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.
The introduction ofcustom 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?
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.
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.
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 aresource libraryin 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 withindividual certification program accountswho 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.
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 outlinedhere.
You can get a preview of what’s available in the library from thehome 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 commentshere.
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.
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
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.
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
As we announced on the Inside AdWords blog, we’re celebrating AdWords’ 10th birthday this month by asking our advertisers to submit stories of how online advertising has played a role in their businesses -- and then sharing their submissions with the world via a global map of the stories.
Think you can create something special by telling some of your best client stories? Let your clients know that you can help them capture the story of how you’ve partnered to reach their goals with AdWords (of course, you can also submit the story of your own agency business). When you’ve produced the videos, you can submit them on our birthday website.
We can’t wait to see your work -- and share it with the world!
Posted by Kelly Blackford, Agency Training Team This is a cross post from the Agency Ad Solutions Blog
As agencies, you face the unique challenges of mastering the suite of Google media solutions and account management tasks across many accounts. Knowing that you often have questions specific to managing multiple client accounts at scale, we've created an Agency Help Centre to provide you with easy access to answers for your most common questions, as well as useful resources to help you strategically manage your businesses.
We also know that many different sites exist that offer support to agencies for account management, product adoption, media planning, and identifying best-in-class examples. To make life a little easier, we've added links to the Agency Help Centre for the most frequently used resources -- including Google Ad Innovations, the Agency Toolkit and the Google AdWords Certification Program -- so that you only need to go one place to find everything you need.
To date, the Agency Help Centre is available for the US and UK. Over the course of Q4'2010, we'll be localising this resource across multiple languages, as well as continuing to incorporate new agency-centric resources into the site.
Posted by Kelly Blackford, Agency Training Team This is a cross post from the Agency Ad Solutions Blog
The Ad Preview tool lets you view your ads as they would appear on a Google search results page without accruing extra impressions for your ad. You can filter your test search by Google domain, language, and location to understand exactly how your ad appears to different users.
In addition to showing a preview, we will also tell you why your ad may not be showing in certain scenarios. By integrating this information directly into the Ad Preview tool, we hope to save you time and several extra steps. Previously you had to visit the Ads Diagnostic tool separately in the "Opportunities" tab of your AdWords account to understand why your ads may not be showing for a particular keyword.
Click on the "new version" link in the current tool to check it out, and stay tuned for increased availability of this tool in the coming weeks!
I love to discover new places, from sandwich shops in my neighborhood to great museums around the globe. When I start looking for something in a new area, like a barbecue restaurant in Sydney, I usually do quite a few searches. I might search for a list of restaurants and then search for details about each place, like which one has the best atmosphere and menu options.
Today we’re introducing Place Search, a new kind of local search result that organises the world’s information around places. We’ve clustered search results around specific locations so you can more easily make comparisons and decide where to go. Say you’re looking for that great barbecue restaurant. With Place Search here’s what you’ll get:
The new results are marked with red pins, and each one is a unique restaurant with relevant information and reviews from across the web. The information is now grouped conveniently to make it easier to digest and compare.
Place Search results will begin appearing automatically on Google when we predict you’re looking for local information. In addition, you’ll find a new link for “Places” in the left-hand panel of the search results page so you can switch to these results whenever you want. For example, when I’m in Melbourne, I love to go out for sushi, but a search for [sushi] doesn’t automatically show me Place Search results. If I click “Places” I get the new view:
We’ve made results like this possible by developing technology to better understand places. With Place Search, we’re dynamically connecting hundreds of millions of websites with more than 50 million real-world locations. We automatically identify when sites are talking about physical places and cluster links even when they don’t provide addresses and use different names.
One of the great things about our approach is that it makes it easier to find a comprehensive view of each place. In our new layout you’ll find many more relevant links on a single results page—often 30 or 40. Instead of doing eight or 10 searches, often you’ll get to the sites you’re looking for with just one search. In our testing, Place Search saves people an average of two seconds on searches for local information.
Place Search is rolling out now and will be available globally in more than 40 languages in the next few days. During the roll-out process you can use this special link to preview the new results. Our goal is to help you feel like a local everywhere you go!
