Inside AdWords: August 2009

More High Quality Templates and New Premium Fonts in Display Ad Builder

Friday, August 28, 2009

we announced
In addition to these new templates, we also added 13 premium fonts that you can use to make ads with maximum visual appeal. They include: News Gothic, Gill Sans, Futura and Nimbus Sans. Here are some examples of the new ad templates and fonts:

(click here to see full size image)

With some of the new templates, you don't even need to upload any logos or images. With just a little bit of text you can create an appealing display ad in seconds.
To start creating your ads, visit the "Ads" tab in any campaign, click "New Ad," and select "Display Ad Builder' from the drop down." If you want to learn more about creating and running display ads, visit the Display Ads 101 tutorial.Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

New Interface Thursdays: Tips for keyword management

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Focusing on what's important

In the Keywords tab you have several tools that help you focus on what matters to you.

First, you can customize columns to show only the metrics you care about and in the order you want. You can then use filters to focus on keywords that match a certain criteria. For example, you might only want to look at keywords that aren't converting well. Filters let you hone on what's important. You can find examples of good filters to try in this Help Center article.

And once you know what you're looking for, you can put AdWords on the look out. Using custom alerts you can tell AdWords what changes are important to you and be alerted when they happen both in your account and via email. For example, using filters you identify your best converting high volume keywords. You could create an alert to be notified if the conversion rate on those keywords drops compared to last week.

If you're working through a My Client Center account, note that you'll need to log in directly to an individual AdWords account to set custom alerts for now.

Changing many things at once

Once you've found what's important, the new interface makes it easier to make bulk changes to your keywords. First off you can select many keywords at once and click Edit to open up all fields for editing. To save time, you can do this all with your keyboard: select keywords with X, move up and down rows using J and K, and press E to get into edit mode. If you want to select a consecutive list of keywords, select the first keyword then hold the Shift key, and then click the last keyword you want selected.

While in edit mode, you can pause keywords, adjust your Max CPC, change the destination URL, and switch the match type. You can also copy bids and destination URLs to all rows. We've also recently added the ability to raise all applicable keyword bids to their first page CPC. From edit mode, just click Prefill all CPCs to first page bid.

You can also use spreadsheet editing to make bulk changes. Spreadsheet editing lets you work with your keywords as if you were using a spreadsheet. You can use formulas, copy and paste, and even find and replace. You'll find spreadsheet editing by clicking More actions then Spreadsheet edit. Remember that spreadsheet editing can only be done within an ad group.

Moving things around

Maintaining a good account structure is one of the keys to successful AdWords campaigns. So, from time to time, you may want to move things around a bit to create more refined, relevant sets of keywords and ads. This is where the copy feature comes in handy. Like spreadsheet editing, you'll also find copy under More actions.You can copy keywords to another ad group or campaign. When copying keywords, you have the option to also copy the bid and destination URL.

We hope these tips help you manage your keywords more effectively and improve your AdWords campaigns.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Inside AdWords crew

New Interface Thursdays: Your top questions from the webinar series

Thursday, August 20, 2009

How do I delete keywords?Change statusMy ad is pending review. What does that mean?Where do I find spreadsheet editing?KeywordsSpreadsheet editMore actionsWhat is the difference between 1 per click and many per click conversions?hereHow do I view Destination URLs for keywordscustomizing your columnsKeywords Filters and viewsCustomize columns

(click for larger image)
Where are settings for ad scheduling, frequency capping, ad rotations, etc?Campaign SettingsAdvancedPosted by Amanda Kelly, Inside AdWords crew

Conversion Rates Don't Vary Much with Ad Position

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

For today's Inside AdWords post we have a note from our Chief Economist at Google, Hal Varian. Hal and his team spend most of their time studying the AdWords auction and finding ways to make it more efficient. Today he'd like to share some research that he and his team have done on conversion rates by ad position:

Advertisers often ask us how conversion rates vary with position. Everyone is aware that higher positions tend to get more clicks and therefore more conversions in total. The question of interest is how does the conversion rate (conversions/clicks) vary with position?

This is a tricky question for several reasons. Since Google ranks ads by bid times ad quality, ads in higher positions tend to have higher quality and higher quality ads tend to have higher conversion rates. Thus you may see a correlation between auction position and conversion rates just due to this ad quality effect. However, the real question is how the conversion rate for the same ad would change if it were displayed in a different position.

Another difficulty is that the average position number reported by Google is that it is an average over all auctions in which you participate. If you increase your bid, it is quite possible to see your average position move lower on the page! The reason is that when you increase your bid, your ad will appear in new auctions, and it will tend to come in at the bottom of those new auctions. This effect can be large enough to push your overall average position down. See this FAQ for more on this issue.

We have used a statistical model to account for these effects and found that, on average, there is very little variation in conversion rates by position for the same ad. For example, for pages where 11 ads are shown the conversion rate varies by less than 5% across positions. In other words, an ad that had a 1.0% conversion rate in the best position, would have about a 0.95% conversion rate in the worst position, on average. Ads above the search results have a conversion rate within ±2% of right-hand side positions.

