AdWords has just rolled out AdWords Keyword Planner, a new tool that combines two of the most popular existing AdWords tools, the Google Keyword Tool and the AdWords Traffic Estimator, and adds to it a wizard-like integrated workflow to guide users through the process of finding keywords for creating new Ad Groups and/or Campaigns.

I’m guessing that at some point in the future, the AdWords Keyword Planner may replace the Google Keyword Tool and AdWords Traffic Estimator – tools which have been in service for over 10 years and are widely used for both PPC and SEO. So if you’ve used either tool in the past, take note here – your process is probably about to change!

Getting Started With AdWords Keyword Planner

The AdWords Keyword Planner supports three key use cases:

• Search for keyword and ad group ideas
• Enter or upload keywords to get estimates
• Multiply keyword lists to get estimates

The functionality is exposed via a wizard-like interface, as shown here:

Searching for Keyword and Ad Group Ideas

Adding keywords to your account based on Google suggested keywords is the primary use case. The Keyword Planner (illustrated below), provides a robust keyword workbench for researching and picking keywords to add to your AdWords account.

Using the Keyword Planner Tool you can:

• Look for keyword and ad group ideas: Brainstorm keyword ideas based on individual keyword ideas, or based on your landing page, a product category, or any combination of the above.
• View keyword statistics and performance estimates:  Specify targeting options that you select such as country, language and search network to inform your keyword estimates.
• Filter keywords: You can narrow your keyword list based on various criteria, such as average CPC and average monthly search volume. You can also include or exclude keywords containing specific terms, and exclude keywords that are already in your AdWords account.

List View vs. Grouped View and “Your Keyword Plan”

Keywords in the Keyword Planner appear either in list view or in grouped view, which is sort of analogous to the concept of keyword niches and keyword lists that we’ve long supported in WordStream’s own keyword tools.

Additionally, you can add individual keywords or keyword groupings to “Your Plan,” which is sort of a temporary storage area for saving interesting-looking keywords and keyword groupings for later.

The Keyword Planner maintains state for the duration of your session – keywords that you add are saved while you’re in the process of looking for keywords.

Finally, when you’re done finding keywords, click on the “Get Estimates and Review Plan” button.

Getting Estimates and Reviewing Your Plan

The next step of the Keyword Plan process involves setting a keyword bid and daily budget for your portfolio of keywords and keyword groupings.

Since keyword volume and CPC bid estimates vary wildly based on your budget, bid, location, and other factors, it’s important that you provide Google with some information to customize your estimates.

For example, you could enter in a bid of $40 and a daily budget of $1,000.00 and based on those settings, the Keyword Planner will generate detailed daily estimates for clicks, impressions, average ad position, and costs, as shown here.

Enter or Upload Your Own Keyword List

Sometimes in search marketing, you’re lucky to have your own analytics data, for example, a list of top keywords that generate conversions for your website. If you’re this fortunate, it would definitely make sense to use those battle-proven keywords rather than the generic keyword suggestions you get from the Google Keyword Suggestion Tool.  Here’s what that looks like:

When you press the Get Estimates button, you’ll be brought to the same keyword workbench area; the only difference is that you’ll be looking at your own keyword list, rather than the generic keywords suggested via the Google Keyword Tool.

Multiplying Keyword Lists Using Keyword Planner

A completely new feature in Keyword Planner which isn’t available in either the existing Google Keyword Tool or AdWords Traffic Estimator tools is the ability to mash up and multiply keyword lists. For example, you might want to multiply a bunch of names of cities and towns with different action words to come up with all the different keyword permutations, as shown here:

You can add up to 3 lists to mash up, and clicking on the Get Estimates button brings you to the same keyword workbench area.

Summary: The AdWords Keyword Planner

The new Keyword Planner tool supports various workflows for building ad groups and ad campaigns either starting from scratch, or based on your existing lists, and provides a more cohesive user experience by integrating the keyword selection, keyword grouping, keyword analysis and filtering aspects of the keyword selection workflow.

The Keyword Planner is currently available in a small number of AdWords accounts today. To find it, I just loaded up my MCC and checked every account to see if it had the Keyword Planner (thankfully, we have hundreds of accounts linked up). I found an account with Keyword Planner on around my 67^th account. Google tells me that they plan to roll out Keyword Planner to a broader audience in the near future!

To provide more control and precision over bids in an enhanced campaign, advertisers will soon be able to set a mobile bid adjustment at the ad group level. This functionality will be available to all advertisers in mid-May. We think this may be useful if you’ve been operating large scale campaigns and found that your optimal bids for some keywords would require significantly different mobile bid adjustments within an enhanced campaign.

When Google originally announced the shift to Enhanced Campaigns, mobile bid adjustments were only available at the campaign level, a detail that AdWords power users were especially unhappy about.

Oh look, a cave. I wonder if Google has been here.

The Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease? Advertisers’ Top 3 Complaints About Enhanced Campaigns

Since the big announcement in February, a lot of AdWords advertisers have been very vocal about their disappointment with Enhanced Campaigns, to the point that I’m one of the few people who see the bright side (LOL):

Most of the complaints around Enhanced Campaigns have had to do with loss of control. I see the top three most common complaints as being:

• The bundling of tablet and desktop devices – Matt Umbro tweeted at the time of the release “The lack of tablet vs. desktop segmentation I believe is the most WTF feature of #enhancedcampaigns.” Most advertisers believe that ads perform differently on tablets and desktops and that they should be able to segment these out. I argue that it’s really user context that matters, more than the device, and Enhanced Campaigns give advertisers more ability to tweak bids depending on context (location and time).
• Loss of device targeting – Enhanced Campaigns give us mobile bid adjustments, so we can bid up or down when an ad appears on a mobile device, but this removes the option of creating mobile-only campaigns.
• Loss of keyword-level bidding for mobile – As mentioned above, at the time of the original roll-out, mobile bid adjustments were only available at the campaign level.

The additional flexibility that Google has just announced goes far in addressing complaint #3 – starting in May advertisers will have the ability to set mobile bids on a per-adgroup basis as opposed to per campaign. What we don’t know is whether Google was planning to release this more granular targeting all along, or whether they caved in response to overwhelming user outcry.

What do you think?

Whether or not you’re one of those angry SEM’s who isn’t happy with the changes in AdWords, do you think Google will cave in other demands? Will mobile-only campaigns be back in our arsenal? Will Google admit that tablets and desktops aren’t the same after all?

If a keyword wasn’t working out, no problem! I could change the ad, or optimize the bids, or chose entirely different keywords. I could measure and optimize anything and everything, which enabled me to create very sophisticated and profitable paid search campaigns.

Yet as PPC has become more and powerful and thus more optimizable, sadly, the average AdWords account manager is optimizing less stuff in their account – to the point where I believe that today, most AdWords accounts are dying of neglect.

Very low PPC account optimization activity means that many advertisers are missing out on what I believe to be the best part of PPC. Should you be concerned?

Exhibit A: Self-Reported Weekly PPC Activity

Last month at my WordStream webinar, we asked a non-scientific poll of approximately 200 AdWords advertisers the following question: How much time do you spend doing PPC work every week?

Respondents painted a very rosy picture. The overwhelming majority of respondents (87%) reported doing some activity every week, as illustrated in the following screen capture:

AdWords Account Managers Claim to be Very Busy Optimizing their PPC Accounts

Exhibit B: Actual PPC Account Activity

I wanted to see how the self-reported account activity compared to the actual AdWords account activity in advertisers’ accounts. I can do this by looking at the Change History log in AdWords – I’ll explain in detail how to do this later.

In a nutshell, I manually looked at several hundred recent customers and set the date range to the 30 days prior to signing up as a WordStream customer. Here’s what I found:

In this chart, the “Activity Index” on the Y-axis is a measurement of how active an advertiser is in terms of doing PPC account optimization. The Activity Index is based on manually counting up the number of changes in the exported change history report using Excel, then applying a weighting for each type of account change.

For example, because creating/editing/deleting a new campaign is a more time-consuming and more significant optimization than changing a single keyword bid, campaign changes are given a higher activity weighting.

I then plotted the activity scores against the advertisers’ monthly spend to see how the activity level varies based on how much an advertiser is investing in paid search.

Here were some of the highlights (or “low-lights”?) that I found:

• Approximately 20% of AdWords account managers do nothing at all within a month.
• There’s very little consistency. Only 10% of advertisers consistently do optimization work in their account every week over a 90-day period.
• Agencies do only slightly better than advertisers when it comes to regular account activity.
• The more you spend on AdWords, the more likely you are to be optimizing your account – however as you can see in the chart, there are many companies spending lots of money (hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars) doing nothing at all in their accounts.

It’s Probably Much Worse

I have no way to prove this but I suspect that there’s probably some survey bias happening here and that low account activity is actually a far bigger challenge. My data was taken from WordStream customers, immediately prior to working with WordStream – meaning those advertisers had already realized they could be doing more with their accounts.

I suspect that businesses who reach out to companies like WordStream are agencies and advertisers who care deeply about their account performance and are taking action to improve their accounts, and thus are more likely to have been historically active in their account.

I think there’s probably a large number of advertisers out there who are completely asleep at the switch and thus aren’t even showing up on my radar screen, and are likely to have even worse account activity.

Why PPC Account Activity Matters

While PPC can work for just about any kind of company, I’ve found that it almost never works on the first day. Furthermore I’ve never seen a successful “set it and forget it” strategy. The reality is that no matter how good your account is, you can always do better.

Here’s a summary of different types of PPC account optimization activities and why they matter:

Thoughtful and consistent PPC account optimization activity is the path to achieving ROI from paid search. On the other hand, a “set it and forget it” strategy is a bit of a death spiral that generally results in a cycle of lower Quality Scores, which results in higher cost per clicks and lower ad position, which results in lower ROI, and ultimately failure.

For this reason I believe that PPC account activity even trumps Quality Score as the single most important PPC metric in your account.

If I’ve convinced you in the importance of measuring and tracking your PPC account activity, here’s how to do it.

Figuring Out Your Account Activity in AdWords

To figure out your account activity levels in AdWords, find the Change History Tool, located in the Tools & Analysis tab, as shown here:

Set the date range to the time period you’re interested in, then click on the Download button to export the report in a CSV format. AdWords groups together different changes by campaign and ad group; for example in the screenshot you can see that there were 39 bid changes within a single ad group. So, to process the exported data, you’ll need to do some manual data manipulation in Excel to decompress the change history log.

An Easier Way to Determine Recent AdWords Account Activity

Another way to quickly visualize your recent AdWords account activity is to just grade your account using the AdWords Performance Grader. This free tool will do an instant audit of your PPC account across 8 different key performance metrics, including Account Activity.

The report will calculate and display your Account Activity in the last 30 and 90 days and break it out by types of account optimizations are happening in your account. Here’s an example of what the Account Activity section of the AdWords Grader report looks like.

So in this example, you can see that the advertiser has created/deleted or modified 2 campaigns in the last 90 days, made 10 ad text changes in the last 30 days, etc.

In addition to automatically calculating you’re your account activity, the WordStream AdWords Grader also gives you a score of how your account activity stacks up against a WordStream PPC best practice benchmark for account activity.

Slow and Steady Wins the PPC Race

Given the anemic activity levels in the typical PPC account, I believe that PPC account managers should be embracing the concept of PPC activity as a success metric. When asked for the most important PPC metrics, PPC marketers tend to think of things like CTR, cost per conversion, conversion rate, etc. – yet it is only our ongoing PPC experimentation and optimization activities that enable us to do well in all of these metrics.

Ultimately the key to success in maintaining a healthy amount of PPC account activity is to make it regular. For example, set aside at least 20 minutes a week for PPC optimization, spending a few minutes on each of the most critical PPC optimization tasks, like keyword expansion, negative keyword research, bid optimization, and ad text optimization. While this might seem like a lot of work, the use of PPC tools can add a ton of leverage in terms of time savings and ROI.

Like with a diet or fitness plan, don’t overdo it by doing thousands of changes in one sitting and then not revisiting for 6 months, but don’t get complacent and fall into a sedentary PPC lifestyle either.

The good news is that the PPC account activity bar is very low. Just 20 minutes of PPC work every week would put you ahead of 90% of the other accounts out there.

In a bid to capitalize on widespread discontent and outrage in the SEM community over Google AdWords enhanced campaigns, Bing today re-iterated their view that EC’s are essentially a dumb move and indicated that they will not be following Google’s lead as far as their product development efforts are concerned.

Bing Champions “Advertiser Choice” – Implies that Google Doesn’t Care

While Bing’s announcement itself is pretty straightforward, they used a pretty long 1200 word blog post to indict Google of not providing “advertiser choice”.

The blog post enumerates a litany of complaints that have been leveled against Google in recent months, including the notion that:

• Bundling of tablet and desktop advertising as a single target is worrisome given that there is research that shows tablets convert better than PCs with a lower cost-per-click (CPC)
• Eliminating of mobile device targeting removes choice from sophisticated advertisers, because a mobile campaign must now always be a subset of a desktop search marketing campaign
• Losing the ability to create specific campaigns for mobile devices going forward has led to the creation of complicated and impractical workarounds by advertisers.

Bing concludes:

We’re committed in giving advertisers the tools to control their spending, target the most relevant audience, and ensure they can get the best return on investment. Thus, we do not believe bundling together mobile, desktop and tablet advertising in an opaque manner is in the best interest of our customer base or the industry at large. The Bing Ads team wants to ensure you, our customers, have maximum transparency.

Bing Reminds Us that You Can Still Export Your AdWords Account to Bing

I had to laugh a bit when Google Announced enhanced campaigns on February 6 and then only 2 weeks later updated their AdWords API Terms To Comply With FTC Antitrust Settlement to allow easier exporting of AdWords Campaign data into Bing. Why?

Because with such a radical change in campaign structure, it meant that campaigns cannot be brought over to Bing if there aren’t concepts and constructs that mirror those in enhanced campaigns.

Nevertheless, Bing now says they’ll update their AdWords to Bing account conversion tools to ensure advertisers can continue to seamlessly transition between both products.  For example, in the updated account converter which will be available in a few months, advertisers who import enhanced campaigns from AdWords, Bing will support the ability to mark ads as being mobile optimized, etc.

Kowtowing to Search Marketers Concerns a Brilliant PR Move

In a recent WordStream webinar poll of approximately 200 search marketers on March 21, 2013, AdWords enhanced campaign detractors outnumbered supporters by roughly a 5:1 ratio, when excluding those who are indifferent, as illustrated here:

It appears that Bing is piling on the band-wagon, hoping to pick up some market share among upset search marketers by providing “advertiser choice”. The strategy may be working based on a sample of enthousiastic anonymous blog comments, as shown here:

Have Your Say

Does Bing’s announcement to not follow Google Enhanced Campaigns make you more or less likely to advertise on Bing? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

Just over 4 years ago, Craig Danuloff at Click Equations wrote an article called “The Economics of Quality Score” that provided a simple model to determine the value of Google Quality Score in your AdWords account.

We all know the value of Google’s Quality Score in a high-level sense – Quality Score plays an important role in determining your Ad Rank, which is how Google determine the position in which your ad appears, which in turn determines the amount of exposure and clicks your ads will receive.

We also know that Quality Score plays a very important role in determining how much you’re charged per click. A now famous video by Hal Varian, Google’s Chief Economist, helped clarify this point – that your cost per click is calculated using the formula: Ad Rank of the ad below yours / your Quality Score.

Using this information, along with some basic arithmetic, Craig published two tables that illustrated the value of Quality Score at that time, as shown here:

The tables illustrate:

1. The average savings and “penalties” experienced with high Quality Scores (8, 9, or 10) or low Quality Scores (6 or below), with 7 taken as a neutral average.
2. The economic cost or benefit of having your Quality Score move up or down by 1 point.

At this point, it’s important to note that the true Quality Score that Google uses to calculate your CPC isn’t really a whole number between 1 and 10. The Quality Score that is visible to you in your account is a whole number between 1 and 10. Quality Score for calculating CPC is a real number and the scale is non-linear. Furthermore there are other factors involved in calculating CPC’s that aren’t disclosed by Google.

So while the actual numbers in the chart were off, the overall point hopefully remains true – that the positive and negative effects of Quality Score and its impact on CPC are directionally correct, and so these tables serve as a powerful illustration of the value of Quality Score.

What’s the Value of Google Quality Score in 2013?

Much more than it was worth four years ago.

While the overall positive and negative effects of having a good or bad Quality Score remain true today, Quality Score has changed significantly in the last 4 years.

Most significantly, a Quality Score of 7 was set to be the neutral value at the time because QS=7 was the average Quality Score for most keywords back then. As Craig put it:

Note that we set QS=7 as the neutral value because using ClickEquations to review a wide range of accounts we’ve seen that QS=7 appears to be the mean quality score across a very large and diverse set of keywords.

