Jul
31
Posted | July 31, 2009
When we started building the new AdWords interface we asked ourselves two questions. First, how can we help you get your work done faster? Second, how can we help you find the right tools at the right time to drive the best possible performance for your AdWords campaigns? We believe we've made great progress towards these goals, and today, the new interface is coming out of beta.
We've heard from many of you that the new interface has made a material difference for your business. Advertisers have saved time with quicker editing, reporting, and account navigation, and they've improved campaign performance by using better integrated tools to refine their targeting.
For example, search marketing agency ROI Revolution has used the new interface to reduce the average time they spend optimizing a given campaign for the Google Content Network from a few hours to just 20 minutes. Team lead Justin D'Angelo explains: “We’ve spotted things that used to take much longer, require running reports and require much more data analysis. With the new interface, we can spot it in a second and cut costs for our clients."
B2B software company ClickTime has also seen measurable business impact from using the new interface. They've used the search terms report to increase their CTR by 31% while reducing cost per lead and improving overall lead quality. On the whole, they estimate their AdWords productivity has increased by 100% with the new interface. You can read more about these success stories on our case studies page.
Let's look at the continuous improvements we've made and new features we've rolled out to the new AdWords interface in response to advertiser feedback. In the past month alone we've released spreadsheet editing to support bulk changes to keyword lists, and location extensions to simplify the local advertising process, among other additions. And we're not done yet -- the new AdWords interface is built on an infrastructure that lets us develop features more quickly than in the past, so you'll continue to see new features released regularly in the coming months.
Now that the new interface is out of beta, we're upgrading a larger number of advertiser accounts to the new interface exclusively. If you have questions about the interface, please consult the new interface microsite or attend an upcoming free webinar.
Finally, we'd like to say thank you to all of you who helped us test the new AdWords interface over the past nine months. Your feedback has been invaluable in making AdWords what it is today. And as always, if you have any comments or requests, please let us know.
Jul
28
Posted | July 28, 2009
From August 11 - 14 the Seminars for Success will host its first summit featuring in-depth training on Google's online marketing suite. Daily workshops will cover Google AdWords, Google Analytics and Website Optimizer along with special sessions on social marketing, mobile strategies and more. The summit will take place in Burlington VT, and you can register online for one or all four days of the summit.
If you can't make it to the summit, there are also a number of other seminars occuring over the next few months:
AdWords 101: Beginner and 201: Intermediate
September 14-15: Washington DC Area
September 28-29: Columbus, OH Area
October 5-6: New York City Area
October 26-27: Chicago, IL
November 2-3: Berkeley, CA
November 16-17: Charlotte, NC
December 7-8: Scottsdale, AZ
Adwords 301:Advanced Account Optimization and AdWords 302: Advanced Conversion Optimization
August 4-5: Denver, CO
August 25-26: Toronto, Canada
September 1-2: Atlanta, GA
September 23-24: New York, NY
Analytics: Introduction and Analytics: Advanced
July 29-30: Los Angeles, CA
September 16-17: Chicago, IL
September 17-18: Canberra, Australia
September 24-25: Sydney, Australia
October 22-23: Melbourne, Australia
Website Optimizer
July 31: Los Angeles, CAFor more information about Seminars for Success, including registration details, course outlines, and past attendees' comments, please visit http://www.google.com/awseminars.
Jul
25
Posted | July 25, 2009
Today, we'd like to tell you about a new way to run your local ads – location extensions. Location extensions allow you to "extend" your AdWords campaigns by dynamically attaching your business address to your ads. This new feature will be fully available in the coming weeks, with some advertisers having access to the feature starting today.
If you're a business owner, you can set up extensions by linking an AdWords campaign to your Local Business Center (LBC) account. If you're not the primary business owner of the locations you're advertising, you can manually enter addresses directly into AdWords. For example, a clothing brand that distributes to a number of different stores might want to associate their ads with various store locations through extensions, even though their official business address doesn't correspond to those addresses.
