Google Email- 'An Important Update to Your AdWords Account'

Many Google Advertisers received an email from AdWordsnoreply@Google.com stating "In the coming weeks, we'll upgrade your AdWords account" to their new interface.

This auto email itself stated the following points (to summarize):

-Its a 'a new web interface designed to make campaign management faster and easier.'
-'You'll have at least 30 days from the date of this email before you'll be required to use the new interface'
-'We're working to ensure that the new interface contains all of the reports and controls you need to manage your campaigns effectively'

Therefore there are two major points I will summarize with:

1. This is happening to everyone

2. You don't have a choice (so you might as well switch and get used to it asap)

If you have already familiarized yourself with the new platform, please pass along any help or feedback you may have.

Yahoo Search Marketing Notification Email- "Minimum bid requirements have increased for some of your keywords"

Have you ever gotten an email notification from Yahoo Search Marketing stating that your 'Minimum bid requirements have increased for some of your keywords' in a Pay Per Click account you have with them?


Well let me attempt to set the record straight.  This auto notification email specifically pertains to a keyword or set of keywords in your account that Yahoo is adjusting is invisible 'floor' of bidding.  This is to say that for Yahoo's PPC program, they choose and set a minimum bid required to be displayed at all, even on lower pages.  Therefore, the 'old school' model of being at the minimum bid of $.10 may not get you any impressions.


This auto notify email is then attempting to tell you that you may need to increase your bids as a result of this invisible floor raising up on your keyword(s).


These emails shouldn't though, give you too much of a problem in having to log into your account and track down the affected keywords, because if you were at the minimum bid previously and now wouldn't be displayed, you weren't pushing this keyword aggressively in the 1st place.


It is annoying to me how Yahoo goes about its business in attempting to alarm you with auto emails, so you can take time out of your day and in their hopes, spend more money with them.  Again, if this was an important keyword for your campaign, you would be attempting 1st page positioning and therefore wouldn't be affected.


Yahoo is sure to let you know when your account has run out of money or in this case, when it wants you/is making you bid higher on the per click level.  Now I just hope I can get some service on why they reject an Ad URL change and NOT tell me about it.


Do you have a marketing account with Yahoo and have no idea what I'm talking about?  Let me educate you and help build your business.  Yahoo historically around 33% cheaper than Google AdWords, both of which are necessary.

Google AdWords- The Keyword Tool

Google AdWords does provide a way internally to get suggestions for keywords in your marketplace, its called the Keyword Tool. This tool is found when drilling into the account at the 'keyword' level. This means you have clicked past both the Campaign and Ad Group levels to display your keywords and ads.

This tool is free to AdWords users, so great right. Well in the past not as much because depending on what you gave the tool as a starting term for more suggestions, the tool spit out those suggestions from most general (least useful) to specific. Furthermore, the only information associated with these suggestions was 2 simple horizontal bar graphs detailing, 'advertiser competition' and 'search volume'. So hopefully your are following me in that no numeric data was given whatsoever.

Now Google has expanded the tool to return suggestions with 'approximate search volume' for the last month and 'approximate average search volume' with an actual value. Practically speaking, your campaign has only to spend a predetermined amount any way, so its not as if one regularly finds him or herself adding up search volumes, but it is nice to quantify what Google used to shove into a half inch blue bar.

When it comes down to it, we need to have all the necessary keywords in the PPC account regardless of search volume because we need to target what it is we have deemed necessary in achieving our projected goals. That is, we do the best we can with what we can in the given market with a given budget for a certain business model. But I can say it is significant that Google's Keyword tool is a bit more useful, and frankly it is nice to see Google sharing any real data with us at all. I'm sure tired of getting email replies that might as well have been some fraction of a bar graph. But Google must be listening to the people to some extent in changes as little as this one.

The Notorious Pay Per Click Ad Quality Score and what Google will tell us about it

What is Pay Per Click 'Quality Score' and how is it calculated?

Quality Score is a dynamic variable assigned to each of your keywords. It's calculated using a variety of factors and measures how relevant your keyword is to your ad text and to a user's search query, according to Google.

About Quality Score

Quality Score influences your ads' position on Google. It also partly determines your keywords' minimum bids. In general, the higher your Quality Score, the better your ad position and the lower your minimum bids.

Quality Score helps ensure that only the most relevant ads appear to users on Google and the Google Network. The AdWords system works best for everybody—advertisers, users, publishers, and Google too—when the ads we display match our users' needs as closely as possible. Relevant ads tend to earn more clicks, appear in a higher position, and bring you the most success.
For calculating a keyword's minimum bid (PPC only, not content network or content targeted ads):

• The keyword's historical click-through rate on Google
• The relevance of the keyword to the ads in its ad group
• The quality of your landing page
• Your account history, which is measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account
• Other relevance factors***

Unfortunately, that is all Google will tell us, partly to avoid people gaming the system and partly to be less accountable. The ability to control earnings this way (in my estimation) will keep Google (and Yahoo in their shadow) from ever completely erasing the veil.

All we can do is play by the rules and put ourselves in the best position to pay the least for the desired position. This includes rotating ads, writing the most direct ad, and having the site back both of those points us with our "call to action", or what we are looking to have the user/searcher do. This must be done clearly, easily and within the top fold of the landing page.

Google's PPC games and something to avoid

The following linked article from The Register accuses Google's AdWords, namely the 'automatic matching' feature to be untargeted and an outright waste of funds in most instances.



In short, automatic matching weakens the parameters and rules of defining 'targeted' in PPC terms. If I sell Adidas shoes, the articles explains, I don't want to come up for a search on slippers. That would simply be a waste of money. I would go as far to add that in today's world of short attention spans, anything not directly or literally an Adidas shoe is not targeted enough- let alone slippers.



Pay per click is too reliant on the 'conversions to dollars spent' ratio to allow for any more leniency than exactly what I typed in. Again, attentions spans generally don't allow for it. Additionally, if the search term in question is on the general side where this rule may not directly apply, then the traffic itself will be of the browsing type not the converting (purchasing, buying, targeted lead) type. So in this case my clients probably aren't interested in the 1st place.



But that is a whole different argument in itself.



http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/18/when_google_does_evil/page2.html