Since then Quality Scores of 7 have become much scarcer and the average Quality Score has fallen.

Here’s a quick snapshot of what the Impression Weighted Average Quality Score looks like in 2013. Note that I’m weighting Keyword Quality Scores by impressions – because different keywords have different search volumes.

I compiled this data by doing a manual analysis of several hundred new clients that WordStream signed up in the first two months of 2013.

Based on this manual analysis, I estimate that today’s impression weighted average Quality Score in 2013 is just slightly over 5 (out of a possible 10).

A Quality Score of 5 Is the New 7

Keywords, on an impression-weighted basis, now have an average Quality Score of 5. Therefore, accounts (or campaigns or ad groups) with average volume-weighted keyword Quality Scores better than 5 can be considered better than average, and are thereby benefiting relative to most advertisers. Accounts with average Quality Scores lower than 5 are below average, and those scores are detrimental to your account.

So re-running the calculations, but this time using a Quality Score of 5 as the new mean value for Quality Score (the “base value”), the Economics of Quality Score in 2013 now looks more like this:

The #1 take-away here is that as average Quality Score has drifted lower, the “value” of having an above-average Quality Score has increased tremendously.

Also note that on a percentage change basis, the Quality Score “discounts” for above-average QS keywords have increased from 66% to 200% compared to their 2009 values, as illustrated in the preceding table.

For this and other reasons, I’ve often argued that Quality Score is the most important success metric in achieving AdWords success – and this is more true now than ever before.

Note that the marginal savings or cost increases for a 1-point increase or decrease in Quality Score remain unchanged (by definition), but are included in the table for the sake of completeness.

What’s My Average Quality Score? How to Check Your Impression-Weighted Quality Score

Now that I’ve described the value of Quality Score, and how it’s more important now than ever, you might be asking yourself – what’s my Quality Score? There’s two ways to figure it out – an easy way and a hard way. Let’s start with the hard way.

Finding Your Average AdWords Quality Score the Hard Way

To manually figure out your average Quality Score, follow these steps:

• Log into AdWords.
• For each Search Campaign, navigate to the Keywords Tab, click on the “columns” button, then add the “Quality Score” attribute, as illustrated below.
• Export the data into a spreadsheet and calculate your impression weighted average Quality Score by multiplying each keyword Quality Score by the number of impressions accrued to that keyword. Add up this product for all keywords, and then divide by the total number of impressions accrued by those keywords. That’s your impression-weighted quality score for your Account (or campaign, ad group, etc.).

Finding your Google Quality Score using the AdWords Interface

Finding Your AdWords Quality Score the Easy Way

Another way to quickly visualize your impression-weighted Quality Score distribution is to just grade your account using the AdWords Performance Grader. This free tool will do an instant audit of your PPC account across 8 different key performance metrics, including impression-weighted Quality Score.

The report will calculate and display your average Quality Score and plot a distribution of the number of impressions happening at each visible Quality Score for the last 90 days, and compare that to a “Recommended Curve” for your business. Here’s an example of what the Quality Score section of the report looks like.

Now Is the Time to Improve Your Google Quality Score

Knowing that your Quality Scores may be saving you up to 50%, or costing you up to 400%, should provide strong motivation for everyone to both understand and work to improve your Quality Scores.

So what’s the difference between PR and content marketing? Is there any? The short answer is yes. Here are some thoughts on how these marketing strategies differ.

Content Marketing & PR Evolved from Different Tactics

I see content marketing as an extension of an SEO more than an extension of PR. In the past, links were a huge part of SEO, and SEOs sometimes went to extreme, shady lengths to get them (buying them, spamming forums, etc.). Google has cracked down on thin content and link spam with its ongoing Panda and Penguin updates, forcing SEOs to brush up on their content marketing skills.

Of course, Google maintains that nothing has changed – links were always supposed to be earned, not bought or faked. And they’re getting better at discouraging marketers from trying to game the system. It’s like Matt Cutts said: Don’t try to fake being awesome, just be awesome! Content marketing is about creating awesomeness that people will want to read and share, leading naturally to traffic, links, social signals and media mentions. It’s a legitimate, white-hat link building tactic.

Those natural (AKA organic) signals of awesomeness and mass approval are what Google has always tried to measure with its ranking algorithm and the link graph – based on the insight that the best, most popular sites will, over time, accrue the most links (and likes, tweets, etc.). Public relations is more like advertising – rather than seeking attention indirectly by creating stuff that people will want to read and link to, you pay for attention in a more direct way. With advertising, you’re buying media placements to raise awareness. With PR, you’re (generally) paying a firm to talk to the media about your company and offerings, again to raise awareness. But the goals aren’t exactly the same, which brings us to the next point.

Content Marketing & PR Have Different Success Metrics

Because the goals aren’t exactly the same, content marketing and PR have different success metrics. Generally, PR success is measured in terms of “media placements,” “press mentions” or “impressions.” Some impressions are better than no impressions, but these metrics are less valuable than the KPIs you get with content marketing: page views, referrals, and actual leads driven. With content marketing, you’re generally approaching the end game in one of two ways (and probably both):

• Placing contributed articles – When placing articles on other sites and blogs, content marketers know it’s key to get some backlinks – not just for their SEO value (links aren’t dead yet!) but for the referral traffic, which is easily measured in analytics. This way, content marketers can know which publishers offer the most value and most relevant readership.
• Hosting your own awesome content – “Not provided” notwithstanding, the content on your own site is easily measured in terms of all kinds of rich engagement metrics (time on site, social shares, comments, etc.) as well as conversions – you can use tracking codes on any offers within your content to track which blog posts, guides, etc. are driving demos or sales.

In the pre-digital world, impressions were a valid measure of reach – think Superbowl ads or billboard placement. But in the digital world, we have the ability to measure much more effectively. A mention is good, but a mention with a link is better. And a mention with a link that leads back to your site and converts is the real goal.

It’s also worth noting that advertisements and PR differ in their content and angle compared to content marketing. The former is more about directly talking up your own products or services. The latter is more about thought leadership – sharing knowledge and skills or just providing entertainment in such a way that people will want to buy your stuff, because they’re already on your side.

Content Marketing Is Harder Than PR – But Worth It

Good content marketing is hard to execute. It requires specialized skills, a great deal of creativity, huge amounts of effort, and to top it all off, luck. It also has really unpredictable ROI. Sometimes you hit a home run, but more often, your efforts fall flat. And there’s nothing to do but get back on the horse.

All that said, content marketing is worth it. When you do hit a home run, the results are remarkable: spikes in traffic, leads, and sales as well as a lasting life in organic traffic, all directly attributable to amazing content. In my view, if content marketing and PR were in a race, content marketing would be winning.

A Note on Consolidation

I’m seeing a lot of consolidation between SEO, content marketing, and PR. It’s all turning into just plain “marketing,” similar to how “web marketing” used to be differentiated in the ‘90s, whereas marketing now includes web marketing by default.

The trend is to bring content marketing and PR back in house, since a lot of the old SEO tricks no longer work and what is required for results is just marketing creativity and solid execution. After many years of having a separate SEO meeting at WordStream, we’re now rolling that stuff into our regular weekly marketing meetings, largely because of the increasing overlap between the two. We want everyone on our team to do a little of everything, or at least understand how integrated these roles really are.

What do you think? How different are content marketing and PR really?

I couldn’t help but laugh when I read this, and I’m sure many of you did as well, because it’s pretty well-known within the search engine marketing community that eBay is the butt of many jokes when it comes to adopting advertising best practices.

eBay is probably the world’s biggest abuser of an ad writing tactic in AdWords known as Dynamic Keyword Insertion or DKI. As its name suggests, DKI dynamically inserts the user’s query into the headline of your ad, as follows:

When used correctly, DKI can be a highly effective ad writing technique. But when employed in the way that eBay uses it, the results are disastrous.

Dynamic Keyword Insertion Run Amok

eBay’s AdWords strategy appears to be to pick every possible word in the dictionary and run them on Dynamic Keyword Insertion. For the last 10 years or so, they’ve been running ads on the most ridiculous things including stuff that doesn’t exist or stuff that is illegal to sell. Here are just a few examples:

Need a Perpetual Motion Machine? Shop on eBay and Save! Discount Perpetual Motion Machines!

Feeling lonely? Need a wife?

Or maybe you’re looking for love in all the wrong places?

Or how about some slaves or Bill Gates while we’re at it.

I could go on but I think it’s safe to say that if you’ve used Google in the last 10 years, you’ve come across a bunch of bizarre eBay ads that make absolutely no sense. So I can’t say I’m shocked that they finally realized they weren’t getting ROI from AdWords.

It’s Not AdWords, It’s You: The Problem with eBay’s Ad Strategy

The problem with eBay’s carpet-bombing ad strategy is that it’s doomed to fail. The way AdWords works is that they allow companies to pick what keywords they want to show their ads on.

Now to ensure that advertisers do a good job at choosing keywords that are relevant to their business (which is important because Google would prefer not to display stupid, irrelevant ads, which annoy users), they give you a discount on ads that have high click-through rates. The flip side of this is that they penalize lousy ads (like ads for slaves or loneliness, etc.) by charging as much as 10x more.

Furthermore, because your ads are so weird, if someone clicks on the ad and goes to the site – they’re not likely to find what they’re looking for (no perpetual motion machines in sight), and won’t convert into a sale. So eBay was paying a high premium for mostly worthless clicks.

These and other factors likely explain your study results. I’m sure Google LOVED your business, but of course you weren’t getting return on that misguided advertising spend.

Attention John Donahoe: I Dare You to Fire Your Ad Managers and Give Me a Shot

So eBay, I hope you can see that it’s not AdWords – it’s your dumb ads that are killing your account.

Success at paid search is possible but you’ll need to invest more time than just creating one universal ad template then jamming every keyword in the world into that one ad using dynamic keyword insertion.

I’ve been doing paid search for 10 years and have made it work for thousands of businesses, and I’m absolutely certain I can make it work for you, too. Here are a five free tips for you:

• Take advantage of new advertising features and functions like Google Product Listing Ads, which display pretty pictures of the stuff you’re selling.
• Be more picky with your keywords. Instead of bidding on hopelessly unspecific keywords like “baby,” choose more specific terms that show at least a little intent, like baby bottles, or baby stroller, etc.
• Consider using Dynamic Search Ads – a new technology from Google that picks your keywords for you automatically.
• Use negative keywords to prevent your ads from showing up on irrelevant searches. This could save you tens of thousands of dollars! No joke!
• Use remarketing to target shopping cart abandoners. It’s a super-effective way to draw people back onto your site.

The first 5 tips are on the house. John Donahoe, your AdWords account managers are an embarrassment to your company and your AdWords account is in shambles. Call me and I’ll turn things around for you!

Far from it – the opposite in fact! Google has managed to transform itself into a “mobile first” company. Currently, the majority of Google’s $8B run-rate mobile revenue derives from advertising (excluding Motorola). That’s why the company is totally restructuring the way its pay-per-click advertising platform, AdWords, works – Google wants more businesses advertising on mobile, so it’s making mobile PPC radically simpler with the introduction of enhanced campaigns, as well as new mobile conversion types, offer extensions and a mobile app ad type, all specifically created to address mobile-centric use cases.

New research conducted by WordStream into Google’s mobile product portfolio reveals that Google’s mobile strategy centers around investments in four key mobile product areas: Mobile Devices, Mobile Apps, Mobile Content and Mobile Advertising.

We believe that with such an exciting mobile product portfolio, advertising formats have just scratched the surface of the mobile monetization opportunity.

In the below graphic, we outline Google’s top 20 mobile products, including a report card that grades each product based on quality, adoption, originality, value to advertisers and other criteria. Scroll through to learn what each of these products does – and how they add to Google’s bottom line! (Click on the image to enlarge to full size.)

Below is a quick summary of Google’s four areas of focus and the mobile products in each category.

Mobile Advertising: Google Ads for Mobile

Google’s key advertising products for mobile search include:

• Google AdWords – AdWords, Google’s online ad serving platform used by millions worldwide, offers powerful mobile targeting options and ROI reporting tools for mobile advertisers.
• Location and Call Extensions – These ad extensions help mobile advertisers reach local searchers and make it easy for them to convert. Everybody wins!
• Google Offers – Google’s answer to Groupon, Living Social et al, Google Offers are mobile discounts that can be redeemed online or at brick-and-mortar stores.
• Google AdMob – A mobile advertising platform specifically designed for mobile apps. Marketers can advertise their apps inside other existing apps.

Killer Mobile Apps: Google Apps for Mobile

Google’s portfolio of mobile app products include:

• Google Maps – The gold standard for mobile map/GPS apps. Google understands that location is key to providing a great search experience (1 in 4 Google searches are related to location).
• Google Now – A system of Siri-like voice commands and a card system that lets users customize the updates they want, when they want them. The dream of the perfect smartphone!
• Google+ Local – Mobile users can search for nearby restaurants and entertainment rated by Zagat.
• Google Play Books – Google’s version of Kindle, Google Play Books lets you read ebooks on a mobile device.
• Google Wallet – A method for online payments via Google’s secure cloud servers. Google Wallet isn’t supported everywhere, but it’s a step toward cashless and cardless transactions.
• Google Voice – Make cheap international calls, send free text messages, read voicemail transcripts and more.
• Google Search App – Makes Google search easy to navigate on your mobile device.
• Google Shopper – Helps mobile users find products to buy and make purchasing decisions.
• Google Goggles  - An image recognition app that allows users to take a photo of an object to find more information about it. In its early stages, but exciting technology for visual search.

Mobile Content: Google Content for Mobile

• Youtube – The world’s best video sharing website. Nothing else comes close! A full 40% of video views on YouTube now come from mobile devices, adding up to a billion views a day.
• Google Play – An app store for purchasing mobile apps, ebooks and music, this is Google’s answer to iTunes.

Mobile Devices: Google Devices for Mobile

• Android – Google’s Linux-based, open source operating system for mobile devices is the world’s most widely used smartphone platform.
• Motorola – The dream is to combine Motorola’s great hardware with awesome Android software, but so far this dream hasn’t been realized.
• Chrome for Mobile – Google’s Chrome browser for mobile makes the web easier to navigate from mobile devices.
• Google Glass – Google’s much-hyped augmented reality glasses are still in development, but early models are reminiscent of science fiction. Fascinating and scary stuff!

The Future of Mobile

This infographic doesn’t even cover all the mobile products that Google has in development – just the most exciting and (so far) most profitable of its forays into the mobile space. Clearly, Google is positioned to be one of just a few major players in mobile as the revolution continues. As far as mobile advertising goes, Google has barely scratched the surface of what’s possible. You can expect them to make huge advances in the realm of mobile advertising – and billions and billions in mobile ad revenues in the coming years.

Google has rolled out a new “click-to-download” ad template that makes it easier for people to find and install mobile apps, directly from a Google search listing page on your mobile device. The new ad format allows users to download a mobile app from iTunes or the Google Play Store with just one click from a search listing on their mobile device. The new ad template is part of the Enhanced Campaigns roll-out, which should be available to all AdWords accounts by now.

The mobile app market is a huge, fast-growing market with over 700,000 Android and iPhone apps today. In fact, the mobile app industry is believed by some estimates to be a $30 billion market in 2012 – which is an utterly remarkable statistic considering this industry didn’t even exist 5 years ago! Google appears to have noticed this too, and so they’ve rolled out this new ad template to solve for this common advertising use case.

How to Advertise your Mobile App on Google AdWords

Advertising your mobile app in Google is easier than ever. To create a “Click-to-Download” ad in your AdWords account, navigate to the “New Ad” button and click on the “App / Digital Content Ad” option, as illustrated below. This only works for enhanced campaigns.

Next, pick the App Platform, Android or iOS. (Sorry, Microsoft and Blackberry users/developers, your phones are not supported at this time!)

Once you’ve picked the app platform, you can then search for your app in the respective app store (Google Play or iTunes). Type in the name of your app, click “Look up app,” then pick the app that you’re trying to promote.

Next you just type out the headline and description for your ad. Google will show you an ad preview to give you an idea of how your app download ad will look like on a tablet and on a mobile phone.

As you can see, the new app download format prominently features your mobile app’s icon, and a green link to the app download page, both of which are sure to drive additional attention to your listing and drive more app installs.

