Using Call Extensions in PPC

When you think about PPC, you think about the online world:  online searches, online ads, and online websites where a conversion happens.  The offline world often doesn’t factor into the picture of PPC.

Of course, though, the offline world still exists, and business happens there on a daily basis.  Since the dawn of PPC, businesses have tried to find a way to cross the chasm between online and off.

One way to do that is by using call extensions in your PPC ads.  In a nutshell, call extensions are a Google Adwords feature that allows your phone number to appear automatically with your ad copy – without using precious space in the ad copy itself.

The cost for using call extensions depends on the device used to perform the search.  For mobile searches, call extensions appear at no extra charge, and the advertiser pays the normal CPC when the phone number is clicked to call.  On desktop and laptop computers, advertisers need to use a Google phone number, and there is a minimum charge of $1 per call.  You get a lot of cool analytics when you use the Google numbers, though – we’ll talk about that in a minute.

Wordstream has a great post covering all the basics of call extensions, so I won’t repeat all that here.  For a closer look at where call extensions might show up and what they look like, check out this post from PPC Hero.

Let’s talk about where the rubber meets the road with call extensions:  evaluating results.  As with a lot of new and shiny objects in the online world, a lot of advertisers get really excited about the fact that the feature exists, without thinking about whether the feature makes sense for their business and helps them get closer to their goals.

Obviously, if your business isn’t equipped to generate conversions over the phone, you shouldn’t use call extensions.  Even if you are equipped, it’s crucial to think about dayparting:  are you running call extensions at 2am when no one is there to answer the phone?  That’s probably not a good user experience, so daypart your campaigns accordingly.

OK, so you’ve ensured that you can convert over the phone and you’ve dayparted properly.  How do you tell if this is working or not?

Well, there are several considerations.  First off, unless you’ve purchased a system to tie phone orders into your web analytics platform, your phone conversions won’t show up there.  You’ll need another way to track them.  If you have a good phone tracking system already, and you’re using a unique phone number for PPC (which you absolutely should do), then this shouldn’t be an issue.

But not all businesses have such a fancy phone system.  While it’s a lot harder to get accurate conversion data without that, you can still tally sales manually.  This requires phone rep cooperation, but it can be done, especially if the reps are incentivized properly.

So you’ve decided to use a Google forwarding number.  What great data do you get in return?

Well, it’s pretty cool, actually.  Go to the Dimensions tab in Adwords and select “Call Details” for your view.

Then, export your report.  You’ll end up with the following fields by default:

•    Start time
•    End time
•    Status
•    Duration (seconds)
•    Caller area code
•    Phone cost
•    Call type
•    Campaign

Pretty cool, huh?  From there, you can analyze whether these calls were worthwhile, at least from a location (area code) and duration standpoint.

By converting seconds to minutes, you can chart the call length for easy analysis, like this:

So if you’re a B2B advertiser with a long sales cycle, and your goal is to generate consultative phone calls, a call duration of less than 1 minute (60 seconds in the report) is probably not good. 

There are many other analyses you can perform with this data – and it gets even more powerful when you marry it with your own call center reports.  The point is, if generating phone contacts is one of your goals, you definitely should be using call extensions.

How have you used call extensions in your campaigns?

Adwords Support Needs A Better Bra

I know I’m probably starting to sound like a broken record.  Over the past couple weeks, I’ve written about the less-than-optimal changes to Adwords, including near match and the rotate ads fail.

I started this week thinking things couldn’t get any worse.  Surely we’d hit rock bottom and were on our way up.

I was wrong.

Last week, I was hard at work on my first-of-the-month to-do list:  client reporting, and updating ad copy tests.  For as long as I’ve been in agency PPC, I’ve evaluated and updated ad copy tests on at least a monthly basis.  It’s a good practice, right?  Especially in view of the recent “near rotate” fiasco?

Not so fast, bad guy.

We have a global client with campaigns for every country and region of the world.  Although the basic message for their ads is the same, I’m sure it won’t be surprising to hear that minor nuances in ad copy can have different results in different parts of the world.  Anyway, I updated all their ad copy tests and moved on.

Or so I thought.

When I checked the campaigns the next day, I noticed that the US campaign traffic was down a bit.  Well, I didn’t get too worried – after all, we all know that days are not data.

A few more days went by, and I checked the campaigns on Monday.  I was in for a shock.

US campaign traffic had screeched to a halt.  Mind you, this is a branded campaign for a long-term advertiser with an average quality score of 10.  At first, I thought the new ads might be stuck in editorial review, which seems to be happening more and more lately.

But alas, the ads were just stuck on the “other” ad position, instead of the top where they had been.  And CTR & traffic tanked as a result.  Quality scores and everything else were still ok, so I figured there must be something else going on.

Well, of course we don’t have an Adwords rep for this client, for whatever reason.  (Eliminating agency reps is yet another tear in the elastic of Google's support.)  So I called the general support number.

What a nightmare.

I related my story to the rep right off the bat – basically telling her the exact same thing I said here.  She agreed that something was amiss, and promised to get back with me.

Later that day, I got an email reply.  It said, and I paraphrase:  “I took a look at your account, and it looks like your ads are mostly appearing in the Other position, which is why your CTR is down.  Here’s a report illustrating this.  I suggest you raise your bids to get things back on track.”

Seriously?!?!?

One, I told her that I’d already run that report.  I knew that’s what had happened.  But I didn’t know WHY it happened.  Two, how in the h-e-double-hockey-sticks can my quality score drop that much overnight??  The ad changes were very minor – just a tweak to the second description line – and this is a long-standing branded campaign for the brand owner.  I smelled a rat (or something even stinkier).

So I wrote back, basically telling her all that, and also telling her that I’d tripled my bids as soon as I saw the problem (BEFORE I even called Google), and still traffic was nil.

Two days later, I hadn’t heard anything.  So I called support again.  The rep I spoke to that time told me that the original rep had gotten my email and was looking into it further.

Yet another day went by before I heard back.  The reply?  “There might be a temporary drop in quality score due to the ad changes.  Just give it a few more days.”

ARE THEY KIDDING??

Here’s a client whose traffic from their most important region of the world has gone to crap, and they want me to wait?  And does quality score really drop with minor ad changes?  Does that mean that our quality score is reset every time we change ads?  Does historical quality score count for nothing? And how is that going to work now that we have to change our ads every 30 days just to keep them rotating evenly?

After I got this reply, I decided to try a crazy ACE test.  I set the test to 50/50 and set the experimental bids at $108 per click.  Yes, over $100 per click.  And this is for brand terms with an actual CPC of well under $1 prior to this disaster.

Guess what?

Traffic is back!

And no, we’re not actually paying $108 per click, but the average CPC is up about 10x from what it was before.  It’s still early days, and I’m hopeful that I can back the bids down to a more reasonable level in a short period of time.

