Inside AdWords: April 2006

Choose a different account time zone

Thursday, April 27, 2006

Currently, all AdWords accounts are set to Pacific Time. However, in the coming weeks you’ll see a message in your account inviting you to set your account's local time zone. This means your entire account, including all ad serving, reporting, and billing, will be calculated and managed according to the time zone of your choice. Posted by Judy, Inside AdWords crew

Ads quality and you

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

"My job at Google is to watch over the quality of the ads we deliver to our users and to design ways to increase the quality of those ads. We believe that ads provide valuable information when they are highly relevant to what users wish to find -- and that by showing high quality relevant ads, users will consider ads as a first choice when they're searching for products and services. At the end of the day, our users benefit from relevant ads and our advertisers get more qualified leads over time.

We constantly evaluate how our users interact with the ads we display and look for opportunities to show more ads when we think they'll be useful -- and fewer ads when we think that users might not want to see them. With this in mind, on queries such as 'car insurance' or 'flowers,' we try to show a wide selection of relevant ads to our users. And, for queries where users are most likely not interested in a product or service, such as 'dog friendly parks in Mountain View,' we may aim to show fewer ads.

Starting today, and over the coming weeks, we'll be implementing an ads quality change designed to show fewer ads on queries for which our users might prefer not to see them and more ads on queries for which ads are useful. The impact of this change will vary from advertiser to advertiser, so we wanted to give you a heads-up and suggest that you keep an eye on your keyword performance over the next few weeks.

If you notice a decline in impressions or clicks on some of your keywords, you may wish to ensure that your most important terms are each specifically entered as keywords in their own right, rather than relying on broad or phrase match to include them. Or, if you notice an unwanted increase in impressions or clicks for some keywords, consider adding negative keywords to more finely tune your targeting. send us your suggestionsPosted by Blake, Inside AdWords crew

Small change to scheduled report delivery

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

In order to provide global support for AdWords advertisers, scheduled report delivery will be shifted by about three hours starting this week. Daily, weekly, and monthly reports will become available at approximately 9:00 am PDT on Mondays, and daily reports will be available at around 6:00 am PDT the rest of the week. Please keep in mind that actual times can vary. This shift is temporary and part of an ongoing process to improve support for our global advertisers.Posted by Arielle, Inside AdWords crew

Mother's Day: it's not too early...

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

pause it and save it for next yearretail industry12 industry profilesPosted by Judy, Inside AdWords crew

Save some trees this Earth Day

Friday, April 21, 2006

Earth Dayprint invoices or receiptsprint report graphsreports you createdownloademailed to youPosted by Arielle, Inside AdWords crew

System maintenance Saturday afternoon

Thursday, April 20, 2006

PDTPosted by Arielle, Inside AdWords crew

What does 'Active' really mean?

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

AdWords HelpMy "Starter Campaign", my "Starter Ad Group" and my keywords are all listed as having a status of "Active" -- are you saying that even though they're all *listed* as "Active", they're not *really* running after all...?doesn'tnot minimum bidrecommended amountPosted by Blake, Inside AdWords crew

Narrow your account-wide searches

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Starting this week, you'll see a new option to 'pick from list' when you access any of our suite of account management tools, such as the Find and Edit Ad Text tool. Let's say you want to update the ad text of certain ads for an upcoming promotional campaign. Using the 'pick from list' option, you can easily specify in which Ad Groups the tool should search. For broader searches, you can still use the existing filters to find keywords or ad text across your entire account.advanced searchmove or copy toolrefresherPosted by Sarah, Inside AdWords crew

AdWords 101: What’s in my account? (Part 1 of 3)

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Access your campaigns - click on any campaign name to be taken into the Campaign Details page.

Search your campaigns – use the handy search box on the upper right corner to locate campaigns, Ad Groups, ads or keywords in your account.

View alerts – messages will appear on your Campaign Summary page above the table when we have important notifications about things that may affect your account.

Create a new campaign – use the links above the table on the left hand side to create a new keyword- or site-targeted campaign.

Change campaign status(es) – need to pause, resume or delete one of your campaigns? Want to change your campaign settings? You can do this easily by clicking the check boxes beside the relevant campaign(s) and then select the appropriate action buttons in the first row of the table.

Change the date range - select the time frame for which you'd like to see your statistics reported in the table, be it a pre-defined period such as "last 7 days" or "yesterday", or a custom date range which you specify.

Homework:Navigating the TabsCampaign ManagementAccount Navigation DemoToolsDeciding whether to use Conversion TrackingInside AdWordsKeyword ToolFind / Edit ToolsConversion TrackingPosted by Vivian, Inside AdWords crew

AdWords support -- making it simple and effective

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

AdWords HelpCould someone from Google publicly answer the question: what should we expect from Google customer service?...AdWords Help

Let's start with response time. Our target for email turnaround-time is a maximum of one business day (Monday through Friday). We always aim to answer as quickly as possible, of course, and frequently beat the 24 hour time by a substantial margin. As some advertisers have noted, it may also occasionally take longer than 24 hours -- especially during peak periods, such as after the launch of new features/tools, during extremely active retail seasons, and so forth.