The Click to Download Ad: It Just Works

The new click to download ad format is a huge step forward in ease of use in comparison to the previous way of doing this, and is part of Google’s master plan to make ads smarter and more responsive to user context. When I talked to Surojit Chatterjee this week, he explained:

Previously there was no easy way to do this. Now you put a URL to iTunes or Google Play, we’ll figure out if it works on tablet or mobile, then we’ll only show the ads to the right people. So, if you have an iPhone app, we’re not going to show that ad to an Android user or on a tablet if it can’t run on a tablet. We’ll automatically figure it out. We also have better ad formatting than before. Most of the App developer use cases seem to be nicely handled. 

New Mobile App Ad Extensions, Too!

In addition to the launch of the Click to Download ad format, Google has also released a new Mobile App Extension, which lets app marketers deep link to a specific page within their mobile app, right from the ad.

To create a Mobile App Extension, go to the “Ad Extension” tab, then select “App Extension” as shown in the following screenshot:

For example, a user who already has your app installed can be brought to a specific section inside your mobile app, and could complete a conversion inside your app.

Mobile App Advertising Made Simple

If you’re an app developer, particularly if you’re launching a new app, you need to invest in getting some credibility in terms of a large number of installs and reviews so that everyone looking for your type of app picks your app from the list. Alternatively, if you already have a big number of installs and reviews, you could employ this advertising as a way to get even more reviews and downloads and prevent competing apps from ever having a chance.

In summary, the new app download ad format is a simple, powerful, effective way to get people to find and use your mobile app right away. Upgrade to enhanced campaigns and so you can start taking advantage of this format now!

Offer Extensions enables AdWords advertisers to post a rebate, coupon, or discount to their regular Google search ads. Here’s a peek at what they look like:

Clicking the offer will take users to a landing page, detailing the logistics of the offer and how to use it. From there, users can print out the offer or can save it for later by saving it to the My Offers section of Google Offers.

There are plenty incentives for this new ad extension – it lets advertisers easily enter the ever-popular deal space without contending with Groupon and Living Social-esk sites.

Offer Extensions also mean more search ad real estate, broadcasting discounts that are likely to bring in better click-through-rates, although the cost-per-click will be the same as it would be for a regular ad.

Setting Up Offer Extensions

AdWords Offer Extensions can be created at the campaign level or ad group level, and are fairly simple to set up. You’ll need to start first with an “enhanced campaign.” Once the campaign is created, click Ad Extensions à  Offer Extensions, and then “Create New Extension”.

From there you fill in the details concerning the redemption dates, the offer headline, redemption details, etc. Make sure to follow best practices to get the most out of your Offer Extension.

The offers won’t show up in every SERP – only when an ad already appears in one of the top three ad positions, and only if Google think the offer is relevant to a searcher’s query.

What Does Offer Extensions Really Mean?

Offer Extensions cuts advertisers a pretty sweet deal for a number of reasons:

• Advertisers can post “deals” without going through deal sites and using the familiar AdWords landscape.
• Extra Google Search ad space that has the potential to stand out and be more clickable than regular text ads.
• Online activity can now affect offline activity – a simple Google ad offer can drive business to a physical brick and mortar store.

Is This the End of Groupon?

Could AdWords ad extensions spell out the end for Groupon? Sites like Groupon and Living Social post business deals on their site, relying on their name to bring in potential customers. However, Google Offer Extensions does one better, matching an advertisers’ offer with relevant users who are ready to make a purchase, increasing the likelihood of a conversion.

Groupon is known as being a difficult group to work with – they are known for taking a big cut of deal profits, and often deal sites bring in one-time users who are just looking for a good bargain. Google Offer Extensions only shows discount offers to users who already are interested in what you are selling, therefore bypassing the frugal rebate wranglers who are just looking for a deal.

Advertisers should keep their eyes out for this new ad extension – it could mean big changes for the existing deal space, and offers a lot to AdWords advertisers.

Recently, I had the chance to chat with Surojit Chatterjee, the head of global mobile search ads product at Google. Surojit was one of the key product leaders behind the recently released Enhanced Campaigns. In this interview, we discuss the upcoming changes in detail, including what trends and behavior drove the changes, what we can expect from Google’s mobile products in the future, as well as tips and strategies for managing Enhanced Campaigns.

Larry: What’s the driving force behind the new Enhanced Campaigns? What is Google trying to achieve?

Surojit: There’s a mobile revolution going on and a few things have became clear. First, constant connectivity. Mobile, laptop, tablet – I always have three devices I carry around with me. I’m possibly an exception because I work on mobile, but if you look around, everyone has multiple devices, and people are switching between them.

The other thing is that devices are proliferating greatly in terms of form factor and capabilities. You get larger phones (“phablets”) and tablets that connect to keyboards and become a notebook. So the lines are blurring. What’s becoming super important is that people are motivated by their user context.

What that means is that what device people use and what they do on that device depends on where they are, their location and the time of day. Am I at home in the evening? Am I at work at noon? Am I outside, looking for a pizza? User context, like where a person is and at what time, and what they’re doing, is way more important that what device is being used.

So we can no longer tackle this problem by asking advertisers to optimize for every category of device. We have been asking advertisers to optimize for mobile to get good ROI from mobile search, but it’s just not scalable anymore.

How do you see SMB’s benefitting from the changes?

Firstly, we design AdWords as a tool for businesses of all sizes and types, rather than any particular segment.

That said, I think SMB’s will benefit greatly, because it was particularly hard for SMB’s to figure out how to do mobile advertising well – should I split my campaigns this way or that way, for example. What should I do? They don’t have all the resources to do this work as larger advertisers do. So what EC’s give them is a very simple way to advertise across all devices, and the control to show the right ad.

Can you give me an example of this?

I was the lead product manager for click-to-call ads on mobile, and during the beta testing, I worked with my dentist as a beta customer – and he loved it! As a dentist, he got most of his inquiries via phone calls, and the phone was ringing a lot more at his practice. He started getting calls from local users using geo-targeting, and his business was growing. But one of his comments to me was: “This is great but I’m a small business, I don’t have a call center to receive calls on nights and weekends, so I’d rather have those users get sent to my website and fill out a contact form. How do I do that?”

So I explained to him you can do that by splitting up your campaigns, having one with dayparting that features phone numbers during office hours, and another without it for nights and weekends. And I could see that this was starting to go beyond him. It’s not that he’s not smart, it’s just that he doesn’t have the time to do this work, and to manage multiple campaigns going forward.

With EC, he can do something very powerful and very simple. He creates one campaign with click-to-call ads, with a click-to-call ad scheduled to run during office hours. It’s that simple. And that makes stuff really simple and easy for SMB’s.

We’ve heard that there are differences in the types of queries being executed on desktop vs. mobile. For example, 1 in 3 mobile searches have local search intent, compared with 1 in 5 for desktop search. What kind of search query differences are you seeing between desktop vs. tablet and tablet vs. mobile search?

We’re seeing context is one important key that drives search behavior. User context drives what people search for, and the actions they take. So for example, say I am at home in the evening, and I’m doing a search. The actions that I will take will be largely the same if I’m using a smartphone, tablet or notebook, because the context is the same. Particularly between notebook and tablet, the query patterns are very similar. Pick any category of keyword search, then pick a specific time of day and location and they’re very similar. The reason is because tablets are used at home, or a stationary location. It’s not a device that’s used when you’re out and about, like on a trip looking for a restaurant.

In terms of advertising we see tablets performing very similar to desktop as well, and that’s due to the fact that tablets often have larger screens and people feel comfortable doing types of commerce actions that they would have otherwise done on a desktop. So between tablet and notebook, we see the user behavior and ad performance as being very similar. Between mobile and tablet/desktop, there are clear differences, which is why we have stuff like mobile preferred ads in EC’s.

If you’re on a mobile device, and you’re on the go, then this is different – we saw this in our data as well. Mobile users are often looking to take action immediately. The time between intent and action is shorter on mobile actions. People will search for something then call immediately, or drive to that store immediately. That’s why they’re searching.

In terms of performance, we’re seeing mobile performing differently because the actions are different. And sometimes it’s harder to measure those actions. Some of our advertisers have figured out ways to measure off-line actions, but most of them haven’t. That’s why we have created specific optimizations for mobile, like mobile preferred ads and extensions, bid adjustments to control your ROI from paid search, etc.

One of the reasons for separating mobile and desktop campaigns was the ability to specify different keywords. Going forward, it’s not possible to target device- or tablet-only campaigns. Is there still a way to target different keywords for mobile and desktop? For example, what if your business use case is selling mobile apps?

First, let me address the mobile apps piece. To be perfectly honest, there’s so much cool stuff in enhanced campaigns, that we weren’t able to elaborate on every feature when we first launched, but what we have done as part of the change is create a new type of ad, the App and Digital Content Ad, and there’s a new ad template for promoting mobile apps. Previously there was no easy way to do this. Now you put a URL to iTunes or Google Play, we’ll figure out if it works on tablet or mobile, then we’ll only show the ads to the right people. So, if you have an iPhone app, we’re not going to show that ad to an Android user or on a tablet if it can’t run on a tablet. We’ll automatically figure it out. We also have better ad formatting than before. Most of the App developer use cases seem to be nicely handled.

That’s just one example, but we’re really focused on looking at specific use cases and how we can help solve them in a way that doesn’t complicate the interface for 99% of advertisers. So we have to strike a balance. I can’t comment right now about future development plans and specific features, but I will say that we are focused on listening to our advertiser feedback. That is what we have done with the app download use case, because we understood that market very well.

Pre-EC, an advertiser could set different max CPC bids for all of the keywords that were targeting mobile search. With Enhanced Campaigns, there appears to be a single desktop-to-mobile bid multiplier for all keywords within a campaign. Do you anticipate giving us the ability to override the mobile bid adjustments and set mobile bids at a keyword level?

There are now three different bid adjustments: Device, Location and Time of Day, all at the campaign level. For a given keyword, there are multiple bid adjustments, and you get to a final bid by multiplying the bid adjustments to the base bid. The reason I’m explaining this is because at a campaign level, I think the math is still doable and understandable. As we go deeper and deeper, the tradeoff is how complex do we want to make this for the majority of advertisers, versus how much control we give.

We are listening to feedback and looking at how people are actually using the product, because we can’t hear from millions of advertisers at the same time. We continue to watch this space closely to figure out what will make things easier. Our current thinking is that having these three levers lets you fine-tune your bids in a pretty granular way, and before jumping into more bid options, we’ll see how our advertisers are using and optimizing with them.

Google is no longer doing behind-the-scenes discounting for mobile ads – advertisers are now asked to set an initial mobile bid multiplier when migrating to the new campaigns. Google will provide a suggested bid multiplier value, which may be up or down. Can you give some additional detail on how Google calculates that value?

We’re looking at two things:

1. Traffic Estimator Data – We look at overall auction data to figure out how much more traffic you’ll get as you change your bid, and look for a happy medium there.
2. Bidding Patterns – We also look at how similar advertisers have been bidding for a mobile optimized campaign vs. desktop campaigns for similar keywords.

Based on these two factors, we figure out a number that we feel is competitive for you. And the number is purely there as a guide. You have full choice to set the mobile bid multiplier to any number, including minus 100% which would opt you out of mobile.

Do you recommend revisiting the mobile bid multiplier periodically? If so, how often?

You should be looking at it pretty often until you think you have reached your campaign objectives. I would recommend that you follow the initial suggestion, then check back often to see if it’s performing for you. There’s a bit of an averaging effect with the initial bid suggestion – we don’t know precisely what your advertising goals and objectives are, they may be different from other advertisers, so you need to check it, fine-tune it – it’s very similar to bid management guidance on a regular keyword. For any given keyword, we’ll show you bid simulation data, how much traffic you’ll get, how your cost will change, but we let advertisers decide how to bid because everyone has a different objective.

For the average advertiser, look every few days or once a week. Some of the most sophisticated advertisers might check every hour. Try to iterate until you reach your goal, and even then, check periodically. As we gather more data we’ll publish more best practices around setting mobile bid adjustments.

Does Google have any data to share on the performance of mobile optimized campaigns using call extensions and other best practices vs. non-optimized desktop ads?

When an advertiser uses click-to-call ads with call extensions and location extensions, we see an average CTR increase of 6-8%. In general, we see calls doing really well on mobile; right now we’re doing more than 27 million calls per month.

Will Google’s new mobile call conversion type (where you specify a conversion based on length of call) be compatible with Google’s bid management functions, like Conversion Optimizer and enhanced CPC bidding?

At this point, the new conversion data isn’t being used by Conversion Optimizer and auto-bidding tools. We are of course working on this but I have nothing to announce right now.

Regarding call reporting, it’s great to be able to run a report to see what numbers called and the call duration, and thanks for getting rid of the $1 fee! Do you anticipate building out any additional reporting features? Like say, call recording?

We’re working hard to make this as robust as possible in terms of reporting capabilities. We brought in the power of Google Voice in the US, UK, Canada, and many other countries – but it’s a very challenging project. It requires compatibility with phone services, and every country has different telephony laws, so we have a lot of complexity and we need to make it super simple for our advertisers. My vision was to make it so simple, that an advertiser could create a click-to-call ad, then automatically you get all the tracking which looks just like a phone bill. For every call the business got, we tell you the duration of the call, when the call happened, when it ended, and all of that. It’s a very powerful report and as you can see we’re trying to give the best visibility that we can, period. This is not a really easy thing to do, it took a ton of time and investment to come this far, and we’ll continue to work on it.

In 2011, the Quality Score algorithm was updated to take into consideration having a mobile optimized landing page. Yet last month, Larry Page said in the Q4 earnings call:

I’m amazed by Chrome on my Android phone … Chrome is just an amazing experience. So, using my Nexus phone or other smartphones from the latest generation, those phones are almost like using a desktop of last year or something like that…. We don’t necessarily want [advertisers] to have mobile sites [because] some are too simple and I find I get kind of frustrated on my phone sometimes when I have these mobile-specific sites because I am using a modern Nexus 4 that can actually view up the full site and I just find it confusing… So, I think as an industry, we need to improve these experiences and that will take a bit of time, but I’d almost say that we should be designing for the kind of mobile phones that we have now, and that those experiences should work on all devices.

Is it still considered a best practice to create mobile optimized landing pages? If so, what does that look like?

We encourage businesses to create responsive design sites: This means you have one site that adjusts appropriately and renders correctly for the right device. That said, we support a variety of architectures for mobile sites, like a mobile-specific site, and encourage every business to figure out what the best approach is for them.

I think Larry Page’s comment is that he wants a site to work on every device. The devices need to get better and better. That’s what Google has been advancing with Android and Chrome – we really want to make the Web better. Users shouldn’t have to remember different addresses for a business, like .mobi, etc. Ideally everything should just work regardless of what device is being used. His vision is aligned with where we’d like the industry to go: we want browsers and devices to be more powerful/capable, and for advertisers/publishers to adopt a way of designing their websites such that it works on different devices.

We realize that we won’t get here tomorrow. It will take time for all users to have powerful enough devices and for businesses/publishers to roll out responsive sites, but at the same time we don’t want people to dumb down their sites. It’s not enough to build a mobile site at a surface level. I talked to a big business in the travel industry, and they built a mobile site that didn’t work as well as their desktop site, and the problem was that they had dumbed down the site. You can’t expect a site that has no information to do as well as one that has lots of information. It’s more about laying out the information differently, with the understanding that people don’t have a precise mouse pointer at their fingertips. Make the website touch-friendly, and figure out what information is more relevant to the mobile visitor. Like phone numbers and directions – make that information available so they can act quickly. It doesn’t mean remove the other useful information, it may be more about positioning content.

I find EC to be one of the most significant changes to AdWords in the last five years. As the founder of a startup, I’ve witnessed – and driven – some pretty profound reinventions of our product stack. Our software today looks very different from when I first approached investors. Do Enhanced Campaigns constitute a complete re-envisioning of the way AdWords campaign management works?

The world was very different when we created AdWords more than 10 years ago. If we were to have developed AdWords today, we would have done it very differently. And this is exactly what we have done with Enhanced Campaigns – we are thinking about users and their context, and the actions people take depending on where they are and when. That’s what EC’s are about. So what we are trying to do is give our advertisers a set of powerful tools and make it really really simple to reach all users on all devices at all times. At the same time we want to give advertisers the ability to customize their ad text for mobile and adjust how much they spend depending on user context, without needing to split campaigns and do very specific, manual, per-device optimizations and tweaks.

So the summary of this is that EC is really making AdWords ready for the new world where we see this huge proliferation of devices. I see a future where every imaginable device will be connected to the internet, your TV, your watch, everything – they’ll all interact with each other, and a user will switch from one device to another. This is a huge opportunity for our advertisers to connect with the right users at the right time with the right message!

Previously, Google Offer Extensions were available in a private beta for select AdWords advertisers. The feature is now on track to be rolled out to all advertisers along with a ton other changes by the end of February.