There’s a nagging voice in the back of my head, though.  And it’s shrieking “MONEY GRAB!”

Postscript:  I just got an email from Adwords Support.  It says "I see that the number of clicks this campaign received today has increased quite a bit from days past." Nothing like stating the obvious.... Wow.  I'm speechless.

Two PPC Wins and a Fail

This week brought a flurry of PPC announcements from Google.  Of course, this isn’t unusual – PPC is known for being fast-moving and constantly innovating, with Google leading the way.  Like many of the PPC advances of the past, this week’s list brings both good and bad to the industry.

Win #1:  Adwords Account Labels

On Tuesday, Google rolled out a neat feature called Account Labels.  With Labels, you can organize account elements into custom groupings to facilitating the slicing and dicing of data.

This is basically pivot tables on steroids.  The example Google gives in their blog post is grouping products across geo-targeted campaigns.  Say you sell Nike sneakers, and you replicate campaigns across geographies.  Labels will enable you to group and summarize stats on Nike sneakers across your account so you can evaluate results on a larger set of data.

Labels are a pretty neat feature, and I’m already planning to implement them in one of our international client’s campaigns.

Win #2:  Quality Score Transparency

Ever since it was introduced in 2007, PPC managers have lived and died by quality score.  Countless hours and thousands of blog posts have been devoted to optimizing quality score.

And yet, quality score has been somewhat of a black box.  We all know that click-through rate is the most heavily-weighted factor in quality score, but there were also the ubiquitous “other factors” that Google didn’t specify. 

And furthermore, Google didn’t tell us a lot about what was wrong when we earned poor quality scores.  We were just told keyword relevance is “poor.”

Now, Google’s giving us more transparency into quality score factors.  They’re supplying more detail on what elements need improvement:  CTR, ad relevance, and/or landing page.

Pretty cool – more info is always better!

Fail:  Near Match

For years now, PPC’ers have complained about broad match gone wild.  Just yesterday I was reviewing some search queries for VoIP keywords, and apparently Google thinks that’s the same thing as “voice recognition apps” and “cheap prison telephone voice”. 

But, at least we have phrase and exact match to counteract the silly broad matching.  Right?

Wrong.

From Google’s Inside Adwords blog, “Starting in mid-May, phrase and exact match keywords will match close variants, including misspellings, singular/plural forms, stemmings, accents and abbreviations. Based on our research and testing, we believe these changes will be broadly beneficial for users and advertisers.”

Are they kidding?!?  What research are they doing?  Maybe they’re looking at their own search query reports and deciding the matches are close enough?

This move hasn’t exactly been popular with PPC pros.  An informal and unscientific poll of the PPC Chat group on LinkedIn reveals that 68% of PPC’ers are against the change (registration required).

While I do see the benefit of this change in certain situations, to me it’s yet another money grab by Google.  Like many other default settings in Adwords, this one will slip by the novice PPC managers and mom & pop folks trying to manage their own accounts, and they’ll wonder why they’re not getting the ROI they expected.

The good news is, there’s still time to opt out.  You’ll find the option under campaign settings in the Adwords UI.  The bad news is, there’s no bulk edit, so each campaign has to be opted out manually, one by one.  And there’s no option for this in Adwords Editor yet either.  Coincidence?  Maybe.

What do you think of the recent Adwords announcements?

3 Unfulfilled PPC Wishes from 2007

Ah, January: the month when everyone makes resolutions and looks at their holiday wish lists to see what gifts people failed to give them. (C’mon, admit it: we all do this!) In the spirit of gifts not received, I got to thinking about my PPC gift list from 5 years ago, and the gifts I still haven’t gotten after all that time. Here are my top 3.

More traffic and search leadership from MSN/Bing.

Back in early 2007, in the early days of MSN’s PPC program, I found myself wishing that MSN (now Bing) would catch the big guys of search, but wondering if they ever could. In that post, I observed, with chagrin, the fact that “MSN falls down on volume and ease of use. Traffic and order volumes are about 10% of what we get from Google.” The post goes on to say that “I don't even know which I'd like MSN to address first: increasing volume, or fixing the UI.”

Sound familiar? While the latest release of the adCenter UI is a HUGE improvement, it still leaves a lot to be desired, especially given the fact that adCenter now includes Yahoo traffic. In fact, I think traffic from adCenter might even be lower in 2012 than it was in 2007. There certainly isn’t any increase in market share – which is pathetic given the fact that market share is now Bing and Yahoo combined. It’s sad, really.

Better Adwords query matching.

Match type issues have plagued PPC advertisers from the beginning. Novice PPC’ers make the mistaken assumption that match types actually work the way Google says they do. News flash: they didn’t work that way in 2007, and still don’t in 2012. One merely needs to run a search query report to see all the crazy query matches to exact and phrase match keywords to realize that match types are more of a suggestion for Google, as opposed to an instruction.

I do have to give Google credit for adding modified broad match to the arsenal, though. I’ve had good results with this, and I know others have as well.

More accurate PPC traffic estimates.

Back in 2007, I was an in-house PPC’er, which meant that part of my job was budgeting and forecasting. On a regular basis, I had to estimate how many orders we’d get from PPC, along with traffic, cost, and profit. This was a huge challenge back in 2007, and it’s still a challenge today.

In fact, it can be an even bigger challenge for search agencies. Not only do we need to forecast revenue for the agency, we need to provide forecasts and estimates for clients. And clients often take the estimates as gospel: “Great, we’re going to get 20,000 visits per month from PPC!” In reality, it’s a crap shoot: you might get your 20,000 visits; or you might only get 2,000; or you might get 200,000.

Estimating traffic outside the US, or for geotargeted campaigns, is even more of a joke. To see a nice analysis of just how big a joke it still is, check out this post from PPC Northern Ireland.

In the search world, 5 years is an eternity. Back in 2007, I was writing a lot about Yahoo Panama, click fraud, and garbitrage – all of which are non-factors in the 2012 PPC world. So it’s a bit of a surprise that some things haven’t changed.

Will 2012 bring the gifts of more Bing PPC traffic, better keyword matching, and accurate traffic estimates? Will I be writing this same article in 2017 (God help me)? I guess only time will tell, but I wouldn’t bid high on it.

Top 3 PPC Stories from Beyond the Paid

Ah, the end of the year: the time when we all sit back and reflect on our accomplishments over the past 12 months. Or not, because most of us are way too busy. But I digress.

In the PPC world, there’s never a dull moment, so I can’t say that 2011 was the most eventful year ever. But there were definitely a few stories worth reviewing as we head into 2012. With that, here are my top 3 stories from 2011 - a la David Letterman.

#3. 10 PPC Experts to Follow on Twitter

Like Letterman, people seem to love “Top 10” lists. I agree that they’re fun – but usually they’re pointless, too. I wanted to create a list of PPC experts that would actually help the community get connected.

