As an Excel add-in, it offers powerful API-based access to data, right in the familiar Excel environment. Version 8 includes some usability improvements, better Excel integration, improved keyword suggestions and insights, and perhaps most importantly – a new template-based system with community support.

My Take: It seems like you can’t throw a cat without hitting a new adCenter feature these days. (No animals were harmed in testing this theory.) I just finished a getting started article on the old version of MAI last month! We ended that article hoping for community templates and mobile device data – we got it!

adCenter is alone in offering this type of marketplace data in a desktop software tool. Google AdWords doesn’t offer one. Their related offerings are Web-based, and adCenter offers additional features and data that simply is not available on the AdWords network.

With MAI, we can build business processes around automated spreadsheets, which could greatly improve the adoption of the adCenter marketing platform by making it easier to get great, actionable data.

I had a chance to catch up with Amit Goel, a Product Manager on the team responsible for MAI.

“One of the key values of Microsoft Ad Intelligence is its ability to operate seamlessly in Excel which of course enables you to benefit from the excel-based features commonly used by SEMs. Plus, we are really excited to introduce the templates to our advertisers. We hope they can benefit from this upgrade by using templates to save time manual tasks. Increasing our Advertisers’ Return on Time Spent is a big push for us.”

My Take: I’ve been working in Excel-based tools doing PPC for almost a decade now. I eagerly anticipate the day when these tools make my account-specific data available. But the current functionality gives us lots to explore. For example, I can imagine automating the expansion of core keywords from limited input, as with starting up a new account.

Amit Goel: Currently MAI is account agnostic. In the future we will be including advertiser context i.e. account specific data in MAI. Our goal is to have advertisers perform keyword research based on their account information and directly sync their data to adCenter platform from Excel.”

My Take: Sweet!

Templates & Community Support

The new version of MAI supports templates. You can save your reports to a template and develop your own custom, repeatable keyword research workflow.

Join the online discussion at Microsoft Advertising Intelligence 8.0 (MAI 8.0): Templates and Best Practices

My Take: The Community Templates have so much potential. I’m eagerly looking forward to what we come up with as a community. One of the templates that is available today from the AdCenter team is a Twitter template that helps Advertisers find keywords from tweets happening near a specific location. The mashup potential is really great!

Now, With Mobile!

The latest version of MAI includes device-based data. Advertisers can customize results to include any combination of “Desktops and laptops,” “Smart phones” and “Non-smart phones.”

My Take: If you haven’t already heard, mobile is coming. At this point in the game, PPC tools need to be Device-Aware, and it is good to see adCenter catching the details.

Quick Tour

• Download Microsoft Advertising Intelligence – a Free downloadable add-in for Excel
• Note: v8 does not update the previous version. Uninstall the old version using Windows&squot; Add/Remove Programs Control Panel.)
• The new version, v8, will auto-update going forward.
• Once installed, launch Excel. Notice the new “Ad Intelligence 8.0″ tab with a ribbon bar full of tools!

Keyword Suggestions

• Webpage Keywords: Generate keywords from a list of URLs.

• Aggregate Keywords: This is the core research tool. Feed it a list and get keyword suggestions.

• Searches With Your Keyword: Submit a list, and get back search queries that contain your keyword.

• Associated Keywords: This is the Keyword Ninja – find related keywords that other Advertisers are bidding on. (This is not SpyFu.com. They won’t share who, and you can’t filter the results to spy on your competitors.)

• Related Searches: Bing “Related Searches” results.

Keyword Analysis: Traffic & Performance

• Traffic: Search Volume

• Keyword Categories: Generates a list of keywords along with their Business Categories

• Search-User Location: Top locations where searches originated from (configure a country)

• Age Group & Gender: Break out Search Volume by Age & Gender over the last 30 days

• Keyword Performance: Impressions, Clicks, CTR, CPC, etc. (tip: default is aggregate, try configuring a position.)

• Bid Estimation: Bid suggestions and expected performance (tip: configure position and match type).

Configure The Output

Each tool on the ribbon has configurable output. The Excel integration is tight here. Advertisers can point the settings to read from specific cells, such as the keywords to feed into the tool, the match types to use, the positions to use for performance data, etc.

API Access

All of the features exposed through MAI in Excel are also available directly through the Ad Intelligence API Service. There is a tremendous opportunity to build data-rich tool sets from these features, but that discussion is beyond the scope of this post.

Quota

In previous versions, it was possible to reach Quota and get blocked from access for the rest of the day. This has been explicitly addressed in this version should not be an issue.

Resources

• Download Microsoft Advertising Intelligence

So, wouldn’t you think that after more than a decade of search marketing and literally tens of billions of dollars in the U.S. alone in paid search ad revenue, that someone would come along and actually build a powerful keyword generation tool?

Yes, there have been attempts in the past, and there are some handy tools out on the market today, but the general consensus with most search marketers is that these platforms are not all-inclusive.

They are simply pieces that still need much more manual manipulation to build stand alone keyword lists and groups. For our own clients, my team and I manually aggregate multiple keyword tools in order to put together what we feel is the most comprehensive list available.

Well, there’s a new player in the market. Billing themselves as “the world’s most intelligent keyword and categorization platform”, the Chicago-based technology vendor, Zenya, feels they have cracked the puzzle.

I met their founder and CEO, Stephen Scarr, a little over a month ago at an industry event put on by Marin Software. Talk about passion! Stephen could barely contain his excitement for what he believes is the best keyword building tool on the market. (Note: he is also one of the brains behind Info.com which he co-founded in 1999.)

Zenya has spent the last three years developing a sophisticated system of categorization that maps searcher intent of more than 600 million categorized keywords and growing.

Zenya’s first dedicated team included taxonomists, subject-matter experts, and structured data analysts who collaborated to build an entirely new taxonomy from scratch, one designed to cater to the unique needs of online advertising. Today, Zenya’s categorization algorithm can process more than ten thousands keywords every second with a database of over 1.4 billion keywords.

