Inside AdWords: December 2010

10 of our favorite AdWords innovations from 2010

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

AdWords Campaign Experiments: Experiment with bid, keyword, ad group and placement changes, then measure how they impact your campaign performance.

Search Funnels: Understand the Google.com search ad click and impression behavior leading up to a conversion.

Product Ads: Highlight your most relevant products with pictures and prices directly on the search results page with Product Listing Ads and Product Extensions.

Product Listing Ads

Product Extensions

AdWords Call Metrics: Include a Google Voice phone number in ads that appear on Google.com, and measure the number of phone calls generated by your AdWords campaigns.

Call Metrics

Click-to-call Phone Extensions: Make it easier for potential customers to reach you by including a clickable phone number in ads that appear on mobile phones with full Internet browsers.

Click-to-call phone extensions

Display Campaign Optimizer: Save time and increase conversions on the Google Display Network with this new automatic bidding and targeting tool.

Enhanced CPC: A bidding option that automatically adjusts the Max CPC bids that you’ve set based on the likelihood that your ad will convert, leading to more conversions and higher profit.

Broad Match Modifier: A keyword match type giving you more potential traffic than phrase match with comparable ROI.

AdWords Automated Rules: Save time by scheduling automatic changes to your AdWords account based on criteria that you specify.

Remarketing: Show your ads to users who’ve previously visited your website as they browse sites across the Google Display Network.

Google Ad InnovationsInside AdWords

There's still time to meet your 2010 resolution to become Google AdWords certified

Monday, December 20, 2010

hereprofile pageAdWords Learning CenterAdWords Seminars for SuccessGoogle AdWords Certification ProgramPosted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

Significant advances for Display Ad Builder

Friday, December 17, 2010

Display Ad BuilderQuickly manage hundreds of ads with bulk copying and editingnewest version of AdWords Editor

Sample Display Ad Builder ad copied using AdWords Editor and then customized based on user location.
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instructionsour websiteDrive engagement with social and expandable templates

An ad created using one of Display Ad Builder's social templates.
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Create the perfect ad by customizing your templates

Now you can move around text boxes and pictures and re-size text boxes to customize templates to fit your needs.
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demo‘New Ad’‘Display Ad Builder.’
Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

Introducing the Big Small Business Plan

Thursday, December 16, 2010

shared what you saidregister for this offer AdWords Conversion Trackingsign up for AdWordsPosted by Gordon Zhu, Inside AdWords crew

We Asked. You Told Us Your Wishes for 2011

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Google Small Business Blogbiggest wish for your businessexpanding your business’ online presenceblogFacebookTwitterTheme 1: Move my business online

click for full size imageTheme 2: Grow my business

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Theme 3: Love my business

click for full size imageGoogle Small Business

Expand your business - Chrome fast

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Editors note: This is a guest blog post from the Chrome Web Store team, presenting you a new opportunity to grow your business on the web.made availableCreating an appwww.google.com/chrome/CreateAnApp

Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

Learn more about Quality Score from our live online course

Monday, December 13, 2010

To help you understand more about Quality Score, we’ll be hosting a free, live course in the AdWords Online Classroom (UK) on Wednesday, December 15. The key to a successful AdWords account is the relevancy of your ads, keywords, and website. Having a better understanding of Quality Score can help you improve your AdWords performance.

The interactive course will be delivered by two AdWords Specialists and will take approximately one hour including some time for Q&A. It will take place on Wednesday, December 15 from 3pm - 4pm BST / GMT+1 (London), 10am-11am EST (New York), 7am-8am PST (San Francisco).

If you’re interested, make sure to sign up now!

To learn more about Quality Score you can also visit our Help Center.

Posted by Jason Shafton, Inside AdWords crew

More information about how our partners work with advertisers

Friday, December 10, 2010

In July, we shared some upcoming changes to the way our third party partners should provide reports and information about AdWords to their clients. Starting in February 2011, all advertisers should be able to find out how much of their advertising budget (cost) was spent on AdWords, how many times their ads appeared (impressions) and how many times users clicked on their ads (clicks). While most of our third party partners already provide this basic reporting, for those that are still preparing to meet these new requirements, we’ve included some simple guidelines and answers to frequently asked questions in our Help Center.