Once extensions are set up, we'll dynamically match your business locations to a user's location or search terms and show the address with your text ads. If we're unable to determine a user's location or if there are no relevant addresses to show, we'll simply show your ad without an address. If you prefer not to dynamically match addresses to your ads and would rather show a specific address in one particular ad, you can do so by setting up specific location extensions for individual ads. Your ads can show with their relevant extensions on Google and Google Maps and as regular text ads without the extensions on partner sites in the Search and Content Networks.
With the introduction of location extensions, local business ads will no longer be a separate ad format. Instead, you can simply create new local ads with extensions from scratch or add extensions to your existing text ads. For those of you who have existing local business ads, your ads will continue running as long as you don't edit them. If you edit a local business ad, it will be converted to a text ad with the ad's address attached as a location extension. The new converted ad will look identical to the local business ad and will appear in the same places as your local business ads. AdWords Editor will continue to support the creation and management of local business ads, and we plan to launch Editor support for location extensions in a future release. For full details about editing local business ads in the new interface, please visit this Help Center entry.
To learn more about location extensions, please see the location extensions overview section of the Help Center.
Jul
25
Posted | July 25, 2009
For those of you reading the blog in India, we're hosting a Google Analytics Conversion University Seminar at the Google Gurgaon, India office on August 8th, 2009. Google Conversion University is an open event for anyone interested in learning more about how Google Analytics helps you make smarter business decisions based on your website data. The seminar will include a variety of experts in the field including in-house Analytics product experts and Google Analytics Authorized Consultants.
For registration and more details, please visit: www.getGAready.in. Read more about this event on the Official Google India blog.
For registration and more details, please visit: www.getGAready.in. Read more about this event on the Official Google India blog.
Jul
23
Posted | July 23, 2009
We're excited to announce that Conversion Optimizer, an AdWords CPA (cost per acquisition) bidding feature is available to more campaigns. Any campaign with at least 15 conversions in the last 30 days is now eligible to use Conversion Optimizer. These conversions can be tracked either through AdWords Conversion Tracking or as linked Google Analytics goals.
A recent analysis showed that campaigns which adopted Conversion Optimizer achieved a 21% increase in conversions while at the same time decreasing their CPA by 14% (on average and in comparison to similar campaigns).
An example of this improvement can be seen in PRWeb, who describe the results they saw from Conversion Optimizer as "phenomenal". Meg Walker, the Director of Online Marketing for PRWeb, initially turned to Conversion Optimizer in order to improve PRWeb's campaign management and results. Within a week she was able to see the value of Conversion Optimizer for driving incremental conversions at lower costs. Overall, she's been able to reduce CPA and CPC by 12.5% and 5.4% respectively and increase overall conversion rates by 76.5%. Even more impressive, one campaign that seemed to be maxed out increased conversions by 201.5% and decreased cost per conversion by 66.5%.
The success PRWeb achieved with Conversion Optimizer has freed up funding and time that can now be spent on other aspects of the business. As Ms. Walker mentions, "I don’t have to bid for position or constantly manage CPC changes. Since my objective is to hit a specific CPA goal, the Conversion Optimizer is ideal.” To read the entire success story, please visit http://www.google.com/adwords/conversionoptimizer/success.html
To learn more about Conversion Optimizer and read other success stories, please visit the AdWords Conversion Optimizer page.
Jul
22
Posted | July 22, 2009
Your keywords determine when your ad shows to potential customers, but it's the content of your ads that determines if users will actually click and visit your website. So we thought we'd share this short video with some best practices for creating winning ad text. You will see ideas for what you can test when writing your ads, which will help you to differentiate your business from the crowd and drive even more potential customers to your website.
Did you like the video? We'd love to hear your feedback. Let us know. For more information, visit our entry on ad text optimization in the AdWords Help Center.
Jul
17
Posted | July 17, 2009
How do I get better results from my campaigns? It's a simple question that can often be surprisingly difficult to answer. Where should I focus my efforts? On ad text? Budget? Keywords or bids? Which campaign has the greatest potential for improvement? And what are the expected results?
Today we're introducing the Opportunities tab, a beta feature in the new AdWords interface built to help you answer these questions. The Opportunities tab is a central hub you can use to browse and apply customized optimization ideas to your account. We're designing the new tab both to save you time when optimizing your campaigns and to give you more insight into ways you can capture additional cost-effective traffic.