Here’s what an AdWords Offer Extension looks like in the wild:

How Do AdWords Offer Extensions Work?

Advertisers can attach a redeemable offer to their regular Google search ad. When users click the offer, they’ll be sent to one of two locations, depending on the advertiser’s chosen redemption option:

• Online Redemption: If your deal is for online redemption, users who click the “view offer” link will be taken to your offer page, complete with redemption details, existing on your business’s website.

• In-Store Redemption: If you choose to do an in-store redemption option, users who click the “view offer” link will be taken to a Google hosted landing page. From there, users can choose to print out the offer or “save it for later” by sending it to the “My Offers” section of Google Offers for later in-store use.

Why is Google Implementing the Offer Extension?

Google has been fiddling around in the deal space for some time now. It makes sense that Google wants to enter the deal market space – they have over a million local advertisers, and the coupon concept works well in tandem with local businesses.

Google in 2010 was reported to have been in talks to buy Groupon for as much as $6 billion – an offer that was rejected by Groupon, which later filed for an IPO. As a result, Google Offers was created in 2011 to directly compete with deal sites like Groupon and Living Social – the Groupon concept was considered relatively easy to repeat and replicate, which Google did with its own offering.

Google Offers failed to take off with quite the horsepower Google was hoping for, but the Googs wasn’t about to give up that easily.

Google “Save to Wallet” was the next step in Google’s quest for couponing. “Save to Wallet” is a feature for Google Wallet that lets users save deals they discover to use at a later date. It basically serves as an online coupon clipper for coupons that can be used at brick and mortar businesses or online.

Google Wallet as a whole has been struggling to wrangle in users, despite being a cool product, partly because the technology doesn’t work across all mobile phones. The “Save to Wallet” feature continues the trend of Google emphasizing local.

And now we have AdWords Offer Extensions, a logical next step in Google’s efforts to delve into the realm of coupons, offers and rebates. It’s clear that Google sees the value of coupons and deals, especially when combined with local searches, which account for roughly one of every 4 searches conducted on Google. Offer Extensions are a smart move for Google, but it’ll benefit advertisers even more if they take Google up on the offer.

Offer Extensions: Better ROI Measurement for Advertisers

Online advertisers – in particular those with physical retail presences – have long lamented the difficulty in measuring the all-encompassing value of online marketing. The traditional model of conversion tracking online measures completed actions as those that end in a “thank you” page, be it at the end of a form or an online purchase, but the real measure of online advertising is fairly elusive. How many web surfers saw your business’s ad, but instead of buying online, went to your brick and mortar location?

While measuring the full ramifications of online ads continues to be a challenge, Google has recognized the challenges advertisers face in being unable to track how PPC traffic affects footfall.

AdWords Offer Extensions closes the gap between online and offline activity considerably. Google keeps track of how many users save and print your online ad offer, so that users can better measure their ROI. When users choose to print out your ad offer to redeem your deal in-store, you’re getting a better glimpse at the ramifications of online action toward offline.

AdWords Offer Extensions Let Advertisers Easily Enter the Deal Market

Coupons and discounts are big. Whether it’s “buy one, get one free” or “20% off,” if users know they are getting a deal, they are more likely to go ahead with a purchase. Everyone enjoys the feeling of getting a bargain.

Coupons mean more eyeballs and attention for advertisers. Even if users see your deal, save it for later, and forget about it, they’ve still interacted with your business and brand more than they might have if you didn’t put out an ad offer.

Putting up a deal with a site like Groupon or Living Social can be quite a hassle. Some of the biggest complaints are the very high costs and lack of control over your deal once it launches. Offer Extensions serve as a great alterative to deal sites like Groupon, letting advertisers enter the deal market through the familiar form of AdWords.

The Value of Foot Traffic

AdWords’ Offer Extensions feature gives advertisers the capacity to turn online interest into in-store traffic. What’s more valuable? An online purchase or a physical purchase at a traditional store? The answer often depends on the size of your business (big name chain vs. small local business) and your industry.

Small local businesses often gain the most from in-store purchases. For many businesses, part of their perceived value lies in their accessibility for users. This is especially true of places that provide products or services that don’t work well (or at all) online – think flower boutiques, ice cream parlors, and cafes.

Even larger businesses that are capable of online orders can benefit from consumers taking advantage of in-store deals. A user may find an online deal for Olympia Sports, for example, and use that coupon, have an order delivered, and that’s the end of the line. An in-store offer, on the other hand, prompts a user to find a nearby Olympia Sports. Once a user has visited that physical store and its location, the individual will be more likely to return there in the future for sporting needs that can’t be dealt with online.

How to Set Up Google Offer Extensions in AdWords: Easy as Pie

One of the great things about Offer Extensions is how easy they are to implement. It’s a fairly simple process, but Offer Extensions are only available in “enhanced campaigns,” so when you create your campaign, you’ll need to choose one of these campaign types:

• Search & Display Networks – All features
• Search Network only – All features

You can issue offers at the campaign level of your AdWords account by clicking Ad Extensions

Google today announced a bold and sweeping set of changes to their AdWords PPC management platform in a bid to greatly simplify mobile ad campaign management – at stake is the future of Google’s advertising business itself. All of the new features – which I believe will greatly increase both mobile advertising adoption and Google’s revenues from mobile search – will become available to customers by the end of the month. In this article, I’ll walk through all of the coming changes in detail. If you’re interested in the growing mobile search space (and you all should be!), pay close attention. These changes will affect all advertisers before the end of the year.

Why the Big Change?

We live in a multi-screen, constantly connected mobile world today, and marketers need to be able to easily reach people across all devices with relevant ads. Over the last 5 years, growth in search query volume from mobile phones has greatly outpaced growth in query volume from desktop computers – the number of daily searches on Google from mobile devices is expected to surpass daily desktop search volume by next year.

Yet there’s been a big challenge with mobile advertising adoption at Google – to take advantage of the sophisticated mobile advertising features and strategies that are required to be successful, like geo-targeting and device-specific targeting, advertisers must take on an exponential amount of additional campaign management complexity.

Meaning, in the current AdWords platform, advertisers are expected to create multiple different campaigns – one for every city and every possible device combination, which quickly becomes pretty difficult, if not impossible for the average advertiser to manage. Because this is so overwhelming, only the most sophisticated agencies and advertisers with large budgets and dedicated in-house PPC managers took advantage of Google’s various mobile advertising features. Here’s a screenshot to give you an idea of just how challenging mobile advertising was on Google AdWords before today (click to enlarge)

We estimate that within the small and medium-sized business segment, less than 1 in 25 bothered doing the work of mobile-enabling their PPC campaigns, because it was such a hassle.

Google realizes that they need to simplify mobile advertising, particularly given that mobile search accounts for roughly half of all searches. Accordingly they are now rolling out new “Enhanced Campaigns” with the goal of greatly simplifying PPC campaign management. Let’s take a look at how they work.

Introducing Enhanced Campaigns

What’s changing is the way ad campaigns are structured. Google is rethinking how we deal with the multi-device world we live in, and is upgrading the decade-old PPC campaign structure to have the ability to leverage all of the important mobile advertising features, without having to create separate campaigns for every location and device combination – which was the previous best practice.

Going forward, ad campaigns will be different in several ways:

1. New Bidding Options: Currently, AdWords campaigns support a time of day-based bid adjustments (e.g., you can bid more when your store is open and bid less when you are closed – which makes obvious sense). Google is expanding on this concept and including new bid adjustment options for location (e.g., bid more for searches conducted close to my store, and less for the neighboring towns and communities), and another bid adjustment option for device (bid more or less for mobile searches). Rather than having to create specific geo-targeted campaigns and mobile specific campaigns, you can now do that all in one campaign.
2. Much Smarter Ads: Ads are getting a lot smarter about user context. Within a single campaign, you can have ads for desktop and mobile – similar to how you can have different sized image ads within a single display ad campaign. Google will make note of what device is executing the search and will correctly pick the right ad to run with.  Rather than having to specify different campaigns for tablet and mobile, etc., ads and settings will be adjusted for you automatically, based on user context.

So overall, the idea of these new Enhanced Campaigns is to take the mobile advertising features that were previously available – but rarely used because they were too hard to implement – and now offer them in a much more scalable way for all Google advertisers.

New Bid Adjustments:  Location, Time of Day & Device Based Bidding

So how do all these new bid adjustments work, exactly? For starters, all of the keywords and bids in your account still exist – no changes there.

Essentially the key difference is that rather than exploding the size of your PPC account by breaking out your PPC campaigns into hundreds of possible campaign variants, you only need to specify a single bid adjustment factor for location and device.

Specifically, for geo-specific and time-of-day based bidding, you’ll be able to specify a bid adjustment multiplier from -100% to +300%.

For mobile devices, you can now specify a bid adjustment between -100% and +300%. If you absolutely want to opt out of mobile (for example, suppose your company sells only desktop software that doesn’t work on mobile), then you can bid it down by -100%, which effectively turns off mobile search.

As a result of having the new campaign bidding options for location, time of day, and device – all device targeting is going away.

RIP Tablet Targeting Options

Another thing that’s changed is that Google is no longer differentiating between tablets and desktop/notebook searches.  Google says that with the device ecosystem rapidly evolving, the boundary between tablet and notebook is becoming a bit blurred.  Take for example, a Windows Surface device that can operate as both a notebook and a tablet.

Google believes that the core use case of tablet computing replaces desktop and notebook computer usage in the home – and as a result, they view tablets as being pretty much aligned with desktop, in that they both have a pretty similar mix of search terms typically being executed, and similar ad performance of those searches.

New and Improved: Smarter Ads

The second big bucket of new features has to do with smarter ads where you’ll be able to customize your ads for mobile.

Essentially what is offered is a check-box that says: “I want this ad to run on mobile.” If you just have one ad in an ad group, and you check this box, then it’s going to run across all devices. But if you do have an ad group that has the new universal ads and mobile ads in the same ad group, Google will always display your mobile ad to run on the mobile devices. Essentially, mobile and desktop ads can now live together, in the same campaigns!

Since creating a great mobile ad experience involves more than just changing a keyword bid, Google is rolling out some new ad extension management features. These include check boxes for your various ad extensions, like call extensions or site link extensions, that specify that you only want your extension to run on mobile or desktop. This way, advertisers can continue to customize the ads, landing pages, ad text (etc.) that are optimized for mobile and desktop search, respectively. So basically all of the existing ad extensions (such as location extensions, communication extensions, social extensions, etc.) will have the ability to designate them as mobile or desktop specific extensions.

Additionally, ad extensions will all have new scheduling capabilities – like the ability to run certain ad extensions during happy hour, etc.

No More Mobile Call Reporting Fees!

Previously Google had offered mobile call reporting features to allow an advertiser to see what phone numbers called, when, and how long the call lasted. This was helpful but a bit bizarre in that Google actually charged advertisers a dollar extra per call to use it – which, sadly, acted as a disincentive to adopt mobile search features!

Going forward, Google is dumping the extra mobile call reporting fee because they would like all advertisers to take advantage of advanced call metrics and reporting as much as possible.

New Mobile Advertising Conversion Type

The ROI of mobile search is systematically under-reported because current conversion tracking is based on a user finding a thank-you page after having placed an order online or filling out a contact-us form. In mobile search, the call to action is often to make a phone call, so traditional conversion tracking doesn’t work.

Therefore, a mobile advertising conversion type is being introduced. The conversion type is based on call duration and is specified by the advertiser. For example, an advertiser can specify a minimum duration of a call that you consider to be a conversion in your reporting.

This new conversion type should give advertisers greater insight into the true value of mobile advertising and will result in increased mobile ad adoption.

Enhanced Campaigns: The Automatic Upgrade Path

Like a lot of other Google AdWords changes, Google will give advertisers until mid-year to manually upgrade to the new Enhanced Campaigns, and then will automatically upgrade all accounts.

1. If you’re like the vast majority of advertisers and you never bothered with separating your campaigns into different experiences for desktop vs. mobile – then you’re in luck! Your upgrade path is pretty straightforward. You just need to set your mobile bid adjustment factor, which Google will set for you automatically – more on that shortly.
2. If you’ve previously created a desktop-only campaign, then by default it would be upgraded to run across desktop and mobile devices, and Google will automatically set a non-zero initial mobile bid adjustment factor on your behalf.
3. If you’ve previously created a mobile-only campaign (i.e. no desktop targeting), then by default it will be upgraded to go across mobile and desktop, and they’ll set an initial bid adjustment factor for you.
4. If you had previously made copies of the same campaign, one for desktop, and one for mobile, then you’ll need to merge those back together into one.

I personally don’t agree with the default settings for the auto-upgrade paths (2) and (3) above, because advertisers who had previously separated mobile/desktop campaigns (again, this was considered the best practice) will now end up having two campaigns targeting similar keywords with different ad experiences that target both mobile and desktop, even though they were likely intended to target either desktop or mobile search. It would have made more sense to me if the bid adjustment factor for mobile search was set to -100% for desktop only campaigns. I suspect the decision was made for business reasons (to grow Google Revenues).

Setting Your Mobile Bid Adjustment Factor

One of the key things that you need to do when migrating to the new Enhanced Campaigns is to set your mobile bid adjustment factor to specify how much more or less you’d like to bid for mobile searches –the range is between -100% and 300%.

If you haven’t yet separated out your mobile and desktop campaigns in AdWords, you may have noticed that on average, the cost per click for mobile search is quite a bit lower than that of desktop search. What’s currently happening is that Google is doing some behind the scenes discounting to determine a mobile CPC bid for you, even though you haven’t explicitly specified a bid amount for mobile search.

Going forward, it’s the responsibility of the advertiser to set mobile bids. Google says that they’re going to try to initially set that as best they can (either up or down) for an advertiser based on auction metrics and looking at the keywords in your campaigns and what other advertisers are doing, but that their guess isn’t going to be as good as if someone makes a conscious decision for their business..

Google AdWords Enhanced Campaigns Roll-Out Schedule

All of these changes are pretty huge and it will take Google a few months to roll everything out. Here’s a rough idea of what the schedule looks like:

• Early February: What’s happening today is just a pre-announcement that a change is coming.
• End of February: All advertisers will be able to start upgrading their campaigns from within the Google AdWords application. There will be a little announcement in the application that says you’re eligible to upgrade a campaign. The changes will also be available in the AdWords API so that Google Partners can will have enough time to adopt these new features, with the caveat that device targeting and stuff will be going away.
• Late June (tentative): All campaigns are auto-upgraded to Enhanced Campaigns.

It will be an option until mid-year. Then enhanced campaigns will be the default for all campaigns.

What’s the Real Reason for All These Changes?

In addition to increasing adoption rates for mobile advertising in AdWords by greatly simplifying campaign creation, management and reporting for mobile search, Google wants to, eliminate the gap between mobile and desktop CPC’s.

So Are Mobile CPC’s Going Up?

Yes. I believe that on average, they’ll be the same as desktop CPC’s after the auto-upgrade rolls out due to increased advertiser competition and all of the auto-set mobile bid adjustment factors. In fact, last month Google CEO Larry Page was asked on an earnings call if he thought that mobile CPC’s would be going up any time soon, to which he responded:

“I am very, very optimistic about it. I think that [mobile] CPCs will improve … Obviously; I mentioned that we are working to simplify our ad system for advertisers. In the light of all these changes and I am excited about our plans there:  We don’t have anything to announce today but I am very excited about our efforts there. I think that we will make rapid progress in that area.”

What’s WordStream Doing with Enhanced Campaigns?

WordStream was one of just 3 companies to be pre-briefed on the changes over a month ago because we work with nearly a thousand SMB advertisers. We’re excited to add these capabilities to our PPC management platform, and we already have teams working on it!  We’ll be publishing additional tips and best practices to our blog soon!

Summary: Are the Changes Good for Advertisers?

I think the changes make a lot of sense. Right now there are a bunch of advertisers that opt out of mobile search because they think (incorrectly) that the ROI of mobile search isn’t there. They’re led to believe that’s the case because they don’t fully take advantage of all the powerful mobile features that Google has to offer. And they don’t bother with those features because it’s pretty complicated and requires extra work on the part of the advertiser.

In particular, small businesses that I work with every day aren’t too keen on doubling the number of ad campaigns in their account because that doubles the campaign management complexity – and they have other things to do, like running their business! It’s also a bit more challenging to track the ROI of mobile search, and the call reporting costs are incurred by the advertiser. As a result, some advertisers make the determination that it’s not worth the hassle. As you can see, it’s a bit of a vicious cycle here.