The most common reason for an advertiser to not receive a response to their query is that their email program has been set to filter certain types of mail. In other words, a response is sent, but it ends up in the recipient's 'junk mail' folder. So, be sure to double check your email filters.

The best way to contact support is by using the 'Contact Us' link from within the account about which you have questions. This link can be found on the top right of each page in your account.

If you are not able to use the 'Contact Us' link in your account, then please use the 'Contact Us' link at the bottom of the AdWords Help Center home page.

If you are contacting us from the Help Center, then please be sure to identify your account by customer ID and/or email address. A surprisingly large number of emails come in each day with no way to identify the account associated with the question. As you might imagine, this makes a meaningful response more difficult.

Please note that sending your email by a means other than the above mentioned methods will slow down your response -- or possibly prevent it altogether, as the support teams can't answer an email that is never received.

At present, customer service folks work Monday through Friday. So, for example, writing to support late on a Friday afternoon is likely to mean that your reply will not be received until at least Monday afternoon.

Be aware of peak periods and slack periods. Highest volume of email occurs on Monday. Volume is lower, and turnaround-time is potentially quicker mid-week. So if your question is routine rather than urgent, take advantage of this and consider writing mid-week.

Be as succinct and as specific as possible with your questions. If the support team has to make a guess as to what the question is, then the answer is likely to be longer in coming and less useful as well. And, in many ways, it is best to ask a single question (or very few) per email. Asking 5 or 8 questions in one email may slow your response down a bit.

It is important to provide whatever background information will be required to answer your questions fully and quickly. For example, please include pertinent dates, campaign and Ad Group names, the keywords in question, etc.

Finally, every email is answered by a real person. So, if you ever get a reply that doesn't meet your satisfaction, please reply directly to that email. This will send your response to the person who originally answered your email, who is already familiar with your account. This prevents duplication of research and speed things up. Also, be sure to explain what was lacking in the original answer.

your feedbackPosted by Blake, Inside AdWords crew

An AdSense primer for AdWords advertisers

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

AdWords 101AdSense programAdSense for search AdSense for content introduced a feature AdWords referralsreferral buttonapply to the AdSense programprogram policies let us knowPosted by Sarah, Inside AdWords crew

AdWords Editor beta update

Monday, April 10, 2006

past postreleasedAdWords EditorAdWords Editor is still in beta and by invite only, but with the release of the latest version, we also invited 5,000 more advertisers to participate. We'll be inviting more users in the coming months, so stay tuned! We've received a lot of positive feedback from our beta participants so far. Please keep it coming -- your feedback is taken seriously.Posted by Arielle, Inside AdWords crew

International AdWords update: more promotional credits for Google Advertising Professionals

Thursday, April 06, 2006

what's happeningGoogle Advertising Professionalsthis programpromotional creditsMy Client CentersitePosted by Vivian, Inside AdWords crew

Why no pop-ups?

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

I just got an email saying that my ad was disapproved because my landing page had a pop up when the ad was clicked on. Pop ups are very common, and I'm not sure why it is a problem. What's the big deal? Can you make an exception in my case? My pop up doesn't try to sell anything, I'm just giving my customers a chance to tell me what they want. That should be OK, right? - A pop-up fan AdWords Editorial Guidelinesdoes The Most Hated Advertising TechniquesJakob NielsenPosted by Blake, Inside AdWords crew

AdWords 101: Targeting the right customers (Part 2 of 2)

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

first half of our lessonSearch? Content? Or both? Google Networksearch content single themepartner websitesimage adseditKeyword- or site-targeted?
site sectionsdemographic site selectiontopicHomework: Ad DistributionSite TargetingGoogle Network OverviewAbout the Content NetworkSite Targeting OverviewInside AdWordsSearch / Content networksShowing ads on Google propertiesTracking search and content clicks separatelyA fireside chat on content targetingIntroducing content bids6 tips to optimize for the content networkAdvertising outside of the (text) boxSite TargetingIntroductionCPM pricingSite SectionsDemographic site selection
*Source: Custom analysis conducted for Google by comScore Networks, November 2005
Posted by Vivian, Inside AdWords crew

Inside AdWords

We've moved!

Choose a different account time zone

Ads quality and you

Small change to scheduled report delivery

Mother's Day: it's not too early...

Save some trees this Earth Day

System maintenance Saturday afternoon

What does 'Active' really mean?

Narrow your account-wide searches

AdWords 101: What’s in my account? (Part 1 of 3)

AdWords support -- making it simple and effective

An AdSense primer for AdWords advertisers

AdWords Editor beta update

International AdWords update: more promotional credits for Google Advertising Professionals

Why no pop-ups?

AdWords 101: Targeting the right customers (Part 2 of 2)

Google Best Practices

Best Practices Newsletter

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