The bottom line: conversion rates don't vary much by position.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

New Search Ads Quality Guide Available

Friday, August 14, 2009

You're probably already familiar with the concept of Quality Score and know that it plays a major role in the way that Google decides when to show your ads and how to rank them. But, even seasoned AdWords veterans still have questions about ads quality, which is why we've put together the Search Ads Quality Getting Started Guide.
Since introducing the concept back in July 2005, we've done a lot of work to make Quality Scores more detailed, accurate, and transparent. These improvements have included adding landing page load time, offering score diagnosis on the Keyword Analysis page, and displaying first page bid estimates.
The new Search Ads Quality Getting Started Guide is a resource for how you can get the most out of your search advertising on Google. While we're not making any changes to the way Quality Score works, the guide is organized to help you understand some of the most important concepts around quality, such as: how quality score affects your ranking and how quality score affects how much you pay.
The new guide also offers useful tips on how to improve your ad quality and addresses some of your most common questions.
Whether you've been advertising with AdWords for years, or you just created your first campaign, we believe that the Getting Started Guide will be a useful resource for you to learn more about a topic that is at the core of advertising on AdWords.Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

New Interface Thursdays: Best practices for location extensions

Thursday, August 13, 2009

introduced location extensions
First, it's important to know that there are two ways to set up extensions. You can set up extensions at the campaign level or at the ad level.
Setting up campaign level extensions means that Google will dynamically match a campaign's text ads with the most relevant address in your account based on information like a user's location or a user's search terms. Keep in mind that the address will only be shown when it's relevant to the user's location or search terms. We'll use a fictional chain of coffee shops, Bob's Coffee, to illustrate when you'd want to add campaign level extensions:
Add campaign level extensions when you want to...

Use the same ad text across a number of business locations. For example, Bob has a "buy one cup, get the second free" discount at all his coffee shops. Bob can create one ad and run campaign level extensions because his ad text for this discount is applicable to all his locations.
Direct ads for all of your locations to the same landing page. For example, all of Bob's stores feature the same drinks and prices, so he has a single webpage to greet online users regardless of their location.
Create and edit a lot of ads quickly. For example, Bob's Coffee is introducing a "$1 latte Tuesdays" promotion at all its stores. If Bob creates a new campaign for this promotion and sets up campaign extensions, he only has to create one ad, and that ad will be able to show with any of the addresses associated with that campaign.

If you think these settings are right for your campaigns, you can learn more about how to set up campaign level extensions.
Ad level extensions allow you to override a campaign's location extension settings. When you use ad level extensions, you are selecting one address to show with a specific ad.
Create ad level extensions when you want to...

Associate a single address with a specific marketing message. For example, Bob wants to test out a promotion at just one location before implementing it for all stores. He is going to offer a "Case of the Mondays" special, a free upgrade to a large coffee when you a buy medium coffee on Monday. Bob has created an ad to go with this promotion and only wants this ad to show for the one location where he's running the promotion. He doesn't want AdWords to match the ad to any of his other addresses, so he overrides the campaign setting with an ad level extension.
Direct each ad to a specific landing page. Bob has also created a separate landing page within his website to promote the "Case of the Mondays" promotion. He wants to direct most of his users to the main webpage via his regular campaigns, but wants to direct viewers of the "Case of the Mondays" ad to a page specifically for the promotion.

If ad level extensions better meet your needs, read more about how to start using them. Remember, you can use a mix of campaign and ad level extensions in your account.
Adding addresses to AdWordsWhen you're setting up your extensions, you should also know that there are two ways to give your addresses to Google: use the Local Business Center or enter addresses manually into AdWords.
If you're a primary business owner, you should use Local Business Center to give your addresses to Google. The Local Business Center is a free tool that allows you to manage your business listings. Addresses you enter manually or through bulk upload here will affect how your free business listings and ads appear on Google.com and Google Maps. If you plan to use Local Business Center, you can learn more about how it works with extensions.
If you're not the primary business owner of the locations in your ads, you can manually enter addresses into AdWords. An example of a non-business owner might be a wireless hotspot company that provides Internet access at Bob's Coffee. The company doesn't own any of the Bob's Coffee locations, but might want to advertise that their Wi-Fi services are available at a Bob's Coffee location.
Whichever method you choose, you can add addresses from the same place in AdWords, in the Audience section of the Settings tab.

To learn more about location extensions, check out the location extensions overview section in the AdWords Help Center.Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Inside AdWords crew

Create New High Quality Display Ads with Display Ad Builder

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Display Ad Builder90 templates
Today, we have introduced a new set of "Elegant" ad templates in the "General" category of Display Ad Builder that make it even easier to create high quality display ads. These templates have ready-made buttons and backgrounds that give each ad a cohesive look and feel. More specifically, the backgrounds use subtle gradients and the new buttons have unique shapes, icons and color treatments. The goal of these ads is to make it as easy as possible to create high-quality ads in a matter of seconds without having to use complex graphics software. Here are a few examples:

(Click to see full size image)

With some of these new templates, all you have to do is upload your product image and write some text to get a professional looking display ad out in no time.