I believe that the ROI of mobile search is very compelling – you have a lot of valuable leverage, like precise location, immediacy, commercial intent, and 1-click-to-call going for it. It’s always been a matter of just getting the advertiser to adopt the somewhat complicated best practices in terms of campaign setup and reporting to realize these benefits. By simplifying this process, I’m confident that you’ll see an uptake in mobile advertising adoption and ROI. I think the new enhanced campaigns will be particularly helpful for the SMBs who are not yet taking advantage of mobile search.

What’s Your Take on the New Google AdWords Enhanced Mobile Campaigns?

Let me know your thoughts in the comment fields below!

WordStream conducted extensive research into the seasonality and trends of keyword searches on Google corresponding to chicken wings and hundreds of other popular Super Bowl snacks including:

• Guacamole
• Chili
• Nachos
• Pulled Pork
• Pigs in a blanket
• Doritos
• Seven Layer Dip

The astonishing results revealed a near perfect correlation between the demand for chicken wings and buffalo chicken dip with the NFL season. The results are illustrated in graphical form, here:

Note that for the last 9 consecutive years, search volume for Buffalo Chicken Dip followed a similar pattern, increasing significantly in September (which corresponds to the start of the NFL season), then peaking in December (corresponding to end of the regular season) and peaking again in February, corresponding to the Super Bowl.

“The entire chicken wing economy appears to be based on the NFL season,” said Larry Kim, Founder and CTO of WordStream, Inc. “No other snack or beverage that we examined exhibited such a strong correlation to the Super Bowl and NFL season, and I can confidently forecast that this trend will repeat itself this year.”

National Chicken Council Forecasts 1.23 Billion Chicken Wings To be Gobbled Up This Weekend

According to the National Chicken Council, “Super Bowl weekend is unquestionably the biggest time of the year for wings.” Americans will eat well over a billion of them this weekend while watching the big game. About four out of five Americans eat chicken wings and more than half of those sports fans (57%) slather their wings in ranch dressing, with the rest opting for BBQ (43%), hot sauce (38%), or blue cheese (35%). (“Ranch dressing” keyword volume also peaks in January, with another peak in July – is that when the new ranch flavors come out?)

The search volume for “chicken wings” increases by approximately 75% every February, relative to the 3 months prior, though the snack has more steady-state demand relative to buffalo chicken dip.

Google estimates that Americans search for “Chicken Wings” approximately 550,000 times per month on average.

Other Chicken Snacks Seen as Super Bowl Favorites

Other, similar keyword searches corresponding to chicken snacks were all seen to exhibit similar trends, including the following keyword searches:

• Buffalo dip recipe
• Buffalo chicken recipe
• Chicken dip recipe
• Chicken dip recipes
• Chicken wing dip
• Buffalo wing dip

We can therefore conclude that in the event of an NFL lockout, the chicken economy (and buffalo sauce) would be in trouble!

What’s Your Industry’s Chicken Dip?

Every industry has its own version of “buffalo chicken dip,” a product or concept with big seasonal peaks. By carefully anticipating those keyword trends and having your search marketing campaigns at the ready, you could hatch the same kind of profits as chicken farms do on Superbowl Sunday.

Tweet This Story

Search volume for the keyword “buffalo chicken dip” corresponds perfectly to Super Bowl season!

Unlike Google and other web search engines, Facebook Graph Search will allow users to find Facebook-only content in four main areas (example queries from the Facebook press release below):

People: “friends who live in my city,” “people from my hometown who like hiking,” “friends of friends who have been to Yosemite National Park,” “software engineers who live in San Francisco and like skiing,” “people who like things I like,” “people who like tennis and live nearby”

Photos: “photos I like,” “photos of my family,” “photos of my friends before 1999,” “photos of my friends taken in New York,” “photos of the Eiffel Tower”

Places: “restaurants in San Francisco,” “cities visited by my family,” “Indian restaurants liked by my friends from India,” “tourist attractions in Italy visited by my friends,” “restaurants in New York liked by chefs,” “countries my friends have visited”

Interests: “music my friends like,” “movies liked by people who like movies I like,” “languages my friends speak,” “strategy games played by friends of my friends,” “movies liked by people who are film directors,” “books read by CEOs”

This is not a new search engine, it’s a more advanced way to browse existing content on Facebook. Facebook already had a search bar on the top but it was limited to names and page titles. With the new search bar users will apparently be able to type actual queries to find the information they are looking for. Google killer? Not likely, but it could keep users on Facebook longer and help them find private info.

Facebook Graph Search appears to be a great way to search through your stuff, but from an online advertiser’s perspective, I’m unimpressed. It remains unclear how advertisers will be able to use this Graph Search product to better market and sell their products to Facebook users. Search can be great for ad targeting because it allows marketers to direct ads about their products and services to the right people at the right time. Unfortunately, the new Facebook Graph Search capabilities are limited to people, locations, photos, and other types of searches that are weak in revealing commercial intent. In typical Facebook fashion, the official Facebook Graph Search announcement does not outline any benefit for its advertisers.

What do you think of Graph Search?

As the founder of a search marketing startup, I’ve had the opportunity to interview, hire and work with some of the most amazing SEOs on the planet. I am so proud to have worked with people like Tom Demers and Ken Lyons, who not only helped me turn wordstream.com into a website that holds its own against domains like google.com for SERP rankings, they went on to found a successful internet marketing consultancy of their own!

Because WordStream’s business is in the internet marketing industry, the competition for SEO keywords in this vertical is incredibly fierce. We’re always competing against other search agencies, or search marketing product companies who obviously know a thing or two about SEO. If you think your insurance or travel industry has fierce competition, try competing in an industry where everyone does search for a living! I’m pleased to say that our SEO is very strong, thanks to the great SEO talent on our team.

Recently, I’ve met with many other founders and heads of marketing at VC-backed startups hoping to scale their lead generation efforts, and a question that always comes up is: How do you find/identify such great SEO talent? In my article today, I’ll describe in detail my interview process for separating the SEO heroes from the SEO fakers!

My Top 7 SEO Interview Questions

Working in SEO requires a certain mindset and skills – It’s like a game where the rules are always changing. But unlike Calvinball, we don’t get to make up the rules!

Because search engine optimization requires this game-like mindset, the questions I ask any SEO interview candidate are mostly situational and behavioral as opposed to factoid-based questions like “What is PageRank” or “What is Panda,” etc. I do expect anyone who does SEO daily to know these facts and the basic lingo, but it’s less important than gaining an understanding of how the person attacks challenges and where their actual skills lie (if they have any). These strategic questions help me figure out if the person is really cut out to join my elite team of Internet marketing ninjas.

1. What Is Your SEO Super Power?

First, I try to figure out what they do. SEO is rarely a one-person thing, and when it is, one area or another tends to suffer. There are different specialties in SEO: blogging, link building, social media, SEO strategy. At WordStream, our SEO work is distributed among a few key players with different areas of expertise. When talking to a new candidate, I try to figure out what their role would be on my SEO team in order to ask the right questions for the rest of the interview. Experience is of course a factor here, but I’m also looking for passion and potential.

2. What is your SEO workflow?

Say you get in to work on a Monday at 9 AM – what does your day look like, and your overall week? This of course depends on what their role is; for example, if they’re primarily doing content marketing and blogging, I’d ask them, How do you determine what to write about next? How do you prioritize tasks? If you’re a link builder, I’d ask, How do you prioritize your link opportunities? This is super important because in SEO, you have an infinite number of things you could potentially do on any given day, and only 8-10 hours in the day to get something done. I want to see their attack plan. They should have an internal system and be able to take initiative – I don’t want to hire an SEO who needs constant hand-holding from a manager.

3. How do you measure SEO success?

What are the SEO KPI’s (key performance indicators) you track? What is a reasonable goal for a month? There’s really no right answer here because it depends on the client’s objectives, and the guy’s role. What I’m hoping for is that they say something intelligent about different KPI’s like counting and tracking links, social shares, unbranded organic traffic, referred visitors, engagement metrics, conversions, etc. (Hint: “mad hits” and “keyword rankings” are not metrics I care about.) Even better if they have tried out different metrics and changed them over time, and can explain why.

4. How do you conduct an SEO experiment?

Tell me about an SEO experiment that you’ve run recently. What was the result? If you’re in the trenches doing SEO, a key to success is being able to figure out what works and what doesn’t. I’d like to know how they run their experiments, and if they don’t run experiments, that’s a red flag. Ken Lyons kept an SEO log where he tinkered with various SEO experiments, sometimes dozens at a time. I love an SEO with a bit of mad scientist in them.

5. What SEO tools do you use and why?

If someone says they don’t use SEO tools, it’s an automatic fail. Why? It means you’re an incredibly inefficient person or that you have never done a significant amount of SEO work in your life. There’s no way to do serious SEO without introducing some automation. For this question, I’m wondering what tools they use for keyword research, blogging, link analysis, social media, etc. The more obscure the better. And I’m not just looking for a list of tools, either – I want to know why you use them, what you love and what you find annoying. Sometimes I even learn about cool new tools this way! (Bonus for me whether I hire them or not, bwahaha.)

6. What SEO blogs do you read?

As I mentioned above, SEO is always changing. Tom Demers used to come in early every morning and spend an hour or so just reading. Keeping up with the industry is crucial both to stay current on news and various Google updates as well as to get new strategic ideas and tips for increasing efficiency. So I ask job candidates to tell me what SEO blogs and sites they read. But anyone can list out a few blogs. I’m looking for something beyond the bare-minimum basics (like Search Engine Land). I then follow up with another question: What’s an interesting article you’ve recently read on one of those blogs and why did you find it interesting? This tells me whether they actually read any blogs, how often, as well as why they read.

7. Show me your analytics.

I guess this isn’t a question so much as a demand and egregious breach of privacy (ha ha). If possible, I ask them to log into their Google Analytics so I can see what’s going on with the site they currently work for. Is the site doing well? Did it get killed by recent penalties like Panda or Penguin? Were they able to recover? Are there spikes in traffic? If so, I ask what they did to achieve that. (Crazy linkbait schemes?) I look at their traffic sources – are they diversified? Is there referral traffic from social media sites like Twitter and Facebook? What do the engagement metrics look like (are people reading their content or just bouncing away?) Forget all the preparing they’ve done for the interview and the rehearsed answers about where they see themselves in five years – I can tell in about 1 minute if they’re any good just by looking at their analytics.

During my interview with Ken Lyons, he showed me his AdWords accounts. Every keyword in his client’s accounts had Quality Scores of 10/10.  I was just floored. I immediately thought to myself, “Hire this guy, quick!”

Even if the candidate is unable to show me their Google Analytics, I can get a good sense of how they operate. If you’re an SEO, your fingerprints are all over the internet. For example, I:

• Read their blog posts: Does he/she actually blog? Are the posts engaging? Do they offer in-depth insight? A unique point of view? Do they generate shares and reader comments? Do they blog regularly? Do they have a personal blog?
• Look at their Social Media: How is the guy using Social Media? Are their Twitter/Facebook/Linkedin/Google+ pages thriving communities, or a ghost town? Have they claimed their vanity URL? Do they have a YouTube channel? A Pinterest page? Because this stuff is all public, it’s easy to look at.
• Do a Link Audit: I look at what kinds of links they’ve been able to acquire – are they editorial links from A-List publications? Or just spammy link dumping grounds?
• Crawl Their Site: Sometimes I’ll even look over their website structure and look at the different types of content they produce and how it’s all linked together.
• Analyze Web Presence: Tools like compete.com and alexa.com can help you figure out if their site is doing decent in terms of traffic.

All of this stuff tells me a lot more about their real ability to do SEO than the self-reported stuff from the resume and interview. If you’re applying for SEO jobs, you should have this kind of evidence of your ability to show the hiring manager. It’s the equivalent of a portfolio for a design job. You need to prove you can do SEO.

Bonus Skills

Having a bonus skill or two can really help push an application over the top. Things I look for are any experience in managing:

• Paid Search (such as AdWords, Facebook Marketplace, etc.)
• Email Marketing
• Public Relations
• Web Design/Development, etc.

These types of skills are becoming increasingly important as SEO evolves. These days, an SEO increasingly needs to be an expert in internet marketing in general.

The SEO Interview: Next Steps

If they’ve survived all the questions and I think they’re a strong candidate, I then shift gears and talk about what a great place WordStream is to work at. The way I look at it is, if the person is qualified for the job, the interview goes both ways – they’re also interviewing us. So I try to allocate at least half of the time answering questions about our company, our values, our trajectory, our interesting SEO projects, and basically try to convince them to work with us.

YouTube has become the venue by which budding musicians and performers get their first big break. Justin Bieber first got discovered on YouTube, and more recently YouTube has made Psy’s hit “Gangnam Style” the most viral video of all time. And that’s not just an empty title – “Gangnam Style” has reached nearly 1 billion views, and those views can be equated to serious YouTube advertising revenue.

(Source: WordStream, Inc. provider of PPC and AdWords tools.)

To put things in perspective: YouTube gets over 1 billion views per day, which means that if YouTube was a search engine, it would be the #2 largest, nearly 2X bigger than Bing and Yahoo search combined, and roughly a third the size of Google.com!

Google is horse-dancing straight to the bank because of Psy’s immense YouTube success, and the perpetuating notion that the hottest headline sensations happen on YouTube. With YouTube being increasingly viewed as the place where pop culture happens, its advertising potential continues to grow exponentially.

YouTube’s advertising potential is as big as the record industry itself, hence Psy being invited to meet with Google’s Eric Schmidt (and the resulting obligatory dance lesson). These viral videos aren’t just sensational fads – they are big advertising money.

Logic dictates that marketers should go where the people are – YouTube!

Want to be the next “Gangnam Style?” Don’t we all? There are a number of factors that go into making a viral video a success, and more than just a little is luck.

Trying your hand at making a viral video that aims to dominate the social sphere is great fun, but making a less globally ambitious yet more useful YouTube advertising video is likely the way to go for advertisers who want to further their reach into the massive (and still very much untapped) YouTube advertising realm.

(P.S. If you are still dead set on going after the holy grail and aim to earn the coveted title of “viral video,” read our Top 25 Most Viral YouTube Videos of All Time, complete with tips on creating your own viral video sensation.)

Advertising on YouTube: Utilizing Display and Video Ads

Since Google has taken over YouTube, they’ve gone to great lengths to make advertising on YouTube as easy and customizable as creating ads in AdWords. The options are nearly as numerous, with the two major options being display ads and video ads.

Display Ads on YouTube

YouTube Advertising Display Ads exist within the greater Google Display Network. Display ads let your ads appear alongside related YouTube videos, or as pop-ups within YouTube videos.

• Standard Banner Ad – These are just like the regular Google Display Ads, available as standard banner ads and rich media ads. You can use topic categories and keywords to specify where you want these banner ads to appear. Bright, colorful images that will grab the eye are best practice.
• In-Video Overlay Ads – In-video overlay ads appear as pop-ups within existing contextually targeted videos that are targeted by selected queries. Destination URLs within in-video ads can go to locations outside of YouTube.

In-video ad and banner ad to the right

In my personal YouTube viewing experiences, I find pop-up ads incredibly annoying. But there’s no denying that they are impossible to ignore, even if they are X-ed out immediately. Banner ads in the sidebar might be more easily overlooked.

YouTube Video Ads

Creating YouTube video ads is easy and completely free – you can shoot it yourself for a homebrewed feel, or hire some help for a crisp, professional look.

Wisely, YouTube advises “Don’t think Titanic. Don’t even think ‘sales pitch.’ Think about quick how-tos, or positive reviews from customers. Be personal.” No one goes to YouTube looking to watch extended daytime infomercials.

Need some ideas? Check out our Guide to Creating YouTube Content, packed with video ad concepts and ideas, as well as information on recording your video and optimizing it for SEO. And if all else fails and you’re really stuck, fall back on YouTube fundamentals – kittens! You wouldn’t be the first to create a cat-focused marketing campaign.

This is a favorite in the WordStream marketing department

YouTube advertising’s latest video ads fall under the umbrella of ‘True View’ video ads. While I can’t testify to any added “truth” value, True View ads are a great deal budgeting wise because you only pay when viewers actually choose to watch your video.

True View video ads come in a number of different formats:

In-Stream Video Ads

Probably the most popular YouTube video ad format, in-stream ads play your ad before or during another video from a YouTube partner.

A viewer’s immediate reaction tends to be full of grimaces, groans, and complaints since you’ve taken the liberty of interrupting their YouTube video viewing adventure.

Viewers are obligated to sit through 5 mandatory seconds of the ad, after which they get to decide if they want to keep watching or skip the rest of the video and go on to what they wanted to see in the first place.

If you’ve done some good targeting and have an interesting video ad, viewers might opt to continue watching, which can only mean you’re doing it right!

With in-stream video ads, you don’t pay unless the viewers watch your video for 30 seconds, or until the end of the video. If they choose to skip, you don’t pay a penny. What’s great is that with this option, you can create videos longer than 30 seconds, allowing you to experiment with video ad lengths.

