Large ad groups can negatively affect your performance. Poor performing keywords drag down the Quality Score (QS) of better performing keywords in the same ad group. This ultimately impacts impression share and raises click costs.

QS helps determine your actual Cost-Per-Click (CPC). Google assesses the relevance of your keywords, ad text, and landing content, as well as the click-through rate (CTR) of the keyword and ad group. Optimizing an account can be difficult to do with ad groups that include too many keyword themes. To help keep QS up and CPCs down, you will need to draw as straight a line as possible from search query to keyword to ad copy.

Try distributing keywords into smaller, more tightly focused ad groups. There is no “magic” number of terms per ad group, so organize keywords into new groupings based on logical themes. For automated assistance, use the Keyword Grouper tool available in Google’s free Adwords Editor, which can identify keyword themes, create ad groups, and copy existing keywords and ads into them.

Once tighter ad groups are developed, write ad copy focused solely on the keyword themes that include the keywords in the ad group. More specific ad text attracts a more targeted audience.

One way to optimize your Google AdWords Content Network performance is to monitor the domains you are being placed on. Knowing where your clicks are coming from and if they are helping you to be profitable will give you the upper hand in optimizing performance.

Google’s Placement Report shows which domains are hosting your ads and how the placements performed. Keep in mind that impression, click and cost data can be dangerously misleading without conversion data attributing accrued leads or sales to each of the domains.

If Google conversion tracking is installed, conversion data will be included in the report. If you use a separate conversion tracking system, pull a report that includes the referring domain.

First, identify domains not consistent with your service, company or industry. Next, identify poorly performing domains by calculating each domain’s cost-per-acquisition and projected profit. Keep in mind that the Content network often requires more flexible expectations than the Search network due to its lower volume. Block these sites immediately to avoid further wasted spend.

To block domains, head to Google’s Tools page and choose Site and Category Exclusions. There you can add the domains to exclude.  Your CPA should improve.

In an attempt to ease web designers’ on-going frustrations of determining what content is “above the fold,” or visible on a page without scrolling, Google has launched its latest tool, Google Browser Size. Since users are surfing the web with such a wide range of browser sizes, monitor sizes, and screen resolutions, it has become difficult to know exactly where the fold is. Enter Google Browser Size. Using a multicolor, transparent overlay, the tool provides contour lines showing the percentage of users who are able to see the content of a webpage without scrolling.

To use the Browser Size tool, enter a URL in the search box, click ‘Go’, and the site will be displayed beneath the Google contour lines. If the content of the web page is centered, simply resize your own browser to a given percentage to view the page as a certain percentage of users view it.

Regardless of precision, the tool is an invaluable resource for identifying where key content should be placed on a page. After all, if a site has great content, but nobody is willing to scroll to see it, that content does them little good.

In a surprise move, Google has changed it’s U.S. trademark policy today.  The move was announced to agencies under NDA but the information was leaked to the press and they moved the time table to today.

The details can be found here.  In a nutshell, Google will allow some use of trademarks in ads within the US, which meet certain criteria.  These include:

• Ads which use the term in a descriptive or generic way, and not in reference to the trademark owner or the goods or services corresponding to the trademark term.
• Ads which use the trademark in a nominative manner to refer to the trademark or its owner, specifically:
  • Resale of the trademarked goods or services: The advertiser’s site must sell (or clearly facilitate the sale of) the goods or services corresponding to a trademark term. The landing page of the ad must clearly demonstrate that a user is able to purchase the goods or services corresponding to a trademark from the advertiser.
  • Sale of components, replacement parts or compatible products corresponding to a trademark: The advertiser’s site must sell (or clearly facilitate the sale of) the components, replacement parts or compatible products relating to the goods or services of the trademark. The advertiser’s landing page must clearly demonstrate that a user is able to purchase the components, parts or compatible products corresponding to the trademark term from the advertiser.
  • Informational sites: The primary purpose of the advertiser’s site must be to provide non-competitive and informative details about the goods or services corresponding to the trademark term. Additionally, the advertiser may not sell or facilitate the sale of the goods or services of a competitor of the trademark owner.

We were told that if you have ads in your account which were previously disapproved for trademark policy and that comply with the aforementioned criteria, you may submit those ads for re-review and eligible ads would begin showing in the US starting June 15.

I have received so many links to Tuesday’s New York Times article on click fraud “Per-Per-Click Web Advertisers Fight Costly Fraud” from people that my inbox is full.

Pay-per-click advertising is on the rise.  As reported in the article, this is the only form of advertising that grew during the economic debacle that was 2008.  The attraction of this highly measurable form of advertising is more keen now than it ever has been, as companies shift their marketing dollars to the most accountable form of advertising.

It’s no surprise that the lure of those dollars attract the nefarious, with 17% of all clicks in 2008 deemed fraudulent per Click Forensics, according to the article.  The search engines are trying to keep up. They continue to improve their click fraud algorithms and do catch a fair amount of it.  It’s not a perfect science, however, and while they do offer credits for fraudulent traffic, it is still incumbent upon the advertiser to defend themselves.

While click fraud is a serious problem, it is rarely reported on accurately. Click Forensics and other panelists at the Search Engine Strategies conference in NYC last year reported that much of the click fraud that Google and Yahoo experience is in their content network. Reporters are typically blind to the difference between the content and search networks and don’t distinguish between the two. Click fraud is also a pet topic for reporters since it sounds exciting.