Posted by Kelly Blackford, Agency Training Team This is a cross post from the Official Google Blog
The Bid Simulator tool gives you insight into the advertising results you could get if you used a different maximum CPC bid for your keywords. For example, suppose you have a maximum CPC bid of $1.00 for your keyword, and you wonder what results you'd get with a bid of $1.50 or $0.75. The Bid Simulator shows the clicks, cost, and impressions you would have seen with these other bids over the last seven days. Using insights from this tool, you can make informed decisions about raising and lowering your bids.
We recently launched a new Bid Simulator feature: the ability to view bid simulations across keywords in an ad group at once. With this launch, we hope to give you a faster and easier way of making bidding decisions across keywords in an ad group.
The ad group level bid simulator provides simulations for two types of changes: 1. Applying a single bid to all the keywords in an ad group 2. Updating the ad group default bid (this only impacts those keywords that do not have their own keyword-level CPC bid and use the ad group default bid)
If, like many agencies and advertisers, you manage your bids at the keyword-level, it may be worth taking a look at ad group level bid simulations. You may find, in some cases, that you could have achieved better results with a single ad group default max CPC bid.
Let’s take a closer look at an ad group in which this is the case:
The highlighted row shows that over the last seven days, the ad group received 339 clicks, costing a total of $182.37. Beneath this row, you can see simulations for the potential clicks, cost, and impressions that the ad group could have received had the keywords all used a single max CPC bid.
In this case, if all keywords in the ad group had used a max CPC bid of $0.53, the ad group could have received an additional 49 clicks (for a total of 398) for about the same cost ($182). Thus, if clicks from all keywords in the ad group are equally valuable to your client, it would make sense to set a single bid of $0.53 for all the keywords.
If a few keywords in an ad group are especially profitable for your client, you should manage them separately by assigning keyword-level max CPC bids. In this case, the bid simulator will display simulations for the remaining keywords in the ad group that use the ad group default bid. If you select a new ad group default bid, this bid will apply to all keywords in the ad group for which you haven’t specified a keyword-level max CPC.
For more details on the Bid Simulator, watch the video below or visit the AdWords Help Centre.
One of our goals is to help you get better performance from your display advertising campaigns. Users are increasingly spending time online across a growing number of sites -- last year alone there were 47 million new web sites created. Contextual targeting can help you reach users on these new sites by automatically showing your ad on web pages related to your products on the millions of sites in the Google Display Network. Still, building and managing these campaigns can be time-consuming. That's why we are introducing new tools to help you reach the right audience and meet your business goals.
Display Campaign Optimiser. This tool automatically manages targeting and bidding for your Display Network campaigns with the goal of increasing your conversions while meeting your advertising objectives. It is now available globally for larger campaigns running on the Google Display Network.
Contextual Targeting Tool. The Contextual Targeting Tool helps you more efficiently build your own display campaigns. The Contextual Targeting Tool builds tightly themed keyword lists for your display campaigns, which are used to contextually target your ads. We've begun a phased launch for this tool, and will become available to more advertisers over the coming weeks and months.
Whether you’re looking for an easier way to build your display campaigns or for an automated solution that continually optimises bids and targeting, you can use these tools to achieve performance at scale with your display campaigns.
Today we began the launch of Google Instant in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and India. Google Instant is an innovative new Google interface that predicts the user’s query as they type and instantly shows updated results. This new interface applies to both search results and related ads.
Google Instant is an important step in helping users find information quickly and easily -- people can see their search results the instant they type words into the search box. It’s an interactive search experience that helps users build queries that return results more closely tailored to their needs.
It’s possible that you might notice changes in the number of impressions your clients’ ads receive depending on how users search with this new feature. With Google Instant, we expect increased user engagement with our search services, including ads.
We’re launching Google Instant in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and India for users with modern browsers gradually over the next few weeks, so you may not see it immediately.
If you would like more information about Google Instant, please take a look at the video below, or visit the AdWords Help Centre.
In August this year, we announced we would discontinue access to the old version of the Keyword Tool in favor of the new Keyword Tool. The goal of this update is to combine all the features you love from both the Keyword Tool and the Search-based Keyword Tool into one comprehensive tool providing increased functionality and a streamlined way to identify new keywords for your account.
