Google AdWords Archives

Preview AdWords extensions with the Ad Preview tool

Posted on February 23, 2014 · 2 Comments

Previewing AdWords extensions with the Ad Preview Tool is something I’ve always wanted to do. But until today I didn’t know that was possible.

I had no idea if seller rating extensions were showing. Or which sitelinks were showing. I did not know what PLAs were showing for my customers before I paid for some clicks. Especially if I restricted my campaign targeting to “people in my targeted area”.

But I didn’t want to pay for the clicks and then make the adjustments. I wanted to be able to add the extensions, launch the campaign and test it quickly. Especially now that Google has placed way more weight on ad extensions than they used to.

Yesterday though I have discovered an interesting thread on the English AdWords Community. Here’s what an advertiser says:

It doesn’t work for me when I use the search box at the TOP of the Ad Preview tool, but it works when I use the search box at the BOTTOM.

I tried to do what he was suggesting, but I couldn’t get it to work. The search box at the bottom of the Google SERP was not working for me.

Here’s how the preview looked at first, after entering the query in the Ad Preview Tool:

Adwords ad extensions not showing in the Ad Preview Tool

As you can see, no ad extensions are showing.

But this morning, when preparing a new Product Listing Ads campaign for a customer, I understood what he meant.

The search button at the top of the Ad Preview search result page does not work. Not if you click on the button. But if you click in the search box and hit enter, bam! There they are. It also works if you switch between Google Images / Shopping results and then you switch back to Web.

Here’s how the same search looks after clicking in the Google Search box and hitting enter:

Adwords ad extensions showing in the Ad Preview Tool

Quite a change, right? Product listing ads are now showing, and so are seller rating extensions. I’ve also seen sitelinks so this makes me think that they all show if you repeat the search from the Google search box.

I have no idea why they don’t trigger when you first hit the preview button. Or why the blue Google Search button is inactive in the Ad Preview window.

But I sure am happy that I can now preview all the AdWords extensions with the Ad Preview tool. I used to do the same by using RedFly’s great Seo Global for Google Search extension. I also manipulated the Google URL with location & language parameters. I’m glad I don’t have to do that anymore.

What do you think? Did you already know about this possibility? If you didn’t, do you think you’ll start including it in your workflow? Let me know in the comments section below.

e-Commerce AdWords newbie? Start with Product Listing Ads

Posted on September 13, 2013 · Leave a Comment

From brick and mortar to e-Commerce

Yes, you read that right. Precisely. What if your first Google AdWords campaign, ever, was a Product Listing Ads one?

If you’re expanding your business online, or turning your brick and mortar shop into a pure online presence, I say that Product Listing Ads is what you should start with.

But why? It sounds so … strange

Yes, it does. But everything revolves around your products. The way you organize and decorate your real shop, and the way you do the same with the online one. Everything is supposed to lead the potential customer to the product(s) she might be interested in. You don’t build websites to showcase your designer’s work or to share cats pictures. You do it to sell your products. Period.

So why worry, at this stage, about keywords, match types, negative keywords, ad rotation, conversion optimizer and all sorts of other AdWords terms that make your head spin?

Why think about which text ads would sound more catchy, whether to bid for more general or more specific terms, or where exactly on your website should you land certain search queries / ad combinations?

Let’s make things clear: if you’re selling stuff online, and if you’re doing business in a country where Google Merchant Center has already launched, you’ll have to create Product Listing Ads (campaigns) anyway.

You’ll have to do it because:

Your products are the core of your business
Product Listing Ads attract a whole lot of attention, with those nice pictures of theirs
Your competition already does it and if they do, you won’t be able to counter them with text ads

Nice product listing ads with images

So how about using PLAs as a quick way of getting your product inventory online and also as a way to learn how your potential customers search for your products and interact with your website?

All you need to know about setting it up is here. In a nutshell, you’ll have to:

Create a file which holds a list of your products either in XML format, or if it sounds too complicated, tab delimited text. If you cannot do that, you can ask whomever manages your website to do that for you.
Create a Google Merchant Center account, upload the compliant feed, and wait for it to get approved.
Link the Merchant Center account with an AdWords account, and create your first campaign.
Open a Google Analytics and a Google Webmaster tools account if you did not already and link them to AdWords and between them.
Set your campaign budget and your bids (you can even do it at product level, if you want, by creating one ad group per product and assigning only one product target to it).
Launch your campaign and let it run for a while.

