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
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.
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.
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.
Editor's Note: As part of our current rollout, Google Instant will become the core search experience on Google.com for Chrome, Firefox, Safari and IE 8. We’ll also be offering Google Instant to our users in France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain and the U.K. who are signed in and have Instant-capable browsers. Over the coming weeks and months, we’ll work to roll out Google Instant to all geographies and platforms.
Today, we announced the launch of Google Instant, an innovative new Google.com interface that creates an interactive search experience for users by predicting their query as they type and instantly showing updated results. By providing users with this immediate feedback, they’re able to refine their searches more quickly and find the results that more precisely match what they need.
Google Instant is starting to roll-out to users on Google domains in the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Russia who use the latest browsers (Chrome v5/6, Firefox v3, Safari v5 for Mac and Internet Explorer v8). Please note, users on domains other than Google.com can only access Google Instant if they are signed in to a Google Account. We will continue to add new domains and languages over the next several months.
This new interface applies to both search results and related ads. Therefore, we expect increased user engagement with our search services, including ads.
Although Google Instant doesn’t change the way ads are served, ads and search results will now be shown based on the "predicted search." For example, if someone types "flow" into Google.com, our algorithms predict that the user is searching for "flowers" (the predicted search) and therefore display both search results and ads for “flowers”. However, if that user then adds the letter "c" to the query, our algorithms may predict that the user is searching for "flowchart" and show the corresponding natural and paid results for flowchart.
Example 1: User types "flow"
Example 2: User types "flowc"
As a result, Google Instant changes the way we think about impressions. With Google Instant, an impression is counted if a user takes an action to choose a query (for example, presses the Enter key or clicks the Search button), clicks a link on the results page, or stops typing for three or more seconds.
It's possible that this feature may increase or decrease your overall impression levels. However, Google Instant may ultimately improve the quality of your clicks since it helps users type queries that more directly connect them with the answers they need.
Here’s a video that explains Google Instant in greater depth:
For more information on this interactive new feature, please visit the AdWords Help Center.
Posted by Kelly Blackford, Agency Training Team This is a cross post from the Inside AdWords Blog
In order to make it easier for you to manage your account and take advantage of location extensions, we’re releasing a new version of AdWords Editor, 8.0.1, for Windows and Mac. AdWords Editor 8.0.1 now supports location extensions, our new and improved way to run local ads. To support this change, we've transitioned the local business ads in your AdWords account to ads that are compatible with location extensions, added the Extensions tab in the AdWords Editor interface, and removed the Local Business Ads tab. This new Extensions tab should help make it easy for you to create and manage your location extensions. Learn more.
To help you focus on just what you need when you’re managing your AdWords account, AdWords Editor 8.0.1 also introduces collapsible and expandable panels, progress bars for tasks that can take some time, improved adding of My Client Center accounts, simplified exception requests, and more helpful error messages.
To learn more about all of the new features in version 8.0.1, such as support for campaigns using target CPA and enhanced CPC bidding options, read the release notes.
If you're already using AdWords Editor, you'll be prompted to upgrade automatically, as soon as it's available for you. After you install the new version, you’ll need to download your account again. To preserve your comments and unposted changes, select the 'Backup then Upgrade' option in the automatic upgrade prompt, then import the backup file after downloading the account. We’re launching version 8.0.1 to all users over the course of the next few weeks, so don’t worry if you don’t get it right away.
If you’re not using AdWords Editor, you can visit our website to download it. Find more information and answers to your AdWords Editor questions in our Help Centre.
Posted by Kelly Blackford, Agency Training Team This is a cross post from the Inside AdWords Blog
Whether consumers are looking for a great lounge to hang out with their friends or a trusty shop to repair a bicycle, the web is a great place to discover and learn about local businesses and services. Some of the listings on Google Maps showcase reviews to help prospective customers make informed decisions and find the places that are just right for them. Reviews on Google Maps are assembled from a variety of sources on the web to give you the best possible overview of what people are saying about a specific place. We also encourage users to share their opinions by writing reviews directly on the Place Page of any place they’ve visited, be it a local business, tourist attraction or the like.