To start creating your ads, click Display Ad Builder on the Create an ad page within a new or existing campaign in your AdWords account. If you want to learn more about creating and running display ads, visit the Display Ads 101 tutorial.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Join us at SES San Jose next week

Friday, August 07, 2009

Search Engine Strategies San JoseTuesday, August 11th, 2009

Duplicate Content - Greg Grothaus - 9am-10:15am

The Next Wave for Online Video - Erin Bouchier - 11:45am-12:45pm

Successful Site Architecture - Johannes Henkel - 11:45am-12:45pm

How to Turn Your Web Analytics into a Money Making Machine - Avinash Kaushik- 1:45pm - 2:45pm

Keeping it Local - Josh Siegel - 4:30pm-5:30pm

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

Convert Your Visitors to Customers - Nitin Mangtani - 10:45am - 12:00pm

Conference Keynote - Nick Fox - 1:00pm - 2:00pm

Google AdWords, Analytics & Website Optimizer Secrets Revealed + Google Science Fair - 2:30pm - 3:45pm

Real World Multivariate Testing - Trevor Claiborne - 4:00pm - 5:15pm

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

Extreme Site Makeover - Tiffany Lane - 10:30am - 11:45am

Quality Score - Jonathan Alferness - 10:30am - 11:45am

Images & Search Engines - RJ Pittman - 2:15pm - 3:30pm

Search Becomes the Display OS - Rajas Moonka - 3:45pm - 5:00pm

New Interface Thursdays: Keep tabs on your account with custom alerts

Thursday, August 06, 2009

The new interface helps you focus on the data you care about with tools like filters and customizable columns. But wouldn't it be great if, instead of having to search for important changes in your metrics, you could be notified when a change you care about occurs?
That's why we've released a new feature called custom alerts. Custom alerts help you stay on top of your account's performance by notifying you whenever important changes occur in your account.
For example, what if you wanted to know when there was a spike in impressions for any of your branded keywords? Simply navigate to your branded keywords ad group, and in the Keywords tab, click More actions, then Create a custom alert.

Here, we've defined an alert to notify us when impressions for the brand terms ad group have increased more than 20% over the previous day:

As another example, you might want to be notified when a campaign is coming close to hitting its budget. To set up this alert, you'll first navigate to All online campaigns. Under More actions, select Create a custom alert. You can set up a ">90% of daily budget spent" alert for a selected campaign, or for every campaign in your account.

Getting alertsOnce you've set up an alert, AdWords will be on the lookout for changes. After an alert is triggered, you'll see it in the Messages section at the top of your account. If you set up email notification, you don't even need to log in, you'll be emailed when the important change occurs.

Clicking the plus-box shows the full alert:

You can then dismiss the alert from your messages, or click View to see the parts of your account that triggered the notification.

Managing your custom alerts
To look at the alerts you've already set up, select Manage custom alerts under the More actions menu. You can see all the alerts you've set up for your account by first navigating to the Campaigns tab in All online campaigns.
When managing your alerts you can make a number of changes, like pausing or deleting an alert. You can also modify an alert's settings using in-line editing. Lastly, you can turn email notification on or off for a particular alert.
Custom alerts are one of our favorite features in the new AdWords interface, and we're excited about all the different ways you can use them. So the next time you want to keep a close eye on your account, remember that AdWords can stay alert for you.
Meet the new AdWords interface teamThere are two upcoming chances to meet the new interface team. Next week, we'll be at the Search Engine Strategies San Jose conference. Join us for our session Google AdWords, Analytics & Website Optimizer: Secrets Revealed! on August 12th at 2:30 PM. After the session, we'll be holding a "science fair" where you can meet many of the AdWords engineers.
We also have one more webinar on August 20th at 9:30 AM PDT. You can register for the free webinar on the new interface webinars site.Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Inside AdWords crew

AdWords system maintenance on August 8th

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

On Saturday, August 8th, 2009, the AdWords system will be unavailable from approximately 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT due to system maintenance. While you won't be able to sign in to your accounts during this time, your campaigns will continue to run as usual. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Posted by Amanda Kelly, Inside AdWords crew

Two more chances to attend a new AdWords interface webinar

Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Over the weeks, many advertisers have joined us to learn more about the new interface. Here's what a couple of them had to say about the webinars:

I'd like to thank you for today's webinar. It was very useful and I've learned more about the new features of AdWords interface.

This was truly a great session and I learned a few new tricks. Great shortcuts and tools for power users.

There are just two more webinars left in the series. The next webinar is tomorrow, Wednesday, August 5 at 9:30 AM PDT. Our final webinar will be on Thursday, August 20 at 9:30 AM PDT. You can register for either webinar on the new interface webinars site.
And if you can't attend one of the live webinars, the next best thing is a recorded one: