Google AdWords Articles

You've installed Google Analytics on your website. Now what will you do with all of this information? Solution- create advanced segments. Advanced segments will help you track the behaviors of the visitors to your site. They're also very useful for tracking your online marketing and advertising efforts. 

For example, there was a spike in your conversions and you want to know what caused them. Setting an advanced segment will help you focus on which advertising or marketing campaign contributed the increase in sales. 

How to Create an Advanced Segment

An advanced segment lets you focus on one area of visitor type, behaviors, and in this example, traffic source- PPC.

1. Sign in to your Google Analytics account.

2. Go to the upper right of your dashboard and click All Visits.

3. On the left part of the screen, click the blue link Create a new advanced segment.

4. Under the green dimensions tab, click Traffic Sources.

5. From there, select Medium.

6. Click and drag this Medium box into the box 

7. Name your segment. In the example below, I've named it "PPC". Now click Create Segment and you're ready to apply it to your report.

I am now looking at my reports with my PPC segment turned on.  To learn more about the demographics of my PPC visitors, I can go over to the left to the Visitors report. From here, I can see things like browser and connection speed of my PPC visitors.

Advanced Segments for AdWords Traffic

Why set an AdWords advanced segment? AdWords gives you many tools with which you can monitor and optimize your ads' performance. There's ad scheduling, demographic targeting, and managed placements, just to name a few. Using an advanced segment will help you monitor your AdWords advertising efforts more closely. There are a few ways to find the behavior of your AdWords traffic:

Analytics

1.Set an advanced segment

Using the steps I describe above, set your Source to Google and the Medium to CPC.

2. Day Parts Report

*This is only available if you have destination auto-tagging turned on and your AdWords account is linked to Analytics.

Under Traffic Source, select AdWords. From there, select the Day Parts report. This graph will show you the time of day or day of week your ads were clicked. If you click on a time of day (say, 2:00), you can find the clicks, conversions, bounce rate, etc. for that specific time. Below is the graph by day. 

AdWords Dimensions Tab

The Dimensions tab in AdWords will give you metrics on day parts and conversions, and it will also give you demographic and geographic information on your clicks. 

What to do with Advanced Segment Information

There are many, many things you can do with all the information you gather from advanced segments. These are just a few ways to segment out your traffic to discover how your site and marketing efforts are performing: 

• Use a day part segment to schedule AdWords ads at certain parts of the day to increase ROI.
• Segmenting visitors by location to see if national campaigns are working at a local level.
• Compare engaged vs. nonengaged visitors.
• Compare campaign sources to decide where to allocate marketing and advertising dollars. 

These are just some of the segments that will give you very valuable information. Look for more blog posts from us with more detail on how to analyze the information you gather. 

In the meantime, if you'd like more help with Google Analytics or AdWords managment, please contact Adam Howitt Consulting, Inc. to learn more about our services. 

Check out this post with a little bit more detail on YouTube and a slide presentation on SlideShare. 

Google's been rolling out new features all year (remember Google Caffeine?), but Google Instant takes the cake, so far. As we know from its other products, Google is all about the user experience. It describes Google Instant as "search before you type." So, how will Google Instant affect the future of search?

How Google Instant works:

It takes what you have typed already and predicts the most likely completion and streams results in real-time. The predicted results are based on popular searches.

How will Google Instant affect AdWords?

For those of you worried about how it will affect your AdWords performance, you can breathe a sigh of releif. Sort of. According to the AdWords blog, Google Instant will not change the way ads are served. However, it does give a new meaning to "impression". It counts impressions by a) the results page is displayed for a minimum of three seconds when the user stops typing b) the user chooses a particular result by clicking Enter or Search, or by selecting one of the predicted results, or c) the user begins to type a query and clicks anywhere on the page-- an ad, spelling correction, a search result, or a related search. This new way of counting impressions will more than likely change the number of impressions your ad pre-Instant would see.

On the upside, Google says "[Instant] may also improve the quality of your clicks since it helps users type queries that more directly connect them with the answers they need."

Say I want to search for a running app for my iPhone. Typing "running app" has a predicted search result of "running apparel" (the -arel is in gray font). Until I press Enter or Search the AdWords ads that appear, and of course search listings, are related to buying running apparel. Once I've told Google  by pressing enter that I want a running app and not running apparel, the ads change.

And the affect of Google Instant on search ranking?

Time will tell, but straight from Google: "No, [Instant] does not impact the ranking of search results." How is this possible? Well, for one, if your site is already optimized for longtail keywords- keywords consisting of two or more words- you're in good shape. Because Google Instant will give the user the most popular search result, it does not matter how many keywords or letters the user types in.

Check to see how your current keywords are ranking. If they're not ranking high, it'd be wise to brainstorm a few more keywords to optimize for.

Big vs. Small Businesses

Try this: type "s" in the Google search bar. What do you see? The suggested search term is "Sears" The dropdown suggestion box yields Sprint, Skype, and Southwest Airlines (there's no Starbucks).

