Archive for the ‘Reporting’ category

Compare your AdWords Metrics by Date Range on the Fly

May 14th, 2010

I am psyched to see this addition to the AdWords user interface today – not sure if it is new or I have not been drinking enough coffee, but either way I like it!

The option to quickly compare metrics has been available on the campaign snapshot for awhile now but only on the campaign level, not down the the keywords level as shown below.

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Compare Metrics by Date - Nice!

Nice little time saver.

As usual, comments welcome!

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Kim Clinkunbroomer, GAP

Posted by: Kim Clinkunbroomer, GAP

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AdWords Shares Search Query Data for Keywords that did NOT Result in a Click

May 3rd, 2010

I have run into a few accounts recently that displayed search query data for keywords that had no clicks.

This is not the ‘norm’ as far a search query reports are concerned.   Until recently the only data that has ever been shared on a search query report is data that resulted in a click.  Sadly advertisers who use broad or phrase match keywords were left guessing as to what actual keywords caused the impressions that did not result in a click-through to their website.  This lack of information hinders account optimizations because we are left guessing at what negative keywords need to be included or what new keywords we could be adding to improve CTR.

In reviewing a new account today I see strong evidence that Google is making some changes or perhaps testing something in a limited number of accounts.

As you can see below, there are a good number of keywords that did not result in clicks but Google has provided the keyword data anyway.  This report was a quick search query report from within the User Interface vs. the Reporting Section.  However the formal search query report includes tons of data on keywords with Zero (yes, I said Zero) clicks!

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Search Query Data Provided for Keywords that did not result in a click

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What is extra interesting is the additional bit of data highlighted in yellow above {more:}.  I am not sure if this is additional data from expanded or session based search queries.

What does this mean to people who manage adwords accounts?  This much needed transparency allows us better control over the account which ultimately increases quality score and reduces costs.

I hope this is something we can expect to see in all AdWords accounts soon.

I have requested a comment from Google and will report back when/if I get a reply.

Perhaps you have seen this in an account already?

Comments Welcome!

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Kim Clinkunbroomer, GAP

Posted by: Kim Clinkunbroomer, GAP

More About Kim and her services at:  KimClink.com

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AdWords: First Page Bid Estimates

March 7th, 2010

First page bid estimates are what google approximates you would have to pay to be visible on the first page of search results when the search query exactly matches your keyword.  This first page bid estimate (FPBE) is based on your keyword  quality score.  If your keyword quality is low then you will likely have a higher FPBE than you would have if your keyword quality score were better.

Checking your first page bid estimates is a good way to identify areas for improvement, develop a bidding strategy, and identifying keywords that may be less expensive than others.

There are two ways to view your first page bid estimate.

1. keyword/placement performance report. Customize the report to show the First Page Bid Estimate.

Customizing your Keywords/Placement Performance Report to show First Page Bid Estimate

2. Spreadsheet edit feature is a quick way to review your first page bid estimates.

AdWords First page Bid Estimates

How to View your First Page Bid Estimates in Spreadsheet Edit.

The spreadsheet edit will display the first page bid estimates like this:

Spreadsheet Edit - First Page Bid Estimates

Again, look at your first page bid estimates from time to time to analyze what effect your quality score has on your account.

Click here to read more about quality improving quality score.

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Kim Clinkunbroomer, GAP

Posted by: Kim Clinkunbroomer, GAP

Owner of Clinks Web Service & AdWordsPI in Chicago, Illinois

Twitter: Kim Clink on TwitterAWHE on Twitter

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New AdWords Feature? Control Panel & Library

January 28th, 2010

Another New Feature for AdWords?

I noticed a new link today in the AdWords User Interface labeled “Control Panel & Library”

Control Panel & Library

Control Panel & Library

Unfortunately the page does not load correctly, instead loading an error message.

Loads page with error message

Loads Control Panel & Library Page with Error Message

Once this error message is dismissed the page continues to try to load data without success.  It looks like work in progress to me and I am sure Google will have this working soon.

It “seems” this feature will store exported reports in a library for future access.  This will put reports at AdWords members fingertips in the AdWords Interface.  This is only my assumption because the page does not load correctly.

I will ask Google for comment on this new feature and report back with details when they become available.

1/28/10 Update: Google Employee AdWordsProStephen was kind enough to share the following:

“The Control Panel and Library will be home to key cross-campaign settings like custom alert preferences and scheduled reports.”

Thanks AdWordsProStephen!

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Kim Clinkunbroomer, GAP

Posted by: Kim Clinkunbroomer, GAP

Owner of Clinks Web Service & AdWordsPI in Chicago, Illinois

Twitter: Kim Clink on TwitterAWHE on Twitter

AdWords: Segmenting Device & Click Type Data

January 18th, 2010

How to Segment your Device and Click Type Traffic Data

Google recently launched Click To Call for high-end Mobile Devices.