“Overwhelming demand for a better way to identify productive keywords led us to develop Zenya,” Stephen avidly explains. “Since the inception of search engine marketing, advertisers have constantly struggled with the time-consuming and arduous process of keyword research. Using available keywords tools, marketers spend countless hours identifying relevant keywords to create Ad campaigns of tightly themed categories (topics).”

To assist digital marketers, info.com conceived Zenya to create the world’s first repository of categorized keywords, making the keyword building task that could last days or weeks, take just minutes.”

The folks at Zenya believe there are three core values that search marketers will discover with their product:

1. To Save Time. Rather than spending weeks creating keyword lists, marketers can download thousands of relevant keywords in seconds.
2. To Gain Control. Using the category tree or advanced filters, Zenya customers can constrain and focus their results to pinpoint relevant intent and connect with customers.
3. To Achieve Insight. Marketers can make sense of unstructured keyword data and categorize entire keyword portfolios into more than 250,000 categories.

Sound good?  Well, let’s take a closer look at the product.

Take a look at the filters available for the current search of men’s shoes. You can exclude different things such as adult terms and branded terms or add your own minus (negative) ones. You can filter by category, intent, language, etc.

One of the more interesting filters is user intent. Zenya’s advanced categorization allows users to zero in on the types of terms that demonstrate various levels of the purchase funnel.

Categorical analysis is also very crucial to proper paid search. Using the categorical filters, users can better groups their keywords and develop granular messaging. Check out the keyword and category matches for the query cellphone plans.

Zenya has a variable pricing plan based on a points system. Users can opt-in at various levels to meet their needs.

Needless to say, Zenya is new to market and definitely has room to grow. For example, currently available as a consulting service, another feature in development is an automated gap analysis. This enables marketers to map their keywords sets to Zenya’s taxonomy of more than 250,000 categories and then source additional keywords in these categories as method of efficient campaign expansion.

As the paid search industry grows, so do the opportunities for vendors to garner budgetary dollars. Zenya is another platform that search pros should do their homework on and see if it should be another tool to add to their SEM toolbox.

But no one’s really solved it.

Some folks have come close. Most of the top-tier SEM platforms have very robust reporting tools—but the general consensus with search marketers is that they only go so far.

“Sure, the SEM tools sometimes do a great job solving for common problems. But when I have to do something fast, or even the least bit custom, or if I feel like I can re-use the tool again, I make it up in Excel and keep it around for future-use.” says search pro Crosby Grant, Director of Advertising Services with Stone Temple Consulting.

At the core of the issue is that most search marketers would love to not have all of the extra steps involved with importing SEM data into Excel and then having to pivot and filter it before even being able to start the analysis. If a tool can go 80% or even 90% of the way, that’s great, but then it still means Excel is needed somewhere along the way so why not just do it all there?

“We want to put a bullet in pivot tables and Excel,” said Jordan Franklin, director of social strategy at Clickable. “There was a time when Excel was an efficiency tool for advertisers. Now, with the massive volume and diversity of data channels, marketers need more powerful and flexible tools to answer their burning questions.”

Clickable’s plan to deliver reporting and intelligence across many channels starts with its Widget Dashboard (now available in beta).

Part of Clickable’s third-generation technology platform, the Widget Dashboard visually captures and displays all search and social marketing data.

The Dashboard gives digital marketers and agencies an easy-to-use platform for tracking and modifying campaigns across Facebook, Google and Bing. Already connected to Clickable’s ad management tool, it also enables future data integration of additional channels across social, search and video, as well as proprietary customer data sources. Upcoming integrations include LinkedIn, Twitter and Foursquare.

Their vision is to empower marketers and agencies to demonstrate ROI and improve decision-making through visually persuasive dashboards and intelligence that spans online and even offline channels.

Not only search and social, but display, YouTube, television ratings data, and even customer CRM — providing a holistic view of the entire marketing funnel, from branding, engagement, direct response and ongoing customer engagement.

Other companies do have similar dashboards, but Clickable’s plan doesn’t stop there. They know that once all of the marketer’s data in in one place, the next evolution of the tool will begin to deliver new business intelligence not only for search marketers, but for all key stakeholders in the marketing value chain — from account executives to digital strategists to chief marketing officers.

“The ability to leverage big marketing data has created opportunities to build tools and platforms that can surface insights around demand, supply, consumer behavior, segmentation, positioning and targeting,” said Max Kalehoff, vice president of marketing.

Let’s take a look at some screenshots from the current Widget Dashboard beta as well as some soon to be released features. Even though this is just the first step in Clickable’s plan for the tool, it still has some very strong functions that marketers are already leveraging for their campaigns.

As the tool’s name suggests, the dashboard is based on widgets which are the building blocks of the visualization features. You can build them from any metrics and then manipulate them into different configurations based on the types of reports you want to see.

As you can see below, widgets can mix data tables and charts/graphs to build out any combinations that you would want to see.

Want metrics? No problem. Any fields from data coming into the system can be chosen in the widget building process.

You can make your own custom metrics as well from any combination of data fields in the system.

For example, you could create a new column called “Total Cost with Fees” to include any markup from tool charges, agency fees, etc. This way ,you’re always looking at the right CPA and other revenue or cost related metrics.

On the bottom left, the Widget Dashboard is reporting on Clickable’s proprietary metric, Brand Advocates, which “defines people who like more than one post of a brand on Facebook, and either share or reply to at least on piece of content posted by that brand in a specific time period.”

Cool stuff! Right now, the tool is a very fast and intuitive dashboard that is competitive with the reporting features of other platforms on market.

However, Clickable maintains that this is in fact just step one to aggregate all of your cross-channel marketing data in one place. Once this has been accomplished, the idea is to bring in more outside data to bring context and deep business intelligence to the dashboard to make it a true SEM analyst’s dream tool.

It is in some ways better than AdWords’ equivalent tools, and the Excel integration and wizard workflow are unlike anything AdWords makes available.