Since you pay the same amount whether the viewer watches 30 seconds or the whole extended video, you can get more exposure for the same price. In fact, some studies have shown that longer videos (closer to the 60-second ballpark) tend to do better than the shorter ones. My theory is that longer videos are probably developing a richer story that is keeping viewers engaged, rather than throwing out a short “look at this, you should buy it” ad.

In-stream ads allow for contextual targeting, interest targeting, and demographic targeting. The more specific your campaign, the better.

In-Slate Video Ads

YouTube’s In-Slate video ads appear before YouTube partner videos that are 10 minutes or longer. Viewers can choose to watch one of three ads or alternatively can choose to see regular commercial breaks during their video.

In-Search Video Ads

In-search video ads appear above or to the right of regular YouTube search results.

In-Search video ads work similar to text ads in Google search, with advertisers bidding on keyword terms. While the same ad text strategies used to create AdWords text ads applies to these in-search video ads, the YouTube advertising market is much less saturated, allowing advertisers who might normally be unable to compete for popular keyword terms on Google search to get traction on YouTube.

In-Display Video Ads

In-display video ads appear alongside other YouTube videos, or on other Google Display Network sites that match your targeting options. It’s in the realm of “well if you liked that video, you’ll absolutely love….”

Additional YouTube Video Advertising Tools and Features

YouTube has a number of tools, extensions, and targeting options that can easily go unnoticed, but are absolutely worth checking out. YouTube advertising provides:

YouTube Analytics Data – YouTube provides a wealth of analytic data, letting advertisers collection information on metrics such as the number of views a video gets, user engagement, and at which points viewers stop watching the video.

Remarketing – You can conduct YouTube advertising remarketing ads to users who have already watched your previous videos on YouTube or on the Google Display Network.

Channels – YouTube Channels are free to create, and function as your business’s own station, not unlike a Facebook page. You can customize your channel to express your business’s personality, and make it easy for viewers to subscribe to your future videos.

Taylor Swift’s example of a colorful customized YouTube branded channel. A bit too colorful for my taste, but I’m sure the tweens love it.

Advanced Targeting Options – YouTube advertising offers some great demographic targeting options including niche interest targeting and age targeting. Watch out, single, male, small dog owners under the age of 35!

Mobile Ads – When you’ve gotten the hang of YouTube advertising videos, you can extend your reach to smartphones and tablets.

Homepage Ads – Advertisers can purchase prime ad space on YouTube’s homepage, ensuring plenty of eyeballs and attention.

Additionally, advertisers can opt for something referred to as a “Homepage Roadblock.” Yes, it is just about intense as it sounds.

With YouTube’s Homepage Roadblock (also referred to as a YouTube Masthead – the terms seem to be used interchangeably), you are the only advertiser on the YouTube homepage for 24 full hours. That equates to about 23 million viewers, with 100% of the attention and no competition. This immense ad takeover doesn’t come cheap – a single day will cost you around $300,000, so this option is primarily for those with the deep pockets. Like Rich Uncle Pennybags pockets.

The main point of being on the homepage is branding, so if you do have the dough to make the investment, ensure that you are making good use of the prime real-estate by incorporating dynamic ads and engaging, clickable features.

Ways to Use YouTube Advertising Ads

Brand Awareness: YouTube videos let you create unique brand experiences and express your business’s personality. Creating videos is a fun and practical way to develop your brand’s identity. Time to get funky!

Product Launch: Videos are a great way to introduce a new product or build excitement about an upcoming release.

Exhibit A:

I have a genius idea – let’s reintroduce the same product…but make it slightly smaller. Revolutionary!

Audience Engagement: YouTube can be a great venue for connecting and interacting with customers. A great example is Old Spice’s video response campaign in which they had Isaiah Mustafa, aka “the man your man could smell like” release a number of videos on YouTube answering questions and comments put forth by fans on Twitter and Facebook. The campaign was incredibly successful, with Old Spice’s Twitter following increasing by 2700%

Customer Help: YouTube is a great place to offer how-to video solutions for common customer problems. Your videos can serve as a more engaging FAQ, or help customers gain a more advanced understanding of the features your product offers. Try hosting Q&A sessions, or town hall meetings to increase conversion with customers.

YouTube Advertising: Untapped Exposure

With so many different ad formats to choose from, YouTube advertising is a playground for marketers looking to experiment with ad formats and gain exposure in a predominantly untapped market.

Have you tried marketing with YouTube ads? What has your YouTube Advertising experience been like? Share your experiences in the comment section!

“Gangnam Style” has become the most viral YouTube video of all time, obtaining unprecedented worldwide attention and breaking social and viral records left and right. With the recent M.C. Hammer mash-up broadcast at the American Music Awards, the “Gangnam Style” craze is still going strong, but for how long?

To commemorate this momentous day in internet pop-culture history, I’m releasing a new infographic, “Psy vs. Bieber: ‘Gangnam Style’ Takes Best in Show for Top YouTube Video of All Time”, which puts Psy’s “Gangnam Style” head-to-head against Bieber’s “Baby.”

I graded Psy vs. Bieber based on three factors:

• Social Media Exposure: Which YouTube video has the most views? The most likes?
• Celebrity Support: Who do the Hollywood celebrities support more?
• Staying Power: Who has the more devoted following that will keep their star power going strong?

Check out the full infographic to find out the answers, and read on for more, after the break:

(Source: WordStream, Inc. Provider of PPC and AdWords marketing software)

Tweetables

• Never say never @justinbieber you’ve been beat on YouTube – @psy_oppa takes over #1 YouTube video with +804M views
• Tweets from @joshgroban, @katyperry, @tpain helped @psy_oppa ‘s Gangnam Style the most viral video of all time!
• w/ help from @BritneySpears @TheEllenShow @ChelseaLately @MCHammer Gangnam Style is today #1 most viewed YouTube Video
• Gangnam Style is now the #1 Most Viewed YouTube video Ever! But is @psy_oppa just a one trick pony?
• #Beliebers worldwide are mourning today as @JustinBieber Baby loses out to @psy_oppa Gangnam Style on YouTube!

“Gangnam Style” Goes Where No YouTube Video Has Gone Before: Unprecedented Social Media Exposure

The success of “Gangnam Style” has been an immense phenomenon, garnering massive attention out of the starting gate when it was initially uploaded on July 15, 2012.

While the internet is no stranger to viral videos, “Gangnam Style” has shown rare endurance for a one-hit wonder- where other videos drop off the radar, “Gangnam Style” seems to multiply its supporters with each passing week. The quirky k-pop hit has continued to thrive long after many prophesized its end, and in doing so has redefined the very notion of a viral video.

When comparing Psy vs. Bieber on social media exposure, as of the time of this writing, Psy’s “Gangnam Style” took the prize with 805 Million views in just 19 weeks, compared to Bieber trailing slightly behind now with 804 Million views after being on the chart for 135 Weeks. Never say never Bieber – you’ve been beaten!

Taking into account the number of video views combined with the amount of time the videos have been present on YouTube, I was able to generate data on how many views, likes, and dislikes each video obtains every minute. In every minute:

• “Gangnam Style” gets 4,062 views, while “Baby” gets 550 views a minute
• “Gangnam Style” gets 29 likes, while “Baby” gets 1 like each minute
• “Gangnam Style” gets 1.7 dislikes, while “Baby” gets 4.3 like each minute

What’s especially interesting to observe is that “Gangnam Style” holds 95% likes (in other words, 95% of reactions on YouTube are positive) and holds the World Record for most liked YouTube video, while Justin Bieber’s “Baby” has 69% dislikes (which works out to 3.2 Million dislikes) and is the most disliked video on all of YouTube.

This like and dislike data offers a deeper revelation – although Bieber has been the champion of YouTube until recently, evidently not all viewers are watching “Baby” because they appreciate the video’s cinematographic sophistication.

Due to the high percentage of dislikes, I theorize that many YouTube users visit Bieber’s video solely to give it the thumbs down, perhaps while offering a snide remark to a friend watching the video over a shoulder: “Look how ridiculous he is – why do they like him?” Not all of Bieber’s video views are a tally in his favor.

This really comes as no surprise considering all the Bieber-haters out there.

In recent months YouTube has served as a warzone between Justin Bieber’s supporters and naysayers. In fact, it’s hard to say if massive support for “Gangnam Style” is a result of the video, or if Bieber dissidents are choosing Psy as their champion out of pure dislike of Bieber.

Psy vs. Bieber on Celebrity Support: It’s All About Who You Know

Celebrity endorsement on Twitter is the key ingredient for YouTube video marketing and can set a viral video ablaze – a few retweets can change the lives of many artists. We explored Twitter to compare celebrity tweets about Psy and Bieber. It’s interesting to note that nearly all Tweets associated with Psy are directly connected to “Gangnam Style,” while tweets surrounding Bieber are less concerned with his music or videos, instead focused on his personal identity (or his apparent rockin’ six pack).

Part of what has made Gangnam Style so irresistible is the video’s easy-to-imitate dance moves. No moon walking or Dougie-ing here, just trotting around on an invisible horse (keep those heels down!). Psy’s fun yet easily learnable horse-dance makes it easy for others to join in, resulting in a number of celebrity attempts at mastering the move. Just when you begin to feel a yawn, another celebrity comes out of the woodwork to add their “Gangnam Style” rendition to the horse and pony show, MC Hammer being the latest addition.

Watching this video, you can see how much the celeb audience is enjoying the performance, dancing and signing along. What is it about “Gangnam Style” that has us so enthralled? Bieber, lacking a trademark show stopping number, isn’t nearly as fun to imitate, although he is adorable on the eyes.

Strength of Fandom: Bieber Fans Can’t Get Enough of the Kool-Aid

Despite the unparalleled popularity of  “Gangnam Style,” Psy himself has a paltry number of YouTube channel subscribers and Twitter followers compared to The Biebster. Psy has a mere 1.2 million followers, easily overshadowed by the clinically diagnosed victims of Bieber fever, who account for Justin Bieber’s 30.2 million Twitter followers.

Justin Bieber has grown a cult of devoted Beliebers who melt at his very mention. These cyber-savvy tweens are quick to retweet and favorite even Bieber’s most trifling of remarks.

Awesome story Biebs, tell it again!

The majority of Psy’s supporters, on the other hand, lay allegiance solely to the “Gangnam Style” video, rather than its creator. Will Gangnam Style enthusiasts embrace Psy’s future music videos with similar fervor? Do they love the product or the person? Will the Trix rabbit ever get his hands on that box of cereal? These are the hard questions we must face in today’s modern world.

Why is “Gangnam Style” So Popular? He’s Not the Star Quarterback

Why has “Gangam Style” become the phenomenon that it has? Yes, the music is catchy, and video hilarious, and Psy’s patented motto of ‘dress classy and dance silly’ has charmed the suit pants off us all.

What really has set Psy apart and earned him significant attention is his kind demeanor and humility, which is a refreshing change from the normal Hollywood ho-hum. He doesn’t look like or act like the classic music celeb, and out-of-the-ordinary can be quite endearing. But ultimately, that’s all Psy is – a break from the normalcy that will eventually be returned to. Hollywood is built on dashing egomaniacs, and to them it will return. Psy’s the musical artist Hollywood deserves, but not the one they need (or want to keep around past dessert).

Future Predictions for “Gangnam Style” : Bye, Bye, Bye?

Many “Gangnam Style” fans have been looking to Psy’s usurpation of Bieber as a pinnacle moment. Interest in the video might fade now that the most major milestone has been reached. However, if the video continues its current trajectory, I predict that on December 11, 2012 (approximately), “Gangnam Style” will be the first YouTube video to reach 1 billion views! It’s certainly plausible to imagine “Gangnam Style” continuing its growth and reaching that marker.

People have really been gung-ho about “Gangnam Style,” with the dance earning some impressive, and honestly, quite exaggerated accolades. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called “Gangnam Style” a force for world peace, singling it out as a new hope for growth of Korean culture. At the AMA awards, MC Hammer called out Psy as one of the four artists ever to “shift the planet” with their dance, comparing him to James Brown, Michael Jackson, and, naturally, the Hammer-man himself.

There’s no argument that “Gangnam Style” hasn’t shown remarkable shelf-life, far surpassing its expected cultural sell-by date. But planet shifting? Probably more than a slight embellishment.

In the words of one Yahoo Answers user, “I guess I’m just not feeling it anymore. :/”

I feel your pain korean-letters-woman. If you were feeling this way 2 months ago, you must be ultra annoyed by now.

Will People Still be Watching Psy a Year from Now?

Prior to having done this research, I would have said no. But having gone through this data collection exercise I’m nothing short of astonished by these numbers. Take for example his 5.3 million video likes, which is growing at 29 per minute. The next closest video is LMFAO’s ‘Party Rock Anthem’ which has a measly 1.6 Million likes and hardly changing. And Psy’s racked up in 19 weeks more views than Bieber could in 135 weeks! Psy’s success is nothing short of phenomenal – becoming the #1 YouTube Video Ever in such a short timeframe is the social media equivalent of a lunar landing!  Of course it’s yet to be seen if Psy himself will continue to be revered as a performer, or if “Gangnam Style” is a one-hit wonder and Psy merely a one-trick pony — the data leads me to believe that he’ll be influencing pop culture on a global scale for years to come!

What future do you predict for Psy’s k-pop sensation? Will Gangnam Style continue to grow, or does this mark the beginning of the end? Tell me what you think in the comments!

It’s almost here—the holiday shopping season that so many businesses rely on to profitably round out the year. And once again, there’s a movement afoot to ensure that small businesses get their fair share of the action. Nestled in between Black Friday and Cyber Monday is Small Business Saturday (SBS)—which this year falls on Saturday, November 24. The U.S. Small Business Administration describes it as “a day to celebrate and support small business and all that they do for their communities.” It’s particularly meaningful to me as I myself founded a start-up, and we work with so many small and medium sized businesses every day!

Small Business Saturday may be less than one week away, but there’s still time to make sure your business is primed for what will hopefully be a big day for sales. Here are 21 ways you can still prepare:

1. Think of how your products can be great gifts, and promote the gift concept like crazy.
2. Offer unique items. Try not to have things people could find anywhere online—make it original.
3. Play upon the local. SBS is about small, local businesses, and so the people visiting your store are probably all about the “local.” If you have any products that are locally crafted, point them out and promote them. People love sampling local cuisine while traveling because it is something special and unique to the area. Having gift items and products that are unique to your location is a great incentive.
4. Put signs up promoting Small Business Saturday. People who see the signs in your store are obviously already shopping in your store and are more likely to come and support you later. American Express offers some free signage you can create.
5. Make a day of it! This is the chance to celebrate your business for all that it is. Put up some balloons, offer some goodies, and make it a party!
6. Promote the in-store special offers you’ll have November 24 via Twitter and Facebook.
7. Use the tools offered by Amex to easily promote SBS via social networks and to get free online advertising.
8. Post on Facebook about SBS and how you are preparing. The Small Business Saturday Facebook Page has a bunch of tools, even a special welcome mat!
9. Take some photos of your best gift items and post them on your Facebook wall.
10. Remind fans that they can get $25 for signing up for Small Business Saturday. They’ll be grateful to you and may even spend some of that cash in your store.
11. Post a video on YouTube about what makes your store special. Make it yourself, or use the templates SBS offers on their Facebook page.
12. Tweet about #shopsmall and #SmallBizSat, and remind folks of all the cool stuff you’ll be offering that day. Maybe some free pins or stickers?
13. Send an email to your mailing list about Small Business Saturday and why it’s important to support local biz.
14. Blog about the big day as well and explain what it’s all about.
15. Create a “Small Business Saturday” PPC campaign, tailored for this once-a-year-day. This free Google keyword generator tools  can assist you.
16. Enable location targeting for your PPC ads so that they’ll show up for local searches, and learn more about Local Online Marketing.
17. Implement negative keywords to stop wasted spend and redirect those funds to your Small Business Saturday campaign. Negative keyword tools can help you do this.
18. Assess the performance of your AdWords account before Small Business Saturday. Take action on the suggested changes to save money, or consider hiring a PPC agency to do the work for you.
19. On Small Business Saturday, ask visitors to sign up for your mailing list so you can notify them of future special offers and events.
20. Take photos throughout the day and then post them to Facebook later. Make sure people know you’ll be posting the pictures—that way they’ll visit and tag themselves later.
21. Continue the conversation by asking for feedback. Conversation is a key part of keeping happy Facebook fans.

What are you doing for Small Business Saturday?! Any other ideas to share? Let me know in the comments below.

