AdWords Adviser

Archive for January 15th, 2010

Split testing has in fact been around much longer than AdWords. Advertisers still use it today when advertising in the printed media. But when used with AdWords, it becomes a much more powerful tool.

It can take months to see results from split testing two ads in the printed media, with AdWords you get results in days (sometimes minutes).

What Is AdWords Split Testing?

Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could run two ads together and compare their performance. Over time you could pick the ad that performs best and delete the other. You could then repeat the test with another ad and see if that one was any better.

Every time that you succeeded in writing an ad that was better than the last, you’d:)

• increase your click-through-rate (CTR),
• and a higher CTR could improve your Quality Score (QS),
• and a better QS might mean you pay less in bids,
• and a higher CTR definitely means more web site visitors,
• and more visitors means more opportunities to make a sale.

It all makes perfect sense doesn’t it?

The Art Of Split Testing

AdWords split testing is very simple. Instead of creating one ad for each ad group in your campaign, you create two. The first ad is called your “control” and the second your “test”. Let your ads run and monitor the results. 

AdWords Split Testing

Every time someone performs a search that triggers one of your ads, Google rotates your two ads. Over time, one of your two ads will become more successful than the other and AdWords will start to show that ad more often.

If the dominant ad is your test ad, then you’ve improved your ads performance. Delete the control ad and make the test your control. Should the more dominant ad be your control ad then unfortunately, the ads performance hasn’t been improved. You should now delete the test ad and try again.

Whatever the result, don’t split test your AdWords ads just once. Keep on testing, each time writing a better ad, always trying to beat the control ad.

Test every part of your ads, heading, descriptions and the display url, but only make one change at a time. If you make multiple changes then it won’t be clear which changes caused your improvement.

Choosing A Winning Ad

Deciding on a winning ad can be confusing. By default, AdWords will try to decide which of your ads is performing best and show that ad more often. This can lead to one ad getting shown more times than the other.

Ad Rotation Option

If you’d rather make that decision yourself then change the “Ad Delivery” option in each of your campaigns to “Rotate: Show Ads More Evenly”. This option can be found on the “Settings” tab for each of your campaigns.

Monitor your ads daily and when each ad has received at least 30 clicks, you should be able to see a clear winner.