Last month, I covered four ways to use AdWords Scripts to improve AdWords account management. I didn't share any actual code for fear of geeking out too much, but people seemed interested enough in how to use Scripts to track historical Quality Score (QS), so this month, I'll share step-by-step instructions and give you the code needed to track your own account-level Quality Score. But first, let me explain what account-level Quality Score is all about… Why You Should Track Account-Level Quality Score The Quality Score of your AdWords account is a useful gauge to monitor how good Google [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Enterprise SEM | Google: AdWords

Google AdWords has begun providing more specifics about the new bidding tools and mobile bid settings for enhanced campaigns. The AdWords interface for enhanced campaigns includes a new bid adjustment calculator designed to show you what the final bid adjustment will be when using multiple bid settings. Bid adjustments for mobile, day, time of day and location are made within the Campaign Settings tab. The calculator shows you what the implications will be when applying multiple bid adjustments.                   [...]

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

A new report from CPC Strategy looks at how Google Shopping fared against its rival, Amazon Product Ads, after making the switch to a commercial model in Q3 last year. The analysis finds its performance changed significantly compared to Amazon Product Ads, and provides further evidence that the move bolstered Google Shopping. Surge In Traffic & Lower CPCs In the second half of last year, Google Shopping sent 120% more traffic to merchants than Amazon Product Ads. In fact, Google Shopping more than doubled the amount of traffic it sent to merchants compared to 2011. At $0.31, Google Sh [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Search Marketing: Shopping Search Marketing | SEM Industry: Stats | Top News

The Telegraph reports Google is leading an effort to prevent illegal download sites from having a source of credit to be able to buy ads online. Google is in talks specifically with Visa, Mastercard and PayPal to prevent these types of companies from using credit cards or PayPal accounts. This would help prevent these types of companies that are overseas from placing these illegal ads, when court orders cannot. They have taken internal efforts to mass ban AdWords advertisers many times throughout the years. Google is not the first to go this route, supposedly the book publishing, music, [...]

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

Google made a huge splash last week when they announced Enhanced Campaigns. There have been both positive and negative reactions to the announcement. If you haven’t heard about the changes, here is the quick, bullet-point list: The ability to set mobile-specific bids will be removed (you can do bid adjustments at the campaign level) The ability to target specific mobile devices and carriers will be removed The ability to specifically target tablets will be removed and bundled with desktop campaigns You can now control ad extensions by ad group You can now use ad scheduling for [...]

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

In January, Marin Software released a study on Google’s 2012 transition from Google Product Search to the commercial, “pay-to-play” model built on Product Listing Ads. When this enhanced shopping experience was first announced in May of 2012, online retailers reacted with both praise and criticism. However, since the transition, PLA campaigns have performed with a great deal of success. In fact, by the end of December 2012, the share of spend on PLA campaigns had increased 600% compared to January. More importantly, during the fourth quarter of 2012, as holiday shoppers searched and p [...]

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

Google just announced that data from search funnels will now be incorporated in the campaigns, ad groups, keywords, and ads tabs where it will be easier to act on. This is a welcome change for all advertisers; advanced advertisers will find it easier to incorporate the additional conversion metrics into their strategies and newer advertisers may become more aware of the usefulness of these metrics. After last week’s announcement about Enhanced Campaigns, which seem to favor advertisers who use less sophisticated techniques for managing their accounts, this newest announcement from Google [...]

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

Marin Software has released a report on paid click, CPC and conversion trends across the globe, with a focus on mobile. Called "The State of Mobile Search Advertising in the World," the 2012 data are drawn from search campaigns conducted in 13 geographies including the US, UK, China, Europe and Australia. Some of the findings, however, will effectively be rendered moot by Google's new Enhanced Campaigns, which lump together PC and tablet targeting and create new default pricing intended, in part, to equalize CPC prices across platforms. Source: Marin Software Marin forecasts in th [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Google: Web Search | SEM Industry: Stats | Stats: Search Behavior | Stats: Size | Stats: Spend Projections | Top News

Tensions were high in the pay-per-click world yesterday, as marketers held their collective breath waiting for news of what were rumored to be "big changes" from Google AdWords. Indeed, it was big news -- the launch of Enhanced Campaigns, which let marketers combine separate desktop and mobile campaigns into one, with a variety of implications. Following, thoughts from marketers about what they like, what they don't like, what needs to be done now, and what they'd like to see in future releases. (Note: This is a significant update with a lot of inter-related changes, so we can't hope to get [...]

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

I am absolutely fascinated by the automotive industry and am admittedly a car guy. The newest cars continually impress me because every new model seems like a significant upgrade over the previous model. And, they really are. New cars are lighter, stronger, more spacious, safer, more fuel efficient, and quicker than ever. A 2013 Mazda hatchback that costs a mere $30,000 is quicker than the (then) $180,000 Supercars from Italy I grew up idolizing. Astonishing, really. The term “upgrade” often seems like an understatement. So, what happens if the new models are not better? Thankfully, [...]