Initially, the Opportunities tab will focus on budget and keyword ideas for your campaigns and ad groups, but in the coming months we'll be expanding the set of available features. If you've used our Campaign Optimizer tool, you're already familiar with some of the types of customized ideas that will be listed on the new tab. But unlike Campaign Optimizer, the Opportunities tab lets you browse ideas across campaigns and ad groups, helping you find potential areas of improvement and easily prioritize the changes you make to your account.
The Opportunities tab will replace the Tools tab in the new AdWords interface. However, all existing AdWords tools will still be available, and you can find the current Tools page within the new tab.
Today we're releasing the Opportunities tab to a small number of U.S. English advertisers, and we look forward to expanding the feature to additional countries and languages in the coming weeks. If you're a U.S. English advertiser and would like to be considered for the beta, please submit your account information on our beta sign-up page.
Interested in learning more about other features in the new AdWords interface? Attend one of our upcoming free webinars for an in-depth walkthrough. We just added two new dates: July 29th and August 5th. You can sign up at the new interface webinars page.
Jul
15
Posted | July 15, 2009
Have you committed one of the "7 deadly sins of landing page design?"
Since it's the page visitors see after clicking your ad, your landing page is one of your most valuable tools. A bad landing page will drive visitors away, while a good one will turn AdWords clicks into customers. This is why we held a webinar on July 1st to expose the "7 deadly sins of landing page design", and explained how to fix them.
Tim Ash, one of our Website Optimizer Authorized Consultants, led this webinar and shared many insights and best practices to help advertisers improve their conversion rates. A recording of the webinar is now available for anyone who was not able to attend.
The recording is also available on the Website Optimizer Youtube Channel, where you can learn even more about improving your conversion rate with website testing.
We hope you will find these resources helpful as you improve your website landing pages to turn more clicks into customers.
Jul
14
Posted | July 14, 2009
If you want your ads to only run during certain times of the day or week, consider using ad scheduling, today's (Ad)Word of the Day.
Ad scheduling can help you better target your ads by selecting the times when you want to show ads. For example, if you offer special late night deals, you can set up an ad group to show those ads only between 10pm and 3am. You can also set different bids for different hours, so if you have better conversion rates during certain hours, you can set your bids higher to try and get more impressions and clicks during that time.
For more information, check out the article on ad scheduling in the AdWords Help Center.
Ad scheduling lets you control the days and times your ad campaigns appear. You may also choose an advanced mode, which allows you to raise or lower your bids for a campaign at certain times of the day.
For more information, check out the article on ad scheduling in the AdWords Help Center.
Jul
10
Posted | July 10, 2009
Many advertisers use spreadsheets when managing their AdWords campaigns to streamline tasks such as changing bids, creating keyword lists, and adjusting destination URLs. As a result, we decided to work on a way for you to use spreadsheets directly in your account, and today this feature is available in the new AdWords interface.
You can access spreadsheet edit mode from the Keywords tab in any ad group. You'll find it under the More actions menu.
In the past, you might have used power posting to enter your keywords with bids and destination URLs. Now, with spreadsheet editing, you can accomplish the same tasks from a spreadsheet view. Even if you use another spreadsheet application, it's very easy to transfer your work into AdWords - simply copy and paste directly from your spreadsheet into your account.
Like in a spreadsheet, you can use formulas to edit your keywords and bids. For example, if you want your ad to show on the first page, but your bid is lower than the first page bid, you can set up a formula to address this.
Here, I've set my Max CPC to be 120% of the first page bid (Cell G2). To apply this to all of my keywords, I can just copy and paste. Keep in mind that only the values are saved back into AdWords, not the formulas.
Questions? Attend a new interface webinar tomorrow
We'll be holding another free webinar about the new AdWords interface tomorrow, July 10th at 11a.m. PDT. If you're looking to get up to speed quickly, it's a great way to spend an hour on Friday. If you can't make it tomorrow, we have one on Thursday, July 16th at 10a.m. PDT as well. You can register for either webinar on the New Interface Webinars site.