The new Keyword Tool is now the default keyword tool in the AdWords interface. You can find the tool from within your client's AdWords accounts by clicking on the "Keyword Tool" link from the Opportunities tab or by accessing the standalone version outside of AdWords.
The updated Keyword Tool has a number of benefits:
* Flexible search options: Search by any combination of keyword, website/URL, and category (where available) and receive a single set of results * Easy keyword refinement: Filter results by word or keyword match type * Advanced options: View statistics for mobile search and use data filters based on local searches, search and ad share, and more
Be sure to check out some of the brand new features available in the updated Keyword Tool.:
* Removing Duplicate Keywords: When you access the Keyword Tool from within an ad group, keywords that are already in that ad group will be distinguished by an “Already in ad group” message.
* Adding Negative keywords: You can add keyword ideas as negatives right from your keyword idea list. Just click on a keyword and use the drop down menu to select and save your negative keyword.
Whether you're an individual or a company, you can demonstrate your proficiency in AdWords by joining the Google AdWords Certification Program. It's a globally-recognised stamp of approval, which showcases your knowledge of the latest AdWords tools and best practices. You can choose from a variety of exams based on what's most relevant to your areas of specialisation. The goal of the exams is to provide you with the knowledge you need to effectively manage Google advertising programs.
Over the last few months we have offered live webinars to help you study for the Google Advertising Fundamentals and Search Advertising Advanced exams. We are pleased to announce that we are now offering live webinars to help you prepare for the Google Certified Partner Reporting and Analysis Advanced Exam. In this three-part webinar series, we will cover the key topics found on the exam and offer a few tips to help you study.
Reporting & Analysis Advanced 1: Advanced Conversion Tracking Date: October 19th at 12pm Sydney time (9am SG and 2pm NZ) Description: In this session, we'll review the function and purpose of AdWords Conversion Tracking and explain related terms. We'll also share some best practices for using AdWords Conversion tracking in your AdWords account.
Reporting & Analysis Advanced 2: Google Analytics Date: October 21st at 12pm Sydney time (9am SG and 2pm NZ) Description: In this session, we'll discuss which types of data can be found in each section of Google Analytics. We'll show you how you can analyze visitor, traffic sources, content, and goal report data to meet your advertising goals.
Reporting & Analysis Advanced 3: Website Optimiser Date: October 26th at 12pm Sydney time (9am SG and 2pm NZ) Description: In this session, we'll discuss how website and landing page testing can help achieve online performance goals. We'll walk you through getting started with Website Optimiser and summarise the differences between A/B and multivariate testing.
In addition to the new webinars above, you can now watch the Google Advertising Fundamentals and Search Advertising Advanced webinars on-demand. The sessions cover the key topics found on each exam and you can access them online whenever it is convenient for you. All you need to get started is an Internet connection and a computer with speakers or headphones.
Google Advertising Fundamentals - Targeting the Google Network - Understanding Search Ads Quality - Optimisation Tools & Strategies - Selling Google AdWords
Search Advertising Advanced - Leveraging AdWords Tools - Performance Monitoring and Conversion Tracking - Conversion Optimiser Strategies - Multiple Account Management Tools and Best Practices
Display Ad Builder is a tool that allows you to create your own display ads quickly and easily from a selection of templates. You can find Display Ad Builder in the "Ads" tab in any ad group page within your account. With the tool, you can customise display ad templates with different background colors, fonts, images, and text and run them across more than one million websites in the Google Display Network.
We recently launched four new expandable templates in Display Ad Builder that allow you and your clients to show off more offers, product information, or whatever you'd like in the expanded space. Here is an example of a design that you can choose from:
For more information and to watch an interactive demo on Display Ad Builder, visit the Google Display Network site.
Advertising with Google used to be all about four lines of text, on Google.com and on our partner sites. No longer. Did you know that, outside of ads alongside search results, more than 40 percent of the ads that we show are now non-text ads? And that doesn’t include the 45 billion ads that our DoubleClick advertising products serve every day across the web.
We get excited by display advertising for a number of reasons. First, we now know that we can use all the technology and expertise that we’ve developed in search and search advertising to improve display advertising for users, advertisers and publishers, right across the web. Second, helping advertisers and publishers to easily deliver the most engaging, relevant, creative and valuable ad contains the sort of huge technical challenge that we love. And third, great display advertising helps to fund great content on the web.