#2. Google’s SSL Change: A Bad Deal for PPC

So much has been written about this huge misstep by Google, you’re probably sick of seeing it. But it continues to annoy people, so it bears repeating. This is a bad, bad deal, and I hope 2012 brings the return of our organic search query data in Google Analytics.

And now, for the top story of 2011…..

#1. Microsoft adCenter Ignores Advertiser Feedback

I’m sure some of you think I love to beat up on adCenter, like they’re my favorite punching bag. Not so. There are many things to love about adCenter: quality traffic, helpful reps, features that Adwords lacks, and more. They even have an online suggestion box for advertiser feedback, unlike Google.

This seemed pretty cool to me, so shortly after it launched, I posted the suggestion to give us separate bids for Yahoo and Bing. After all, we PPC’ers are all about transparency and control.

At the time, this suggestion was the top vote-getter by a landslide. But did adCenter take it to heart?

Nope. They shot it down and put it on the “completed” list. So much for advertiser feedback.

What are your top PPC stories from 2011?

I'm Dreaming Of Separate Bids for Search Partners

Seems like everybody has a PPC wishlist at this time of year. Earlier this week, my good friend Matt Van Wagner published a great post on Search Engine Land called 7 Things On My Google AdWords Wishlist For Santa. I agree with everything on his list, and hope that all of us PPCers find those fine gifts under our tree next weekend.

Yesterday, there was another fun SEL post from Conrad Saam called A Letter from Santa To The Search Community, which was also fun. Give both of these posts a read, if you haven't already.

All these wishes are fine and good, but the one thing I'm wishing for this holiday is the ability to set separate bids for Google Search Partners. Why this hasn't rolled out already is a mystery to me. If I had to guess, I'd say that Google doesn't want to lose the revenue from search partners when people bid less for them. But partners don't always perform worse than Google - in fact, I've seen many instances with our clients where partners actually perform better than Google.

We already have the ability to opt out of partners entirely - why not give us a chance to opt back in with separate bids? C'mon, Google - you quit sending out great holiday gifts years ago; can't you at least grant us this one wish?

What's on your PPC wish list this year?

Is Adwords Turning Into Big Brother?

Over the past few weeks, Google has rolled out a few changes that seem to imply that they know what’s best for all of us. (I know this isn’t new, but bear with me…) There’s Google Plus, with its +1 boxes on search results & ads that you can’t opt out of; and the SSL fail that’s masking as much as 20% of organic search query data.

Earlier this week, there was a post on the Inside Adwords blog, announcing that all Adwords campaigns using Enhanced CPC and Conversion Optimizer would have ad rotation automatically switched from “optimize for clicks” to “optimize for conversions” - unless you opt out by filling out a form.


Thing was, the link to the form went to a 404 page.

And then the post was pulled down shortly after it went live.

It’s back up now, and the form actually works. But what the heck was that all about?

Let’s set aside the fact that Adwords obviously jumped the gun on a blog post that wasn’t ready for prime time. Anyone who blogs has probably done that once or twice.

The bigger issue is that Google is once again taking choice out of the hands of marketers and advertisers, opting instead to decide what they think is best for us.

In some ways, this makes sense. The whole point of using Enhanced CPC and Conversion Optimizer is to try to improve the conversion rate and cost per conversion of your campaigns. Therefore, using the “optimize for clicks” setting is at odds with the Enhanced CPC/Conversion Optimizer algorithm. In fact, it’s likely that this factor alone has led to less-than-stellar performance for campaigns with these settings – leading advertisers to say that Enhanced CPC and Conversion Optimizer don’t work. That’s bad for Google.

Also, remember that Optimize for Clicks is the default campaign setting. This means that many novice advertisers are using this setting unwittingly. Consider a scenario in which these same novice advertisers read a blog post touting the benefits of Enhanced CPC or Conversion Optimizer – so the novice says, “Hey, let’s try that,” and then sees poor results because their campaign is still set to “optimize for clicks.” That isn’t good for Google either.

But here’s the thing: The blog post said that all campaigns would be switched over unless you opt out by filling out a form. This implies that advertisers won’t even have the option of choosing “optimize for clicks” for Enhanced CPC and Conversion Optimizer campaigns.

And this is why I have a problem with it.

I’m fine with changing the default for these campaigns to Optimize for Conversions. That’s totally ok. What I’m not fine with is taking the choice out of the hands of the advertiser and putting it in the hands of Google. That’s akin to the fox guarding the hen house.

I find this move even more puzzling in light of the flap over the SSL thing. Ever since that announcement, SEMs have been raising holy hell, asking for more data and transparency. It seems like a bad move to decide to make this change now, on the heels of all the furor – and right before the holidays to boot.

I recently spoke with our Adwords reps about some of our client campaigns. It was one of those “let us make optimization suggestions for you” conversations, so I always take those with a grain of salt. They actually had several good suggestions, so it wasn’t all bad. But they really pushed me to switch all of our client campaigns from “rotate” to “optimize for conversions.”

Bad move.

I good-naturedly told them that they just hit a hot button (and they obviously don’t read my blog and have never heard me speak at conferences), and they quickly backpedaled. But still – why is Google all of a sudden pushing “optimize for conversions” rather than letting us make the choice ourselves?

Has 1984 arrived a couple decades late?

Google Engage for Agencies - What's It Worth?

As part of their overhaul of their Certification program, Google recently launched a new service for SEM agencies called Google Engage for Agencies. The program offers training resources, marketing materials, news, and support for agencies who manage Adwords accounts on behalf of clients. Members of Engage also get free $100 Adwords vouchers to use for new clients.

The program launched several months ago, but I just recently had time to go in and play around with it. Overall, I’m underwhelmed. In order to secure your membership in the program, you’ll need to watch four 15-20 minute videos covering an overview of Adwords. The videos are so basic it’s not even funny – really 101 type stuff. And you have to watch each video in its entirety to get a little code you can enter to finalize your membership and get your $100 vouchers.

It seems to me that anyone who’s already Adwords Certified should be able to skip that step. After all, if you’ve passed the Fundamentals test, you’ll already know everything that’s in the Engage videos. You can't tell me that Google doesn't know you're certified - the login for Engage is the same as your Adwords login, and your profile includes certification info. And if you work at an agency, your time is money – time spent watching basic videos on stuff you’ve been doing for years is time you’re not doing billable client work.

All that said, there are a few redeeming qualities of the program. Obviously, the vouchers are nice – I don’t know any agency folks who would turn down $100. Engage also has a library of marketing materials that can be used to sell Adwords to clients. For example, there’s a downloadable PDF on preparing a sales pitch for Adwords, complete with worksheets you can use to ensure you’re asking the right questions of your prospect. While I’m not personally responsible for sales at Fluency Media, I’ve passed along many of these materials to our sales team.