As an agency, we have been monitoring click fraud for our clients since the day we opened our doors in 2003.  That’s possible because we track the performance of every keyword and monitor every click.  The data we receive are analyzed every day for patterns and activity that constitute fraud and we use those data to champion our clients with the engines.  We have had countless thousands of dollars returned to clients.

Is click fraud a problem? Absolutely. Is it going away? No. And so we constantly keep vigil and protect our clients.

(If you do not track your own PPC campaigns, then let me urge you to do so ASAP and to analyze the data you obtain.  There is an outstanding standalone tracking service called ConversionRuler that you should check out.)

Google has been testing ads with headlines that exceed the 25 character limit when using keyword insertion.  Last week Google made available the following explanation:

“You may occasionally notice an ad that exceeds our character limits
(typically, 25 characters in the title and 35 characters in each ensuing
line). This sometimes happens with ads that use keyword insertion.

When a keyword-insertion ad appears on a search result page, the AdWords
system inserts the keyword that triggered the ad into the ad text. If the
keyword is too long, and would cause the ad text to exceed our character
limits, the ad’s default text would be used instead.

In rare cases, the system may insert a keyword that causes the ad to
exceed the character limit by one or two characters. There’s no guaranteed
way to exceed the character limit, so we don’t recommend that you tailor
your ad text to attempt this. It would likely make keyword insertion less
effective for you, since the AdWords system will almost always use your
default text in place of a too-long keyword.”

Should you be interested in creating an ad group with keywords that push an ad to 26 or 27 characters using DKI (dynamic keyword insertion), while ensuring that the default ad was suitable for the keywords in the ad group, do follow Google best practices (tightly focused keywords in an ad group) and do measure your results to ensure the ad is converting and providing profit for you.

In a bid to strengthen its delivery of the right ad to the right person, Google has launched a new feature for its content network, Interest-Based Advertising, that will allow advertisers to reach users who have displayed interest in their vertical or who have visited their website in the past.  Therefore, the ad won’t be shown simply based on the user’s immediate interest.  More ad exposure for the advertiser and delivery of ads of greater interest for the user.  That’s the theory.

In an age where cookies have less stickiness than any time before, it will be interesting to see how well this can be executed.  Advertisers have certainly been clamoring for it for a while.  Amazon makes great use behavioral targeting by thrusting products related to past purchases and searches under the visitor’s nose on their site.  To quell the privacy firestorm that this is likely to spark, users have the ability to remove or add interest categories (600 so far) to tailor the ads they see, or they can completely opt out (through cookies or browser plugin).  That, too, will be interesting to see in action.

For additional, useful information visit these links: Google and Search Engine Land

Company: Online Retailer

Overview:  The client had a new e-commerce site for retailing consumer products and was looking to drive sales while keeping cost-per-sale under control.

Result:  After a thorough audit of available search terms and search activity a campaign was crafted to quickly gather data and begin a performance-based campaign.  In this case, there was enough data to begin building a statistical model and getting the client profitable on major product lines within two weeks and on secondary products within six weeks.  The campaign in aggregate was profitable from day two.  Cost per sale was cut almost in half from week two to week four while sales volume increased 528% for the same period.

One of Google’s latest betas is their Search-based Keyword Tool, a new keyword recommendation tool.  This tool presents a great opportunity for advertisers to fill gaps in their search term lists by suggesting keywords deemed highly relevant based on site content. Although the tool doesn’t allow users to import terms directly from the tool into an AdWords account, the results can be useful to determine potentially valuable areas for account expansion.

Google refers to the Search-based Keyword Tool (SKT) as an “inverse search engine,” which provides relevant keyword results based on a domain submitted in the search box. Like the keyword tool that exists within each AdWords account, the SKT provides lists of suggested keywords based on site content organized into categories, which may be helpful for organizing terms into ad groups.

The tool works by drawing from a one-year database of actual user searches, from which it chooses the user searches relevant to a site’s content.

Unlike the current keyword tool, the SKT provides a list of missed keyword opportunities by first examining the list of search terms and negative search terms being used in an account. It is designed to give results stripped of keyword redundancies and terms that clash with negative search terms in an account.

If the “Partial matches to keywords in my account” is selected in the “More Filters” option, the tool will also provide keyword ideas based on the searches for which broad- and phrase-match terms have delivered ads. The “Ad/Search share” column displays the percentage of time that a client’s paid or organic results (on the first page) have shown a listing for the corresponding user search in the past year.

The SKT returns a list of terms that is filterable in the interface, or can be exported to Excel. Click on “More Filters” to filter by competition levels, suggested bid (based on first page averages), search volume, or competition levels.

The SKT should also be able to provide a longer and more detailed list of search terms because it examines every page on a domain entered into its ‘Website’ field, rather than only the pages that are directly linked to that site. Google recommended using the tool for clients who have large online catalogs and many product pages.

The tool can be found at:

www.google.com/sktool

and more information can be found at:

www.google.com/support/sktool

Google provides views into performance metrics from Google search vs. their search partners. This is good news for us, as it means easier auditing of this information and the potential for easier calibration against our third-party tracking data.  More importantly, it opens the door for separate optimization of the high-quality Google search traffic and the varying quality of their search partners.

We applaud any moves on the part of the ad engines that allow measurement and management at the most granular level. The more access there is to this data, the better and more efficient ad spend can be.