We’ve heard from our third party partners and advertisers that it’s important for advertisers to know what to expect when working with a third party partner and how to notify us at Google about violations of our policies. So we’ve created a document for all advertisers that includes this information.

We believe it’s especially important for advertisers with small to medium advertising budgets -- who may not have the resources and expertise of large advertisers -- to know what they can expect when working with our third party partners. If you’re a third party partner and 80% or more of your customers spend less than $1,000 USD (or local currency equivalent) per month on AdWords, you’ll be required to share this document with your customers. To learn how you can meet this requirement, visit our Help Center.

We think that these new requirements ensure that every advertiser that works with a third party partner understands the value that they receive from their partner and AdWords.

Posted by Jason Shafton, Inside AdWords crew

International tourists find the Polish seaside through Google AdWords

Friday, December 10, 2010

Villa Zdroj Bed and Breakfast in 2002Google AdWords

Villa Zdrojclick for full size image

Sebastian with his family
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short videoPosted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

Test your text and display ads with AdWords Campaign Experiments

Thursday, December 09, 2010

AdWords Campaign ExperimentsWhat can I test?

Text Ads

Display Ads

Ad text
Headlines
Display URLs
Calls to action

Images
Display URLs
Calls to action

display ad builderWhat about ad rotation?ad rotationhow-to-videosFAQs

Posted by Gordon Zhu, Inside AdWords crew

Discover new features in the Opportunities tab

Wednesday, December 08, 2010

Today we’re announcing four new features in the Opportunities tab that we hope will improve the way that you optimize your AdWords account.
First page CPC ideasFirst page CPC ideas help you adjust your bids so that your ads have a better chance of appearing on the first page of search results. If you have first page CPC ideas in your account, these will appear in your Opportunities tab above your keyword, bid, and budget ideas.

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More robust statistics for your keyword ideas Until now, we’ve provided ‘estimated monthly searches’ as the primary statistic upon which to evaluate the potential impact of your keyword ideas. Now, in addition to search estimates for each keyword, you’ll also see estimates for impressions, cost, and clicks whenever these statistics are available. These new statistics can help you make more informed decisions about which keywords you apply to your account.

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Bid ideas for ad groupsBid ideas can now be found at the ad group level in addition to the keyword level.

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Export your ideasIf you have a lot of ideas in your account, exporting these to a .csv file can be a good way for you to review optimizations before you apply them. Exporting your ideas is as easy as clicking the ‘Export all ideas to .csv’ link. While you can see all the other features in the Opportunities tab now, this last feature is rolling out to all advertiser accounts over the next few weeks.

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We hope you find these updates in the Opportunities tab useful. To learn more about the Opportunities tab, watch our webinar in the AdWords Online Classroom or visit the AdWords Help Center.
Posted by Jason Shafton, Inside AdWords crew

The Keyword Tool - when you talk, we listen

Wednesday, December 08, 2010

provide us with feedbackThere are three new ways to filter and refine your keyword list.

Choose specific terms to include or exclude from your keyword list.

Use the ‘More like these’ button to search for terms that are similar to the specific keyword ideas you've selected from the table.

Get only results that include the exact words or phrases (and their close synonyms) you’ve typed in the search box.

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Adding stars to keywordsAdd stars to keywords‘View as text’ button

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Your continued feedback is important, so please keep sending us your comments and we'll post about more improvements here.

Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

Thank you for ten great years

Tuesday, December 07, 2010

In early November, we invited you to help us celebrate AdWords’ 10th birthday by telling the story of your own business. Today we’re sharing your stories with the world on a global map we’re featuring on the AdWords 10th Birthday website.

click for full size imageWe hope you enjoy this collection of voices from your fellow entrepreneurs. And if you didn’t submit your own story but feel inspired to do so now, it isn’t too late to add your voice. Just visit our website and send us your video or written story.Thank you for ten great years. We can’t wait to see what’s to come in the next ten.Posted by Jason Shafton, Inside AdWords crew

AdWords rules, and so can you!