And the training modules are definitely helpful for new agency team members who need to get up to speed on PPC. So if you’ve hired an intern or new staff member, I recommend starting them off with the intro videos I mentioned earlier. You’ll get the dual benefit of training them on PPC and enrolling them in the Engage program at the same time.

Engage also includes handy links to Adwords Certification training modules. This info, formerly found in your Adwords MCC, is a good training resource for those new to PPC, as well as a handy refresher course for anyone who needs to get certified or renew their certification.

To sum it up, if you’ve been doing PPC for a while, you may not find much use for Engage; but if you’re new to PPC, you’ll find it informative.

Have you tried Engage for Agencies? What do you think of it?

Adwords Reps – A Love-Hate Relationship

Since the dawn of Adwords, PPC managers have had a love-hate relationship with their Adwords reps. In my own experience, I love having someone who can go to bat for me when I need help pushing ad copy through editorial, solving a billing problem, or increasing the capacity of my account.

On the other hand, I’m not so fond of the frequency at which reps change: just when I feel comfortable that my rep understands our clients, we’re assigned someone new. I also have been almost universally disappointed with the “optimizations” provided by Google. The only thing they’re optimizing is Google’s revenue.

Late last year, Google announced that they were switching up their account rep structure for agencies. Instead of one rep per agency, reps would be assigned by vertical. Personally, I’ve found this to be a pain – I can never remember who I’m supposed to contact about which client. Furthermore, vertical support is only available at a certain spend level: as far as I can tell, the minimum is at least $15,000 per month. That’s a pretty hefty chunk of change for many advertisers.

To get support for clients below that budget level, we had to contact the generic Adwords support hotline. While I’ve always found the general support reps to be attentive and helpful, it’s still frustrating to have to re-explain a client’s business and goals over and over to a new person each time you call.

Just this week, though, I got an email from a rep who said he’d been assigned to our agency for this quarter, offering to discuss all of our clients. I agreed to a call, and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. He had obviously taken the time to review our client campaigns, and beyond that, he had looked at their websites to get an idea of the client’s business. He had several optimization ideas I was impressed with, as well. While most of the ideas weren’t new features, he had suggestions for new ways to use the features that I hadn’t thought of or heard of. All in all, I was quite pleased, and have spent a chunk of time this week implementing many of his suggestions for testing.

But that’s just me. In a recent PPC Chat, PPC’ers weighed in on the usefulness of Adwords reps. The overwhelming sentiment was that reps are only marginally helpful, and often are just trying to make more money for Google. I have to say that I’ve found this to be truer of the vertical reps than the agency rep I talked to this week. PPC Chatters also said they find it much more helpful to ask other PPC’ers via Twitter or online forums for help, rather than going to Google.

What’s your take? Is Adwords Support as marginal as ever, or is it getting better? Share the good, the bad, and the ugly in the comments!

Preparing for the Adwords Fundamentals Exam

Many professional careers have certification programs, and PPC is no exception. Both Google Adwords and Microsoft adCenter offer certification programs for PPC professionals. In this post, I’m going to talk about preparing for the Google Adwords Fundamentals exam, which is the first step to becoming a Certified Professional.

First of all, if you’ve been actively managing PPC accounts for at least a year or two, you should have a good chance of passing the Fundamentals exam without even studying. But if this is your first time taking one of the Adwords exams, or if it’s been a couple years since you’ve taken it, there are a few things you should be aware of:

• The test costs $50, non-refundable. So if you’re not feeling confident about your Adwords knowledge, don’t take the test.
• You have 90 minutes to complete the exam – and once you start, you have to finish in one sitting. Make sure you have that big a block of time available to take the exam uninterrupted.
• Once you start the exam, the testing interface locks out your computer so you can’t access browsers or other programs. It wasn’t always this way with the Adwords exam – you used to take the exam in one browser, and could have another one open to search for the answers! (Of course I didn’t do this, wink wink!)
• You can mark questions for review later, so if you don’t know an answer or aren’t sure, mark it and go on – you can come back to it later.

If you’re relatively new to PPC, though, you’ll want to study a bit before you take the exam. The best way to study is to review the training materials in the Google Learning Center.

The Learning Center is your home base for preparing for the exam. It contains detailed written documentation on all the topics that will be tested.

That said, there are a LOT of topics. If you’re a complete beginner, you’ll want to take the time to go through all of the lessons; you can do this while you’re actively managing a PPC account or shadowing someone else during training.

However, if you have some Adwords experience, read through the lesson description first. If it covers something you feel pretty confident about, skip it. Focus on the lessons on topics that are new to you. If the lesson includes any case studies or examples, pay particular attention, as a lot of exam questions are in the form of case study-type examples that you’ll need to analyze and answer correctly.

Remember that all the rules for taking standardized tests apply to the Adwords exam, too:

• Skip questions you’re not sure of and come back to them
• Your first impression is usually correct
• On true/false questions, you have a 50/50 chance of getting the answer right
• And so on

With careful preparation, you’ll be able to pass the exam and become a Certified Professional!

AdWords Campaign Experiments: Details and Pitfalls

Back in September, I wrote a brief overview of AdWords Campaign Experiments (ACE), and Joe Kerschbaum wrote an excellent post on ways to use the feature.

ACE is a great enhancement that can really take your PPC campaigns to the next level. That said, there are a few important details you need to know before using it, as well as some pitfalls to watch out for. Let's look at an example to illustrate.

ACE Details

One of the highly touted ways to use Experiments is to try new keywords, and with good reason. Maybe there's a broad match keyword you're not sure will generate the results you want, or maybe there's a keyword that is marginally relevant to your campaign, but you'd still like to test it out.

Pre-Experiments, your only option was to add the keyword and watch it like a hawk while hoping for the best. Now, you can use Experiments to display the keyword on as little as 5 percent of your total traffic. Great news, right?

Yes and no. First of all, using Experiments requires at least a rudimentary understanding of testing principles. If you haven't conducted controlled tests before, even the terminology in the Experiments documentation will be confusing.

It's also a little tricky getting your head around the "control," "experiment," and "control + experiment" categories. Basically, the "experiment" will only run on the percent of traffic you specify.

So if you only want your test keyword to run 10 percent of the time, you'll need to set it to "experiment only." Conversely, if you don't want a particular keyword or set of keywords included in the experiment, you'll need to set it to "control only."

Remember, Experiments run at the campaign level, so if you're only testing keywords within one ad group, be sure to set the other non-experiment ad groups to "control," as well.

It gets confusing, to be sure.

ACE Pitfalls

One big shortfall of Experiments is that it can't be applied to campaign settings. For example, it would be great to test dayparting, networks, devices, daily budgets, and other campaign-level settings, and Experiments would be ideal for this. Unfortunately, it isn't an option at this time. I'm hoping it will be, eventually.