Another good reason for starting with Product Listing Ads and not text / display ads is the following: if you want to manage your first AdWords campaigns yourself, chances are that you’re not too familiar with all the ins and outs of the AdWords system.

Disclaimer: If you’re among the 5% who study hard before diving deep into advertising, congratulations, and sorry for wasting your time. This article is not for you.

But if you’re not, I think it would be great to learn how people search for your products.

You’ll be amazed to see, by looking at their search terms, how they mix brands, product categories, SKUs and color variations, in ways you would have never imagined.

And from that stream of search terms you’ll select

your negative keywords
new keywords for different campaigns

You’ll also see that sometimes people search for a specific model, land on the right landing page and yet don’t buy from you. Some of the reasons for that behavior may be that they don’t trust your website, or because your price is not right. And you’ll learn about your website’s performance that way and you’ll take steps to improve both the website’s functionality and your offer.

And if you create separate ad groups for each of your products, and if you use a solid naming convention, you’ll also be able to see how you’re doing at brand level, or at product category level. Therefore you’ll know where to invest more and where to cut your costs. Where to try and get a better deal from your supplier and which brands or product categories you should forget about.

And terms such as conversion rate, cost per conversion, etc. will be easier to grasp when thinking about a product, whose margin per sale/conversion you know, and where you can see how many clicks it took to convert and what the average cost per click was. You’ll see that if you make 10 bucks per sale and pay 25 cents per click, and if shipping costs you 5 bucks, you can only afford 20 clicks to sell one item, and therefore you need a 5% conversion rate to break even.

And that’s because you’ll focus on the right things: your products and your website, and not let all the other bells and whistles, dials, buttons and levers distract you.

Because that’s what Product Listing Ads are all about: your website and your inventory. A huge chunk of your e-Commerce business.

Image source: Pixabay.com

Anonymous AdWords placements

Posted on August 7, 2012 · 25 Comments

Update 2 (august 2018): Should you still want to see specific placements that are sending you “anonymous” traffic you’ll need to leave the Google Analytics interface and use Google’s Analytics API. Three easy ways are Google’s Data Studio, Google Analytics’ Query Explorer and Google Sheets with a Google Analytics add-on.

Update 1: as of June 2013, Google Analytics no longer “de-anonymizes ” URLs reported as anonymous by Google AdWords (see the comments below). It was fun while it lasted, though.

Having a look at a placement performance report a few days ago I was both surprised and annoyed to see that I got the most clicks and incurred the biggest costs for some famous AdSense publishers, by the names of x65tw5263something.anonymous.google and such.

Obviously, those placements only got me clicks and no conversions, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this.

AdWords anonymous URLs

According to Google, “Some publishers choose to offer placements anonymously and not disclose their site names to advertisers.” (http ://support .google .com /adwords /bin /answer .py ?hl =en &answer =2471191). Which, to me, reads “you may find yourself spending money without knowing where your ads appear”.

It’s like going out to dinner, asking for the bill and seeing, next to everything, from hors d’oeuvres to desserts, some items which requested to remain anonymous. In spite of representing a significant part of the bill. They just don’t like publicity, you know, so they chose to remain anonymous. In the background. Discrete. 🙂

Luckily, every AdWords account I run is linked to a Google Analytics account, and AdWords related data is in there as well. And – lo and behold – Google Analytics knows no such thing as anonymous placement URLs. Every URL that got me at least a click is there, undisguised. In the foreground, for all to see. Transparent.

Which means that I can see, per placement domain or URL:

bounce rate
pages / visit
visit duration
goal completion
revenue

That’s enough for me to be able to judge whether a certain placement is worth my money or not. And although I won’t be able to say who is x65tw5263something.anonymous.google, specifically, I will be able to say that I no longer want my ads to show on a certain website or section of it.

The image below represents filtered data; domains containing the string “anonymous”. As you can see, there are no such URLs in Google Analytics. All data is visible there.

So, in the future, if you see a lot of x65tw5263something.anonymous.google in your placement reports, and do not know what to exclude, leave the AdWords interface and move to the Google Analytics one. Once there, see what placements are not performing according to your targets and expectations and exclude them.