Google has released a refresh of their Search Engine Results Pages (SERP), shifting the search toolbar from the left side to the top of the screen.

According to Google: “With the new design, there’s a bit more breathing room, and more focus on the answers you’re looking for, whether from web results or from a feature like the Knowledge Graph,” the search engine said Tuesday in a blog post.

The stated goal was to create a “simpler, cleaner design” which creates a “consistent search experience across the wide variety of devices and screen sizes people use today.”

How the SERP Change Impacts Organic Search

The New Google SERP layout makes the Knowledge Graph listings more prominent. The knowledge graph cannibalizes organic search clicks (which were already on the decline) on informational queries because user queries are often answered directly in the SERP – a user doesn’t even have to click on an organic listing to get basic information about their query.

How the SERP Change Impacts Paid Search

Similarly, the new SERP layout makes paid search ads more much more prominent. By moving the utility bar to the top, there is much more room for the new huge ad formats, like Google Shopping ads, which were so huge they barely fit. The ads now appear more prominently, closer to the left side of the page.

Summary: The Net Impact of the New Google SERP Changes

Even though Google’s stated goal of the change is to improve usability (which I believe to be true), we should ask ourselves what other motivations they might have, and why Google is making the change to the SERP layout right now? After all, the previous SERP layout was in place for many years.

I believe that the decision to make Product listing ads even more prominent right before the holiday shopping season is no coincidence, particularly after a disapointing Q3 2012 earnings report. If you’re an online retailer, I believe that the new SERP changes make paid search, especially the Product Listing Ads, even harder to ignore. What are your thoughts about the timing and impact of the new SERP changes? Write up your thoughts in the comments below!

Election Day 2012 is tomorrow – will President Barack Obama get another four years? Or will Republican challenger Mitt Romney take the win?

Political wonks may know that statistician Nate Silver has predicted a win for Obama based on election polls and public opinion polls. I was curious if the Internet presence of the two respective candidates pointed to the same outcome. So I ran some quick numbers to look at Obama and Romney’s spending on paid search advertising (political campaign ads on Google search and the Google Display Network), their website traffic, and their social media presence (including Facebook fans, Twitter followers, and YouTube subscribers).

Based on what I found, I predict that Obama will win by a landslide on Nov. 6, 2012. Obama is well in the lead in every category that I looked at. Romney does not have a sophisticated Internet marketing presence compared to Obama, suggesting that:

• Romney has been getting less exposure in the crucial weeks leading up to Election Day
• Obama has a more passionate voter base, at least in online communities

It’s possible that Romney has been making up the difference in other forms of campaign spending – by buying more TV spots, for example. But in the past, I’ve predicted election outcomes based on social media “polling” alone, and I think these numbers speak volumes. Now, I’m no Obama fan, but I’d put my money on him tomorrow at the polls.

Let’s take a look at the numbers.

Obama vs. Romney: Paid Search Advertising Spend

Barack Obama appears to be spending about $4.4k to $13.1k / day on Google Search. Mitt Romney appears to be spending about  $3.4k to $6.3k / day on Google Search. In other words, Obama is spending up to twice as much on Google search advertising as Romney. These are just estimates based on traffic and cost per click estimates, but even if the exact numbers are off, the difference is big. (I used the same method to estimate daily spending for both candidates.)

As for the Google Display Network, Barack Obama appears to be spending about $6.0k / day on Google Display Advertising (banner ads) while Mitt Romney appears to be spending about $2.3k / day on Google Display Advertising. So Obama is spending almost three times as much as Romney on Google Display. Display ads are terrific for increasing awareness and building your brand, both of which are key when it comes to rallying and growing your voter base, so Obama could be getting tons of leverage out of this advertising spend.

Obama vs. Romney: Online Engagement Metrics

What about other online engagement metrics, like website traffic and social media following? Obama is kicking the pants off Romney in every category I looked at:

To summarize this data:

• Barack Obama has almost three times as many Facebook fans as Mitt Romney (31 million to Romney’s 11 million).
• Obama has had over three times as many website viewers in October 2012 as Romney, at 8.6 million viewers compared to 2.6 million for the Republican candidate.
• Obama has more than 13 times as many Twitter followers as Romney, with nearly 22 million compared to Romney’s measly 1.6 million Twitter followers.
• Obama has nine times as many YouTube subscribers and nine times as many YouTube video views.
• The internet reach of Obama’s website is more than double that of Romney’s website.

Here’s an illustration of the respective reach of Obama’s website (barackobama.com) versus Romney’s website (mittromney.com). By reach, we mean the estimated percentage of global internet users who have visited a particular site.

The red line represents Obama’s website reach. It’s significantly higher with more big spikes than Romney’s.

Obama-Related Search Queries More Likely to Be Personalized?

A recent Wall Street Journal article points out that Google “often customizes the results of people who have recently searched for ‘Obama’—but not those who have recently searched for ‘Romney.’”

Here’s how it works: When a user searches for the name Obama, Google includes links about President Barack Obama in subsequent searches on terms such as “Iran,” “Medicare” and “gay marriage.” The altered results are labeled in gray type: “you recently searched for Obama.” Testers searching for “Romney,” however, didn’t see customized links containing Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney’s name in their subsequent search results.

This isn’t based on human judgment or invertention but rather algorithms. In other words, it means that more people are looking for information about Obama’s stance on Iran, Medicare and gay marriage than Romney’s views on the same topics. Again, this could be construed as an indication that web users are more engaged with Obama.

In Summary: Who Will Win the 2012 Presidential Election Tomorrow?

This isn’t 1994. In this day and age, when everyone and their grandma is on Facebook and has an iPhone, Internet presence really matters. Romney’s relatively weak Internet presence and comparatively low spending on online marketing channels could be very bad news for the Republican party.

Based on the available Internet marketing data, I predict that Barack Obama will win by a landslide tomorrow. You can quote me on that!

We recently conducted what we believe is the most extensive study of the economics of the Google AdWords model to date. By crunching data from our AdWords Performance Grader, which has analyzed over a billion dollars in aggregate spend, we were able to determine averages and benchmarks for top-level key performance metrics across the Google search and display networks, including conversion rate and cost per conversion. We also drilled down into the top 10 industries that spend the most money on Google advertising to determine industry benchmarks for AdWords conversion rate and more. Read on to learn what we found!

(Click to see the full-size infographic on Google AdWords metrics for Q3 2012)

Average Conversion Rates for Google AdWords Search and Display

In Q3 2012, the average conversion rate on AdWords for the search network was 5.63% across all industries and advertisers. The average conversion rate on the Google Display Network in Q3 2012 was slightly lower at 4.68%.

Keep in mind that advertisers have control over how they define “conversions” – while Google helped advertisers complete about 13 million total conversions per day through AdWords in Q3, not all conversions are defined as completed sales. Some businesses use AdWords to generate leads, and they may count a range of different activities as leads.

For this reason, it can be helpful to break out the average conversion rates by industry. Businesses within a given vertical tend to define conversion in similar ways. For example, in the finance and insurance industry, advertisers generally use paid search for lead gen, so filling out a form to “get a quote” or to contact the company would count as a conversion. In the shopping industry, on the other hand, conversions are more likely to be completed product sales.

Please note: These numbers are based on our own analysis and research – they are not official Google data. We analyzed data from 2,600 AdWords accounts, examining key metrics like the total number of number of clicks, impressions, costs, etc. between July 1, 2012 and September 30, 2012. When determining conversion rates, I ignored data for accounts that didn’t have Google conversion tracking enabled, which was roughly half the dataset. Click here for the full methodology of my study.

As with any benchmark data, it’s best to take these numbers with a grain of salt. They are based on averages of a subset of advertisers. Your mileage may vary.

Average AdWords Conversion Rates by Industry

Below are the average conversion rates on both search and display for the top 10 industries that spent the most on Google AdWords in Q3 2012:

Finance

Average conversion rate for the Finance Industry on Google Search: 6.12%

Average conversion rate for the Finance Industry on Google Display Network: 5.12%

Travel

Average conversion rate for the Travel Industry on Google Search: 1.45%

Average conversion rate for the Travel Industry on Google Display Network: 2.99%

Shopping

Average conversion rate for the Shopping Industry on Google Search: 3.58%

Average conversion rate for the Shopping Industry on Google Display Network: 2.19%

Jobs & Education

Average conversion rate for the Jobs & Education industry on Google Search: 6.09%

Average conversion rate for the Jobs & Education industry on Google Display Network: 2.09%

Internet & Telecom

Average conversion rate for the Internet & Telecommunications Industry on Google Search: 6.27%

Average conversion rate for the Internet & Telecommunications Industry on Google Display Network: 8.59%

Computers & Electronics

Average conversion rate for the Computers & Electronics Industry on Google Search: 4.79%

Average conversion rate for the Computers & Electronics industry on Google Display Network: 2.96%

Business & Industrial

Average conversion rate for the business & industrial industry on Google Search: 4.23%

Average conversion rate for the business & industrial industry on Google Display Network: 4.10%

Home & Garden

Average conversion rate for the Home & Garden industry on Google Search: 2.21%

Average conversion rate for the Home & Garden industry on Google Display Network: 3.43%

Autos & Vehicles

Average conversion rate on the Autos & Vehicles Industry for Google Search: 4.29%

Average conversion rate on the Autos & Vehicles industry for Google Display Network: 6.15%

Beauty & Fitness

Average conversion rate for the Beauty & Fitness industry on Google Search: 4.56%

Average conversion rate for the Beauty & Fitness industry on Google Display Network: 2.27%

Average Conversion Rates by Industry: Highlights

Here are a few interesting findings that stuck out to us about this data:

• The Internet and Telecom industry has the highest conversion rates on both search and display. Top advertisers in Internet & Telecom include AT&T, Sprint, T Mobile, Verizon and Comcast. Whether these companies are primarily using search ads to generate leads for mobile plans or whether they’re selling phones and other hardware, it appears that AdWords is working for them.
• The finance industry has the second highest average conversion rate – as well as the highest cost per click (CPC) of the bunch. Finance and insurance companies like State Farm, Geico, Quicken Loans, and Bank of America spend the most of any industry on Google search advertising and were also responsible for the highest number of complete conversions in Q3, with 1.39 million conversions through Google search and another 268K through the Display network.
• The travel industry has the lowest average conversion rate, at 1.45% on search. This could be because people tend to shop around a lot before pulling the trigger on travel purchases like plane tickets and hotel rooms. The largest advertisers in this vertical are Expedia, Hotels.com, Booking.com, Priceline and Kayak.

Check out the full infographic to see other average metrics by industry, including click-through rate (CTR), total clicks, cost per click and total conversions.

Average Cost Per Conversion on AdWords by Industry

Using the above average conversion rates as well as average cost per click data, we were able to determine the average cost per conversion on AdWords by industry as well. The average cost per conversion across all of Google is $9.41 for search and $7.26 for display.

The average cost per conversion figures for the top 10 industries in Q3 2012 are below:

Finance

Average cost per conversion for the Finance industry on Google Search: $50.49

Average cost per conversion for the Finance industry on Google Display Network: $20.12

Travel

Average cost per conversion for the Travel industry on Google Search: $20.00

Average cost per conversion for the Travel industry on Google Display Network: $9.36

Shopping

Average cost per conversion for the Shopping industry on Google Search: $6.98

Average cost per conversion for the Shopping industry on Google Display Network: $12.33

Jobs & Education

Average cost per conversion for the Jobs & Education industry on Google Search: $29.56

Average cost per conversion for the Jobs & Education industry on Google Display Network: $16.27

Internet & Telecom

Average cost per conversion for the internet and telecom industry on Google Search: $17.70

Average cost per conversion for the internet and telecom industry on Google Display Network: $4.66

Computers & Electronics

Average cost per conversion for the computers & electronics industry on Google Search:  $29.02

Average cost per conversion for the computers & electronics industry on Google Display Network: $14.86

Business & Industrial

Average cost per conversion for the business and industrial industry on Google Search: $39.48

Average cost per conversion for the business and industrial industry on Google Display Network: $23.66

Home & Garden

Average cost per conversion for the Home & Garden industry on Google Search: $34.39

Average cost per conversion for the Home & Garden industry on Google Display Network: $24.40

Autos & Vehicles

Average cost per conversion for the Autos & Vehicles industry on Google Search: $22.61

Average cost per conversion for the Autos & Vehicles industry on Google Display Network: $16.75

Beauty & Fitness

Average cost per conversion for the Beauty &  Fitness industry on Google Search: $24.34

Average cost per conversion for the Beauty &  Fitness industry on Google Display Network: $44.49

Finance once again “boasts” the highest cost per conversion, at over $50 per. Business & industrial (with large advertisers like Staples and ULINE) has the next highest cost per conversion on search at $39.48. Note that for most industries, cost per conversion is lower on the display network, but not in every case.

So What’s a Good Conversion Rate on Google AdWords? What’s a Good Cost Per Conversion?

In general, aim to meet and then beat the average. If you work in one of the above “top 10” industries, use the industry-specific averages as a benchmark. If you work in another vertical, use the “across-Google” averages as your benchmark. As a general rule, a conversion rate between 5% and 10% is a good rate to aim for. If you work in the finance, Internet or another industry with high average conversion rates, aim for the higher end of that range.

A good cost per conversion will vary widely based on your particular business model and the lifetime value of a newly acquired customer. A cost per conversion under $10 is great – but many businesses can afford to pay much more than that for each conversion (sale or lead generated) and still get good ROI form paid search.

Find Out How You Compare to Other Advertisers In Your Industry

Still wondering how your own AdWords performance measures up? Find out the easy way with the AdWords Performance Grader. It’s a fast, free way to see how you compare to other advertisers in your industry and with similar budgets. Grade your account now!

What’s an ad impression? For those who need a quick refresher, impressions are the number of times an ad appears on a web page. Therefore, your AdWords ads will always have more impressions than clicks. Impressions don’t have very much to do with the success of your ad, but they are an important measurement of how many eyeballs your ad is reaching.

If you aren’t getting many clicks on your ads, maybe you aren’t getting enough impressions. If you have plenty of impressions but still don’t have many clicks, that may be a hint that your ads themselves need some work. Low click-through rates contribute to a low Quality Score.

How Many Advertising Impressions Are on Google AdWords Per Day?

According to our recent Google statistics research, Google AdWords serves an average of 29,741,270,774 impressions per day (nearly 30 billion!).

This number is a combination of impressions from Google Search and the Google Display Network:

• Google Search has 5,570,808,015 impressions per day (5.57 billion).
• Google Display Network has 24,170,462,759 impressions per day (24.17 billion).

These ad impression statistics are based on our own original research as well as data from Google and SpyFu.

Why Does the Google Display Network Have More Advertising Impressions than Google Search?

You may be wondering, Why does the Google Display Network have so many more impressions than Google Search? Over 18 billion more impressions per day, to be exact. The main reason why this happens is that Google Search ads are limited to the Google Search site. While Google is always experimenting with how many more ads they can fit onto one Google search results page, there is a limit.

On the other hand, the Google Display Network has the power to place ads on all Google web properties, including Gmail, Blogger, YouTube, and Google partner sites. The Display Network can put ads across a larger number of sites, leading to more daily ad impressions.

Ad Impressions vs. Clicks: How Many Clicks on Google AdWords Per Day?

Google AdWords gets an average of 237,914,225 ad clicks per day. This number is a combination of clicks from Google Search Ads, generating 193,232,044 clicks, and Google Display Network ads, with 44,682,181 ad clicks. Google Search ads get considerably more clicks per day than advertisements on the Google Display Network as illustrated in the infographic.

Why does Google Search receive more ad clicks than the Google Display Network?

The fact that Google Search ads receive more clicks per day than Google Display Network ads may seem surprising considering that Google Display Network dominates the number of ad impressions per day. One might think that more impressions should naturally lead to more clicks, but this isn’t a given. Internet users interact with Google Search ads very differently than they do with ads on the Google Display Network.

• Using Google Search: Google Search is used by people who are often farther along in the buying process. They are usually searching with a specific intent in mind, making them more likely to click a promising ad. It’s also possible that they don’t realize the search ads are ads rather than organic results.

• Using Google Display Network: With Google Display Network, your ad is reaching people in a very different setting. When your ad shows up in Gmail, for example, you are entering a user’s home turf, and they are rarely in the mood for ad browsing when trying to stay in touch with family and friends. On Google partner sites, your ad is also probably competing with photos and content on the partner site.

Why Advertise on the Google Display Network if My Ads Aren’t Clicked?

You may be asking, is it even worth advertising on the Google Display Network if users aren’t noticing my ads? After all, what good are impressions without clicks?