Display advertising has come a long way from the ugly banner ads and pop-ups of the mid 1990s, but there’s still huge improvements to come. Google's efforts are focused on three core areas: simplifying display advertising, delivering better performance and opening the display ecosystem.
Our single message about display advertising can be summed up in three words: “WATCH THIS SPACE.”
Check out our new website and take a look at this video to learn more about what's happening in display advertising at Google and what's to come.
Posted by Neal Mohan, Vice President of Product Management This is a partial cross post from the Official Google Blog
We're pleased to announce that AdWords Campaign Experiments (ACE) will soon be available globally. ACE is a free tool that makes it easier to test and to measure the impact of changes to your keywords, bids, ad groups and placements.
How ACE can help you ACE reduces the guesswork and potential risk involved with making changes to your campaign. Its scientific split-testing approach gives you valid measurements regardless of changes in demand, competitor movements, or other sales and marketing activity that can complicate traditional before-and-after measurement approaches.
If you can relate to any of the following scenarios, you’ll probably find ACE useful:
* You’re considering adding (or pausing) a bunch of new keywords, but you aren’t sure how it will affect your overall campaign clicks, costs, and conversions. * You have a few keywords that account for a significant fraction of your total AdWords clicks, conversions and cost. You’d like to know what happens if you raise (or lower) bids by 10%. Do your clicks and conversions also change by 10%? How would your cost per click and cost per conversion change? * A colleague suggests you might improve your Google Display Network campaign performance by adjusting keywords and adding some placement-specific bids, but you’re concerned you might wind up with fewer conversions and no improvement in cost per conversion.
In each case, you can set up an experiment to measure the impact with just 10-50% of your traffic. ACE runs the experiment side-by-side with your existing account setup. You can then evaluate the performance of your changes with easy-to-read visual indicators.
Where to find ACE and learn more After signing into AdWords, you can access ACE on the Campaign tab under Settings. If you are not seeing it yet in your Campaign tab under settings, just hold tight, since users outside the US will have this option in a week or so. To learn more about using ACE, check out the Help Center FAQ and these videos, which includes this Introduction to ACE.
Posted by Matthew Davison, Account Strategist This is a partial cross post from the Inside AdWords Blog
As mentioned in an earlier post, reporting in AdWords is getting faster and easier! We have added more advanced reporting options to the Campaigns tab to make it easier for you to analyse your account's performance. Reports that were previously only accessible through the Report Center are now available on the same pages you use to manage your campaigns. Easier access to reports helps you find key performance drivers more quickly. And because you're viewing reports on the Campaigns tab, you can now take immediate action on any insights you discover. However, you may need a little guidance to pull the same reports and access certain functions you know from the Report Center directly within the Campaigns tab. Here are a couple of tips:
1) Downloading a report in the Campaigns tab
You can download reports directly in your account online or receive them via email. First, use the navigation tree, date range selector and filters to get the information you would like in your report showing in the Campaigns tab. For example, if you would like to pull a keyword report for the last 7 days for a campaign, you would select that campaign in the tree on the left, click on the Keywords tab, and set the date range to "Last 7 Days".
Step 1: Select the campaign
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Step 2: Click on the Keywords tab
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Step 3: Set the date range to "Last 7 Days"
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From there, you can click on the "Download Report" icon to access this report. You can choose the file format, segments (such as daily stats, day of the week, or conversion data), and also save the report as a template or email the report directly to yourself or other members of your team. The last step is to click the "Create" button to download your report.
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2) Account Reports
Account performance reports show you summary statistics for your entire account and can help you get a quick overview of your overall AdWords performance. You can view your account-wide data in various ways within the Campaigns tab.
• With “All online campaigns” selected on the left side of the page, look at the “Total” rows at the bottom of your tables.
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• Go to the “Dimensions” tab to organise your account data by the parameter of your choice. To enable the "Dimensions" tab, use the customisation menu that appears next to your existing tabs. Check “Dimensions”.
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Once the "Dimensions" tab is activated, you’ll be able to view detailed account-level data right in the UI. You can use the "View" option to further segment the data.
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You can also download a report directly from this view, but clicking on the "Download Report" option.
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For additional insight into using the reports in the Campaigns tab, please refer to this comprehensive guide.