Jul
09
Posted | July 09, 2009
On Saturday, July 11th, 2009, the AdWords system will be unavailable from approximately 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT due to system maintenance. While you won't be able to sign in to your accounts during this time, your campaigns will continue to run as usual. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Jul
08
Posted | July 08, 2009
As an AdWords advertiser, it's important for you that potential customers find you on the Internet. If your business has one or more physical locations, it's just as important that customers can find where you are.
To help your customers find your business locations, you can now add customized directions to your website from Google Maps. With the Google Maps directions gadget, you no longer need to write out and update multiple sets of directions from the North, South, East or West. After all, customers are looking only for directions from their specific location, and they may not know which direction they're coming from.
We wanted to make the process of implementing the gadget on your web site easy for you. You can pre-fill the "To" field with one or multiple addresses, a generic zip code or even a set of latitude-longitude coordinates. Customers only need to enter where they're coming from and are able to print their directions with a single click. And if they would prefer not to drive, the gadget also provides walking and public transit directions.
Take a look at how Legoland California, Emeril Lagasse, and Harvard University are using the gadget. Then test and create your own directions gadget here. The Google Maps gadget is available in 23 languages.
If you're interested in learning more, head over to the Google Lat Long blog for a more detailed walkthrough of the gadget's features.
Jul
07
Posted | July 07, 2009
If you'd like to expand your advertising to YouTube, consider using YouTube Promoted Videos. You can make a video about your business and then promote that video alongside relevant YouTube search results. Similar to AdWords, YouTube Promoted Videos lets you decide where you'd like your videos to appear on YouTube, place bids in an automated online auction, and set daily spending budgets.
Last week we launched "Call-to-Action," a new feature that allows you to add a clickable overlay to your Promoted Videos. This allows you to drive viewers to a website off-YouTube, which can help you drive more conversions and generate engaged, well-targeted traffic for your brand or product.
You can learn more about this new conversion feature of by visiting the recently launched YouTube Biz Blog. To start using Promoted Videos today, visit ads.youtube.com.
Last week we launched "Call-to-Action," a new feature that allows you to add a clickable overlay to your Promoted Videos. This allows you to drive viewers to a website off-YouTube, which can help you drive more conversions and generate engaged, well-targeted traffic for your brand or product.
You can learn more about this new conversion feature of by visiting the recently launched YouTube Biz Blog. To start using Promoted Videos today, visit ads.youtube.com.
Jul
03
Posted | July 03, 2009
We released the new AdWords interface early to get your feedback on it as soon as possible. And you haven't disappointed us! We receive thousands of comments every month covering likes, dislikes, and ideas for ways to further improve the AdWords interface. We read your comments carefully to prioritize the areas to work on next.
And we've made a lot of progress on the top issues our advertisers reported, so today we wanted to share these improvements with you.
Less horizontal scrolling
When working with certain browsers and monitor resolutions (especially 1024x768), you told us you needed to scroll back and forth in order view data tables and controls. We've now condensed the layout of AdWords pages and width of columns in order to eliminate the need to scroll horizontally. If you're still encountering this issue, please let us know.
If you'd like to further condense the view of your account, remember that you can customize your columns. Try hiding columns that aren't important to you and move other columns around to quickly compare important metrics side-by-side.
Support for Safari 4 and Firefox 3.5
Those of you working with the newest versions of Safari and Firefox will be happy to know that the new AdWords interface now works with these browsers. We'll continue to work to support the latest versions all major browsers in the future.
Faster load times
One of our most important goals with the new interface was to improve the efficiency of day-to-day campaign management tasks. We've heard from some advertisers that while integrated reports and roll-up tabs help them quickly access and act on important data, the data didn't always load as quickly as they'd hoped.
We've worked to improve the speed of the interface with the latest releases, and hope you can now see a noticeable improvement. However, our work isn't done, and we'll continue to focus on shortening load times with upcoming launches. For the fastest experience, we recommend using the following browsers: Chrome, Firefox 3+, Safari 4, or Internet Explorer 8.
Searching for keywords
We heard many of you are looking for quick ways to search for keywords, ad text, or campaign names within your account. In previous posts, we talked about how you can use filtering to focus on the data that matters to you.
While text filters allow you to search and act directly on the data you see, they also take a few clicks to set up for the first time. To help you work more quickly, we've added a new shortcut that lets you quickly search by text under the 'Filter and views' menu on any tab.