Tuesday, December 07, 2010

Do you stay awake at night wondering where your bids are? Do you plan your vacations around fluctuations in click volume? Have you taken AdWords for Mobile as your +1 to a family wedding?
Managing an AdWords account to its full potential takes time - time that you could spend managing other important parts of your business. That’s why we’ve developed automated rules, a new feature available to US advertisers that lets you get the benefit of 24-hour account management while leaving you free to focus on other important things.
With automated rules, you’re able to create rules to automate bid, budget, and status changes on a specific part of your account (selected keywords, ad groups, campaigns, and ads) that are triggered at a particular time. For example, automated rules could be created to perform the following tasks:

Enable ads promoting a special offer late on a Sunday night when the offer goes live
Automatically raise your bid to the first page CPC for all keywords in a campaign that contain the word ‘sale’
Generate more traffic on your peak shopping days by automatically increasing your daily budget on Mondays and decreasing it on Wednesdays

Let’s walk through an example of creating a rule within a campaign to increase keyword bids for all keywords with a position worse than 4 so far today. First, we’ll navigate to the Keyword tab of the campaign, click the ‘Automate’ dropdown, and choose “Change Max. CPC bids when...”

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In the window that appears, we’ll create our rule to raise bids for all but deleted keywords in the campaign by 10%. We’ll set specific parameters to make sure the rule is only applied when certain criteria are met. In this case, we’ll add a requirement that the average position must be worse than 4 so far today for any bid changes to be made.

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Then, we’ll specify that the rule should be performed every day at 12pm using data from the same day. We’ll name our rule and choose to keep track of changes by receiving an email each time the rule runs.
As an important last step, we’ll click ‘Preview results,’ to see a list of changes that would be made if the rule were to run at that moment. When we’re satisfied that everything is in order, we’ll click ‘Save.’
To manage the rules you’ve created and keep track of changes automatically made to the account each day, visit the ‘Control panel and library’ section of your account and click ‘Rules.’
Automated rules will be gradually launched to US advertisers over the coming weeks. If you regularly perform manual tasks in your account, we encourage you to give automated rules a try. Once you’ve done so, we’d love to hear your feedback for how we can make automated rules even better. So let us know how it goes!
For more information on AdWords automated rules, visit Google Ad Innovations.
Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Going Global with Google

Monday, December 06, 2010

Google Global Market FinderGoogle Ads for Global Advertisers

click for full size imageGoogle Ads for Global Advertisers

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Find the right market for your products and services, by using tools such as the Global Market Finder

Translate your websites and ad text using Google Translate Web Element and Google Translator Toolkit

Reach new customers with relevant online ads

Understand options for international payment, shipping, and customer service

mosaic companybespoke shoe retailertech support companybed and breakfastPosted by Michael Galvez and Srinidhi Viswanatha, Global Advertisers team

AdWords Train & Gain - And the winner is...

Monday, December 06, 2010

announced

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Train & GainTerra OrganicsYouTube Symphony Orchestra“We started using Google AdWords for our small Organic Produce Home Delivery Service about a year ago. While we saw some great gains, we knew we weren't using it to its full potential and weren't sure how best to budget our ads for the most efficiency. Google's Train & Gain helped us to refine our AdWords knowledge and get more out of our dollar. We learned how to maximize our Cost Per Click, use better (and negative) keywords and track our progress using Google Analytics.

Since starting the Train & Gain program, we've already seen dramatic improvements in the consistency of performance with our advertisements. We're able to work within our budget to get better results and turn more people on to our local farm CSA (community supported agriculture) and produce boxes.
In order to track just how much Google's Train & Gain impacted us, we videotaped our progress week by week and put together a YouTube video so you could gain a better understanding of who we are and how Train and Gain helped us.”

Winners from Americas:Fright Night Scream ParkTerra OrganicsEMlab P&KValstar PrintersDorney SecurityWinners from Europe, Middle East & Africa:Easy ReadSCL WaterPeppermint PixUtility Exchange OnlineFire PersonnelWinners from Japan and Asia-Pacific:NK RealtorsBenjamin’s CraftsPhuket Villa RentalsTemporary Tattoos GuruThe Navadoya ClubAdWords Small Business Center