AdWords Expanded Match Continues to Confound

September 27, 2007 By 3 Comments

Google’s Expanded Broad Match option for Adwords has been the source of much discussion since it launched a couple of years ago. Much of the feedback from advertisers has been less than positive, as evidenced by this Search Engine Watch thread which started almost 2 years ago, yet remains active today.

However, the coupling of Expanded Broad Match with Google’s new Search Query Report has put the spotlight on some of its flaws and shortcomings. Further confounding the issue is Google’s recent clarification of its Landing Page Guidelines, which has some experts wondering whether Google has gone too far in pursuit of a positive user experience.

On the flip side of that coin comes a lively thread on Webmaster World. A good summary of the thread is at Search Engine Roundtable, but basically advertisers expressed their displeasure with the lack of relevancy in Expanded Broad Match. Adwords Advisor chimed in asking for clarification, with a promise to take the feedback to the powers that be at Google, and the discussion’s taken off from there.

I’ve given some of my thoughts in that thread, and the gist of them is that on the plus side, expanded broad match is one of the best ways to discover tail terms that drive great ROI. Instead of spending hours poring over keyword tools and server logs, why not let Google do the legwork for you via expanded broad match? Well, the downside is that, as evidenced in the WMW thread, expanded match goes too far. Ads are being shown on totally irrelevant searches, as well as foreign language and character queries. I don’t think anyone can claim that irrelevant ads provide a positive user experience. A positive experience for Google’s pocketbook, maybe, but not for the searcher.

What we need is for Google to bring back the classic broad match, and have expanded broad match as a separate match option. This has been brought up time and again on forums and blogs, as well as search conferences such as SMX Advanced. I think it’s time Google gave this idea more than just lip service. Let’s hope AWA’s meeting moves us closer to that goal.

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YSM Custom Reports

September 6, 2007 By Leave a Comment

Yesterday, I was catching up on my news and blog feeds after last week’s vacation, and I ran across a brief blurb in the YSM Blog about their “new custom reports.” It’s at the end of this post.

Well, needless to say, I was very excited to hear that Yahoo had finally gotten on the custom report bandwagon. The lack of any kind of custom reporting has been one of the big failings of the new Panama interface. Alas, however, my enthusiasm was severely dampened when I logged in to my account to set up custom reports.

As a matter of fact, I’m not sure I’d even call the new features “custom reporting.” “Enhanced,” maybe, but not custom. You’re still stuck with the 8 pre-built reports – there’s no way to add or delete columns to create a truly custom report. So, if you’re like me and currently have to run two or three different reports, upload them to Access, and run a query to get the data you need, well, you’ll still have to do that. The only real enhancement is that now you can save your report configuration. For example, if you always want to look at daily performance for the past 30 days, you can save a report that will do that, instead of having to manually select that date range every time you run the report. This is nice, but certainly not earth-shattering.

Custom reporting is one area where Google just kicks their competitors’ collective back sides right out of the park. Not only do you have almost total control over what data appears in your Google reports, but you can use parameters such as “only keywords with greater than 100 clicks” and things like that. You can run reports for only Active ads. You can set a specific start day for the week, such as “the week starting last Wednesday.” This particular feature is huge for me, because our fiscal weeks start on Wednesdays. With Google, I just set up a recurring report that runs for Wednesday through Tuesday, and I’m good to go. With the rest, I have to manually put in the actual dates. It wastes valuable time, especially when I’m running the same report week after week.

I’m glad Yahoo has made the improvements they did, but for those of us who are used to Google’s Custom Reports, Yahoo still has a long, long way to go.

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Filed Under: adwords, yahoo search marketing

A Visit from Google AdWords

August 16, 2007 By Leave a Comment

On Monday, five staffers from the Google AdWords Ann Arbor office paid us a visit here at MagazineLine. It’s always exciting to get visitors – being in the Midwest, we don’t get a lot of them (grin), and once again, Google is way ahead of the pack by offering to make the (quick) trip. For the better part of the day, members of our marketing and IT staff talked about search and internet marketing with the biggest hitter in the space.

I was really impressed with the amount of training and preparation the Googlers brought with them. We talked mostly about holiday marketing plans, and they had some great ideas on expanding our reach, as well as new testing ideas we haven’t tried before. We also talked about some of the Google products, including Checkout and Analytics.

The conversation also uncovered some gaps in our current Google strategy. For instance, we discovered that although we’re regularly submitting a feed to Google Base for Product Search, we’re basically nowhere to be found. The Googlers didn’t even know we were listed there. The discussion brought the issue back onto our radar, and with the help of Google, we’ve found some fairly easy ways to improve our feed and get better visibility.

All in all, it was a productive day on both sides of the table. As I’ve said here before, it always helps to have a face to put with the voice at the other end of the phone; and we were able to accomplish so much more in person than we ever could by phone and email.