There are also some pretty big pitfalls to watch out for when using Experiments. The biggest one I've discovered has to do with launching changes fully.

So, you've run your experiment, and it works great and you get great results. The logical next step would be to roll out the changes to all traffic, right? Yes, but rolling it out involves more than just clicking that button in your campaign settings.


I ran into this unfortunate pitfall in a client campaign recently. I ran an experiment on match types: I wanted to see if modified broad match performed better than regular broad match. But I wasn't testing all the keywords in the ad group -- only some of them.

I added a few modified broad match keywords and set them to "experiment only." I set the broad match variations of these terms to "control plus experiment." I set all the remaining keywords to "control only."

The test worked great: the modified broad match terms, as expected, generated a better cost per conversion with an acceptable loss of traffic (traffic did go down, but not enough to justify the higher cost per conversion). So I clicked "Apply: Launch Changes Fully."

The next day, when I checked on the campaign, traffic and spend had fallen through the floor. It didn't make sense: the experiment showed a nearly negligible difference in traffic, but the rolled-out results were more like an 80 percent decrease in traffic.

When I dug into the campaign, I realized that most of my keywords were paused! What happened? Turns out, all the keywords that were set to "control only" were shut off when I launched the experiment fully.

After thinking it through, it made sense. In hindsight, I should have set all the keywords to "control plus experiment" instead of "control only," and then the test keywords to "experiment only."

Once I realized the issue, I was able to fix it quickly, and luckily the client lost less than a day of traffic. But the result was unexpected and really caught me off guard.

With these caveats in mind, make use of Campaign Experiments, and you'll reap the rewards without stumbling!

This post originally appeared on Search Engine Watch on February 22, 2011.

6 Reasons to Love Adwords Editor

From time to time, people on Twitter or in search marketing forums ask: “What’s your number one must-have PPC tool?” While some people answer with bid management tools or the Google keyword tool, I always say Adwords Editor.

If you’re a PPC marketer and are not currently using Adwords Editor, put this article away and go download it. Now. You’ll thank me later.

If you are using Adwords Editor, I hope you’ve discovered the power and ease with which you can create new campaigns and ad groups. Editor is especially useful if you need to append tracking URLs or are building out a large set of keywords in Excel. All you need to do is copy and paste into Editor, click Post, and you’re done.

Here are 6 more features you should be using, but may not be. These are the reasons I love Adwords Editor.

Quick bid adjustment by percentage with rules.

I use this one all the time. Let’s say you have a handful of keywords that are converting, but the cost per conversion is too high, so you’d like to reduce the bids. Let’s say further that the keywords all have different keyword-level bids. Sure, you can edit them one by one in the Adwords interface, but why do that when you have Editor? Just highlight all the keywords and click Advanced Bid Adjustment. From this screen, you can increase or decrease bids by a percentage. So all those high cost-per-conversion keywords I mentioned earlier? You can decrease all those individual keyword bids by 50% with a couple of keystrokes.



Bulk find & replace.

This is a great feature for updating destination URLs, changing prices, and making other edits in your account in bulk. If you’re using keyword-level destination URLs in your ads, you’ll find this to be an invaluable feature.

Finding duplicate keywords.

Anyone who has added a bunch of keywords to an ad group, or moved keywords from one ad group to another, will appreciate this feature. Using the “Find duplicate keywords” feature, Editor will tell you if you have duplicate keywords in the same ad group, campaign, or account. Trust me; you’ll love this when you’re trying to make sure you’re not bidding against yourself!



Moving or Copying campaigns, ad groups, and keywords.

I’m sure you’ve had this experience: you have a campaign with complicated geo-targeting options, and you want to add a second, different campaign to your account with the same geo-targeted settings. You can go into the Adwords interface and re-enter those settings a second time. Or, you can just copy the campaign in Editor – and retain the complicated settings with a couple keystrokes. Then you can make edits from there.

It’s also common to move keywords from one ad group to another – maybe you’ve created a new, more targeted ad group for a subset of keywords that you just want to move. Just select the keywords in Editor and drag them to the new ad group, and you’re done!

Making changes offline.

As I write this post, I’m at the MSU Community Music School, waiting for my kids to finish their music lessons. Unfortunately, there’s no wifi here. Fortunately, I can still edit my Adwords campaigns and bids offline, using Editor. I do this all the time – make edits offline, and then post them the next time I’m online.

Sharing edits between multiple users.

In an agency setting, and even in-house, it’s common for more than one person to work on a PPC account. We all know that two pairs of eyes are better than one, and it’s always good to have someone else check your new campaigns before they start accruing clicks (and costs). With Editor, I can have new marketing staff, or our marketing assistants, create new campaigns in Editor and upload them as Paused. I can then grab them from Editor and check them – all before they go live. It’s a great way to do campaign quality assurance!

What’s your favorite use of Editor?

Google’s Display Network, Part 1: Best Practices & Myths

Just last week, I had a call with one of our Google reps. He was quite knowledgeable, and made several helpful suggestions on Adwords features we could try for our Fluency Media clients. While I was aware of most of the features already, he explained them in detail, and suggested which clients should try which features.

One of the features he brought up was the Google Display Network. The conversation with our rep reminded me that many new advertisers don’t know how to use the Display network, which then prompted me to outline some of the best practices and myths.

When Google launched the Display network about 7 years ago, it was like the Wild West: the network was full of MFA sites, and there were none of the great features like site exclusion that we have now. It was a huge gamble to even thinking about running ads there.

Thankfully, Google listened to advertiser feedback, and made huge improvements over the years. Still, though, the Display network can be a money pit for advertisers who don’t follow best practices.

Best Practice #1: Realize that Display isn’t search.

The first concept to understand is that Display isn’t search. Ads aren’t served based on keywords typed into a search engine. Instead, ads are served on websites where the content matches the content of the ad. Because of this, Display campaigns should always be separate from Search campaigns. Although Google allows advertisers to run ads in both Search and Display in the same campaign, don’t be tempted to take this shortcut. It’s not unusual for ad groups & campaigns to perform very differently in the two networks, so you’ll want the control you get with separate bidding for Search & Display.

Best Practice #2: Use small, tightly-themed ad groups.

This is good advice for search campaigns, too, but is critical for Display. It’s your job as an advertiser to make it abundantly clear to Google what your ad group’s topic is, so Google can show it on appropriate pages. Using tightly themed ad groups will accomplish this.

Best Practice #3: Make heavy use of the placement performance report & site exclusion.

Probably the best thing Google did to enhance advertiser performance in the Display Network was to create the placement performance report. I remember literally whooping with joy when this launched – finally, advertisers would have the transparency to see where their ads were being served, and what the results were on a site-by-site basis! Use this feature to your advantage. The report is easier than ever to run in the new Adwords interface – just go to Networks, set your date range (I use All Time to give the largest data set, and start excluding.