If your clients are verified Google Places business owners, they can publicly respond to reviews written by Google Maps users on the Place Page for their business. Engaging with the people who have shared thoughts about their business is a great way to get to know their customers and find out more. Both positive and negative feedback can be good for a business and help it grow (even though it’s sometimes hard to hear). By responding, your clients can build stronger relationships with existing and prospective customers. For example, a thoughtful response acknowledging a problem and offering a solution can often turn a customer who had an initially negative experience into a raving supporter. A simple thank you or a personal message can further reinforce a positive experience. Ultimately, replying to reviews provides business owners the opportunity to learn what they do well, what they can do better, and show their customers they are listening.
Before writing a response, we recommend reading our handy tips on how to respond to reviewers. You can also follow these instructions. If your client has not yet verified ownership for their business on Google, please direct them to Google Places to claim their listing.
Do you have AdWords clients who target the UK, Canada or Ireland? We recently announced that as of September 14th, we will allow some advertisers who target these markets to use third party trademarks in their ad text even if they don’t own that trademark or have explicit approval from the trademark owner to use it.
This policy was first implemented last year in the U.S. in an effort to provide better ads and a higher quality experience for our users. We believe that this change has helped both our users and advertisers by improving the usefulness of text ads on Google.com and across partner sites. For example, resellers of computers have been able to highlight the actual brands they sell in their ad text making their ads even more specific and relevant for users.
What does this mean for you? As an example, if your Australian client has a campaign targeting the UK for a store that sells Billabong and Roxy T-shirts, you may be able to use the words 'Billabong' and 'Roxy' in your ads in certain circumstances.
Separately, we've also announced an update to our policy to enable advertisers across Europe to select trademarks as keywords. For example, if a user searches for a car brand name that is trademarked, relevant and helpful third party and competitor ads can show -- such as car review sites, car mechanics, and second hand dealers.
This update will also occur on September 14 and brings Europe in line with the trademark policy that already exists in the U.S. and most of the world today.
Please note that these policies do not currently apply to ads targeted to Australia and New Zealand. For a full description of the trademark policy in your country, please check out the AdWords Help Centre.
For more detail on our updated trademark policy in Canada, the UK and Ireland, please visit the FAQ in our Help Center.
Posted by Kelly Blackford, Agency Training Team This is a partial cross post from the Inside AdWords Blog
We're excited to announce the launch of Enhanced CPC, a new automated bidding feature that can help you improve your ROI on your campaigns with manual bidding. Enhanced CPC uses your campaign's historical conversion tracking data to automatically adjust your Max CPC bid based on the likelihood that your ad will convert. As a result, you should receive more conversions while maintaining or reducing your overall CPA and hopefully spend less time managing your Max CPC bids.
How does it work?
Let's walk through an example. Jeff sells model airplane kits and has enabled Enhanced CPC for a campaign that contains the following keywords, each with a Max CPC bid set to $0.30: model airplane, model airplane kits, and build model airplanes. When a user searches for 'model airplane kits,' the AdWords system recognizes that this term has converted well for Jeff in the past, and therefore increases the Max CPC bid to $0.32 for this specific auction. If the likelihood of a conversion is very high, Enhanced CPC can bid up to 30% above the Max CPC. This means that the most that Jeff will be charged for a click is $0.39.
On the other hand, when a user searches on a term that has not converted well in the past, e.g. 'model airplane,' the AdWords system will lower the Max CPC bid for this specific auction to $0.20. By adjusting bids based on Jeff's conversion data, the AdWords system ultimately helps him increase sales while maintaining or decreasing his average cost per conversion.
Enhanced CPC has the unique ability to consider a number of factors when predicting the likelihood of a conversion. A few examples of what Enhanced CPC is able to do include:
* Adjust your bid depending on how well a particular search or display network partner site in the Google network has converted for you in the past * Recognize when specific words within a keyword (e.g. 'kits') convert well and adjust your bid when users search on variations of these terms (e.g. 'model airplane kits for children') * Detect attributes such as the user's location, language settings, browser, and operating system and analyze how these attributes may impact the likelihood of your ad converting
How to get started
To use Enhanced CPC, you'll need to first enable Conversion Tracking for your campaigns. Conversion Tracking not only allows you to take advantage of ROI-boosting features like Enhanced CPC but also provides you with valuable insight into how frequently your ads convert into sales and how much you're paying for these conversions.
