible decisions about your account. How much easier would running your AdWords account become?

As you continue reading this article, you begin to see the value that a custom alerts feature in AdWords can bring to managing your campaign. 

Just decide what you want to track, keyword, adgroup or campaign; navigate to it and select it. Then just click on the “more actions” button and create your custom alert.

Enter the condition and value on which you’d like the alert to trigger and you’re done.

Want to know when your campaign budget exceeds 85%? In just a short while you can set up an custom alert for it. Google will now send you an email whenever your spend starts to get close to your daily budget limit.

Trying out some new keywords? Want to know when bidding on any of them costs you more than £10? Set up a custom alert for each keyword and Google will send you an email when any over spend.

It’s fantastic!

Notice how just by setting up a few custom alerts you can have much more control over how you manage your entire AdWords account.

Stop And Read On, There’s More You Need To Know!

With each word of this post that you read, you feel more an more excited about what this new feature can do for you. You’re desperate to log in to your AdWords account and try it out.

But wait, something is missing!

If you’re like me, you’ll have many AdWords accounts. I manage a few different accounts for our various customers. To keep track of them all, I have a Google “My Client Centre” account.

But enter any of your AdWords accounts through the “My Client Centre”, click on the “More Actions” button and you’ll notice that the “Managed Custom Alerts” option is not there. Where has it gone?

The fact is that custom alerts aren’t available to “My Client Centre” account holders. To access them you have to log directly into the individual account.

Come On Google, You Can Do Better!

I love the new AdWords Custom Alert feature. It’s going to make managing all my customers accounts a whole lot easier. But Google, you’ve got to improve things:

• Giving us MCC account holders access to this feature must surely be an easy one to fix.
• And how about sending text messages to my mobile instead of an email – now that would be control!

What do you think readers? What else could Google add to this feature to make it even more useful? Give us your point of view by posting a comment to this article.

Resources Used In Writing This Article:

http://adwords.blogspot.com/2009/08/new-interface-thursdays-keep-tabs-on.html

Most of us have done battle with AdWords Trademark Policy rules and lost.

Remember that  feeling of despair you had when the latest set of ads you spent hours writing got disapproved by Google in an instance because you included a registered trademark in the ad copy. And then the frustration you felt as your appeal was promptly and abruptly turned down.

AdWords trademark policy used to be very straight forward. You couldn’t use a registered trademark in your ad copy unless you and Google both had written permission from the trademark owner.

Now Everything Has Changed!

Now finally, you can use a registered trademark in your ad copy provided your landing page has a significant focus on the trademark you’re using [huge sigh of relief].

But the bad news is that there is now a completely seperate approval process for these ads to comply with in addition to the normal approval process applied to every ad. Advertisers can therefore expect ads that contain a registered trademark to take even longer to be approved than normal.

Yet More Hoops For Advertisers To Jump Through.

Once your ad has been approved, you’ll notice that it has a status of “approved-limited”. This indicates that Google have recognised that you’ve used a trademark in your ad copy and that you don’t have permission to use it from the owner.

Google will now periodically review your ad copy and landing page to ensure that they continue to comply with their AdWords trademark policy.

You must therefore be very careful when making changes to your web site. Reduce the prominence of the trademark on your landing page and it could get your ad disapproved.

Resources Used In Writing This News Article:

As most of you might already know, effective June 15th of this year, Google is starting to allow the use of trademark terms in the ad text. Every time an advertiser submits his ads that contain a trademark term, the…

Has Google’s New Trademark Policy Caused A Spike In Use?

As you may know, Google recently loosened its policy in the USA related to the use of trademarks in ad copy text, which went into effect on June 15, 2009. The.

Google Follows Their Own Trademark Rules > Allows ‘Google’ to be …

Google recently changed the rules for how trademarks can be used in search ads when the ad is displayed in the US on a Google.com search. The new rules state.

What can rock legends Metalica teach you about getting your AdWords ads above the search results?

Everyone knows that if your ads appear above the search results they’ll perform better than when displayed down the right hand side. A top three position for an ad is therefore as desirable to every AdWords advertiser as a top three chart position for Metalica’s latest album must be to all the band members.

Metalica In My Garden!

Recently, Knebworth House hosted the Sonisphere Rock Festival.  A two day celebration of everything that is good in rock music with the legendary Metalica topping the bill on Sunday night.

I couldn’t get tickets for the festival, but living less than two miles from the venue, I didn’t need them to experience at least some of the atmosphere. I could hear Metalica thumping out the rhythm to all their songs from my garden as clearly as if I was standing at the back of the park.

Whilst listening to Metalica perform, it occurred to me that recording an album must be a bit like preparing a large AdWords campaign.

Imagine how long the band must have spent in the recording studio perfecting all the tracks to get them just right. You also probably spend ages picking the perfect keywords for your campaign and crafting ads to match each of them.

