Jon Diorio, Senior Product Manager for Google AdWords posted on his Google+ page news of “a small reporting tidbit”. Conversion value metrics are now among the those available in the AdWords graph. The newly added metrics are shown in Diorio’s screenshot below.
Recently, I’ve been seeing a lot of odd spending patterns in client accounts, especially when it comes to international Google AdWords campaigns. No, I’m not referring to mobile or enhanced campaigns — I’m talking about to a failure to account for regional differences in how online consumers search and convert. How you approach the issue […]
In my almost twenty years of online marketing, I’ve rarely seen a report showing the average worldwide visitor traffic most sites receive on a monthly basis. Truth be told, around 95% of all websites are below 30 visitors a day. Unfortunately, this number tends to include friends and relatives and seemingly random visitors from countries […]
In an update on the early progress of the transition to enhanced campaigns last night, Sridhar Ramaswamy, SVP, Ads and Commerce at Google — and the lead on enhanced campaigns — said that close to two million campaigns have been set to enhanced. That’s up from 1.5 million Google quoted on the first quarter earnings call on […]
In the competitive paid search landscape, advertisers rely on sound bidding strategies to drive clicks and conversions, and ultimately acquire more revenue. However, business and bidding requirements that vary significantly across industries, publishers, devices, and geographies create a highly complex auction environment. To address this complexity and satisfy bidding requirements, search marketers lean on a […]
When the iPhone was first released, everyone marveled over its amazing simplicity and user experience. The world fell in love, and the mobile industry was changed overnight. Other phones, if they weren’t smartphones, were suddenly viewed as cheap and not very useful. We have all experienced this same truth at the websites we visit. We […]
Up Close With Product Listing Ads Presentations from SMX West, March 2013 Think understanding quality score for ads is challenging? With Google’s introduction of Product Listing Ads (PLAs) the success of your ad is now even more complicated. Beyond optimizing your CPC bids based on keyword, match type, device, time of day, day of week […]
Whether it’s to drive traffic, increase conversions, or maximize revenue, bid optimization is the cornerstone of any effective paid search program. Across industries, publishers, devices, and geographies, bidding strategies vary tremendously as search marketers leverage a wide variety of proprietary, publisher, and third-party bidding tools and solutions. However, the success of these tools and solutions […]
Large numbers of people believe that the majority of mobile search activity happens “on the go.” However, according to an extensive new study from Google and Nielsen, the overwhelming majority (77 percent) of mobile search happens at home or work — even when there’s a PC nearby and readily available. These people are choosing to […]
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 […]
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 […]
UPDATE: As of January 23, Google said it has fixed the problem and past data should be restored “in the coming days.” Google has confirmed a bug that causes conversions from Google Analytics to not be imported into AdWords properly, which can cause issues with any campaigns using this data for optimization. The bug has been reported by […]
Many search engine optimization professionals have different interpretations of the term search-engine friendly website design. Learn how color affects your SEO efforts and conversions.
Google has been pumping out research and speaking at industry trade shows trying to educate advertisers and agencies about the growing importance of mobile in the consumer path to purchase. One of the “best practices” advocated by Google, as well as those experienced with mobile paid search, is to separate PC and mobile campaigns. However […]
The Optimal Conversion Recipe: Search, Display & Retargeting Presentations from SMX East, October 2012 Many search marketers have to manage both text and display ads, and how to do this best is an important concern. An key success factor with this juggling act is retargeting: understanding user intent via search, and then subsequently advertising to […]
Though investors seemed disappointed by Google’s third-quarter numbers, its core AdWords business is going like gangbusters, according to a new study by WordStream. The software company found Google earning $100 million a day through AdWords in Q3, serving 5.5 billion impressions per day on search pages and 25.6 billion impressions per day on the Google […]
Google is tweaking some default options in AdWords that apply when people are using Conversion Optimizer or Enhanced CPC, to encourage advertisers to optimize for conversions. Both Conversion Optimizer and Enhanced CPC are methods to dynamically change advertisers’ bids based on how likely Google thinks the ad is to convert. Starting the week of November […]
Almost anyone who specialises in international SEO or SEM will tell you that within a few years, it becomes pretty obvious that most marketers’ problems have little to do with SEO or SEM techniques and are much more to do with brands cutting corners in their enthusiasm to go global. It’s inevitable really. Organizations expanding […]
Does it bother you as much as it bothers me? Surely you’ve seen it. Perhaps you know someone who’s done it in the past (or good grief, is still doing it!). I can’t imagine anyone who reads Search Engine Land on a regular basis would do it, but then again, many things in life surprise […]
One of the key findings of the Q2 2012 Global Digital Advertising Update from Adobe (Efficient Frontier) is that search marketers can get more value from mobile campaigns than they now can on the PC. According to the report cost-per-click (CPC) prices are lower for both tablets and smartphones than comparable PC search campaigns and […]
Perfecting Your PPC Landing Pages Presentations from SMX Advanced, June 2012 What does the perfect lead gen landing page look like? How about e-commerce? While perfection may be out of the question, we all know that even small performance gains can lead to big improvement in profits. In this session, we’ll dig deep into advanced […]