The adCenter team invited me to help them announce their recent innovations at Search Engine Strategies New York last week. I was somewhat surprised to learn that most Advertisers don’t even know MAI exists. I suspect that is because we don’t go looking for it.

We mostly limit our time with adCenter to copying what we have already done in AdWords; who would think of looking to adCenter for more advanced features and tools? You should. They have been quietly pushing a few features a bit further downfield than AdWords, and MAI (Microsoft Advertiser Intelligence) is one such tool.

Quick Tour

• MAI is a downloadable Add-In for Excel (download)
• Once installed, it adds a tab to Excel, with a ribbon bar full of tools
• Keyword Wizard: Walks you through using the next few buttons, all in one wizard
• Keyword Extraction: Extract Keywords from a list of URLs
• Keyword Suggestion: 3 Types
  • Campaign Association: Mine other advertisers’ keywords!
  • Queries that contain your Keyword
  • Related Search Keywords
• Traffic
  • By Month
  • By Day
• Demographics
  • Age Group and Gender
  • Search-User Location: Geography
• Metrics
  • historical & forecast trends and KPIs
  • Volume

When you take a closer look at the tool, you may notice there are other features available as well. The Quick Tour above highlights the features most useful for Paid Search Advertisers.

Keyword Generation

Keyword Generation is an important part of Paid Search throughout the lifecycle of an account. These tools help with generating keywords by starting with your “seed” terms and expanding them.

Perhaps the most interesting and effective is the “Campaign Association” feature. MAI states that it will “Generate keywords based on the bidding behavior of other adCenter advertisers.” I find this feature frequently finds new ideas that are worth testing, and that it also often shows keywords that I would not normally include in a campaign – they can be quite broad and possibly lack relevance for your account.

The tool will also expand based on related keywords and on search queries adCenter has seen that include your seed terms.

Keyword Extraction

This is a tool familiar to many SEO experts – it basically scrapes a webpage looking for relevant keywords. This is a terrific way to get seed terms and get a good starting list for new clients, or to double check your work across a list of URLs and a long keyword list.

Campaign Structure

Be careful using keyword generation tools at scale. They often do not help put things in the correct AdGroup. That organization would have to be done according to your own Campaign Buildout design.

Metrics

MAI will also produce historical and forecast traffic and monetization data (cost per click, clicks, average positions, etc.), and will break it down by match type. This is another example of where they are pushing the tools a bit beyond what is made available by AdWords, and in really useful ways.

API Access

All of the features exposed through MAI in Excel are also available directly through the API. There is a tremendous opportunity to build data-rich toolsets from these features, but that discussion is beyond the scope of this post.

Quota

Be aware that the tool accesses adCenter via the API, and the volulme of requests is limited. Individual advertisers might have success raising this limit by contacting their representatives.

Future Versions

The adCenter team is actively developing this tool, and we can expect future versions to show improved usability, more features, and hopefully more community support for Advertisers to share best practices around keyword generation.

Resources

• Download Microsoft Advertiser Intelligence
• MAI Tutorials
• Giant List of Keyword Tools

For paid search, getting even a surface level audit of your AdWords account can be fairly expensive. A consultant would have to access your account, pull your reports, check your settings, and evaluate your Quality Scorse, match type usage, etc. Then, putting together their findings in a report (along with links to more information) could easily take hours.

Luckily, search marketing software and services provider, WordStream, has a new tool that can not only find issues with your AdWords account, but is also free for every search marketer to use.

WordStream’s AdWords Performance Grader free evaluation service is a quick and easy way for search marketers to instantly identify where improvements could be made in their AdWords campaigns. It also provides benchmark comparisons to other accounts with budgets in the same range.

I asked Larry Kim, WordStream’s Founder and Chief Technology Officer, what was the inspiration behind building this free tool:

“First, we do account audits and assessments for both prospective and existing clients – for example, we have this Quality Score Toolkit that is basically just an Excel file that does a bunch of number crunching on data from your AdWords account. People liked that but we wanted to make it more automatic.  Second was that we found that advertisers are generally curious to see how they’re doing in paid search.  And lastly we found that there just wasn’t any way to do an instant audit of a PPC Account and compare the results against other accounts.”

The AdWords Performance Grader examines key campaign features including:

• Effective use of negative keywords to control spend
• Quality Score for text ads and the keywords targeted
• Click-through rates on ads
• Impression share for ads
• Long-tail keyword optimization
• Text ad optimization
• Landing page optimization
• PPC best practices

How does it work? Simply input your contact info and Google login credentials (Wordstream will not share or save your login) and the report is delivered to you in moments. Couldn’t be easier!

As always in Search Marketing Toolbox, we go under the hood. Let’s take a look at some of the information from an example report offered by the AdWords Performance Grader to see if it might be a good fit for you.

At the top of the report, you will get an initial summary of the findings along with Wordstream’s propriety score for your overall grade.

Something every search marketer spends a lot of time thinking about is Quality Score.

You can also get information on your Click Thru Rates…

…and your landing pages.

Finally, my favorite section of the report is a check on common SEM practices and how your account stacks up.

There’s more to the report than I was able to show here. Also, as you can see from the screenshots, there are links to more information for search marketers to take the insights they find and actually do something more with them.

I asked Larry what other features are in the works for upcoming releases. He said, “The most exciting thing on the road map for the AdWords Grader is enhanced grading. Now that we’ve collected a bunch of data, we can do even more interesting things with the AdWords Grader scoring algorithms, for example, by providing more granular segmentation by industry, like “Finance & Insurance”, etc.”

What a great, free tool. If you’re one of the select few search marketers whose accounts are doing so well that you don’t need any outside expertise, then I congratulate you. For the other 99.9% of us, WordStream’s new AdWords Performance Grader is a fast, free way to get an extra set of eyes on your account.

Feeds define the data that may be changing regularly, like e-commerce inventory, store locations, etc. Readers may be able to generalize these terms to apply to existing rules-based tool if one is currently in use. First, a word about where this approach fits in to the broader picture.