We’re very lucky to have the Google office so close by. It’s definitely bolstering an already-strong relationship.

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Filed Under: adwords, google

Using Google AdWords’ “Change History” Tool

July 25, 2007 By Leave a Comment

Most good PPC marketers are constantly making changes to their campaigns: tweaking keywords, ad copy, landing pages, CPCs, and other adjustments, all to improve campaign performance. And most good PPC marketers will want to know whether the changes made any difference. This can be really easy or really hard to determine, depending on what changes you make and how you track results.

Google AdWords has a neat tool that makes it easy to see what changes you’ve made. It’s called the Change History tool. Found in the Tools menu within the AdWords interface, it lists all the changes made within an account in the past three months.

I’ve been using this tool more and more. I recently added a long list of keywords to one of my campaigns after review the Search Query report (see this post for more on that experience). I wanted to see how the new keywords were performing. Problem was, I couldn’t remember the exact date I’d made the changes. Then I remembered the Change History tool. Bingo – with just a few clicks, I was able to see the date, and then pull results for the campaign after the changes went in.

The Change History tool is also great for AdWords accounts with multiple users. If you’re in an agency setting, or even in-house with more than one person working on the account, this can create issues for even the best of communicators. I have someone helping me with product changes and updates – with large accounts, it’s almost impossible for one person to handle. The Change History tool will tell me not only what change was made, but who made it. No more “when/why/how did I do THAT?” questions!

If you’re not already using tThe AdWords Change History tool, give it a try. It makes it easy to track changes and the effect on your campaigns.

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Google AdWords’ Search Query Report: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

June 20, 2007 By 4 Comments

Recently, Google added a new report to the AdWords arsenal: the Search Query Report. In a nutshell, this report gives advertisers a list of all the actual search queries on which their ads appeared, along with useful statistics such as impressions, clicks, conversions, average position, and average CPC. This is data advertisers have been requesting for a long time, but until recently had to pull from other sources, such as log files or other analytics tools.

The Good: It’s pretty obvious. This report is a great way to discover new keywords, especially those oft-ballyhooed tail terms that are so hard to find, yet convert like crazy. It’s also useful for discovering negative keywords. I just added over 170 negatives to one campaign after poring over this report! (Thank goodness for AdWords Editor!) Best of all, if you’re using Google’s Conversion Tracker or Analytics, the report includes conversion stats, so it’s easy to see which keywords are converting and which aren’t.

The Bad: The report makes it plainly obvious that there are serious issues with Google’s Broad Match. These issues have been widely publicized in the search marketing forums and blogs, so this isn’t news. However, I found some really crazy stuff in my report. All our campaigns are set to US-only and English-only, since we’re not authorized to sell overseas. Yet our ads are showing on all kinds of non-English keywords, according to the Search Query report. I even found keywords in Russian and Arabic character sets! Not only are these keywords not relevant, we shouldn’t be showing on these searches at all.

The Ugly: First, a little refresher. Most SEMs know about Google’s Quality Score, which is supposed to reward relevant ads, keywords, and landing pages. Google makes several suggestions as to how keyword Quality Score can be improved, including the following: “You can also narrow your targeting options (ie, using regional targeting) or matching types (ie, use exact keyword matching). We also suggest adding your keyword to your ad text.”

Now, a little story to illustrate just how ugly this is in reality. I have generic ads running for keywords like “magazines” and “magazine” and such that go to our home page. I also have more targeted ads for specific magazines such as “newsweek magazine” with specific ad copy, that go to the page for the magazine in question (the Newsweek Magazine page, in this example).

In the Search Query report, I noticed the keyword “self magazine” (phrase match) in my Search Query Report for my generic ads. Avg position = 1.2, avg CPC = $0.51. OK, that’s all fine – we have “magazine” as a broad match keyword in that ad group. Here’s the ugly part. I also have an ad group in a different campaign for Self Magazine. The ad has that exact phrase in the copy and that keyword in the ad group as exact match, with a landing page for that magazine (as opposed to our home page for the generic ad).

Minimum CPC for [self magazine] in that ad group? $10.00.

I’m sorry, but I just don’t get it! Google tells us that to help our Quality Score, we should use targeted keywords, ads, and landing pages. So I’ve done that. Yet, in this example, I’ve been rewarded for following the rules with a $10 minimum CPC. Yet, Google shows our generic ad on “magazine” as a broad match keyword for that same query – and charges us 1/20th of the price.

The ugliest part of all is that the visitor has to then search on our site for the magazine they TYPED INTO GOOGLE in the first place. Making searchers search multiple times is one of my big pet peeves. If they are asking for something specific, we as SEMs should make every effort to give it to them, and the engines should help us out, not hamper our efforts!

Just to back up a bit… All in all, I am thrilled with this report and with the fact that Google is providing us with such great granular data. I’m just a little frustrated by the obvious glitches in the system that are now really, glaringly obvious.

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Filed Under: adwords, google
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