Thanks to all of you for reading this blog over the past few years. After some consideration, we recognize that we're just not generating enough content here to warrant your time, so we won't be posting here any longer. We encourage you to visit our global Agency blog and regional AdWords blogs (find a list on our Press Center) for ongoing news, tips and tools to help you manage your client accounts.

Posted by Emily Wood, Google Blog team

The introduction of custom variables to Google Analytics opened up many possibilities in measurement for site owners. It allows you to extend the dimensions tracked by Google Analytics to include facets that are meaningful to your business. For example, wouldn’t you like to know how your logged in members behaved differently to your casual visitors? Or which categories of content your visitors are consuming?

Barbara Pezzi, Director of Analytics and Search Optimisation, Fairmont Raffles Hotels International, has been kind enough to share her use-cases for the different types of custom variables. Head on over to the APAC Conversion Room blog to find out more about:

1. Visitor-level custom variables: Swissotel were able to segment their visitors based on membership levels, understand their preferences, and then target their marketing efforts accordingly.
2. Session-level custom variables: Fairmont measured which booking method (i.e. single vs multiple) was more popular on their booking engine; and were able to understand which method appealed to which types of customers.
3. Page-level custom variables: Swissotel used page-level custom variables to group pages according to the language of the content. With these groupings they were able to conveniently analyse the behaviour patterns and preferences of visitors according to the language of content consumed.

We would also love to hear how you use custom variables. If you have any tips or suggestions, please leave them in the comments of Barbara’s articles.

Posted by Vinoaj Vijeyakumaar, Senior Conversion Specialist, Google Southeast Asia

We’re pleased to announce the launch of a resource library in the Google AdWords Certification Program portal. We’ve developed this tool based on feedback from agencies and advertisers that they’d like a centralized place to access and download training materials, research, and resources to stay ahead of the digital curve and effectively adopt Google solutions. This new tool is currently available to users with individual certification program accounts who are based in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand (users do not need to be certified to access it). We’ll be rolling out the resource library in the coming months to additional countries.

The library contains product and industry education above and beyond the certification curricula, as well as sales and marketing resources to help agencies and third parties acquire and retain clients. A sample of content includes:

• On-demand eLearning modules
• Market insights research
• Case studies
• Product one-sheeters
• Relevant videos from the Google Business Channel

The “Recently Added” page will allow you to see the new resources in the library.

To get started:

• Log in to your Google AdWords Certification Program account. New users can visithttp://www.google.com/adwords/professionals/ and click “Join the Program.”
  
  Note: While you don't need to complete the certification program to access the resource library, we encourage you to do so. Individual certification requirements are outlined here.

• You can get a preview of what’s available in the library from the home page. We’ve identified four key categories of information—industry research, case studies, continuing education, and product one-sheeters—and you can access samples of them by clicking the hyperlinks under the descriptions.

• If you have a specific search you wish to conduct, you can enter it into the search box. From there, you’ll see a list of relevant resources, which you can then expand to see a complete description and, if applicable, a download button. For the most accurate results, input detailed queries, and use quotation marks around the keyword phrase. In addition, if you're looking for something from one of the predefined categories, be sure to include this term in your query (e.g., "automotive" + "industry research", "YouTube" + "case study", "Google Analytics" + "course").

If you have feedback on the resources returned for your specific search results or have requests for additional content for the library, please submit your comments here.

Posted by Matthew Davison, Agency Team
This is a cross post from the Inside AdWords Blog

Experiments are only as useful as the results they produce. For those of you who use AdWords Campaign Experiments (ACE) to run experiments on your keywords, bids, placements, ad groups, ad creatives, and more, you’ll be happy to know that you can now run an AdWords report to evaluate your experiment performance. You can evaluate data in your report or easily export to a spreadsheet (no more cutting and pasting)!

ACE reports are now one of the many reports you can run from the Campaigns tab (or through the API!). When you run a report segmented by “Experiment,” you’ll see a side-by-side comparison of the performance of your experimental campaign changes (“experiment”) versus your original setup (“control”). You’ll also be able to see the level of statistical significance for your experiment performance, which should help you judge if experiment performance was due to chance or an actual difference in performance. You can learn more about evaluating your results and statistical significance here.

Understanding your experiment's performance can help you determine whether you’re ready to accept your changes fully, remove changes or keep running your experiment. Reports also serve as an important record of experiment outcomes as you won’t see your past experiment data after you’ve accepted or removed your changes.ACE can provide you with invaluable real-time data on how campaign changes affect your account. Whether you find that you have significant improvements to make or your account is running just fine, every experiment is a good experiment! To learn more about ACE, watch our video series on YouTube or visit the AdWords Help Center.