The Broader Landscape of Managing Keywords & Negatives

There are many approaches for discovering keywords and adding them to a PPC Account, and many tools to support the various approaches. This article presents a rules-based approach and some tools that support it.

A good rules-based approach such as this often separates homegrown PPC Accounts from their more-mature competitors. This approach could be part of an overall strategy for managing Keywords and Negatives throughout the lifetime of a PPC account.

A Rules-Based Approach

A good rules-based approach is part of an overall Keywords and Negatives strategy. Most advertisers know how to manually add Keywords, many Advertisers know how to effectively use Negatives, and even How to Use Search Term View.

Quite often, efforts to add keywords in this way end up mostly manual, and occur something like: “Well, what about THIS keyword, or THAT one? Yeah, they would be good… But do don’t we have to go back and add that every where else, too?”

Good advertisers will often take that one step further and actually measure the value of their efforts by monitoring the value of those keywords over time. Some Advertisers know how to use other keyword research and generation tools such as SpyFu, Compete.com, or Wordstream.com and the like.

Some advertisers mine their SEO search queries for PPC keywords (and vice-versa), and some advertisers define rules for their automated tools that automatically add keywords based on performance (e.g.: for every broad match keyword with more than 100 clicks in a month, add a phrase match for the same keyword), or remove keywords based on lack of traffic (e.g.: remove keywords that have zero impressions after 3 months of eligibility). There are many components to managing Keywords and Negatives.

These are all healthy, productive components of a complete Keywords and Negatives strategy. A good rules-based approach helps advertisers leverage the good ideas by building them out across accounts.

• Dictionaries: Define the various groups of words that are relevant to your account
• Grammar: Define how to combine Dictionaries into actual Keywords, within your Account structure of Accounts, Campaigns, and AdGroups
• Feeds: Define keywords that change over time, as with available inventory, prices, etc.

Dictionaries

Consider a mythical PPC client, the ACME Bike Store. A previous Search Engine Land article demonstrating Stone Temple’s PPC Permutator uses a similar example. Today’s article builds on the ideas in the Permutator article. ACME’s Grammar might look like this:

That is to say, the Dictionary defines [terrain], [bike], and [product], each as a set of tokens that can be used in a Keyword Grammar to create Keywords.

Grammar

ACME’s Grammar might look like this:

That is to say, the Grammar defines meaningful ways to combine the tokens defined in the Dictionary, to create Keywords. For example, the combination of the Dictionary and Grammar so far would produce:

The list expands quickly from here. This is one of the values of this approach: Generate a lot of useful Keywords for a minimum of creative effort. However, this benefit can also be a drawback.

It is not productive to produce an excess of keywords that generate zero impressions. It can actually be counter-productive, and negatively impact Quality Score. Managing Zero Impression Keywords and Quality Score are both integral parts of any complete PPC effort, and beyond the scope of this entry.

Regardless, there is no need to over-tax those processes by wantonly adding keywords.

Grammar With Match Types

A Grammar can also define the Match Types for each Grammar entry. By defining the Match Types for each entry, the Advertiser can avoid repeating the entry for each Match Type wanted. The above Grammar definition might now look like this:

Advertisers should choose the right combination of Match Types to create a list that is full of keywords that are specific enough, but not so specific that the Grammar generates an excess of Keywords with zero traffic.

That brings up another good practice beyond the scope of this article, which would be to devise a system for automatically expanding Keywords on new Match Types when they get enough search volume. Another day…

Grammar With Modified Broad Match Support

Advertisers may choose to support “Modified”, as in the example below. One way to do that is to include the “+” sign wherever it might apply in the Grammar definition for the Keyword. Keywords being added as “Modified” retain the “+” in the output, and any output for other Match Types simply remove them.

This way, the Grammar is expressive enough to address the requirements of “Modified”, without requiring additional entries. That is one worthy goal when designing these tools; minimize the amount of effort required of the Advertiser, by maximizing the expressive power and flexibility of the Grammar Syntax.

For the sake of simplicity, the remainder of this article will use examples without the “+”.

Grammar With Negative Match Types

Similarly, a Grammar can define Negative Keywords and Negative Match Types. This helps to craft Airtight AdGroups, which is a highly recommended best practice.

For example, an Airtight AdGroup approach would prevent searches for “mountain bike” from matching for the AdGroup containing the Keyword “mountain bike tires.” To handle that case, add a Negative Exact Match “mountain bike” to the “mountain bike tires” AdGroup.

Grammar With Account Structure

It will be necessary to specify where to put all of these Keywords in the PPC Account. This is one of the final pieces needed for a complete Keyword Grammar: Account, Campaign, and AdGroup.

In addition to naming the structure elements, using a good naming convention will be valuable for many reasons; one convention to consider would be to name the group from the Dictionary, then embed the actual token used within parenthesis.

Example: Group(token), as in the table below.

The Grammar definition above defines a new AdGroup for each token defined in the Dictionary for [terrain] and [product], e.g.:

• Terrain(mountain) Product(tire)
• Terrain(mountain) Product(tube)
• Terrain(road) Product(tire)
• etc.

Defining a naming convention enables the Advertiser to report or take action in bulk based on the name of the Account Structure elements, such as Campaign and ADGroup. Example: generate a report showing the performance for all “Product” AdGroups, vs. other AdGroups to find out if customers convert differently when they have a specific product in mind.

Advanced & Optional Considerations For Grammars

There are some optional components to include in this approach. Named Sets allow advertisers to define specific groups within the Dictionary. For example, a Grammar Entry for [product:tire], which might output the set of keywords {tire, tires}.

Similarly, advertisers could implement Named Sets with Magic Words. The “Each” Magic Word directs the Grammar to expand the Grammar Entry once for “each” token in the Dictionary. Advertisers could consider more complex rules, such as [product:singles]. This could expand one line for each of the Dictionary entries in the “product” group that are single words (vs. plurals).

