Google introduces automatic matching

March 7, 2008 at 2:21 pm · Filed under PPC Campaigns, Internet Marketing, Adwords

I was just thinking yesterday that it would be nice to automatically generate new terms based on your existing terms. These new terms would be suggested and incorporated into your existing campaigns automatically as the campaign is running.  It is a feature I have been wishing for years for.

Well I log into one of the accounts I manage and guess what, I see the following message:

New! You’ve been selected to try Automatic Matching.
Your campaigns will now have access to a new beta feature: Automatic Matching. This feature shows your ads on relevant search queries not already captured by your keywords.

What is the automatic matching beta?  (from Adwords Support)

Automatic matching is an optional feature that helps your ads reach targeted traffic missed by your keyword lists. It works by analyzing the ads, keywords, and landing pages in your ad group. It then shows your ads on search queries relevant to this information.

When automatic matching is first enabled, it dedicates a short period of time to gather information about your campaign. During this period, you won’t see any change to your traffic levels. Once automatic matching has evaluated your campaign, your ads will start to show on additional relevant search queries.

The system will continually monitor your performance on these queries and adjust its matches accordingly. Automatic matching aims to show your ads only on queries that yield a high clickthrough rate (CTR) and a cost-per-click (CPC) comparable to or better than your ad group’s current average CPC. This way, your ads receive additional targeted traffic at a similar cost to your current traffic.

Automatic matching won’t allow your spend to exceed your budget, and it also won’t affect the traffic you’re currently receiving. For example, say your campaign’s daily budget is $10, and on average you accrue $8 in traffic in a day. The automatic matching system may add $1 of relevant traffic per day, meaning it will not prevent your ads from accruing the traffic it normally does. Note also that automatic matching will not affect your campaigns if they already capture the majority of relevant traffic.

Here are a few more details about the feature:

• Opting in and out: Automatic matching is applied at the campaign level. You can opt your campaign in and out of automatic matching on your Campaign Settings page.
• Google Network: Automatic matching does not affect your ad delivery on the content network. It does affect your ad delivery on Google and the search network.
• Quality Score: The traffic accrued by automatic matching won’t affect your keywords’ Quality Scores or minimum bids.
• Ad position: When ranking your ads on search queries acquired through automatic matching, the cost-per-click (CPC) bid will approximate the current average CPC of your ad group. Learn more about ad rank for automatic matching.
• Performance statistics: Aggregated performance statistics for automatic matching will appear in each ad group’s Keywords tab, in a line item labeled Automatic Matching Total.
• Search Query Performance report: You can see the search queries that triggered your ads due to automatic matching by running a Search Query Performance report. The queries will be labeled Automatic in the Search Query Match Type column.

I will update as performance data starts coming in.

Comments

Adowrds Quality Score Algorithm update happening now. Otherwise known as a Google Slap.

March 5, 2008 at 12:46 pm · Filed under PPC Campaigns, Adwords, Adwords Quality Score

One of my clients notified me this morning that when he logged in this morning all his minimum bids were raised to 10.00 per click. The sad part is that this is one of the best performing campaigns I have ever managed. It does excellent day in and day out. He has more competition now than what he had 6 months ago but we have been able to keep out performing the competition 2 to 1. My point is don’t always assume that it is something that you are doing incorrectly on your end. A lot of the time there are reasons for the bids to be raised while at the same time there are times when the rasied bid is unjustifiable and this is one of those times. Hopefully they will readjust the score ASAP so that the client doesn’t see that much down time.

