Google announced changes to the Google Shopping Feed Specification today. Here is a review of the updates and deadlines to be aware of: Products Without Unique Identifiers In the biggest change, Google has added the 'identifier exists' attribute for merchants selling custom goods and other products that don't have unique identifiers like brand names or MPN codes. In categories where unique product identifiers are required but don't exist for an item, you enter FALSE for the 'identifier exists' attribute. Important deadlines: U.S. merchants currently exempted from using unique product [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords

Last month, Google quietly began rolling out the AdWords Keyword Planner to select AdWords accounts last month. In typical AdWords fashion, one of the biggest overhauls of the Google Keyword Tool ever went almost unnoticed!   This new keyword tool combines elements of two existing keyword tools, the Google Keyword Tool and the AdWords Traffic Estimator, adding a more structured and integrated workflow as well as all sorts of new bells and whistles. If you've ever used the Google Keyword Tool and/or AdWords Traffic Estimator in the past, take note here -- the new Keyword Pla [...]

Related Topics: B2B Search Marketing | Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords

AdWords product extensions will soon be heading off into the sunset. They are leaving quietly, too. Brad Geddes noticed the announcement in the AdWords agency newsletter, but no other formal notification has been communicated to advertisers. Product extensions will disappear from the campaign set-up flow on May 20th. Google eventually let product extensions be outrun by Product Listing Ads. As Geddes notes, when Google launched PLAs, product extensions were reduced to a less-than-compelling line of text and price. Here's a pictorial walk down memory lane: U.S. debut in 2009 When PLAs [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords

Over the next few weeks, Google will be migrating AdWords campaigns that don't use any advanced features from "All Features" to "Standard" type campaigns. The change applies only to "Search Network Only" and "Search and Display Networks" campaigns. When Google updated the AdWords campaign setup back in June 2012 to include the "Standard" and "All Features" options, existing campaigns were automatically rolled over to "All Features". In Legacy campaigns, you can still see "not recommended" noted in red next to the Standard option. Now, ahead of the enhanced campaigns switch-over in Ju [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Google: AdWords: Enhanced Campaigns

The momentum of Google's PLA program didn't slow after the holidays. After seeing Google Product Listing Ad traffic jump 82% in Q1 over Q4, CPC Strategy followed up its latest quarterly review of top CSEs with a closer look. The agency hadn't been surprised to see the 87% increase in PLA traffic in Q4 over Q3 as Google's pay-to-play program ramped during the holiday season. However, the huge traffic spike from Product Listing Ads that occurred after the holiday shopping rush did catch them by surprise. Bucking the typical trend of CSEs (and e-commerce in general), paid Google Shopping traf [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google | Google: AdWords | Google: Product Search | Google: Universal Search | Search Marketing: Shopping Search Marketing | Top News

For enterprise SEM practitioners looking to set budgets or otherwise anticipate their needs in the space for the months and years ahead, it's been a particularly difficult time to get a read on how the industry is really trending. Conflicting data and opinions abound; new threats to the hegemony of search, real or just perceived, continue to spring up; and, there are times when all of us may wonder just how much the numbers are actually changing and whether we should be concerned. Case in point: comScore recently showed U.S. core searches increasing 11% year-over-year to hit an all-time [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Enterprise SEM | Google: AdWords | Google: Mobile | Microsoft: Bing Ads | Search Ads | Search Ads: Mobile Search | Stats: Search Behavior

The roll-out has begun. Earlier this month Google said it would be adding ad group-level mobile bid adjustments to enhanced campaigns. As of yesterday, ad group mobile bid adjustments are available through the AdWords API. The new feature is accessible from all current versions of the API with the new AdGroupBidModifierService. Google has updated the AdWords API guide to include technical aspects of the new release. The addition of ad group-level mobile bids will allow advertisers to have more granular control within their campaigns. Until now mobile bids could only be set and adjusted a [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Google: AdWords: Enhanced Campaigns

Earlier this month, local search marketing leaders from the U.S., Canada and 12 other countries gathered in Las Vegas for the Local Search Association’s 2013 annual conference, "Search Starts Here." Over several days, attendees engaged in informative discussions about the numerous opportunities and challenges facing our industry, ranging from the growing importance of original digital content to the rise of mobile and social media. In this month’s column, I will highlight my key takeaways from the LSA conference, which are focused on both the strides I believe local marketers should [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: AdWords: Enhanced Campaigns | Local Search | Search Marketing: Local Search Marketing | SEO: Local | SEO: Mobile Search | Social Media Marketing

Like many of my fellow PPC colleagues, I feel uneasy about the impending move to Enhanced Campaigns and the lurking cutover deadline of July 22nd. Should we convert now and get it over with? Should we run a few tests with our smaller, simpler accounts? Should we abandon tightly-crafted, geo-segmented campaigns in favor of the new geo-bidding options within Enhanced Campaigns? Or, do we wait? Do we keep reading articles like this one, hoping to find guidance, when what we really want to find is some secret AdWords hack that lets us keep targeting tablets and bidding on mobile keywords [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Google: AdWords: Enhanced Campaigns | Paid Search

AdWords users can now share their screens with AdWords support staff. Yesterday, AdWords Community manager, Zee announced the launch of Google Screensharing. Now an AdWords support team member can invite you to share your screen while you're on the phone with them and signed into your AdWords account. There are set-up instructions here. Once you finish the Screensharing acceptance process, the AdWords rep will only be able to see the screen you chose to share, and won't have access to your computer. Google Screensharing actually uses Google+ Hangout technology, and the install is Goog [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Top News