Excerpt From Google:

“your location-specific business phone number will display alongside your destination url in ads that appear on high-end mobile devices. Users will be able to click-to-call your business just as easily as they click to visit your website. You’ll be charged for clicks to call, same as you are for clicks to visit your website.”

To allow AdWords members to analyze their data Google recently added the ability to segment this mobile device data.

Segment and View Mobile & Click Type Segmentation

AdWords: Segment and View Mobile & Click Type Segmentation

Additionally there is the ability to segment your data by ‘click type’ for those who use Click To Call with their mobile AdWords ads.

 AdWords: Segment your Mobile Device Data by Click Type

AdWords: Segment your Mobile Device Data by Click Type

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Kim Clinkunbroomer, GAP

Posted by: Kim Clinkunbroomer, GAP

Owner of Clinks Web Service & AdWordsPI in Chicago, Illinois

Twitter: Kim Clink on TwitterAWHE on Twitter

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AdWords Negative Keywords = Positive Effect on your Bottom Line

January 12th, 2010

Negative Keywords

Negative = Positive

Negative = Positive

If your keyword list contains broad or phrase match keywords then negative keywords are most often a must. Negative keywords prevent your ads from appearing and potentially receiving clicks from search queries that are not relevant to your product or service. Suppressing impressions (and clicks) from irrelevant search queries will improve your CTR and quality score and allow your keyword list to work harder to bring qualified prospects to your website.

AdWords Offers the Following Negative Match types:

Negative Broad MatchedTo create a standard negative keyword, insert a minus sign before a keyword and add it to your ad group or campaign.

Example: -free download

Adding this negative keyword to your account would prevent your ads from showing on any search queries containing the terms free and download Your ads still have the potential to appear for variations of these terms. Your ads will also still show on search queries that only contain one of the terms.

For example, the search queries software download and free software could trigger your ads, while free software download will not.

Negative “Phrase” Matched - To create a negative phrase matched keyword surround the term with quotation marks.

Example: -”free download

Adding this keyword the system wouldn’t let any search query containing the phrase free download trigger your ads. The search query free download accounting software would not trigger your ads. However, your ads could possibly show on the search query download accounting software or free accounting software.

Negative [Exact] Matched – To create a negative exact matched keyword surround the term with brackets

Example: -[free download]

This negative keyword would only prevent your ads from showing on the search query free download. Search queries such as free accounting software download and free software could still trigger your ads.

It is suggested to add relevant variations of your negative keywords, including both the singular and plural forms. Learn to add effective negative keywords to your ad group or campaign.

Now that we have some familiarity with negative keyword match types the next question is how do we identify negatives to add to the account? AdWords offers two tools to identify negative keywords.

1. search query report.

The search query report is a very helpful report to identifying negative keywords. This report will show advertisers what the actual query was that resulted in their ads being served. You can use this report to identify negative keyword to add to your account.

2. Keyword Tool.

The keyword tool can be used to identify negative keywords.

Watch this Video

UPDATE: GOOGLE PUSHED THROUGH THEIR NEW KEYWORD TOOL WHICH IS MISSING THE OPTION TO ADD NEGATIVE KEYWORDS – SEE THIS ARTICLE http://www.adwordshelpexperts.com/2010/02/adwords-keyword-looking-for-a-negative-experience/ FOR DETAILS –

See Previous Interface in the upper right corner of your keyword tool to use the old keyword tool interface as outlined below in this video..

Adding Negative keywords is easy. They can be added at the campaign level to cover all adgroups or at the ad group level if the negative keywords are specific to one category.

Research your Search Query Reports regularly to identify negative keywords. Negative keywords will improve your CTR and preserve your budget by showing your ads to only the best prospects for business.

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Kim Clinkunbroomer, GAP

Posted by: Kim Clinkunbroomer, GAP

Get to know more About Kim

Owner of Clinks Web ServiceAdWordsPI in Chicago, Illinois

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AdWords Removes In-Line Keyword Bidding (Max CPC column) from User Interface Default Settings?

October 1st, 2009

Missing Your Keyword Max CPC column?

A member in the AdWords Help Forum brought to my attention today that the in-line bidding keyword bidding a.k.a. Max CPC column is missing from the keywords section on Adwords.  I went straight into several client accounts and sure enough, it’s gone.

Where is the MAX CPC column?

Where is the MAX CPC Column?

After some looking around I found that if you visit the Filter and Views button the option to have the MAX CPC show is located there.

Customizing Columns with Filters & Views

Customizing Columns with Filters & Views

Now I am able to see and most importantly EDIT the Max CPC for individual keywords.

I am pondering why Google would do this.  Seems like a great way to cause some confusion.