One worthy enrichment is the “Other” Magic Word. This is really useful for Negatives, allowing the addition of every “Other” token the in Dictionary as a Negative. For example, add a Manufacturer(Puffy) AdGroup, and add a {Manufacturer:Other} Keyword as a Negative Phrase Match to prevent this AdGroup from picking up searches from any other Manufacturer.

Advertisers can enrich the Dictionary with whatever meta-data works in a given application, and use Syntax in the Grammar, like Named Sets and Magic Words, to consume that meta-data. The simplest version of these special cases that extend the capabilities beyond the Dictionary is the use of “raw text.”

Grammar Special Case: “Raw Text”

Grammars should be capable of using “raw text” to create names, as with “ACME Bikes” to define the Account Names in the Grammar above. Similarly, Advertisers could use “raw text” in a Keyword definition to combine with Dictionary tokens, or in even in lieu of them.

A good time to use this is when starting with an existing keyword list. Just add the current Keywords do the Grammar, and then continue to add new definitions using the Dictionary. This way the Grammar describes an entire Account structure, which can be quite valuable.

Feeds

Use Feeds to define data that changes over time, such as available inventory. For example, ACME carries Puffy, Hwinn, and sometimes Sianchi bikes. A Feed might contain the following data:

Using Feeds In A Grammar

In order for a Grammar to consume the Feed above, the tool needs to understand a Syntax to express it. One could use curly-braces, e.g.: {Manufacturer}, {Category}, etc.

If Named Sets and Magic Words are implemented, consider enabling them to work with Feed elements as well. This provides the ability to expand Feed-sourced elements in a Grammar, like so:

Separate Grammar & Feed

Separating Dictionaries and Feeds provides the flexibility to adjust one while still leveraging the other. For example, an Advertiser can add a new Bike synonym to the Dictionary.

The next time the Account is generated, the Grammar will expand the new Bike-derived keywords for everything in the feed. Another example would be to add or remove a particular Manufacturer. The next time the Account is generated, the Manufacturer would be added or removed, respectively.

One note on scalability and the underlying implementation. Depending on the application, Advertisers may choose to expand the Dictionary first, or expand the Grammar first. Either way, the results should be deduped. Consider which approach will minimize the computing resources needed to address the exponential growth of the output.

Finally, it is worth noting that a similar approach, and much of the same data, can be used to produce Ads, as well as much of the rest of the information required to build a complete PPC Account.

A similar approach works for adding Geo-Targeting, with {lat} and {lon} for each {Location} provided in the Feed, and consumed in a Campaign Grammar supporting geo-targeting settings. The approach can be expanded to include whatever is needed in a given environment.

Build Your Own, Or Use An Existing Tool

This rules-based approach to Keyword generation, using Dictionaries, Grammars, and Feeds, provides a practical means of powerfully expressing new Keyword ideas into massively scaled PPC Account buildouts. The approach was presented generically in order to provide a basis for Advertisers to incorporate the ideas into tools and processes.

There are also commercial PPC tools available that already incorporate their own versions of some of the same concepts. Kenshoo offers “Real Time Campaigns”. Enterprise Travel advertisers have been using similar home-grown systems for almost a decade now. Of course Stone Temple offers The Permutator for free, and we have our own internal tools we use during Client engagements (Disclaimer: The Author is associated with Stone Temple Consulting.)

Stone Temple has built accounts with 10s of millions of Keywords, Negatives, and Ads for a client with over 800 locations throughout the United States, and uses the same approach to manage Keywords with the changing inventories of various e-commerce clients’.

These ideas can be implemented readily using home-brew or off-the-shelf tools, or by engaging with Consultants who have access to them. On a personal note, I eagerly anticipate the day when Search Engines adopt these ideas and make them available to Advertisers.

How would a rules-based Keyword Generation approach impact your PPC efforts?

Most of the time, this is due to the search engines personalizing their results for each user. We also know that things such as time of day, browser settings, previous searches, and even social network connections can influence the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) to individual users—more so when logged in to the engine account but also when a user isn’t logged in at all.

Geolocation, however, is one of the major influencers to customized SERPs that affects both the logged in and anonymous user.  We have keyword scraping tools such as AdGooroo, The Search Monitor, and Adthena that aggregate search results over many different locations in order to best report on the listings from a holistic perspective.

But for the most part, the available tools require you to collect several days’ worth of data in order to get a statistically significant view.  What do you do when you want to just quickly see a SERP in another location?

There have been various platforms and workarounds before, but LiveSerps is a tool that hopes to solve this dilemma once and for all.

The Firefox and Internet Explorer toolbar was developed by The Search Monitor and lets SEM/ SEO marketers to view live SERPs from anywhere in the world to validate ad placements and organic results.

It currently supports top tier engines in forty countries and twenty U.S. markets. SEM pros can also choose to view their data from a fixed Web perspective or choose various mobile devices such as iPhones/iPads, Android & Blackberry.

I asked Lori Weiman, CEO of The Search Monitor how they came up with this idea.

We realized that while our clients have huge data needs across thousands of keywords, there are some times when a quick live search view on a small group of terms is needed.  The preview tools provided by the engines have a lot of limitations and so just aren’t meeting all the needs of the busy search marketer.  For example, these preview tools only allow 1 look-up at a time and only on their own engine which makes multiple checks tedious, plus the results have the words ‘preview’ all over them which is poor quality for screenshots and client presentations.  Since LiveSERP doesn’t have these limitations – multiple searches can be run at the same time, it remembers your last search so that you don’t have to re-enter all of your settings again, and it allows for multiple devices, geos, and engine views simultaneously.

Okay, enough jibber-jabber…let’s go under the hood!

After downloading and registering for a free account, this is the toolbar interface that you will  see in your browser:

As you can tell, it’s very intuitive and allows for a very simple way to choose the engines, countries, languages, and devices you would like shown.

For more options, click the settings “gear” symbol on the far right, and you can select a few ways to customize how you want the pages to be displayed.