There are a few myths out there about the Display Network that advertisers should be aware of, as well.

Myth #1: Display is an inexpensive source of traffic & conversions.

OK, so this isn’t a total myth. Frequently, Display is a great incremental source of conversions at a very low cost. However, this is by no means always true. Click costs can rival those in search – in fact sometimes CPCs are higher in Display than in search, depending on the vertical. So if you’re looking for a quick way to grab incremental conversions, Display is definitely not the answer. You’ll get traffic, but it may not be inexpensive, and it may not convert.

Myth #2: Display is for everyone.

Again, this isn’t a total myth. We have several clients who get as good or better results from Display as from search. But it’s not a given. For every client who gets great results in Display, we have at least 2 who got horrible results, despite our best efforts to optimize. I firmly believe that there are some businesses for which display is just not a good fit. But you wouldn’t know this from talking to Google – every time I talk to a Google rep, including the conversation last week, they try to pitch me on trying Display for every client.

Myth #3: Site targeting in the Display network is easy.

First, a brief explanation. There are a few targeting options in the display network: keyword targeting, interest category targeting, and placement, or site, targeting. With site targeting, an advertiser can choose exactly which sites they’d like their ads to appear on. So if you want your ads to appear on about.com, you can target that site using site targeting.

Sounds simple, right? It’s not. First of all, there are thousands upon thousands of sites in the display network, so choosing the right sites is a daunting task. Secondly, advertisers tend to gang up when site targeting – everyone wants to target the same popular, high-traffic sites. And what happens when inventory is short and demand is high? You got it – the price goes way, way up. So not only is it challenging to figure out what sites to target, it can be challenging to get conversions at a good cost when the bids are so high.

In Part 2, I’ll share some display network resources that will help you make the most out of the network.

Adwords Finally Adds “Optimize for Conversions” Option

Ever since the dawn of Adwords, advertisers have had the option to run more than one ad variation per ad group. This is one of the features that makes Adwords so attractive – the ability to test different ad copy and landing pages against a set of keywords and learn which performs the best.

Until this week, though, there was always a problem with the definition of “performance.” For Google, and for a handful of advertisers, “performance” is defined as “click-through rate” – the ad that generates the most traffic. But for most advertisers, “performance” is defined as “conversion rate” – the ad that generates the most desired actions, commonly known as conversions.

Until this week, Adwords offered 2 options for serving multiple ads: Optimize or Rotate. Rotate is simple to define: your ads will rotate evenly among impressions, with each variation getting approximately the same number of impressions. So if you have 2 ads, each will display on about 500 out of 1,000 impressions.

By default, the Optimize setting is turned on – changing it requires editing your Campaign Settings. And “Optimize” sounds great: after all, everyone wants to optimize their campaigns, right? Ha, wrong. Optimize (until this week) rotated ads based on click-through rate: the as with the highest CTR would, over time, be displayed on a larger proportion of impressions. It’s not uncommon to see as much as 80-90% of impressions going to one ad with “optimize,” meaning the ad with the lowest CTR barely gets shown. It’s also not uncommon for the ad with the best CTR to be the ad with the worst conversion rate – so you end up spending a lot of money for not very many conversions. Not good.

But what if you were an advertiser who wanted to drive traffic, with conversion optimization as a secondary goal? What if your ad test is just starting out? What if you’re a new advertiser and you don’t even realize you have a choice?

Good testing principles indicate that all test variants should be shown to test samples that are relatively equal in size and demographic. For instance, if an ad only shows to females age 18-34, there’s a good chance the results won’t translate to men age 45-54. So you want to divide up your sample 50/50, and make it random. But if your Adwords ads are set to “Optimize,” that’s most likely not going to happen.

Never fear, though – Adwords to the rescue! This week, Google launched a third option: Optimize for Conversions. Finally, after years and years of advertisers asking for a way to serve the best-converting ad more often, Google came through! Right?

Sort of. As with many Adwords features, there are a few caveats. First, note in the documentation this important caveat: “If there isn't sufficient conversion data to determine which ad will provide the most conversions, ads will rotate using 'Optimize for clicks' data.” Yikes. It’s pretty obvious that most ads will amass a statistically significant number of clicks long before they reach a statistically significant number of conversions. So really, any new test is doomed to start Optimizing for CTR – thus messing up your conversion test results from the start.

Also, the word on the street (or at least on Twitter) is that Optimize for Conversions will optimize based on conversion rate, not number of conversions. So you may have an ad that gets a great conversion rate, but not many clicks; or vice versa. Either way, the system could be making the wrong decision about what’s working for you.

So for now, I’m sticking with “Rotate,” even though Google warns me every time that it’ll ruin my results.

Using Dayparting Effectively in PPC, Part 2: Advanced Tactics

In Part 1, we talked about basic dayparting techniques, such as turning off ads during days or hours where results are poor. But what if you don’t want to turn things all the way off?

For instance, let’s say you get some conversions on the weekends – but the conversion rate isn’t as good as it is during the week. Or maybe you get lots of conversions on a Monday, but it’s really competitive, so your CPCs, and therefore your cost per conversion, are higher than you’d like. In these instances, you don’t want to shut off the weekends or Mondays entirely, because you’d lose sales, right? What to do?

This is where bid adjustment comes in. Bid adjustment is a wonderful feature, available in both Google and MSN/Yahoo, that allows you to raise or lower bids on certain days and/or times. With bid adjustment, you can increase or decrease your max CPCs, using a percentage, during days or times that you choose. Here's a screen shot of the adCenter bid boost screen, found under Campaign Settings.



Let’s take the “weekends aren’t great” example at the beginning of this post. Let’s say your weekend conversions are only worth half what your weekday conversions are worth. Use the bid adjustment feature to set Saturday and Sunday’s bids to 50%. The PPC engine will automatically reduce your CPCs by half. Pretty slick, huh?

As I mentioned in Part 1, when you’re thinking about dayparting, it’s critical to make sure you’re making the right decisions using good data. To make the right decision, you’ll need to look at a large enough set of data. As I mentioned in Part 1, you’ll need at least 100 clicks in each segment to even begin thinking about bid adjustments.

Google makes it easier to get at this data than MSN, at least the day of week data. In Google, just choose Segment by day of week and export the result. However, adCenter’s reporting by hour of the day includes conversion data, while Adwords’ reports by hour do not. (Google is missing the boat on this one, in my opinion!) If your adCenter campaign gets a lot of clicks, you may even want to review conversion data by hour, and then apply that to your Adwords campaigns, as well.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to use a statistical tool to make sure the difference in results is statistically significant. Even if you just look at conversion rate, check the day or days you’re thinking about eliminating, and compare with the other days. If the difference is significant, then go ahead and adjust your bids. If the difference isn’t significant, don’t do it! Even if you have to set the date range to the past 12 months, it’s worth it to make sure you’re making the right decision. Nothing is worse than reducing bids (and getting less traffic & conversions as a result), only to find out you’ve ended up cutting way into your sales.