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

“If we were going to build AdWords today, what would it look like?” That’s the question Google’s Nick Fox, VP of Product Management, and his team began asking last year. The result is AdWords enhanced campaigns, a major update announced today that is designed to simplify campaign management across multiple devices, and to increase adoption rates of mobile advertising among small and medium sized businesses. PPC managers have become accustomed to the time-consuming workarounds needed to target ads by device type and location by cloning campaigns and managing granular settings and bid [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Google: AdWords: Enhanced Campaigns | Search Ads: General | Search Ads: Mobile Search | Search Ads: Pay Per Call | Search Marketing: General | Search Marketing: Mobile | Top News

Yesterday, Australia's highest judicial body, called The High Court of Australia, overturned a lower court decision that held Google responsible for paid-search ads deemed deceptive by  Australia's antitrust regulator, the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC). According to Bloomberg, roughly six years ago the ACCC sued Google claiming that certain travel-related ads appearing in search results were misleading or deceptive. The Commission sought to hold Google responsible for the content of those ads, relying on a pre-Internet decision finding a TV broadcaster responsible [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Google: Legal | Google: Outside US | Legal: Regulation | Top News

Amid industry discussion about what Google's enforcement of new policies will mean for its AdWords distribution partners, IAC says its Mindspark toolbar company, and all of its companies, are fully in compliance with the policies currently in place. Google put new standards for its partners into place in October, issuing rules meant to bar software companies, including toolbar makers, from deceiving users or making uninstallation difficult. "None of IAC's companies prey on any unsuspecting users and we are fully compliant with Google's standards and policies," Justine Sacco, the director of [...]

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

A study published by Harvard professor Latanya Sweeney claims that companies placing public record ads linked to people's names through Google may use language that reflects racial bias, though why this happens is unclear. The study found that ads associated with black identifying names were more likely to have ads with the word "arrest" in them than ads that were associated with white identifying names. From the study: A greater percentage of ads having “arrest” in ad text appeared for black identifying first names than for white identifying first names in searches on Reuters.com, on [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdSense | Google: AdWords

Search toolbars are big business for security software company AVG and media company IAC. But could revenue from these toolbars be in danger, as Google says it is stepping up enforcement of its policies against shady behavior related to toolbar downloads? IAC's Mindspark makes substantial revenues through search toolbars, and AVG, in September 2011, said it had made about 20% of its revenues (or around $40 million) from Yahoo and Google combined that year to date. People install these toolbars for the promise of security or entertainment. Then, when they conduct searches, they get back [...]

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

[caption id="attachment_65488" align="alignright" width="240"] Image courtesy Shutterstock.com[/caption] New York-based Vringo has sued Microsoft over two patents that pertain to the ranking and placement of ads in search results. The patents were originally issued in the early '90s and owned for a long time by Lycos, which later sold them. The patents in question are 6,314,420 and 6,775,664, referred to in the complaint (below) as the "420" and "664" patents. They wound up at Vringo, a company that sells video ringtones for mobile phones. The company's real business however is pat [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Google: Business Issues | Google: Legal | Legal: Patents | Microsoft: Bing Ads | Microsoft: Business Issues | Top News

Google has added three new measurement features to the AdWords for video reporting interface. The enhancements are designed to make reporting more goal-oriented and to make it easier to compare campaign performance across platforms and other forms of media. Reach & Frequency Reach and frequency metrics, including Average Impression Frequency and Average View Frequency, have been added to the interface to give you more insight into how many unique viewers have seen your ad and the average number of times they’ve seen it. It's now easier to tell if your ads are getting enough im [...]

Related Topics: 1 | Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Search Ads: Video | Search Marketing | Top News

The Google Shopping gamble paid off – for both Google and e-commerce advertisers who ran product listing ad campaigns last quarter. A  report from Adobe and a study by RKG each highlighted consumer interest and advertiser opportunity in Google product listing ads. Today, Marin Software released findings showing that, after the transition of Google Shopping to an entirely paid model in October, advertisers increased their share of search budgets directed toward product listing ads by nearly 600%. Those advertisers were rewarded with higher click through rates and lower cost per click than [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Search Marketing: Shopping Search Marketing | SEM Industry: Stats | Stats: General | Stats: Spend Projections | Top News

This weekend, DejanSEO noted Google may have stepped up its promotion of its simplified SEM offering for small businesses, AdWords Express, in Google+ as a way to "get more followers." AdWords Express has now been around officially since July 2011. However, it has seen a number of changes and refinements. Google initially rolled out this particular pitch in December, as we covered on our sister site Marketing Land:Is Google Using AdWords Express Budgets To Promote Google+? But now, small ads or promotions are appearing in Google+ pages: Google is apparently trying to cross-promote [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Mobile | Top News

The best kept secret for saving time and improving results in AdWords may very well be AdWords Scripts, a lightweight automation tool that is easier to use than the API but more powerful than the standard interface and the AdWords Editor. As highly as I think of the AdWords UI (I helped build it for 10 years, after all), when I recently started working with accounts of big advertisers, I found myself frustrated at how manual, repetitive, and slow it was to generate custom reports and act on my findings. The API could let me automate to my heart’s content, but getting started meant wait [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Enterprise SEM | Google: AdWords