Is certainly is worth advertising on the Google Display Network, despite lower click rates than Google Search. For one, display advertising is great for raising brand awareness. Even if users claim they aren’t noticing your ads, they absolutely are to some degree, whether they realize it or not. The higher number of impressions on the Display Network ensure that your ads are being seen by people across a wide variety of networks. These impressions aren’t worthless, even if they don’t all result in clicks.

While a user might not click your ad the first time they see it, brand trust is being built with every ad impression. When users see your ad in various Google partner sites, YouTube, and even Gmail, they are becoming more familiar with your business. This brand trust continues to build so that one day, when a user’s intent matches with your ad, they will be more likely to choose your business because they have seen you ‘around town’ previously.

Google remarketing takes this to the next level by using a cookie to follow a visitor after they leave your site. Who knows why they left – maybe they got distracted by an incoming email message, or accidentally clicked off. The generated cookie remembers what page someone visited on your site, and through the Google Display Network, places your ads related to that page across Google partner sites. Remarketing tends to be very successful because visitors continue to see your ad related to an offer you already know they are interested in, while simultaneously building trust through familiarity.

As seen in our Google Search Revenue Infographic, the number of clicks and number of conversions have risen on both Google Search and Google Display Network since the previous quarter.

Currently, the average number of clicks per day for Google Search ads is 193.2 million. This is a 21.6% increase from Google search ad clicks in Q2 2012. The average number of clicks per day for ads on the Google Display Network is 44.7 million, which is a 29.1% increase from clicks per day during Q2 2012.

While the number of clicks and conversions have increased, the average cost-per-click has decreased significantly. The average cost-per-click for Google Search ads in $0.53 cents, which is a %16.5 decrease since Q2 2012. The average cost-per-click for Google Display Network ads is $0.35, which is a %18.2 decrease from the previous quarter.

With higher total clicks, a higher number of conversions, and lower CPCs across both advertising networks, this is a great time for businesses who have been holding back to begin advertising with AdWords. The recent changes in the Google economy benefit both Google and AdWords advertisers – Google gets to increase revenues, while advertisers get more impressions, clicks, and conversions at lower costs.

Where Did this Ad Impression Data Come From?

The data for this blog post came from our recent study on Google web statistics, which we consider one of the most comprehensive studies on the internal workings of Google AdWords ever conducted.

The infographic data was collected from WordStream’s AdWords Performance Grader, a free tool that lets AdWords advertisers audit their account and see where they can improve.  The tool has evaluated over $1 billion in annualized spending on Google in the past year. For this report, we looked at accounts that were evaluated between July 1, 2012 and October 30, 2012.

Our research for the infographic included over 2,600 AdWords accounts that ran the AdWords Grader in Q3 2012. The accounts in aggregate represented over $250 million in annualized spend. We had accounts with a wide range of spending; some accounts were very small, spending under $100 a month on AdWords. Others were much larger, with some spending up to millions per month in AdWords. The analysis looked at accounts across every industry, and came from all countries where Google does business.

This broad range of diverse data is a great representation of the wide range of customers Google AdWords does business with, and as a result we believe our research to be more accurate than other search marketing studies that deal exclusively with large clients.

If There Are Only 2 or 3 Billion Searches on Google per Day, How Can There Be 5 Billion Ad Impressions?

It’s important to keep in mind that when we say there are 5 billion ad impressions on Google Search per day, we are discussing total ad impressions. One Google SERP can contain 12+ ads per page. Also, we are counting impressions from the Google Search Partner Network, which accounted for approximately 15% of the ad impressions in Q3.

The results are summarized in our Google Statistics Infographic, also shown below (click the image to enlarge). Read on for more commentary on what we discovered, including facts about Google advertising metrics and the top 10 industries that spend the most on Google ads, as well as some very detailed FAQ’s on how all this data was compiled!

(Click to enlarge)

Today’s Changing Google Economy: What’s Happening?

Google is an advertising company – excluding the Motorola business, 94% of Google revenues come from advertising, which relies primarily on key advertising metrics like Impressions, Clicks, Cost Per Click, and Click-Through Rate.

In a nutshell: Google Ad Revenues = Ad Impressions * Click-Through Rate * Cost Per Click.

My analysis shows that, in the last quarter, the average costs per click (CPCs) have declined significantly in the last quarter (-16.5% for Google Search, -18.2% for Google Display Network), while click-through rates (CTR) were mixed (-12.4% for Google Search, +13.8% for Google Display Network).

Offsetting those declines are an impressive growth of ad impressions and clicks (clicks were up +21.6% for Google Search, +29.1% for Google Display Network), which more than made up for lost revenues.

It’s hard to say for certain what is causing what.

The dramatic increase in impressions and clicks is in some way contributing to the decline in average CPC’s and CTR’s – generally speaking, higher supply means lower prices, and showing a greater number of ads on a page inevitably means that any one individual ad is less likely to be clicked on. Alternatively, the massive increase in impressions could be a deliberate strategy on Google’s part to monetize more of their search inventory to increase clicks and revenues.

I think it’s probably a bit of both. In the end, the huge increases in impression volumes and clicks edged out the declines in cost per click and click through rates, resulting in yet another record quarter.

Why Does This Matter? What Does it All Mean?

My take is that the trends we’re seeing in the Google economy create a win-win for both AdWords advertisers and Google.

A larger available inventory of impressions, combined with lower CPC, means that PPC advertisers are now literally able to get more customers for less money.

It also opens up Search Engine Marketing to more advertisers, including perhaps advertisers for whom the economics of search might not have previously worked out at higher average costs per click. (Just as SEO is harder for small businesses with lower budgets, so is PPC.)

Here at WordStream, we work with small and medium-sized businesses with limited search budgets ranging from $1k / month to around $100k / month. And previously, we’ve been quite concerned about rising CPCs and how it often results in smaller businesses responding by adopting increasingly narrow ad targeting parameters, or even dropping paid search all together.

I recognize that CPC’s aren’t fully controlled by Google per se – that an advertiser’s actual cost per click is a reflection of advertiser competition for a keyword, as well as an advertiser’s historical performance track record (Quality Score). But regardless, I’m very supportive of a Google Advertising system that, over time, emphasizes increases in ad inventory and provides features to improve click-through rates and conversion rates – because it delivers much more value to advertisers in the long run and makes paid search a much more sustainable and attractive venue for ad dollars, in comparison to other advertising venues.

Industry-Specific Findings

Numerous other interesting findings came out of this analysis, including the following Google facts:

• Average CPCs in the finance industry, which spends the most of any industry on Google advertising, are high – over $3 per click on the search network and over $1 per click on the Display Network. The vertical with the next highest CPC is jobs and education, at $1.80 on Google search.
• Finance-related ads on Google result in over 1 million completed conversions per day.
• The industry with the highest average click-through rate is shopping, with average CTR at 5.23%, followed by travel at 4.88%.
• The jobs and education sector has the highest conversion rates, at 6.27%, followed by shopping at 6.09% and beauty and fitness at 5.63%.
• Together, the Search and Display networks account for nearly 13 million conversions per day, not only adding to Google’s own bottom line but also generating trillions for advertisers and the economy.

What’s So Special about All This Data? Where did the Google Facts Come From?

I used the data collected by the AdWords Performance Grader, a free AdWords account audit tool which has evaluated over $1 billion dollars in annualized spending on Google in the last year (roughly 2.5% of total advertising revenues on Google!). For this report, I used metrics from accounts that were evaluated between July 1, 2012 and October 30, 2012.

We believe this is the most comprehensive study on the internal working of the Google AdWords system, ever.

How Many AdWords Accounts are Included in the Analysis? What did they look like?

My research included over 2,600 AdWords accounts that ran our AdWords Grader in Q3 2012. The accounts in aggregate represented over $250 million in annualized spend. They ranged from very small (spending under $100 / month) to very large (millions per month in spend), across every industry. Additionally, the analysis includes accounts from all countries where Google does business.

I believe our data set is the broadest, most diversified cross-section of AdWords advertisers that is truly representative of the heterogeneous customer base that Google AdWords has today, and as such, is far more accurate than other studies by search marketing vendors that only work with say, just large clients.

How Was the Research Conducted?

I looked at 2,600 AdWords advertising accounts – examining key metrics like the total number of number of clicks, impressions, costs (etc.) or all of the accounts in the date range of July 1, 2012 to September 30, 2012. I first calculated some top-level metrics, specifically:

• Average CPC for Google Search (including the Google Search Partners) and Google Display Network
• Average CTR’s for Search and Display Network
• Conversion Rates for Search and Display Network

I also determined various important ratios, including the split of revenue and clicks split between Google search (including partner search) and the Google Display Network.

When determining conversion rates, I ignored data for accounts that didn’t have Google Conversion tracking enabled, which was roughly half the dataset.

The next step was to figure out key top-line stats (across all industries) for the entire Google AdWords platform, including:

• Total clicks on Google Search and Google Display Network
• Total impressions on Google Search and Google Display Network
• Total number of conversions for Google Search and Google Display Network
• Average CPC’s for Google Search and Google Display Network
• (etc.)

I was able to determine these numbers using the Google Q3 2012 CPC’s (search & display) and Google’s total advertising revenues of $10.8 Billion, as well as the various ratios that I had previously calculated (share of revenue to Google Search, Google Display, Average CPC on Google Search, etc.).

The next step was to do the same calculation based on specific industry (e.g., Finance, Travel, Shopping, etc.).

To do this, I determined the various ratios and metrics (CTR, CPC, etc.) using advertiser data for a specific category, such as Travel. Next, I determined some industry weightings to apply. For example, what share of total clicks or total spend on Google belong to Travel, etc.

Once I had determined the industry weightings and the industry-specific metrics and ratios, I could then develop the metrics on an industry-specific basis.

Are there any Known Issues Regarding your Research?

Yes. I would like to disclose the following known issues pertaining to my research:

Currency Conversion: In my research, I converted various international currencies (for example, Euro, South African Rand, UK, Pound, Indian Rupee, Danish Krone, Australian Dollar, Singapore Dollar, New Zealand Dollar, Canadian Dollar, Norwegian Krone, Swiss Franc, Japanese Yen, etc.) using a fixed average conversion rate for the entire quarter. A more accurate way to do this would have been to use a different currency exchange rate for every day to account for daily changes in exchange rates.

Rolling Average: The dataset included in the analysis are accounts that were analyzed in Q3 2012. However each account analysis is a snapshot of the advertiser’s account performance metrics over the last 90 days. So, for example, an account evaluated on July 1, 2012, includes data for June 30, 2012 and the 90 days prior, which is actually Q2 2012. So what you’re looking at is a rolling average of data, not just data in the quarter.

High Conversion Rates: My analysis assumes that conversion tracking is properly set up by the advertiser, which is not always the case. A future data index will look for unrealistically high conversion rate outliers and throw those out. They were, however, included in this analysis, which resulted in higher conversion rates.

Higher Margin of Error for Industry-Specific Data: While the number of advertiser accounts used in the analysis was a very large number (2,600 for Q3 2012), the sample size becomes smaller when I break down the analysis based on the advertiser’s industry, which results in greater margins of error. I believe that the accuracy of our data can be further improved by addressing the various known issues and increasing the number of accounts analyzed per quarter.

Higher Weighting of English-Speaking Countries: Because our AdWords Grader is marketed to English-speaking markets, this likely resulted in a higher concentration of companies from English speaking-countries being included in the analysis. A future analysis will segment customer data for USA vs. Rest of World.

Why doesn’t the WordStream data match up exactly with Google’s official reports?

Rather than trying to make our research match up exactly to the every one of the few the bits of data that Google discloses, I chose to do a bottom-up analysis of the Google AdWords system using all of our available data, and fully disclose the research methodology.

Are There Duplicate Accounts in your Data Set?

I de-duplicated the accounts in our dataset. If an advertiser ran the AdWords Grader two or more times during the quarter, the older data from the previous run was discarded from our analysis.

How Do You Categorize Your Data by Industry?

To categorize the data into industries, I relied on an advertiser self-reporting their industry pick-list of 20 industries, prior to running the AdWords Grader application.

I read that there are only around 2 or 3 billion searches on Google per day. How can there be 5 billion ad impressions in a day?

Couple of points here:

• I’m counting total ad impressions. Keep in mind that a search results page can have sometimes +12 ads per page.
• I’m also adding in ad impressions from the Google Partner Search Network, which I found accounted for approximately 15% of the ad impressions in Q3.

Why Are the CPC’s so low?

If you’ve read our research on the most expensive keywords, you might be thinking that the costs per click on AdWords are much higher. But actually those are the outliers in specific geographies with high competition.

CPC’s vary based on advertiser competition. For my analysis, I was looking at the entire Google AdWords platform, so I included data from advertisers worldwide, including countries with lower competition and lower CPC’s than the USA.

Why Are the CPC’s down by so much?

We found that CPC’s for individual ads were down -16.5% and -18.2%. We realize this is more than what Google reported in their earnings report – please see an earlier question on known issues for more information, particularly the “Rolling Average” issue. I believe what I am seeing is 2 quarters of declines in CPC’s (keep in mind that Google reported that their CPC’s fell in both Q2 and Q3 of this year).

Why are Click Through Rates falling By So Much for Google Search?

We think it’s related to having more ads on a page. That if you have double the number of ads on a page, there are more things to click on, so naturally, the click-through rate of an average ad decreases.

We’re also not sure how exactly Google calculates their click-through rates – are they looking at the average click-through rate for a page containing multiple ads, or at the click-through rates of each individual ad?

Finally, keep in mind the “Rolling Average” issue – that we’re seeing 2 quarters worth of data, not just one.

What are Your Plans for this AdWords Data in the Future?

I’m actively working on ways to improve our dataset – I hope to release regularly updated paid search industry benchmarks in the next quarter or two.

What Google Statistics Would you Like to see in the Future?

I’m very interested in hearing your thoughts on what should be included in the data index going forward, in addition to the metrics that I included in this report. For example, share of Mobile Search vs. Desktop Search, etc. Let me know in the comments below!

After months of denying/downplaying the impact of Negative SEO, Google today has launched a new and widely anticipated disavow links tool. The tool was announced by Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s web spam, at today’s keynote at the Pubcon conference, and implicitly proving the existence of Negative SEO. The new Google disavow links tool live and can be used now.

New Disavow Tool: What Does It All Mean?

My take on the new disavow tool:

• Proves that Negative SEO is a Real Issue: Obviously. (duh!) Otherwise why would Google roll out such a tool. Not all webmasters are sophisticated enough to use the disavow tool to disavow links. Unscrupulous SEOs could target unsuspecting, competing websites with devastating effect.
• Creates Moral Hazard: The disavow links tool is a get-out-of-jail-free card for any spammy SEO tactics that have fallen out of favor in Google’s eyes. The risk of engaging in black-hat / grey-hat tactics are significantly reduced because if a grey/black-hat link scheme goes ends up going badly, the damage can now be so easliy undone. We wonder what counter-measures are being taken to mitigate abuse
• Link Clean-Up Still Nearly Impossible: For example, the link profile for my website contains millions of backlinks from thousands of different domains. Trying to find the spammy URL’s / domains in the pile is akin to finding the proverbial needle in a haystak. And that’s probably their goal – that Google will give us the ability to disavow a link, but not the ability to figure out which ones are the spammy ones that are hurting our link profile. (otherwise it would be too easy!).

Who Should Use The Disavow Links Tool and When?

Matt Cutts warned that the new Disavow Links tool should be used with extreme caution to avoid potential damage. He also said that publishers should first try to remove links they are concerned about pointing at them by first working with the site owner hosting the links or with companies they may have purchased links through.

While you might be tempted to delete the spammy links in your link profile, it’s very hard to know exactly which links are the spammy ones that are hurting your account (unless of course, know because you placed them there in the first place). Since I have no reason to believe that my website is being penalized, I’m going to not use this Disavow Links tool for now!

How Does the Disavow Links Tool Work?

A website owner can disavow either individual URL’s or entire domains, specified in a text file which is uploaded to Google Webmaster Tools.

What Happens After I Disavow My Links?

According to Matt Cutts, the process of Google discounting the links to your site won’t be immediate, and could take weeks to take effect.

Using the disavow tool is the same as using the “nofollow” attribute, which allows sites to link to other sites without passing ranking credit to those sites.

Google also reserves the right not to use the submissions if it feels there’s a reason not to trust them. We wonder what else they’re doing with this data. For example, compiling a list of SEO’s with guilty consciences?

Were Can I get more Information on the Google Disavow Tool?

For more information on the new disavow links tool, please see:

• The Google help page about the Disavow tool
• The Official announcement the new Disavow Links tool on the Google Webmaster Central blog.
• A 10-minute video of Matt Cutts talking about the new tool, also embedded below.

What’s your take on the New Disavow Links Tool?

Share your thoughts in the comments below!.