If you're already using Conversion Tracking, getting started is easy. Simply navigate to the 'Bidding and Budgeting' section of the settings tab for your campaign, and select the checkbox under 'Enhanced CPC.'
Please note that campaigns using Enhanced CPC cannot currently be modified using AdWords Editor. We're working to ensure compatibility in the near future. If you're choosing between Enhanced CPC and Conversion Optimizer as your method for boosting ROI, please read this FAQ for more information on how these tools differ.
My Client Center (MCC) is a powerful tool for handling multiple AdWords accounts. You can think of MCC as an "umbrella" account with multiple AdWords accounts (a.k.a. "managed accounts") linked to it. MCC users can use a single login to access all managed accounts, see relevant information for all managed accounts in one place, and run reports across multiple managed accounts at once.
We recently launched a new MCC feature called labels which allows you to organise your client accounts into meaningful groups and find important accounts quickly and easily. You can use labels to organise accounts based on your day-to-day MCC activities. For example, you might create a label like “important” to keep track of key client accounts. Or label old accounts “inactive,” then you can easily filter them out of the dashboard. You can also group accounts by vertical (ex: ”travel” or “retail”) or by who works on them (ex: ”Mary’s accounts”). And you can apply multiple labels to a single account.
Once you’ve created a label, you can filter to quickly see all accounts with or without that label.
Any labels you create will be visible only to users who log directly into your MCC. Those users can apply and edit your labels, but no one else will be able to see them.
If you would like more information about setting up labels, please visit the AdWords Help Centre.
AdWords webinars are free online tutorials delivered by Google AdWords Specialists. You can watch presentations on a variety of topics to help you understand and manage your client's accounts more effectively. Whether you're a new agency employee or a seasoned veteran our AdWords webinars can help you meet your goals. All you need to get started is an internet connection and a computer with speakers or headphones!
Please join us for an upcoming webinar, relevant to search specialists and agencies who would like to stay on top of the latest AdWords products.
AdWords Product Update for Agencies August 19th – 11am Sydney Time (1pm AKL, 9am SG) Over the last few months, we have announced some exciting new products and features available in AdWords. Join us for an overview of the AdWords reports now available in Google Analytics, the new Broad Match Modifier, My Client Centre reporting, and some features that are yet to be released! You can register for this webinar here.
To view and register for any of our upcoming topics or listen to On-Demand trainings, please visit our webinar calendar page.
Reporting in AdWords is getting faster and easier! Reports that are currently available in the Report Center under the Reports tab are moving into the Campaigns tab, making advanced AdWords statistics more accessible and actionable. However, you may need a little help getting started so we wanted to show you where some of the frequently used options from the Report Center can be found in the Campaigns tab.
1. Schedule a Report
If you want to receive information about your account’s performance on a regular basis, you can set up reports to automatically run every day, week, or month.
In the Campaigns tab, you can choose a frequency for your report when you create it. Click the “Email and schedule report” link in the download panel to see your scheduling options.
Moreover, you now have the flexibility to modify your report’s schedule at any time. Simply visit the “Reports” section in the Control Panel & Library and change the setting in the “Frequency” column for your report.
For example, if you want to stop running a scheduled report, you can change the “Frequency” column setting for your report to “None,” instead of deleting the report entirely. That way, you can keep the report on hand, in case you’d like to manually generate it in the future.
2. Email a Report
If you would like to email your scheduled reports directly to your clients or colleagues, you can enter their email address so they have the information they need sent directly to their inbox.
In the Report Center, you can enter email addresses of additional recipients when you create a new report. However, it isn’t easy to check which email addresses are associated with individual reports. For example, there’s no easy way to remove a colleague from all reports if he or she leaves the company.