Try it on your Keywords tab to quickly find all keywords containing a specific term.
Educational materials
You told us you'd like more help with transitioning to the new interface. In addition to New Interface Thursdays and our new interface website, we recently started a series of free educational webinars, featuring the product team. Sign up now for the next webinar on July 10.
If you haven't been using the new AdWords interface to manage your campaigns due to a specific annoyance, now's a great time to to log in and see how the interface has improved. And please, keep your feedback coming. Just click on the Send Feedback link at the top right corner of your account to share your thoughts.
Jul
02
Posted | July 02, 2009
On June 24, Google Ad Planner turned one year old, and what a busy year it's been. Marketers and media planners worldwide now manage tens of thousands of media plans with Google Ad Planner. Additionally, with publishers directly contributing their own site data and sharing their Google Analytics traffic numbers, we continue to provide you the most accurate data measurements for your media planning. We've also steadily released a variety of new features over the year based on your feedback, including pre-defined audiences, more site filters, and additional demographic data.
To celebrate these milestones, we've given Google Ad Planner a facelift. Starting today, you can find sites and manage your media plans even faster with the redesigned Google Ad Planner interface.
We've kept all the best features from before, but the new interface streamlines your research and media planning by making features easier to find and use. Simply enter the URL to jump directly to a site's profile page and see Ad Planner's rich profile data for the site. We've also improved your campaign management by allowing you to easily merge and copy media plans.
We hope you'll take advantage of the new Google Ad Planner interface. Visit www.google.com/adplanner to check out our new look and to find out more information about Google Ad Planner.
To celebrate these milestones, we've given Google Ad Planner a facelift. Starting today, you can find sites and manage your media plans even faster with the redesigned Google Ad Planner interface.
We've kept all the best features from before, but the new interface streamlines your research and media planning by making features easier to find and use. Simply enter the URL to jump directly to a site's profile page and see Ad Planner's rich profile data for the site. We've also improved your campaign management by allowing you to easily merge and copy media plans.
We hope you'll take advantage of the new Google Ad Planner interface. Visit www.google.com/adplanner to check out our new look and to find out more information about Google Ad Planner.
Jul
01
Posted | July 01, 2009
We're pleased to announce today that the click measurement systems in Google AdWords has now been accredited by the Media Rating Council (MRC). MRC accreditation certifies that Google's click measurement technology adheres to the industry standards for counting interactive advertising clicks and that its processes supporting this technology are accurate.
The industry guidelines were developed over the past three years in an effort coordinated by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the MRC. We're proud to be one of the founding members of this group, which established the first ever industry guidelines governing how interactive advertising clicks are counted and how invalid clicks are detected and handled. The audit against these guidelines was conducted by a CPA firm engaged by the MRC to perform the audit. You can view the IAB / MRC Click Measurement Guidelines here.
We look forward to continuing to work with the rest of the industry in promoting rigorous standards and practices in click measurement and analysis. As ever, our Ad Traffic Quality team continues to work hard on protecting advertiser ROI. To read more about our work in this area, please visit our Ad Traffic Quality Resource Center.
The industry guidelines were developed over the past three years in an effort coordinated by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the MRC. We're proud to be one of the founding members of this group, which established the first ever industry guidelines governing how interactive advertising clicks are counted and how invalid clicks are detected and handled. The audit against these guidelines was conducted by a CPA firm engaged by the MRC to perform the audit. You can view the IAB / MRC Click Measurement Guidelines here.
We look forward to continuing to work with the rest of the industry in promoting rigorous standards and practices in click measurement and analysis. As ever, our Ad Traffic Quality team continues to work hard on protecting advertiser ROI. To read more about our work in this area, please visit our Ad Traffic Quality Resource Center.
Jul
01
Posted | July 01, 2009
For those of you who use the AdWords API, we are happy to announce the launch of the latest version of the API, v2009. This version offers more speed, scale, and flexibility to developers, at a lower cost. Since v2009 is a production beta, developers can sign up for access and will be whitelisted on a rolling basis. For full details on what you'll find in v2009 and how to get started, visit the AdWords API blog.
