Enhanced Campaigns: Major Update by Google Adwords

Posted onFebruary 6th, 2013 byadmin

Today at exactly 12pm Pacific, Google officially announced its plan to roll out major changes to the Adwords campaign functionality. Calling the “upgrade” Enhanced Campaigns, Google has said this is the “first step to help you more simply and smartly manage” Adwords campaigns as it pertains to the different devices, locations, day scheduling, and conversions across these segments.

Previously, we made it a best practice to segment campaigns based on different devices and locations. Now with Enhanced Campaigns, Google is going to force all devices and locations for keywords to be managed in 1 campaign, making for less overall campaigns.

For advertisers who don’t have mobile-optimized websites or ads, this is definitely the wakeup call they have been in need of. Search has been completely turned upside down with the growth in mobile device browsing. It is expected that by 2016, 75% of all internet searches will be on a mobile device and much of these searches will be with local intent. Google is anticipating this growth and making these changes to push advertisers to evolve with the times. (more…)

Adwords Search Queries Gone Wrong

Posted onNovember 1st, 2011 byadmin

The state of Adwords Advertiser Accounts have changed over the years where it was once very common to find an account without negative keywords and now it is rather uncommon. In time, advertisers have either become savvier to Adwords best practices or they have hired agencies to implement strategies.

But how far have they really evolved?

I can tell you for certain that the Google’s profit algorithm has evolved even further and is always 10 steps ahead of its advertisers. So my job is to make sure you guys are keeping up with the times. (more…)

Is Your AdWords Account a Hidden Horror?

Posted onApril 28th, 2011 byadmin

Have you ever watched a horror movie and seen a character do something so counter-intuitive it makes your brain explode? The victim walks into a dark basement without a flashlight knowing the killer is in the house. You’re already thinking, “Turn around! Don’t go down there!” But it’s no use, it’s too late. The victim’s fate has been written.

An unmanaged AdWords account is a lot like a B-rated horror flick and every day thousands of business owners walk into their own dark basement. Without a flashlight they are subjecting themselves to the hidden horrors that lurk in the dark. These business owners are allowing themselves to get slaughtered, financially speaking, by setting up Pay Per Click campaigns without understanding Google’s rules.

Pay Per Click is a thousand tiny knives slicing open the throat of your business. A click is a click and they add up fast. This is especially true when you’re paying for clicks regardless of how relevant they are, whether those clicks convert to a sale, or how much your products cost. The results can be savage. Advertisers commonly complain about spending up to $60k on AdWords yet they still can’t make a sale.

When the Keyword Search Pros look inside an unmanaged AdWords account it’s like turning the lights on in that dark basement for the first time. What we find will rattle even the most seasoned bones. (more…)

Unmasking the Abomination of Quality Score

Posted onApril 24th, 2010 byadmin

Dear Quality Score Victim,

I have to admit: I’ve been dying to write an updated piece about Quality Score (QS) since 2 years ago. The game has changed forever and I’ve spent more time gritting my teeth and cursing at my monitor (logged into Adwords) than ever before. The reason is because we were told quality score was to help ‘reward’ advertisers for constructing highly relevant campaigns and adgroups. But its all different now. Where’s the reward?

When QS was first introduced to advertisers in 2005, it was just a static score used to determine the minimum CPC based on the ad relevancy to its keywords. Over the next five years, Google would add in: CTR, landing page relevancy, account history (a combine average of all CTR’s in an account, and (the best part) “other relevant factors.” I’ve always gotten a big laugh out of “other relevant factors” because as I would dissect QS, I could see there was much more unexplained reasoning for low quality scores.

An Illustration of Traditional Quality Score (Pre-2009-2010)

In August of 2008, Google restructured QS and made it a “real-time” score that would take effect as soon as someone searched on Google. Some of the other differences Google made were: replacment of minimum CPC  to “first page minimum bid”, landing page quality, and landing page load time. In expectation of a rough change to quality scores, we were surprised that existing advertisers who had been advertising a while, didn’t really see much change…until 2010. Now we go into the accounts and look around at QS but we’re not in Kansas no mo.

(more…)