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
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 new click to call phone numbers for local and national ads in the United States, and we're excited to make those features available to advertisers in Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand.
When people search for goods or services using their mobile phones, they often prefer to call a store rather than visit that store's website. Whether they're placing a direct order, making a reservation, or inquiring about services, the ability for customers to easily call your business and act now is a unique feature of searches made on mobile phones versus computers.
Now, make it even easier for potential customers to reach you by adding a business phone number in ads that appear on mobile devices. Users will be able to click the number to call, just as easily as clicking to visit your website.
For ad campaigns targeting users of mobile devices with full internet browsers like Phones, Android or Palm Pre, there are two ways to let customers connect with your business phone number directly from your ad:
1. Using phone extensions, you can display a phone number whenever your ad is triggered, regardless of the user's location – this can especially be useful if you have a call center. Your number appears as the last line of any ad text within existing or new campaigns.
2. Using location extensions, you can display a phone number that is displayed based on theuser’s location. Your potential customer will see -- and can click to call -- the phone number of your store location that's nearest to them, not one that's across town. This is especially useful for advertisers who are targeting local audiences.
Advertisers who participated in the beta trial have seen improved click-through rates and many have received more visits to their websites in addition to incremental phone calls. The cost of a click to call your business will be the same as the cost of a click to visit your website.
Give it a try today. It takes just two-steps to add a phone number to your mobile ads, whether you want to target customers at the national or local levels.
1. Add your business phone number with phone extensions to show your ad to customers nationally, regardless of their location. Or add your business phone number with location extensions to let customers call your business location nearest to them.
2. Ensure that you've chosen to show your ads on iPhones and other mobile devices with fullInternet browsers in your campaign settings.
To find out how many calls you've received from your ads, go to the Campaign Summary tab in your AdWords account. Click the "Filter and views" dropdown (step 1 in the screenshot below) and select "Segment by", then "Click Type" (steps 2, 3). The report shows how many clicks and how many calls you received (step 4). You can view calls received at the campaign, ad group or keyword level.
In order to help you make even more informed decisions about your AdWords keywords, ad groups and campaigns, we're excited to release a new set of reports in your AdWords account: AdWords Search Funnels (beta). Currently, conversions in AdWords are attributed to the last ad clicked before the conversion takes place, masking the fact that many customers perform multiple searches before finally converting. AdWords Search Funnels help you see the full picture by giving you insight into the ads your customers interact with during their shopping process.
What is AdWords Search Funnels?
AdWords Search Funnels are a set of reports describing the ad click and impression behavior on Google.com that leads up to a conversion. In addition to a Top Conversions report, Search Funnels consist of 7 reports including Assisted Conversions, First and Last Click Analysis, Time Lag, and Path Length. For an overview of these new reports, check out this video:
Why is this useful?
"Search Funnel enables us to create a better experience for our customers by helping us understand how they search for our products," said Beth Hirschhorn, Chief Marketing Officer from MetLife, the largest life insurance company based in the United States. "It is an important tool to help de-code consumer shopping habits and thought processes, which we can relate back to our online as well as offline advertising."
By showing which ads your customers and clicked before ultimately converting, Search Funnels gives a more complete picture of the value of your keywords, ad groups and campaigns. Let's look at an example.
An online vacation service called Flyaway Vacations is running AdWords campaigns for vacation packages in Hawaii. Their ads link to a site where visitors can book any or all parts of a package that includes flights, a hotel, car rental, and surf lessons. Suppose on March 10 someone searched for "hawaii vacation" and saw and then clicked on an ad for Flyaway's Hawaii package. A click was registered in their AdWords account. Then, two days later, the same person searched for "flights to hawaii" and saw another ad for Flyaway, but didn't click. An impression was registered in Flyaway's AdWords account. Finally, three days later, the same person searched one more time, this time for "flyaway hawaii." This time they clicked the ad, visited the site, and purchased the Hawaii vacation package.
Instead of showing only a purchase conversion for the "flyaway hawaii" keyword, Search Funnels will show an assist click for the keyword "hawaii vacation" and an assist impression for the keyword "flights to hawaii". Testing the value of assist clicks and impressions is important for evaluating and understanding the true value of all of your keywords.
Search Funnels not only help you understand the keywords seen by converters, they also show you those that weren't seen. For example, in the Flyaway campaign, it's possible that another keyword, such as "hawaii surf lessons," didn't contribute any assist clicks or impressions, or last click conversions, indicating that this may be a keyword that's providing little conversion value. Assist information is an additional data point you can use when making strategic budgeting decisions, from the campaign level down to the keyword level.