Additionally, while looking into this issue I noticed another new item, at least new to me. In investigating the issue I selected several keywords and then went to the edit button and Table Edit.

There I found must be a fairly new feature, but it is not active in my accounts.

New Feature to Prefill all Bids to First Page Bid Estimates?

New Feature to Prefill all Bids to First Page Bid Estimates?

Is this to alleviate the dreaded “below first page bid estimate” issue?

Update: Google’s AdWordsPro Stephen posted in the forum with the following statement: “[...] there was a technical issue with the AdWords UI this morning. We introduced a change that accidentally pushed some of the stats columns out of the right place and caused another issue with column customization. We reverted that change for now, so it shouldn’t be a problem anymore.”

Good to know and thanks Stephen for the update!

Posted by: Kim Clinkunbroomer, GAP, AdWords TC

Included in AdWords Reports: Video & Interaction Data

June 3rd, 2009

Just noticed that Google has added two new sets of reporting features to the reports section.  This data is for video and image ads.

  1. Video Columns
  2. Interaction Columns
New Data Included in AdWords Reports

New Data Included in AdWords Reports

What great information!  To know how much of your video was played, to know if visitors almost clicked your video or image ad. Google is helping us to be a fly on the wall in our potential customers homes and offices.

Thanks Google!

AdWords Statistical Mismatch? Click This!

March 15th, 2009

We fairly often see questions from people who have a difference between their campaign or AdGroup row totals and the summary at the bottom of the table. The problem is usually a drop down box that selects only a part of the networks that Google can reach. The snapshot shows where on the page that box is found – toward the upper right of the statistics table in AdWords 2:

AdWords Statistics MisMatch - Click This Selection!

AdWords Statistics MisMatch - Click This Selection!

Personally, even when I am not using the Content Network, I’ll leave this set to show all three networks. Sometimes I can see ways to optimise one or the other of the three networks. Without the triple view, I couldn’t so easily pick up the patterns.

Using the Search Query Performance Report to Improve Keyword List and CTR

January 17th, 2009

The Search Query Performance Report is one of my favorite reports. It is helpful for extracting new keywords, determining new keyword matching options and finding -negative keywords to reduce unwanted impressions and clicks. Overall it is going to provide valuable data to assist you in increasing CTR to give your account a better quality score and an edge over your competition.

The data below is from an account that was brought to my attention because it was failing to provide a return on investment. To protect this clients identity and keywords I am blacking out part of the keyword. He sells coffee products so for the purpose of further explinations let’s replace the blacked out keyword with ‘folgers’.
Broad Match Keywords = low CTR

Broad Match Keywords = low CTR

As you can see the broad match keyword generated a lot of impressions but few clicks resulting in a low CTR. Because broad match will allow keywords to be inserted before the keyword, after the keyword or related synonyms be used for the keyword the broad match keyword ‘folgers’ can match a broad range of queries.

The first thing I did when I got my hands on the account was run a Search Query Performance Report. The broad match keyword ‘folgers’ generated the below queries circled in red as well as many other queries that I have not shown here. As you can see people were performing search queries on ‘folgers coffee packets’ and the broad match keyword ‘folgers’ was allowing the query to show the ads. There were a good number of impressions for ‘folgers coffee packets’ so I have added the new keyword to the account.

Search Query Performance Report - personal info withheld

Search Query Performance Report - personal info withheld

The data from the SQPR allowed me to extract many new keywords to add to the account. It also told me to add some negative keywords such as ‘-makers’ because this ad group is specific to coffee (I have another group for makers). Not shown in this report is the many misspelled variations of the keyword I found. I added keywords for all of these misspellings also.

The Below report is a sampling of new keywords I extracted from the SQPR. This is the next day’s data and already look at that CTR! I will keep the broad match keyword ‘folgers’ for now. I expect to see the impressions for the keyword start to drop while I absorb some of those impressions with these more specific variations. The drop in impressions will cause the ‘folgers’ keyword CTR to improve and I can continue to run the report to find more keywords that have good traffic to add to the account. Eventually I may pause the keyword. Note that all the keywords in the report.2 are new are added in exact or phrase match to further increase CTR by restricting the search queries they can appear on.

As you can see the CTR increased dramatically from the broad match keyword ‘folgers’. These scores overtime will help this account to achieve a fantastic historical CTR and the keywords that are scored as OK will eventually become GREAT scores with a really good historical CTR.

New Keyword Extracted from the SQPR

New Keyword Extracted from the SQPR

More about the the Search Query Performance Report can be learned from Google at http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=68034
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Kim Clinkunbroomer, GAP

Posted by: Kim Clinkunbroomer, GAP

Get to know more About Kim

Owner of Clinks Web Service,  AdWordsPI in Chicago, Illinois

AdWords Training: AdWordsHour.com

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