When used correctly, dayparting and bid adjustment can really improve campaign performance. Look at your data and give it a try!

Google's New Display URL Policy Is BS

The PPC community has been abuzz over the latest Adwords policy change: advertisers can no longer use capitalization in the root domain of display URLs. Subfolders can still have capital letters, but the root domain can't. I haven't seen one person say they like this change - and I've seen plenty who think it's BS (myself included).

I wrote about this for Search Engine Watch yesterday, and there's a good conversation going on in the comments there. What do you think about this change: boon, bust, or BS? Go to SEW and post your thoughts!

PPC Predictions - A Look Back

Yep, it's cliche - everyone is blogging about their predictions for 2011. It happens every year. Last year, I had the privilege of sharing my predictions on David Szetela's PPC Rockstars podcast, along with several other PPC luminaries.

To be honest, I've never been a fan of New Year's resolutions or predictions (I know, that goes contrary to me participating in a podcast on just that topic, but whatever). So this year, rather than postulate on what will happen, let's look at whether I was right last year.

On the podcast, I predicted that the rate of growth in PPC would slow in 2010 vs. previous years, due to social media and other factors such as increasing CPC in search. I also predicted that the Microsoft/Yahoo merger would happen, but it would make no dent in Google's market share. On the show, David politely disagreed with me. (David's always polite!)

Well, guess what. I was wrong on the first one. According to Efficient Frontier, year-over-year growth from 2008 to 2009 was 6%, and Y/Y growth from 2009 to 2010 was 10-15%. I attribute this to the economy, which rebounded in 2010. It's actually a good thing for PPC that I was wrong on this - it indicates that advertisers still see a high value in this channel.

On the second prediction, about Microsoft & Yahoo, I was right!!!!! (Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah, David!) According to Efficient Frontier yet again, Google's click share in Q3 2009 was 72.0%. In Q3 2010, it was 78.3%. So, despite all the ballyhoo surrounding Microhoo, Google continues to win the search click wars - at least for the time being.

So, I'm batting .500 for 2010. Not too shabby, I'd say!

As I like to say, to thine own self be true - I won't be making any predictions for 2011. If you'd like to see some good ones, though, check out the Search Engine Watch article from John Lee - who, not coincidentally, works for David over at Clix Marketing. Here's to success in 2011!

Using AdWords Segments To Increase PPC ROI

Most of you are aware of the recent improvements to the Google AdWords user interface (UI), including the ability to run reports in the Campaigns tab. These are great time-savers for PPC managers. However, there's another new and little-known feature called "Segments" that can really take your campaign performance to the next level.

The Segment option allows you to review your campaign performance data in a number of ways:

* Network: Google Search, Search Partners, and Content.
* Click type: URL clicks or Click to Call.
* Device: Computer or mobile device.
* Experiment: Campaign Experiment results.
* Day: Performance by day.
* Week: Performance by week.
* Month: Performance by month.
* Quarter: Performance by quarter.
* Year: Performance by year.
* Day of week: Performance by day of week (Sunday through Monday), regardless of date.

All data is displayed for the date range selected in the AdWords UI. For example, if you've selected "Last 30 days" as the date range, segment data will display for that time period.

You'll find the Segment option just under the Campaign Management tabs (Ad Group, Ads, Keyword, etc.):


So, how do you make the leap from "interesting" to "actionable" when it comes to segment data?

Focus on Underperforming Campaigns, Ad Groups, or Keywords

Sure, you could slice and dice every possible data point in your account, but most of us don't have that kind of time. Instead, start at a high level.

Do you have one campaign in your account that's performing worse than the rest? Is one ad group falling behind the curve? Is there a keyword or set of keywords that are highly relevant, yet aren't converting? Start the segmenting process here.

Use Time-related Segment Data to Spot Trends

Let's say performance for one of your top ad groups has declined recently, but you're not sure when the decline began. Start with the "last 30 days" date range, and then segment the data by week. You may be able to pinpoint the week when things went south. You may even be able to associate a particular event that coincided with the decrease.

For example, one of our clients' PPC campaign results fell off the map over Labor Day weekend. We were able to use segmentation data to discover that performance was steady until Labor Day, when it fell off the map.

We then looked at segmented data for Labor Day 2009, and saw that performance fell off during that week last year, too. Based on this, we recommended staying the course with PPC, rather than making huge changes to ads and keywords.

Sure enough, performance rebounded a week later. Without segmentation, we might have made changes that we'd regret later.

Regularly Review Network and Device Performance to Find Under- and Overachievers

For some of our clients, the Search Partner Network performs better than Google Search. For others, it performs much worse. With the Segment feature, we can find this out in seconds.

The same thing goes for performance on computers versus mobile devices. Some of our clients get great results from mobile; for others, it's a waste of money. Again, we know in seconds which clients fall into which category.

Side note: It's a PPC best practice to use separate campaigns for computers and mobile devices. That said, serving ads on all devices for a short time acts as a test bed to determine whether it's worthwhile to set up a separate mobile campaign.

Review Day-of-Week Data to Find Under- and Overachievers

It takes a little more time to analyze day-of-week data, but it can pay off in a big way. Segmenting performance data by day of week can yield some shocking insight.

It's common for B2B advertisers to discover that weekends are a complete waste of PPC budget. Not only do the hottest prospects do most of their searching during the week, but most B2B customer service departments work normal business hours. So even if a hot prospect is searching over the weekend and finds your ads, they won't hear back from you for a couple days -- or, they may wait until Monday morning, do another search, and click on your ad again (doubling your cost per conversion in the process). If you're a B2B advertiser, look long and hard at the weekends to make sure you're getting your money's worth.

The same thing goes for B2C advertisers -- although the weekends may not be your problem. One of our clients advertises apartment rentals. Their worst day is Wednesday. It makes sense, if you think about it: people go look at apartments over the weekend, and follow up online Monday or Tuesday. Or, they start looking on Thursday and Friday for apartments to visit over the weekend. Wednesday is no-man's land -- and doesn't convert as well for the client.

Armed with this segment data, you can use Ad Scheduling to turn off your ads on days that don't convert well for your business.

If you haven't already tried the Segment feature, go do it now -- and watch your ROI increase!

This post originally appeared on Search Engine Watch on September 30, 2010.