Here’s an example of a search performed on the terms “ski jackets”, “snowboards”, and “snowboarding boots” on Yahoo in Atlanta.

You’ll use up your twenty-five free searches per month fairly quickly, because each SERP is considered its own “search”.

For example, if you were to search two keywords, on three engines, in two different cities, that would count as twelve total searches (2 x 3 x 2 = 12).

Users can receive new search credits in the following three ways:

• Liking their posts on Facebook – facebook.com/thesearchmonitor
• Following them on twitter and retweeting their tweets @searchmonitor
• Buy more searches at any time in bundles of 100 searches per bundle

So far, the user reaction has been very positive.

“Live SERP provides our marketing team a standard for accurately monitoring our SEO and SEM placements across key geographic markets by removing the influence of social signals and caching. As an added benefit, we’ve even found it useful in discovering affiliate and competitor geo-targeting strategies we wouldn’t otherwise see in real-time.” said Jean Elias, Director Online Marketing, for CareOne Services, Inc.

There you go…another great tool for your Search Marketing Toolbox.

What Is Search Terms View?

The AdWords Search Terms View shows us the performance metrics on the Search Terms that matched against our Keywords (more detail on the difference between Search Terms and Keywords is coming up later in this post). Advertisers can use this data to optimize the Keywords and Negatives in their account.

Optimization in this context usually includes adding Keywords (both new Keywords on an any Match Type and existing Keywords but on a new Match Type), and adding Negatives (again, both new Negatives and existing Negatives on a new Match Type).

The data can also be used to help remove Keywords and Negatives, optimize bids and ad copy, and to inform the organization of AdGroups and Campaigns. In this article, we will focus on the two primary optimization tasks: adding Keywords, and adding Negatives.

Why Optimize Keywords? How Often?

Most of our clients are doing this on a weekly basis at least. I consider this activity to be like gardening for PPC; we want to pull out the weeds and make sure we fertilize the pretty flowers, all the while considering the overall organization and appearance of the garden… and the process never ends.

This core and ongoing practice is essential because it helps us continually refine the traffic we are paying for and improve Quality Score, and also because it helps us find new ideas for AdGroups, Ads, and Landing Pages.

Generating The Search Term View

To navigate to the Search Term View, start by logging in to AdWords, then click the Keywords tab, then click on the “See Search Terms…” button and choose either “All.” This will generate a view of the Search Terms triggered by all of the Keywords in our account.

We can optionally narrow the list using the usual navigation with AdWords, and by selecting individual Keywords and choosing “Selected” instead of “All” from the drop-down.

Recommended Keyword Selection

I recommend choosing our AdGroup with the most clicks in the last 30 days (All Campaigns, then AdGroup tab, then sort descending by Clicks), then the Keyword with the most Impressions (Click on the AdGroup with the most clicks, this takes we to the Keywords tab, now sort descending by Impressions).

We will consider other approaches for narrowing down the list later in this post, but this will do for now. Check the box next to the Keyword with the most Impressions, then click the “See Search Terms…” button. When we click the button, it will drop a menu, choose “Selected.” This will take us to Search Terms View.

Getting Back

When in Search Terms view, there is now a link to get us “Back to Keywords.” This is how we return to the Keyword list we were just at. We can also navigate away from Search Term view by any of the other traditional means, such as the tabs or the quick menu on the left.

Columns In Search Terms View

In Search Terms view, the first column will show us the Search Term, and the next column will be the (Search Term) Match Type. The next two columns will be optionally included by AdWords. If your original Keyword tab was at the “All” level or represented more than one Campaign, then the Search Term view will show a Campaign column next. Likewise, if your Keyword tab represented more than one AdGroup, then it will show an AdGroup column.

One thing to note about the Search Term view is that a given Search Term and Match Type may have matched against multiple Keywords. In this report, that Keyword detail will not be shown; Each Search Term and Match Type combination is reported in one row, regardless of how many different Keywords it matched.

For example, if we have the Keyword “bike” in our account on Broad Match, Phrase Match, and Exact Match, and many different users searched on “bike”, the report will have one row for the “bike” Search Term, and it will be Exact Match. Behind the scenes, our Keywords may have each gotten credit for some of the traffic on their various Match Types, but this report will not show that.

Search Terms vs. Keywords

Search Terms are what the user typed into Google Search. Keywords are added to our account by us, and Google matches them to Search Terms based on their Match Type. For example, if we have a Keyword “bike” in our account on Broad Match, some Search Terms that might match include: “beach bikes,” “road bikes,” “bicycle,” etc.

Match Type in Search Term View

Match Type in Search Term View is the Match Type that Google used to match the Search Term to a Keyword in our account. This is not necessarily the same as the Match Type of the Keyword in our account. For example, if we have a Broad Match Keyword “bike” in our account, and the Search Term report is showing traffic for “bike”, the Match Type in this report would be Exact Match because the Search Term is an Exact Match with the Keyword.

Customizing Columns

The remaining columns can be customized in the usual way (Click the “Columns” drop-down-button, then choose “Customize Columns.”) See references at the end of this entry for a link to get help customizing columns.

Recommended Columns

My recommendation is to start with the following columns:

• Impressions
• Clicks
• Conv. (many-per-click)
• CTR
• Conv. rate (many-per-click)
• Cost
• Total Conv. Value
• Avg. CPC
• Avg. Pos.

In my experience, these columns provide the information I need, in an order that makes sense to me for the task at hand.

Added & Excluded Terms

The Search Term view will also show us which Search Terms already exist as Keywords “Added” or negatives “Excluded” in our account.

Using Added and Excluded Terms in practice

While this feature is helpful, there are some practical limitations to be aware of. It does not tell us if the Keyword is “Added” to the correct AdGroup according to your account’s design structure – we need to check that ourselves.

Another limitation to be aware of is that this feature looks for literal matches. It does not consider coverage provided by the Match Type functionality in AdWords. Meaning, if we have a Phrase Match “bikes” Keyword, while it would cover the Search Term “fast bikes,” it will not be marked as “Added.” We have to check that ourselves.