Search Funnels also show the "Path Length," or average number of clicks and impressions prior to conversion, which can help you understand and target repeat visitors. Additionally they show "Time Lag," or the amount of time it takes a customer to convert after seeing or clicking on your ads for the first time, which can help you determine lead time for seasonal campaigns. These breakdowns can help you understand your customers' behavior and create strategies around that information.
Over the next few weeks, the Search Funnels beta will be rolled out gradually to all accounts in the 'Conversions' section under the 'Reporting' tab. To activate them, you must either have AdWords Conversion Tracking running or import goals or transactions into AdWords from Google Analytics. Keep in mind that Search Funnels are only available in your AdWords account (not in Google Analytics), and will only show data for keywords that show up in at least one conversion path. Search Funnel data is currently limited to search ads showing on Google.com, for ad impressions and clicks within 30 days of the conversion.
Posted by Matthew Davison, Account Strategist
This is a partial cross post from the Inside AdWords Blog
Have you ever looked at aggregated data in Google Analytics and wished there was a way to analyze individual audience segments? Google Analytics now makes this possible with advanced and custom segments.
Different types of visitors - whether new, returning, organic, or paid - behave differently to each other and have vastly different expectations. Advanced and custom segments can be a key tool to understand what your visitors want, and how to cater to them. Website owners tell us that they want data about audience segments that visit their site to improve their user experience and conversions.
You can take advantage of this new feature immediately with predefined segments (e.g. new visitors, paid search visitors, iPhone users). You can also tailor segments and create your own custom advanced segments. You can also share custom advanced segments with other users across accounts.
I've included below examples of advanced segments that I've found most helpful.
The AdWords Report Center has always been the place to go to find detailed data about your campaign performance. Reports with dimensions like geographic performance and time of day can give you new insights that aren't available in the campaigns tab.
But there can be drawbacks to using the Report Center: customised reports take time to set up and run, and you have to navigate back to the Campaigns tab to take action on any insights you discover.
We're addressing these issues by better integrating advanced performance data into campaign management. Now, instead of running a placement performance report, you can manage your automatic placements in the Networks tab. Rather than run a search query report, you can use the "See search terms" option on the Keywords tab to see which searches are bringing up your ads. And if you prefer to look at your reports in a spreadsheet program, you now have the option to download nearly every table in your account (look under the "More actions..." menu above each table).
You can also use new segmentation functions to slice and dice your data directly within campaign management. Click on the "Filter and views" menu above your statistics, then choose the "Segment by" option to see different levels of detail available.
The segmentation options available to you differ depending on whether you're looking at keywords, ad groups or campaigns. If you're looking at keywords, you can segment by match type. If you're looking at campaigns or ad groups, you can segment by network to quickly compare your performance on Google and search partner sites to your performance on the Content Network.
In addition to these segmentation options, we've recently introduced time-based segmentation for your campaigns, ad groups and keywords. Now you can break out statistics by day, week, month, quarter or year to isolate changes in your performance. For example, if your performance summary graphs show a sharp decrease in clicks, segmenting by day can show you changes in other statistics that might explain why your drop in traffic occurred.
You can also segment by day of the week. This option is helpful if you're looking for help with ad scheduling. Try segmenting your performance for the past few months: if your performance is dramatically different on a given day of the week, you can modify your bids to account for the change in user behavior.
We'll be bringing even more data from the Report Center into the Campaigns tab over the coming months. So next time you're searching for insights you can use to improve your performance, you won't have to look very far.
Posted by Jeremy Wood, Product Specialist Team This is a partial cross post from the Inside AdWords Blog
You may already use Google Docs and Spreadsheets for easy and efficient editing, such as collaborating on a company memo or managing your wedding guest list. Did you know that you can now also use Google Spreadsheets to efficiently make mass changes to keywords directly in your clients' AdWords accounts? You can easily copy and paste changes from an external spreadsheet into your account, change bids, create keyword lists, and edit destination URLs. The short video below will show you how to access the tool within your account. Who knew spreadsheets could be this fun?
Posted by Kelly Blackford, Agency Training Team This is a partial cross post from the AdWords Agency Blog
Have you ever tried to optimise your campaigns for various Google properties in the Display Network? In the past, you weren't able to see data for sites such as Google Finance or Gmail. Rather, it was bundled together as "google.com" in your Placement Performance Report (PPR).
We are excited to announce that you will now be able to view subdomains for Google properties at domain level PPRs or in the "automatic placements" on the Networks tab of your AdWords account. To give you a sense of what this will look like, clicks from Gmail will appear as mail.google.com and clicks from Google Finance will appear as finance.google.com. This will give you more transparency as to where your ads are appearing, making it easier to manage your site bids and providing greater ability to optimise your campaigns across the Google Display Network. Take a look at this video on how to use the Performance Placement report to improve the performance of your Content campaigns. Happy Optimising!