To make your reports more secure, email access to reports from the Campaign tab is now tied to other user access controls for your account. When you create a report, you can choose to email the report to other users of your account. If you want to send the report to someone who doesn’t sign in to AdWords directly (such as one of your clients), click the “My account” tab, select “Access,” and add him or her as an email-only user. Email-only users have limited access to the account.
For additional insight into using the reports through the Campaigns tab, please refer to this comprehensive guide.
We recently announced a new Ad Sitelinks format available called One-Line Sitelinks. This feature allows you to add links to your search ads for more generic keywords directing users to specific pages in your website. We have been receiving many queries from our Agency partners, so wanted to share with you the answers to some of these common questions.
Q: Where can Ad Sitelinks show (both two-line & one-line sitelinks)? A: Ad Sitelinks can only show in top positions (above the organic results).
Q: How many ads can display Sitelinks on the Google Search page? A: The maximum number of ads with sitelinks we will show on any one page of results is 2.
Q: How many ads can display two-line sitelinks on the Google Search page? A: Only one ad per page can show two-line sitelinks. So each page could have (max): (1) one advertiser with two-line sitelinks and one advertiser with oneline sitelinks, or (2) two advertisers showing one-line sitelinks. These are the only options.
Q: How will the system choose which links to show within my ad? A: You can enter up to 10 sitelinks you'd like to show under "Campaign Settings", but we will only show a maximum of 4 at a time. We'll usually show the sitelinks you put first (what you entered as 1-4), but may use some of your others if the quality of your first 4 is not high.
Q: What are the character limits for Sitelinks? A: The maximum character length of each sitelink is 35 characters, but we can only fit a total of 70 characters in one-line sitelinks, so keep your sitelinks short (around 16 characters or less) if you want to increase the chance that all 4 show regularly.
If you have any additional questions about Ad Sitelinks, please take a look at this handy one-sheeter.
The broad match modifier is rolling out to all countries and languages after a successful open beta test in the UK and Canada*. To recap the original broad match modifier beta launch announcement:
The broad match modifier is a new AdWords targeting feature that lets you create keywords which have greater reach than phrase match and more control than broad match. Adding modified broad match keywords to your campaign can help you get more clicks and conversions at an attractive ROI, especially if you mainly use exact and phrase match keywords today.
To implement the modifier, just put a plus symbol (+) directly in front of one or more words** in a broad match keyword. Each word preceded by a + has to appear in your potential customer's search exactly or as a close variant. Close variants include misspellings, singular/plural forms, abbreviations and acronyms, and stemmings (like “floor” and “flooring”). Synonyms (like “quick” and “fast”) and related searches (like “flowers” and “tulips”) aren't considered close variants.
The graphic below illustrates the relative reach of different keyword match type strategies.
** Be sure there are no spaces between the + and modified words, but do leave spaces between words. Correct usage: +formal +shoes. Incorrect usage: +formal+shoes.
Here’s what one major UK retail company said about their experience using the feature:
"We're always interested in ways to increase our volumes while keeping our CPA down. As a result, we've added broad match modified keywords to several campaigns where previously we only had phrase and exact match keywords. After a few weeks of testing, we're pleased to see these campaigns showed significant increases in conversion and volume, whilst keeping the CPA down. Therefore, we will be looking to scale our use of modified broad match keywords in all our campaigns to take full advantage of these great results."
If you mainly use broad match keywords in your account, you should know that switching your existing broad match keywords to modified broad match will likely lead to a significant decline in your click and conversion volumes and will not directly improve Quality Score. To maintain volume, keep existing broad match keywords active, add new modified broad match keywords, and adjust bids to achieve your target ROI based on observed performance.
You can begin using the feature by logging into your AdWords account, through the AdWords Editor and through the AdWords API. For more details, guidelines on usage, and answers to common questions, check out the original blog post and the AdWords help center.
Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew This is a cross post from the Inside AdWords Blog
*Except Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Arabic and Hebrew languages, which are coming soon. We’ll update this post when the feature becomes available in those languages.