What are you waiting for? Ready, set, test!

Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

Editor's Note: This is a cross-post from the Inside AdWords Blog. The Contextual Targeting Tool is now available across Asia Pacific.

This week, we’re launching the Contextual Targeting Tool to help you more easily reach customers as they spend time on millions of sites in the Google Display Network.

As you may already know, contextual targeting helps you reach potential customers as they read webpages related to your products or services. Now, with this tool, you can create contextually-targeted campaigns more easily and quickly, while generating more clicks and conversions for your campaigns.
What does the Contextual Targeting Tool do?
This tool automatically builds keyword lists that can be used to show your ads on relevant webpages in the Google Display Network. Tightly-themed keyword lists are the basis of effective contextual targeting, and with the Contextual Targeting Tool, you no longer have to build them manually. In minutes, you can build dozens, even hundreds, of keyword lists, scaling your campaign performance while ensuring accurate targeting for your ads. This means you can get more clicks and conversions for your campaigns and you can do it more quickly.

How do I use it?
Let’s say you sell soccer equipment and gear. Normally, you'd have to build out separate ad groups for each of your product lines, like soccer gear, soccer balls, soccer cleats, etc. With the Contextual Targeting Tool, simply type each product category into the search box, and the tool will automatically generate tightly-themed keyword lists for you. For example, when you enter soccer gear into the tool, you get more specific ad groups, such as youth soccer gear, discount soccer gear, soccer uniforms, soccer bags, etc.

These new ad groups can help you get additional traffic and sales, as you may not think of creating them when manually building out your campaigns. Along with the new ad groups, the tool provides suggested bids and predicted placements to give you an idea of the types of sites in the Display Network where your ads can appear.

The Contextual Targeting Tool has been available to advertisers using AdWords Editor. This week, all advertisers will be able to access it from the Opportunities tab in their AdWords account. You'll still need AdWords Editor to implement the ad groups in your account for now (download AdWords Editor). However, this requirement will be lifted and you’ll be able to implement new ad groups directly from your AdWords account in the coming months.

You can learn more about using the Contextual Targeting Tool by watching this video. We hope this tool will help you more easily and efficiently reach your goals with your Display Network campaigns.

Posted by Matthew Davison, Agency Team

This is a partial cross post from the Inside AdWords Blog

We’ve changed our AdWords advertising policy on alcohol in Australia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea to allow ads that promote the sale of hard alcohol and liquor. This is an extension of a policy change that we made in December 2008, which permitted ads that promote the branding of hard alcohol and liquor.

Since then, hard alcohol advertisers have been able to promote websites that offer information about their brand, their products, or drinks that can be made with their products. Now, they can also promote websites that sell hard alcohol online, direct users to retailers where their products are sold, or feature sales promotions.

To comply with the policy, the ad and website must abide by certain advertising restrictions, including (but not limited to) not targeting minors, not implying that drinking alcohol provides certain advantages, and not showing inappropriate content. They are also subject to any further restrictions in the countries that they target. For full details on the policy, please see the alcohol content guidelines.

We’re constantly evaluating our advertising policies to ensure that they continue to be effective, and we made the decision to change our policy on alcohol to help more advertisers use AdWords for the promotion of their products.

Posted by Matthew Davison, Agency Team

Google Analytics is a tool that helps you understand how visitors interact with your website. The JAPAC Conversion Room Blog recently highlighted how online bespoke shoe retailer Shoes of Prey uses a combination of Google Analytics and Google Alerts to keep tabs on which blogs and websites are writing about them. As a newly-formed startup, they rely heavily on positive buzz about their products, so staying up-to-date on these sites is crucial.

One of the ways Shoes of Prey keeps up with online buzz is by regularly checking their traffic sources and Google Analytics Intelligence Alerts to see which blogs are sending them the most valuable converting traffic. They constantly monitor the Intelligence Alerts reports to look for unusual spikes in overnight traffic from referring sites. Since the web moves at light speed, Shoes of Prey wants to ensure that they are speaking to people writing about them as soon as they publish and not a week or two later.

For the time-poor analyst, Google Analytics Intelligence Alerts are as good as having a personal assistant. Analytics Intelligence constantly monitors your website's traffic. Anytime your traffic patterns change significantly, such as a dip in traffic from a particular country, it adds an automatic alert to your Intelligence reports.

Head on over to the JAPAC Conversion Room Blog to learn more about how Shoes of Prey took advantage of the insights gleaned through Intelligence Alerts to increase traffic to and sales on their site.

Posted by Vinoaj Vijeyakumaar, Google Analytics Team