Google AdWords is rolling-out a new upgrade center today for advertisers using Enhanced Campaigns. Accessible from the left-hand nav bar on the Campaigns tab, the upgrade center lets advertisers managing several campaigns perform bulk upgrades to multiple campaigns simultaneously and merge selected campaigns in a few simple steps. The bulk upgrade feature allows advertisers to select multiple campaigns, choose a mobile bid adjustment, view traffic estimates and upgrade their Enhanced Campaigns with fewer clicks, making it easy to upgrade individual campaigns all at once. The upgrade cent [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Google: AdWords: Enhanced Campaigns | Top News

Starting today Google is adding functionality for social annotations and in-app ad targeting to enhanced campaigns. Social annotations, really Google+ annotations, display the number of Google+ followers an advertiser has under the ad text. Here's an example from Home Depot on a search for "dining room chairs" Social extensions have been available for nearly a year and a half. The difference is in enhanced campaigns social annotations can show automatically and don't have to be set up at the campaign level.  Advertisers' Google+ pages must be linked to their websites and display URL [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords: Enhanced Campaigns

Last week, I presented at HeroConf in Austin and shared some advanced tips for automating AdWords account management with an audience of PPC account managers. They seemed to like what I had to say; so, I’ll share a few of the more advanced scripting tips with you here. When you manage PPC accounts, you likely experience at least one of these two frustrations: You know exactly what you should be doing, but there aren’t enough hours in the day to get it done You’ve bought a tool that automates AdWords account management, but you find yourself locked into a cookie-cutter solution t [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Enterprise SEM | Google: AdWords | How To: PPC | How To: SEM

Since I received some solid feedback on my last column detailing how to determine mobile & geo bid multipliers for enhanced campaigns, I thought I’d share some more actionable stuff this time around. While hourly bid multipliers aren't new, they remain a crucial tactic for optimizing your AdWords campaigns. They work by reducing your ad spend at poor-performing times of the week and increasing your exposure at the best times of the week. Here, I'm going to share the steps you can take (along with a helpful spreadsheet) to determine your hourly bid multipliers for better campaign opt [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Google: AdWords | Google: AdWords: Enhanced Campaigns | Search & Analytics

Google announced their Q1 2013 earnings today, and as many analysts expected, the company posted revenue gains over the previous year. Revenue rose  31% year-over-year  to $13.97  billion for the quarter, beating expectations. Here are the highlights: Paid Clicks -- Aggregate paid clicks, which include ad clicks on Google sites and Google Content Network sites rose 20% year-over-year and 3% over Q4 2012. Google Sites -- Google-owned sites generated $8.64 billion, an 18% increase year-over-year of $7.31 billion. Revenues were flat quarter-over-quarter. Google Network -- Google partner [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Google: Business Issues | Top News

Efforts by Bing Ads to increase click volumes and gain market share from Google appear to be paying off, according to a report by The Search Agency. The Search Agency's Quarterly State of Paid Search, released today, shows Bing's share of spend rose 3.6% year-over-year to 21%. The market share grab comes after four consecutive quarters of a relatively stable split between Google and Bing. Bing spend rose 42% driven by a 7.4% increase in CPC year-over-year and a 46% increase in CTR year-over-year. Google’s spend increased 17.1% year-over-year. Bing’s clicks increased both year- [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Microsoft: Bing Ads | Search Ads | Stats | Top News

I’m a huge fan of Google’s CPA bidding system. Setting bids is necessary; but merely setting them only leads to short-term progress. Your bidding work is only useful until the data changes, and then you have to set bids again. The maxim, "your data are only good until the data changes," can be applied to ads, landing pages, placements and any data point within your PPC campaign. The issue that needs to be examined, here, is the frequency of data changes and how that affects your strategy. Typically, ads do not need to be changed every few days. An ad or a landing page can perform wel [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Google: AdWords: Enhanced Campaigns | Paid Search

A year ago, I was firmly anti-Google. Not in the sense that I disliked Google -- I just felt that Google did not provide the best tools in the business to analyze and make decisions on their own advertising placements. When asked if an advertiser should consider a 3rd party technology to help manage ad spend, I would undoubtedly say "yes" because Google Analytics, AdWords, and Merchant Center were (and remain) imperfectly bound systems requiring a lot of proprietary work to merge and make informed decisions. Much has changed in the last year. Google has made some significant changes (PLA [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Google: AdWords | Google: Analytics | Microsoft: Bing Ads | Search & Analytics

Are those sweet efficiencies early adopters of AdWords product listing ads saw in their holiday numbers coming to an end?  Well, CPCs are rising, but ROI is still solid. RKG's Q1 Digital Marketing Report finds that as more merchants come on board, product listing ad CPCs are now just 10% lower than comparable text ads. Yet, even with the stiffer competition, RKGs client base saw 22% higher ROI from PLAs than non-brand text ads in Q1. PLAs garnered 33% of their e-commerce clients' Google search spend, a sharp increase from Q4. Product Listing Ads   PLAs helped drive up Google' [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Microsoft: Bing Ads | Search Marketing: General | Stats: General | Stats: Spend Projections

According to the great Greek philosopher Heraclitus, change is the only constant. As you have most likely heard by now, Google is making major adjustments to its AdWords platform that will have sweeping changes to the ways and means of how you execute your search campaigns. For B2B search, this is going to have a specific impact on your programs, and getting ready for the coming changes will require a bit of forethought into how you maximize the results of your campaigns. In a realm like B2B, there is always the dual challenge of a diffuse customer base with ever changing needs and a lim [...]

Related Topics: B2B Search Marketing | Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords: Enhanced Campaigns | How To | How To: PPC | Intermediate