This has to be one of the most critical areas that Google needs to pay very close attention too. Because in their war against made for adsense websites a lot of innocent advertisers get caught in the crossfire. Below is the chat I had with an Adwords rep after discovering the account had been slapped. Please overlook the Grammer mistakes as this was just a chat.
Chat InformationThank you for contacting Google AdWords. Please hold a moment while we route your chat to a specialist who will help you with your question: “My client xxx-xxx-xxxx just alerted me that all his terms had become inactive and a 10 min bid slapped on all his terms. This is very discouraging as it is one of the MOST SUCCESSFUL accounts I manage. It has been doing phenomenal, excellent. The ads are directly related to the terms, and the landing pages directly correlate to what the ads are saying so why in the heck has this happened? We created a new campaign called Detox that seems to have triggered this and if it is because of that campaign we will delete it to get back to where we were. I have paused the ad groups just a few minutes ago in order to get a chat prompt but that didn’t work so I would imagine that you have a quality score algorithm change in the works. My client just called and confirmed that others are experiencing the same slap as well. My question to you now is: Is he going to have to take a hit on the 10.00 min “.
Chat InformationAlec S has received your message and will be right with you.

Alec S: Hi Craig. Thanks for contacting Google AdWords. I understand you are concerned about your client’s keywords becoming inactive for search. Is that correct?

Craig: I’m concerned that his account has been unfairly hit with the most recent quality score algorithm changes

Alec S: I am pulling up the account right now to have a look.

Craig: it is the best campaign I manage…

Alec S: You wanted to look at the Detox campaign specifically?

Craig: no the other campaigns.
Craig: xxxx
Craig: xxxx ad group
Craig: look at the terms, ad and landing page

Alec S: I am looking at this ad group right now.
Alec S: All of the keywords for this ad group have a poor Quality Score. It looks like that was caused by a landing page quality issue.

Craig: there is no reason why his score should have been moved to poor
Craig: look at the landing page!

Alec S: I am looking at the landing page right now. Did this client make any recent changes to the website?

Craig: there is nothing wrong with it. It is not misleading it is selling the product that was being advertised
Craig: no, this is the same landing page we have been using for the last three months or longer

Alec S: I understand and apologize for your frustration. I am going to escalate this to our Specialist Team so that we can investigate the issue.

Craig: actually I think the page goes back way longer than that.
Craig: Thank you. Please email me when you find something out.

Alec S: There is a chance that it took our system a bit longer than normal to analyze the content on the website. But I will escalate the issue of the landing page quality with our specialists.
Alec S: What is the best email address to reach you at?

Craig: or when it has been reaccessed, he doesn’t deserve to have to pay 10.00 per click for ? how many clicks before it is lowered back to normal, xxxxxx@gmail.com

Alec S: I would not recommend raising the max cpc bid to as high as $10.00 as that is a lot of money to pay per click. We are not asking you to pay that much, it is our system’s way of telling you to change something in order to improve your quality score.
Alec S: I will discuss the landing page with our specialists and figure out exactly what is going on.

Craig: Believe me I know this. Thank you

Alec S: Thank you for chatting in and have a great day!

Craig: will do

If you have an Adwords campaign check and make sure you min bids have not been raised. Google does not send you an email to notify that this has happened.

Comments

Your landing page load time now affects your Adwords Quality Score

March 5, 2008 at 12:18 pm · Filed under PPC Campaigns, Internet Marketing, Adwords, Adwords Quality Score

Yes, we now have yet another metrix that we have to keep tabs on in order to make the most out of our Adwords campaign while trying to keep the costs low. While I understand some of the reasoning behind the move I think it will have a negative impact on legitimate campaigns that may be using video, flash, an online spokesperson and other very effective methods of marketing to the buyer once they have landed on the landing page.

How is your load time graded? From Google Adwords support:

Each of your keywords will receive a load time ‘grade’ depending on the destination URL associated with that keyword:

• If you assigned a keyword-level destination URL to a particular keyword, then the keyword’s load time grade will be based on that URL.
• If you didn’t assign a keyword-level destination URL, then the keyword’s load time grade will reflect the slowest load time among the ads in the ad group.

Note that we evaluate your load time relative to the average in your geographical region.

How can you determine your grade?