If you don’t have a linked Google Analytics account, get one and link it to your AdWords account. It’s free, and it’s the only way for you to access post-click data related to your AdWords visitors (data which is not in the AdWords interface).

Unfortunately, you won’t be able to exclude placements with only impressions and no clicks, because those placements only appear in the AdWords interface, not in the Google Analytics one (obviously, as you need the visitor to reach your website in order for Google Analytics to be able to record anything). And those placements, if your ads keep showing without getting clicks, may drag your quality score on the display network down. But you can at least stop wasting money for placements that only get you clicks and no other benefits.

An average lie. Three levels of average CTR.

Posted on March 28, 2012 · 5 Comments

House was right.

Everybody lies. Averages are no exceptions. Averages are icebergs. You see their tip, but have no idea what’s under the water.

Unless you dive deeper.

Pick a keyword. An average one. Nothing special. Look at its average CTR.

CTR: 5%
Quality Score: 7
Impressions: 4000
Clicks: 200

Nothing to call home about, right? So how is that keyword doing? Good, bad, average?

If you stay at this level, you’ll never know. So let’s deconstruct that keyword’s CTR.

How does a keyword get its CTR? Someone types a search term into Google’s search box. A keyword is triggered. If that keyword makes it into the auction (its Ad Rank is high enough), the system pulls an ad from that keyword’s ad group, and shows it. That’s an impression. For the keyword, the ad, and the search term.

Another search term is typed, and the same keyword gets triggered. If it makes it into the auction, the keyword gets another impression, just as the search term, and the ad.

So actually, a keyword’s CTR is, in fact, the sum of clicks of all search terms that triggered it, divided by the sum of their impressions.

Therefore that 5% CTR can in fact be composed of:

120 clicks per 2000 impressions for S1 (search term 1), CTR 6%
80 clicks per 2000 impressions for S2 (search term 2), CTR 4%

Again, 4% and 6% are not too far apart, they both look pretty much the same.

Let’s go one level deeper. Let’s say you have two ads in that ad group. How does a search term record an impression? All alone? Not really. An ad gets triggered by it. And if we put on a pair of our customers’ shoes, we realize that the decision to click an ad or to skip it is not related to the search term alone. It’s related to the search term / ad pair. If the ad answers the search query, if it is related to it, a click is recorded.

So those 6% and 4% CTR for search terms S1 and S2 can, in fact, be, the sum of clicks for the S1A1, S1A2, S2A1 and S2A2 search term / ads pairs, and their impressions.

They could be:

110 clicks per 1000 impressions for S1A1, CTR 11%
10 clicks per 1000 impressions for S1A2, CTR 1%
10 clicks per 1000 impressions for S2A1, CTR 1%
70 clicks per 1000 impressions for S2A2, CTR 7%

Just as they are in the picture below.

The average lie. Three levels of CTR.

Amazing, right? Average at keyword level, still average at search term level, completely apart at search term + ad level. What works for one search term in terms of ads does not work for the other, and vice versa. Please note that if the same CTRs would have been split differently, you would have seen the bad performance either at search term level, or in your ad report. But when one search term works well with one ad and bad with the other, and the other way around, you can only see it when you look at the pairs.

So should you start looking at all the search terms and all the ads, in all the ad groups through all your campaigns? No. That would be way too much. But for loose match keywords, more general keywords (if you have to use them), for keywords attracting many impressions and many different search terms, in ad groups where you have more than one ad, and where the ads you’re testing are quite different, it’s something worth looking at.

All you have to do is to look for those keywords, click on them, then choose “See search terms – Selected”. Press “download” and add the Ad Id as a segment. You’ll end up with a table which will contain search terms, Ad Ids, CTR and other metrics.

Sort by search term, and go through that table, and check for variations in CTR as the Ad Id changes for the same search term (or create a pivot table if you wish). Consider splitting that ad group into several ad groups, and make good use of negative keywords whenever you see that some search terms do great with some ads and bad with others.

Make sure you are the master of your search terms, and that you always pair them with the right ad.

We’ve now come to see that there are situations when even inside the same ad group, search terms can perform radically different, according to the ad they’re paired with. And that what matters is in fact exactly what the customer uses when making the decision whether to click or not: the search term, and the ad paired with it. Not the keyword, because that’s invisible to the customer, and all it does is attract one search term and another, not the ad (alone), and not the search term (alone). But the team. As always.