As a rule of thumb, we want to be pushing mature accounts towards Search Term Reports that show every Search Term is “Added” or “Excluded.” (Note to AdWords: this would be a nice feature improvement.)

Adding Keywords

We can add Keywords directly from the Search Term View. To do so, check the box next to the Search Term(s) we wish to add, and click the “Add as Keyword” button. We will be given an opportunity to set a specific bid and destination URL. The Campaign and Adgroup are indicated as well.

The Keyword field accepts power posting syntax for Broad Match (no punctuation), “Phrase Match”, and [Exact Match] Keywords. For example, to add “fast bikes” on Exact Match, edit the Keyword field to be [fast bikes]. Click “Save” and the Keywords are added to our account immediately.

Adding Keywords in Practice

My recommendation is that we should almost always be adding Keywords on Phrase or Exact Match. This is based on my best-practice recommendation of using Broad Match to help us find additional terms, and assumes this AdGroup already has a Broad Match Keyword (or maybe a select few), that is doing that research for us. If so, then we want to run as much of our traffic as we can through Phrase and Exact Match Keywords.

Adding Negatives

We can add negative Keywords in a similar way. Check the box next to the Search Term(s) we wish to add, then click “Add as negative Keyword.” When adding Negatives, we have the option to add them as Campaign or AdGroup Negatives. Click “Save” and the Keywords are added to our account immediately.

Adding Negatives in Practice

My rule of thumb for Negatives is to always add them on Exact Match, maybe add them on Phrase Match, and to only add them on Broad Match in exceptional cases. With the tools we have available today for Keyword targeting and Search Term reporting, we have the ability to be very targeted with our Negatives. We can add Keywords on Broad Match, then use Negatives on Exact Match or Phrase Match to filter unwanted traffic.

In my experience, using Broad Match Negatives runs too high of a risk of blocking words unintentionally. For example, if we have a Keyword for “beach bike” on Broad Match, and are matching the Search Term “bike beach” (which, in this example, we do not want), then we can block that by adding “bike beach” as a Negative on Phrase Match. We would not want to add “bike beach” as a Negative on Broad Match because we would most likely end up unintentionally blocking the good searches for “beach bike.”

Pro Tip: If you have a dedicated rep, he can produce a “Negative Blocked Report” – a report showing you the Search Terms that were blocked by your negatives, and the potential traffic you are missing. It is a good idea to review this occasionally to check if you are inadvertently blocking good traffic.

For example, I recently had a situation where we copied an AdGroup and did a find/replace on the keywords, but neglected to review the negatives. The new AdGroup was blocking itself based on the negatives from the original AdGroup.

Download The Search Term View

We can also download the Search Term view; Just click the “Download” button.

Working Online vs. Downloading and Working in Bulk

Once we start working with this report, we may be tempted to start working it in bulk, by downloading it. Once downloaded we could manipulate the report, generate Keywords and Negatives and upload them in bulk via AdWords Editor, for example.

While I am a big fan of doing things in bulk in Excel then uploading them via AdWords Editor, this is one workflow that I prefer to do directly on the website. I find that I am constantly changing my view from one AdGroup to the next, changing the dates, etc., and that the instant gratification of adding Keywords and Negatives in place, instantly, works for me. our mileage may vary, of course.

Choosing Which Keywords To Work With

When choosing which Keywords to work with, there are many different approaches. While getting started, my recommendation would be to start with 30 days, the AdGroup with the most Clicks, then the Keyword with the most Impressions, as recommended above. This is a great bellweather.

If the Search Terms are all over the place here, then we have a lot of opportunity for optimization. Whereas if our biggest term is generating almost all Exact Match and Phrase Match Search Terms, then we are doing a great job keeping our Keyword Targeting tight. I like to work Keyword by Keyword in this way for my most-trafficked Keywords.

We can also work AdGroup by AdGroup, which will pool more data into the report for us to work with, while still keeping the theme tight. I do not usually find it useful to work with this report at the All or Campaign level, because the Keywords tend to be all over the place. One notable exception; It can definitely be useful to work at the All or Campaign level when adding Negatives. You may want to discipline yourself to cycle through all of your AdGroups over time.

Choosing where to go next will really depend on how much data we have in our Account, and how much time we wish to invest. As a rule of thumb, optimize 5-10% of our traffic weekly, and be sure to work through those less-trafficked AdGroups and Keywords over time as well.

Benefits of Optimizing Keywords &Negatives

The benefits of optimizing in this way should include increased traffic (and/or more targeted traffic), improved Quality Score (through improved Keyword and Ad CTR), improved bidding efficiency (we will be able to refine our bids for a tighter subset of traffic), and often improved Conversion Rate (by filtering out unwanted traffic).

We will also find this is a great way to find Keywords we may not already have coverage for, and for getting insight into how our customers search for our products, which can lead us to create new Ads and Landing Pages. Good luck out there.

Resources

• Google AdWords Help on this topic
• Daydreaming About Paid Search: How About Airtight Ad Groups?
• How do I customize the data in my tables and reports?

AdGooroo is well known in the SEM industry for their SEM Insights and Natural Search Insights products that help marketers get a very accurate view of paid and organic listings on Search Engine Results Pages.

In full disclosure, I’ve been using AdGooroo since 2006 and I have found their level of innovation, technology, and service to be at the highest of levels. I didn’t use the Trademark Insight tool until a few years ago, but it’s just one many products they offer in their suite of integrated tools.

Why Are Trademarked Terms So Important To Monitor?

Think about it: in most paid search marketing accounts, the branded terms are usually the highest converting and most efficient traffic stream you can have. Not only could competitors literally be taking money out of your pocket, but they could also be driving up your costs.

If they’re bidding aggressively, you’re probably following suit to maintain good average positions—so if you can knock some of those folks off of those SERPS, then you won’t have to bid as high to get in the same spots.

