Google Finally Provides Some Usable Insight With Improved Quality Score Reporting

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As you know, Quality Score (QS) is one of the parameters used to determine how much you have to bid to win an auction in the Search Network; if your QS sucks then you’re going to have to pay more than someone with a high QS. The problem is the info breakdown provided by Google was severely lacking – unit now… well sort of.

Google has just provided deeper insight into your Quality Score.

Previously if you hovered over the keyword’s little speech bubble you’d get a pop-up like this give you details on the 3 items that make up your QS:

You can now access this data through your Custom columns to make reviewing the info a lot faster and this is where you see the first positive change:

Google has also added historical data to each of the QS parameters.  Awesome, but it get’s better.  If you segment the data by ‘days’ then you can nail down when a drop in QS occurs and the reason for that drop.

In the example keyword above you can see that the current QS is 8/10. If I segment is by the last 7 days then I can see that at the start of that period the QS was actually 10. A quick browse of the historical parameters shows that the Expected CTR actually dropped from Above Average to Average, resulting in a 2 point penalty to the QS.

You can now use this info to review any changes that occurred at this time to correlate with the drop in QS. This will come in particularly handy for changes to ads that result in a drop to ad relevance or changes to the landing page that cause a rise of fall in landing page experience.

While this new data does help provide a way to find what faults are present and when they occurred for your keyword, don’t fall into the Adwords Quality Score trap – remember that what matters is a profitable or sustainable campaign that gets real results.

Quickly check if your Adwords is sending the right type of traffic

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Is your Adwords campaign sending you a lot of traffic but you aren’t getting the results you expect?  Are you worried that the agency you’re using doesn’t have your best interest at heart and just want to see if things are moving in the right direction?  Here is a super quick and simple way to make sure your Adwords campaign is sending you the right type of visitor. [Read more…] about Quickly check if your Adwords is sending the right type of traffic

Some people, experts even, still don’t understand online advertising

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You may have heard the uproar and what I think is an overreaction to some ads being published on some dodgy offensive websites via Google Adsense/Adwords. As is the way with the world these days, some companies saw this as an opportunity to cash in and loudly scream their disgust by boycotting Google until assurances were made it won’t happen again.  Never miss an opportunity to show outrage – I’m doing that now myself!

This boycott apparently “signals a growing backlash against so-called programmatic trading, which automates the buying and selling of advertising online”.  The online news sites wouldn’t be pushing an agenda here because they’d rather advertisers take overpriced media buys while spruiking traffic numbers and exposure rather than an automated system they can’t deliver that puts ads in front of your ideal customers? [Read more…] about Some people, experts even, still don’t understand online advertising

Google Takes Away More Control from Adwords – Exact Match is Now Longer…Exact Match

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Google has announced that they’re going to connect more people with what they’re looking for by no longer making exact match “exact match”. Close variants are now being expanded to include additional rewording and reordering for exact match keywords. Once again Google is saying that they know best and removing your control over your campaigns.

Along with the rewording and reordering of searches, Google is also going to ignore your use of function words such as “in, to, for, but, a, the”. They claim it will only remove the safely ignored words but they’ve claimed similar things in the past leaving you scratching your head wondering why some terms sneak through that you purposefully block. [Read more…] about Google Takes Away More Control from Adwords – Exact Match is Now Longer…Exact Match

Creating Ad Groups That Work for a Google Adwords Search Network Campaign

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Sick of getting a heap of clicks from your Adwords campaign but not getting conversions? Chances are – from what I’ve seen when look at other people’s accounts – ad groups are not setup properly and you’re paying for traffic that will never leads to sales and leads.

Let’s get your ad groups sorted so you can start taking control over your traffic.

Having control over the keywords you’re bidding on is key to creating an Adwords Search Network campaign that will produce a strong return-on-investment.  This starts well structured Ad Groups and is actually quite simple to do.  This is the process I follow to create well structured ad groups that prevent bad traffic.

[Read more…] about Creating Ad Groups That Work for a Google Adwords Search Network Campaign