iConvert: Landing Pages & Conversion In A Smartphone & Tablet World Presentations from SMX Advanced, June 2012 Well-designed mobile landing pages and sites can mean the difference between consumer engagement or abandonment, with corresponding consequences to your brand. But can mobile sites and landing pages actually drive conversions? Should marketers plan that mobile users will […]
Breaking The Speed Limit: Faster Sites Win! Presentations from SMX Advanced, June 2012 Faster sites win in more ways than just rankings. Search engines can crawl (and index) more pages as server-side speed increases and user engagement (including most importantly, conversion!) increases as client-side speed (and perceived loading time) increases. Learn about hidden tricks you […]
I had a chance recently to speak to DataPop CEO Jason Lehmbeck. Before DataPop Lehmbeck was at Overture/Yahoo. DataPop is an agency/platform that specializes in “offer driven” search campaigns. I was talking to Lehmbeck about mobile search trends and what kinds of consumer response he was seeing to various campaigns. Lehmbeck gave me some unpublished, […]
The “rotate evenly” setting on an AdWords campaign has been a long-time best friend to habitual ad testers testers and landing page tweakers everywhere. Next week, the “rotate evenly” setting will stop rotating after 30 days and default to a different setting, “optimize for clicks.” Three settings currently exist: Rotate evenly Optimize for clicks Optimize […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: 8 Products That Might Be On Yahoo’s Chopping Block Yahoo’s product teams are officially on notice. Shortly after announcing Q1 earnings yesterday, new Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson dropped a bomb during […]
Marin Software has released “The State of Mobile Search Advertising.” It provides yet more evidence of how the search and paid-search markets are being profoundly affected by mobile devices. In almost every category there’s triple-digit growth according to the report, which projects that smartphones and tablets will combine to generate 25 percent of all Google’s […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Do Your 2012 Resolutions Include Increasing Conversion Rates? That’s a trick question. Of course the answer should always be yes. Hopefully your website conversions in 2011 have already resulted in a […]
That’s a trick question. Of course the answer should always be yes. Hopefully your website conversions in 2011 have already resulted in a banner year. But if you feel like you have room to improve (and there always is), then it might be time to review what advice our conversion experts shared with readers throughout […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: A Letter From Santa To The Search Community December, 2011 The North Pole Dear Search Community: Thanks so much for your many letters to the north pole. Your nicely written texts […]
Best Practices For Paid Search Testing Presentations from SMX East – NYC, NY, September 2011 This session centers around the actual process of designing, implementing and measuring the results of paid search tests. Key topics will include what can and cannot be tested, how to design robust tests and identify all the biases and underlying […]
As the majority of online searches are in languages other than English, it’s important to understand how businesses can benefit from search marketing and approach search campaigns in international markets. Marketers can follow these tips to improve their international search engine marketing strategies. 1. Pick Humans Over Machines The pressure to produce a successful, multilingual […]
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Foursquare: More Than Fun & Games, A Potent Local Search Tool About a year ago, I was feeling Foursquare fatigue. Why on earth was I checking in? The badges were harder […]
As discussed last month, negative keywords are an extremely important part of any top performing paid search program. Negative keywords help marketers both avoid non-converting impressions as well as shape traffic for better converting results. Implementing “Match Type Silos” Before I delve into new tips, I got a number of questions in response to last […]
This past Christmas, the phrase “doing more with less” achieved new meaning as I watched my nephew gleefully resuscitate his stubby, short crayons with Crayola’s Crayon Maker into fresh, new, color-packed crayons. Kids with crayons to employees with goals, the “doing more with less” saying has certainly achieved epidemic proportions. No department has able to […]
If you have ever lived in New York City, you know possibly the worst thing about the city is finding an apartment. It is miserable plain and simple. You sort through thousands of Craigslist postings, a few New York Times postings, and answer every ad posted on every mailbox in the city only to realize […]
Negative keywords are a necessity in any well constructed high volume paid search campaign. In a perfect world, large advertisers would run all keywords on exact match to ensure that the keyword bids truly reflect the quality of each keyword’s expected conversion rate. Unfortunately, limiting campaigns to only exact match keywords sacrifices too much volume, […]
Organic conversions are the bread and butter of many B2B organizations, yet many companies forget to keep an eye on the small details that can affect them. Instead, B2B organizations should evaluate their Web presence periodically from an organic user’s perspective, as a “set it and forget it” frame of mind is not reasonable in […]
The latest blog post from Google Webmaster Central remind site owners what many of us have been saying for years: The Google Toolbar PageRank number is a terrible SEO metric (I may be paraphrasing a bit). Webmaster Trends Analysis (and knitter extraordinaire) Susan Moskwa, who wrote the post, says: “I posit that none of us truly care […]
Most of us in the PPC world know that testing ads is a great idea – almost necessary optimization work. There are plenty of articles around the web expounding the benefits: increase QS, lower costs, boost conversion rate … all good stuff. In this article, let’s tackle the basic block and tackling necessary to get […]