And that’s not all Metalica and you have in common. You’re both dreaming about that magical top three spot. Metalica for their album in the national charts and you for your AdWords ads on the search results. Both dreams seem to be just out of reach.

What Is The Magic Ingredient That’ll Make Your Dream Come True?

The harsh reality is that there is nothing Metalica can do to guarantee their top three album chart listing. And you can not control when your ad appears above the search results in Google.

There is only one force that can decide your fate – your public!

For Metalica, to get a top three position in the national album chart they have to sell more albums in a week than the competition. In the same way, you can only gain a top three position above the search results for your ad if it’s click-through rate is above a certain threshold.

Sure, Metalica can do TV, radio and newspaper interviews, perform at concerts and at music festivals to improve their popularity and sell more records. And you can bid higher on your keywords, include negative keywords and write better copy to improve your ads performance.

But the harsh reality is that the only thing that will ensure Metalica a top three position in the album charts is that they sell more records than everybody else. And the only way you’ll get a top three position for your AdWords ads is by your click-through rates exceeding a pre-determined threshold.

Getting Your Ad Above The Search Results Isn’t Completely Out Of Your Control

You’ve got to wonder if getting your ads above the search results is totally out of your control.

Google don’t openly publicise the threshold your ads click-through rate needs to achieve and the value is not even the same for every keyword. But there are some things that you can do to give your ads the best chance.

You can pick only the most relevant keywords, include negative keywords in your campaign and improve your ad copy to make it more appealing.

Do all this and soon you’ll start to see your click-through rates increase.

 P.S. Everyone that chooses Key Searches to run their AdWords campaign enjoys an improvement in their ads click-through rates in less than a month.

Everyone knows that writing AdWords ads for a business that will only show in their local town or city is a big headache.

The problem is that AdWords is just not accurate enough when it comes to determining the searchers actual location. You therefore have to set your ads to show over a much larger area than you’d like just to make absolutely sure that it gets seen by the audience you want to target.

But, this means that your ad is also seen and clicked on by many people who are not your target audience. This costs you money and wastes the searchers time looking at web sites that can’t possibly meet their needs.

Local Search Isn’t Supposed To Work Like This!

I recently experienced exactly this problem when visiting New York on business.

Stuck in a small hotel room in a strange country and wiped out by being in a totally different time zone, I was feeling a bit down and lonely. What I needed to cheer me up was pizza.

You could smell the melted cheese as I pulled my computer out of it’s bag. And you could taste the peperoni as I connected to the hotel Internet and pulled up Google in my browser.

Can you imagine my frustration when I clicked on each of the first three sponsored ads on the results page, started to place my order and then realised that they were actually miles away from my hotel. If I’d continued my order then my pizza would have been cold by the time it got to me.

Once I finally found a nearby restaurant, it’d taken more than half an hour to place my order.

Are AdWords Location Extensions The Answer?

We’ve all known about Google’s Local Business Centre (LBC) for sometime. If you’re a business owner, you can type in your address and have the location of your office or shop appear as a point on Google Maps. But now, Google has gone one step further by linking your LBC and AdWords accounts together.

Wow! – Your address can now be displayed on the results page along side your text ad.

You can even type in multiple addresses and AdWords will dynamically associate the right one based on the search term used.

How Does This Help You When Ordering A Pizza!

Very soon, at a glance, you’ll be able to compare addresses of pizza take-away’s or any other business to your current address without having to click on the ad and go to the advertisers web site first. This simple addition will save you considerable time and frustration.

It’d also be a big benefit to you if you’re an advertiser of a business that wants to capture leads from a very small target audience.

If where you’re located is important, searchers will be able to quickly determine when you’re business is too far away without clicking on your ad.  This will save you money from unwanted clicks by people that will never be your customer.

Resources Used In Writing This Article:

New Local Ad Strategy for AdWords

“If you’re a business owner, you can set up extensions by linking an AdWords campaign to your Local Business Center (LBC) account,” explains Emel Mutlu of Google’s Inside AdWords [...] …

AdWords Gets More Local

Google has made AdWords a little bit more local for businesses by allowing them to run location extensions on ads. According to Google, location extensions allow you to “extend” your AdWords…

Google Location Extensions- A New Local Ad Strategy | Jason Dalrymple

If you’re currently running Google Local Business Ads, your current ads won’t change until the next time you update or change them- they will then magically transform into local extensions. The next version of AdWords Editor will …

P.S. Local search is still a long way short of perfect, and to be fair to Google, they probably do a better job of it than most search engine providers. The addition of AdWords Local Extensions are undoubtedly a significant step forward in improving things.

P.P.S. When you hire us to manage your AdWords local advertising campaign, you’ll see improved results in less than a month.