You can see a keyword’s load time grade on the Keyword Analysis page. The following information will be available:

• The load time will receive one of two grades. If it’s graded This page loads slowly, your landing page quality and Quality Score will be negatively affected. If it’s graded No problems found, your landing page quality and Quality Score will not be affected.
• You’ll see the number of redirects the user is taken through after clicking your ad. Typically, the more redirects there are, the slower the load time.
• We’ll report the site’s average load time.
• We’ll provide a comparison of the load time for your site versus other sites in the geographic area. Note that your load time grade is determined relative to the average in your geographical area.

How can you improve it?

The AdWords system re-evaluates landing pages on a regular basis (approximately once a month). If you make significant improvements to your website’s load time, you should see an improved Quality Score and lower minimum cost-per-click (CPC) bids. Note that your Quality Score may update incrementally over two to three months after you improve your load time.

Here are some tips for improving load time.

• Use fewer redirects.
• Reduce the page size by using fewer, smaller, and more highly-compressed images.
• Do not use interstitial pages.
• Minimize the use of iframes on your landing page.
• Contact your webmaster or webhosting provider to discuss other ways of improving your website’s load time.

You can also use Google’s Webmaster Tools (not available in all languages) to graph the average download time for your site. To do so:

1. Sign in to Webmaster Tools with your Google Account login at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/siteoverview .
2. Click your site if you see it on the page. If not, type in the URL of your website in the Sites field and click Add Site.
3. Select Tools in the sidebar.
4. Click Set crawl rate. Note that you’ll need to have verified your site before you can do so.
5. The third graph will show your site’s average load time.

How big of a problem will this be for those using video and flash on the landing page? Only time will tell.

Comments

Beta Testing Adwords Demographic Bidding

February 19, 2008 at 1:00 pm · Filed under PPC Campaigns, Internet Marketing, Adwords, Search Engine Marketing

Do you know your customer demographics? If so then you could benefit from Google’s new Demographic Bidding campaign setting. Google began beta testing demographic bidding at end of January.

What exactly is the demographic bidding?

Demographic bidding is a way to choose your audience by age and gender. If you want your ads to reach women aged 18-24, or people over 55, demographic bidding can help.

Some publishers on the Google content network know certain individual details about their users. Social networking sites, for instance, often ask users to identify themselves by age and gender. For sites that provide this type of information about their users, Google AdSense can display your AdWords ads to the demographic groups that you prefer, or prevent your ads from displaying to groups you don’t want to reach. You also can bid more for your preferred demographic groups.

Some Google content network sites offer demographic bidding, but many don’t. Your campaign is likely to have a mix of sites that do and do not offer demographic bidding.

How can you optimize your campaigns?

Here are some typical ways that advertisers use demographic bidding reports to optimize their accounts. Remember that increasing your bid for a demographic will likely increase the frequency with which that particular demographic sees your message. Generally, the greater the increase in the bid, the greater the increase in traffic. We recommend that you run each campaign for at least a week and check the data provided by the demographic bidding report before enabling bid modifiers or restricts.

Increase bids for groups that provide good value. If your conversion rate for men is four times higher than it is for women, you may want to bid more for those male viewers. Increasing your bid should make your ad appear more often to that audience. Additionally, if reaching a particular segment is very important for your campaign, raise your bids to increase the frequency with which that segment is seeing your message. To raise your bids this way, click the ‘Edit’ button in the ‘Make Adjustments’ column of the appropriate age or gender row. You can bid up to “bid + 500%” for any one demographic group.

Hide ads from groups with significant traffic and poor value. If your conversion rate is very low for the 18-24 age range, and they account for 50% or more of your traffic, you might use the ‘Make Adjustments’ feature to restrict your ads from appearing to that group.

As with all AdWords features, we encourage you to experiment, track results (with conversion tracking, if possible), and then make changes based on what you learn. The demographic bidding report is one more way to focus your ad spending on the users that give you the very best results.

Here are some screen shots of the new feature.

Here is what it looks like after you have made your demographic choices. Notice the color match bids that give you a total additional percentage you want to bid for that demographic.

I will update this post as results start coming in. I do expect to see an improvement in some of my clients campaigns especially those that know what their customer demographics are.

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