When you also realize that your quality scores could go up because your click-through rates could improve, it becomes obvious how impactful trademark wrangling could be.

As AdGooroo notes in their product literature:

Most companies do nothing to stop competitors and affiliates from advertising on their brand terms because of the difficulty in identifying offending ads. AdGooroo’s 24/7 automated brand monitoring service solves this problem by identifying those advertisers who are bidding on or using your brand terms in their ad copy.

Notice they mention affiliates as well. One of the biggest offenders (and I know this from personal experience) to trademark infringement are affiliates.

It’s become commonplace for most major advertisers who run affiliate programs to not allow their partners to run paid search ads on their branded (or trademarked terms) so that they’re not bidding against themselves or losing sales that they could have garnered.

I’d like to give these folks the benefit of the doubt and hope that when they do break these policies that they do so in ignorance and not on purpose…but the negative results are the same whether it’s competitors or affiliates.

So How Does Trademark Insight Solve This Problem?

Well, if you’re not up to speed on the engine stance on this issue (check out, for example, the AdWords trademark enforcement policy), the gist is that in most cases, it’s up to you to file a report.

Understandably, Google can’t sift through every advertiser on their platform and know who has the authority to use these terms.

So, right now, if you wanted to police your trademark terms, you would have to constantly manually search on your terms, take screenshots, fill out the paperwork, etc. Trademark Insight smartly automates this process.

Now for my favorite part of Search Marketing Toolbox, we go under the hood!

Once you load up your keywords, Trademark Insights takes over and checks for your terms across eleven search engines and fifty different countries. This prevents some rather savvy folks from trying to “geo-spoof” (not geotarget in your company known HQ areas).

After a day or two, here’s the kind of report you will see:

And here’s the detailed listing of the incidents…

You get a list of all advertisers and ad servers:

You can even see infringers based on destination and display URL:

Here’s my absolute favorite part of the tool which to me makes this product a no-brainer. In a few easy steps, Trademark Insight generates the proper engine form with all of the necessary info to file a complaint as outlined by the particular engine’s trademark policy.

How nice is that?

And finally, you can setup a daily email report to check if an incident occurred was discovered the previous day without even having to log in to the platform. Talk about “set it and forget it”!

If you’re a search marketer who has trademarked terms in your account and you’re not tracking infringement, it’s definitely possible you’re missing out on a quick fix to performance improvement. With AdGooroo’s Trademark Insight tool, you can monitor and file engine complaints quickly and easily.

Good hunting!

The tool helps us generate the core concepts of a PPC Account in an easy-to-understand visual layout, without having to burden business users with all of the details. We call it the PPC Planning Matrix.

I’m going to gloss over the absolute basics of Campaign creation, and aim for a quick “How to Get Started Using the PPC Planning Matrix Today” entry.

If you are an expert with Paid Search, this tool may help you work with your customers to generate great PPC Campaigns. You might notice that while this tool covers all the required basics, it leaves room for your own additions and fine tuning. The real value in this tool is that it helps visually organize and collect what is needed to create PPC Campaigns.

Even if you are not a Paid Search expert, this article is still for you. This tool will help you organize your Account into meaningful Campaigns and AdGroups, and produce a bulk sheet that can be pasted into Google AdWords Editor or into adCenter Desktop.

AdGroups & Campaigns

Campaigns are like an organizational folder for holding AdGroups. In addition to the Campaign Name, the one obligatory setting is the Campaign Daily Budget. The tool provides a default of $500, which you are free to override.

Campaigns also provide the ability to change some advanced settings like geography targeting, or device targeting (i.e.: computers or mobile devices), which you are free to adjust after the tool generates a Bulk Sheet for you.

AdGroups contain Keywords and Text Ads. The one compulsory setting is the default Maximum CPC. This will apply to all of your keywords. If you apply a Max CPC for any keyword, then it trumps the AdGroup Default. The tool provides a default AdGroup CPC of $1.00, which you are free to override.

If you want to set keyword level CPC’s you can edit the bulk sheet when the tool is done.

Ads

Ads are what your customers see on their Search Results Page. You provide the Headline, the two lines of Description (combined into one for adCenter), a Display URL that your customers will see, and a Destination URL that your customers’ browser navigates to when they click on your ad. The tool provides some examples.

AdWords restricts the length of the various fields in an ad. The tool will highlight them red if they are too long. You can add up to 3 ads per AdGroup in this tool (AdWords allows more and you can add them later).

Keywords

Keywords are what AdWords and adCenter use to match your ads to actual user searches. Add keywords that are related to the AdGroup you are creating, and the Ads you already provided. The tool supports “Power Posting” keywords (I’m dating myself, for those of you who remember when Power Posting first came out).

You can add Broad, “Phrase”, [Exact], or –negative match keywords directly in the tool, and it will parse them into the bulk sheet as expected.

Errors?

The tool tries to help you fill it out by highlighting errors like a missing Campaign Name, missing Ads or Keywords, etc. The tool is also “protected” to prevent inadvertently breaking things. The adventurous at heart can use the password “StoneTemple” to unlock the worksheet.

Generate Bulk Sheet

Click the button. If nothing happens, be sure you have enabled macros. Change Macro Settings in Microsoft Excel

Import into AdWords Editor

Choose: File | Import CSV | Paste Text… Review and Accept the Proposed Changes. Don’t forget to Post your new Campaigns!

Import Into adCenter Desktop

Desktop doesn’t yet support importing from the Clipboard. You can save the bulk sheet to a new CSV file, or as of Desktop Editor Version 8.1.11291.0, you can import directly from AdWords (Beta).

Choose: Import | From Google Select Import From a File, and browse to the file on your Computer. Verify the columns line up and click “Import.” Don’t forget to Post your new Campaigns!

Take It For A Spin

If you would like to get started with the PPC Planning Matrix, please feel free to send me an email. You will get an automated response with a download link and you can get started right away. You could also adapt these ideas to your own tools. Have fun out there.