Top 5 Free PPC Tools

It's December, and around the world the holidays are upon us. For many, the holidays bring a spirit of giving. In keeping with that spirit, I thought I'd list my top 5 favorite free PPC tools. Think of it as my PPC gift to you. (wink)

#1: Adwords Editor

Without a doubt, Adwords Editor is #1 on my list. All the other tools are, well, not useless, but much more difficult to put into practice without Adwords Editor. When I train new Fluency Media PPC staff, the first thing I have them do is "download Adwords Editor."

If you're new to PPC, or are a PPC Luddite, Adwords Editor is a downloadable application that lets you edit your Adwords campaigns offline. So if you're without an internet connection, you can still work on your campaigns, and then post the changes the next time you're connected.

Adwords Editor is also great for creating campaigns, copying campaigns, ad groups, or keywords, moving keywords or ads from one ad group to another, and making changes in bulk. It was originally developed as a tool for Adwords staff and was built off the Excel platform, so it has many of the features we all know and love from Excel, including find & replace, sorting, filtering, appending, copying….. You get the picture. I literally could not do my job effectively without this tool.

#2: Google Keyword Tool

While the Google Keyword Tool has undergone several recent changes, and is notoriously inaccurate at times, it's still my go-to tool for finding keywords. I like to start with the "website" feature, entering a URL and letting the tool tell me what keywords it thinks are relevant. Not only does this give you a lot of keyword ideas for your PPC campaigns, it alerts you to potential issues with the page that could negatively affect your PPC and SEO results. In other words, if you think the page is about one thing, but the keyword website tool tells you it's about another, you've got a problem - and you'll need to address it if you want to earn the best Quality Score and organic rankings.

#3: Acquisio Modified Broad Match Tool

I just discovered the Acquisio Modified Broad Match tool about 2 weeks ago, although it's been around since July. The guys at Acquisio are awesome - I consider Marc Poirer, their co-founder, to be a great friend in the SEM industry - and this tool is simply incredible.

Earlier this year, Google introduced Modified Broad Match and SEMs all said, "Finally!" It's long overdue, and is easy to implement if you're only modifying a couple of keyword or keyphrases. However, applying modified broad match to a long list of keywords is daunting. Excel's Concatenate function won't do it, Adwords Editor won't do it, and the thought of typing that "+" sign over and over is enough to make my stomach hurt.

Enter the Acquisio tool. Just copy and paste your keywords into the box, indicate whether you want all words modified or only specific words, and click "generate." Voila! It's that simple. I recently created a huge holiday campaign with several hundred modified broad match keywords in a fraction of the time it would have taken me otherwise, just by utilizing this tool.

#4: SplitTester and SuperSplitTester

If you're running ad copy tests (and you should be), you'll need a tool to tell you whether your test results are statistically significant or not. There are several good tools out there that fit the bill, but I like SplitTester and SuperSplitTester.

If you're just looking at one metric, i.e. CTR, conversion rate, or whatever, use SplitTester. Enter the number of clicks (for CTR) or conversions (for conversion rate) and the CTR or conversion rate percentage, and it tells you whether the results are significant, and at what confidence level.

SuperSplitTester takes it a step further and incorporates CTR, conversion rate, and cost per impression. It runs all those metrics through its super-secret algorithm, and tells you which variation will make you the most profit over time. We use this free tool for almost all of our clients' PPC tests, and the results speak for themselves.

#5: Twitter

Twitter? Yes, indeed - Twitter is one of my favorite PPC tools. It's not a tool like the other 4 I've listed, in that it doesn't take in data and spit out a result. Nonetheless, Twitter is my go-to place when I'm having a PPC problem that I can't solve, or when I want to get quick feedback on something. It's also become my news reader: I get breaking PPC news from Twitter before I see it anywhere else, and it aggregates everything into one place. Not only is it a great way to keep up with friends in the industry, it's really become a valuable PPC tool.

Bonus Tip:

Since I'm feeling especially generous, here is a bonus tip: My good friend Alex Cohen from ClickEquations wrote an article for Search Engine Watch not long ago on 43 Paid Search Tools. It's long, but as always, highly educational. Check it out!

Modified Broad Match - The Good and the Bad

Earlier this year, our PPC prayers were answered: Google finally rolled out their Broad Match Modifier, also known as Modified Broad Match. For years, we complained that broad match was just too broad. Our PPC keywords were matching to "silly synonyms" along with relevant terms - and our ROI went in the tank as a result.

Now, with Modified Broad Match, we can stop the hemorrhaging. We get all the benefits of broad match, but none of the junk.

Or do we?

The Good:

Getting rid of the junk. I wrote about this in one of my recent Search Engine Watch columns. In summary, one of our clients is a law firm specializing in aviation accident law. Even though we use negative keywords extensively, broad match is just too broad at times. Just prior to the US launch of modified broad match, our law firm's ad for the broad match term "aviation lawyer" was displayed on this search phrase: "what the laws of flying with glass bongs". This is an obvious case of broad match gone wild - and one that won't happen with modified broad match.

Improving cost per conversion. By its very nature, modified broad match reduces the wasted impressions and clicks, and hones in on the right queries - without restricting impression the way phrase and exact match do. We've seen large improvements in cost per conversion for several clients who found that phrase match didn't give them the traffic they wanted, but traditional broad match didn't get good ROI.

Offering flexibility. On multi-word keyphrases (which you should always be using for PPC, by the way), the broad match modifier can be applied to one word in the keyword phrase, or many. For example, let's say your keyword is "discount running shoes." You could put the modifier on just the word "discount," like this:

+discount running shoes

This will ensure that your ad only displays when the word "discount" is part of the query, but will still allow you to appear on queries like:
• Discount jogging sneakers
• Discount shoes for running
• Running shoes at a discount
• Etc.

But you might also show up on:
• Discount basketball shoes
• Discount athletic socks
• Used running shoes at a discount
• Etc.

Ugh. So maybe you'll want to tighten things up a bit more:

+discount +running +shoes

Now, you'll eliminate those crazy examples above, but can still show on:
• Running shoes at a discount
• Shoes running discount
• Discount shoes for running a marathon
• I want to find running shoes at a discount store
• Etc.

These are queries that you won't get with phrase or exact match, but they're still relevant and likely to convert.

The Bad:

It's still too restrictive at times. We've seen the modifier shrink impression volume by as much as 80%, with no improvement in conversion rates. While this could be due to other concurrent issues, it's hard to explain to a client why their volume on a top keyphrase suddenly disappeared.

It results in higher CPCs. We've also tried running modified broad match phrases side-by-side with traditional broad match. CPCs on the modified phrase have been 20-25% higher than the traditional broad phrase - again, with no difference in CTR or conversion rate.

Sometimes, it performs worse than traditional broad match. Yes, we have actually seen this happen: the modified broad match phrase ended up generating a good amount of impressions, but CTR and conversion rates were actually WORSE than the traditional broad match term. What gives?

What's your experience been with the broad match modifier?