Small businesses monitoring their analytics will likely see more clicks on longtail keywords. This will hold true for more than just small businesses. Pretty much everyone who is not a well-known person/business/product will see more longtail keywords.

So what does Google Instant mean for the future?

As with all new introductions, there are a lot of questions to be answered. It’s only a day old, so it’ll be interesting to see the impact of Instant on AdWords impressions and click through rates. Will the clicks generate more conversions since the ads are more targeted? Is it the end of SEO? How will small businesses compete? 

If you're concerned about the impact of Google Instant on your SEO or AdWords, contact Adam to discuss how Adam Howitt Consulting, Inc. can help your improve performance.

SEO and AdWords resources from Adam Howitt Consulting, Inc,:

Google AdWords campaign management

Search Engine Optimization

Google Website Optimizer

Google released Enhanced CPC this week to help AdWords users improve ROI. But is it better than Conversion Optimizer? Let's take a look:

How Enhanced CPC works:

Each and every time an ad is eligible to appear, Enhanced CPC will automatically adjust your bid based on the likelihood a click will convert. If the system sees that there's a probability this will occur, it will increase your max bid by up to 30%. If it predicts that an auction has a low probability of resulting in a conversion, it will decrease the bid in order to reduce the cost of a potential click from that auction. There is no limit on how much the system will reduce your maximum cost-per-click bid.

When first enabled, Enhanced CPC will modify 50% of the auctions your ad is eligible for. Once the system has enough information to analyze its performance against the remaining 50% of the ads, it will adjust bidding. If Enhanced CPC finds that it is not benefiting your campaign, it will automatically reduce its impact but not stop modifying bids. If it has made a positive impact and your campaign has a strong performance, then the system will modify the bids of up to 75% of auctions.

But how does it know what is likely to convert?

Among many other variables, the system looks at:

• user's location
• user's browser
• language settings
• time of day
• time of week
• specific words in search query
• match type
• historical performance

Conversion Optimizer

This free AdWords tool manages your campaign based on your cost-per-acquisition goals. To use, your campaign must have Conversion Tracking enabled. The Conversion Optimizer uses this data to optimize the placement of your ads in each auction based on the probability of a conversion will occur at that time. It uses historical data from Conversion Tracking to learn where and when your ads are most likely to get conversions. 

How it works:

The tool analyzes conversion tracking data to decide the likelihood of which type and how often an auction will convert. It then predicts which auction will perform best in the future based on past perfomance. Conversion Optimizer will continually adjust bids and invest in the better performing ads to ensure that your money is spent effectively.

Conversion Optimzizer weighs the most recent data more heavily than older data. Therefore, it's better to use Conversion Optimizer with an exisiting campaign that has had AdWords Conversion Tracking enabled for a while.

Similar to Enhaced CPC, Conversion Optimizer looks at: 

• user's location
• users' browser
• language settings
• matchtype and quality
• historical performance
• time

On average campaigns using Conversion Optimzer experience a 21% increase in conversions and a 14% decrease in cost-per-conversion. Of course, numbers and results vary by campaign.

 Take away points:

• The two systems aren't much different, but each has its own benefits. Choose which one is right for you based on how comfortable you are letting Google do the work for you.
• Both tools are easy to test. If you don't like the results from Conversion Optimizer, turn it off and the campaign will revert to your previous CPC bids.
• Enhanced CPC is very easy to use. Just check the box to enable it and let Google do its thing.
• Conversion Optimizer can only be utilized if your campaign received 15 conversions in 30 days. Enhanced CPC does not have a required minimum number of conversions to be used.
• Both will show your ads more when you are likely to get conversions.

Even after reading all this are you still apprehensive about handling your AdWords campaigns? Let us help!

Related resources from Adam Howitt Consulting, Inc.:

Google AdWords campaign management

Facebook Advertising services

Keyword Density Tool

Well, close.  Jeff just sent me an article from Seth's blog pointing out that marketing evolution is much harder than marketing gravity because gravity is something people already believe in.

I'm banking on people believing that evolving your website is cheaper and more productive than starting from scratch or paying for AdWords campaigns.  

The seminar follows a logical flow from fixing the problems for the visitors you get before chasing new visitors with SEO and AdWords campaigns.

The morning shows you how to use Google Analytics to analyze the traffic you get to find the problems on your website.  Next I'll cover Google Website Optimizer to help you split test a theory without fighting with the CEO over what goes on the home page.

The afternoon starts with Search Engine Optimization basics to make sure you're getting the best free traffic possible before you invest in pay-per-click, the focus of the last session of the day.  Google AdWords can be expensive if the material covered in the first 3 sessions isn't addressed and I'll teach you how to change the way you buy your campaigns to get the most for your dollar.

The first one day seminar is December 17th in Chicago and space is restricted to a cozy crowd of 10 to promote interaction and make sure everyone goes home with a personal action plan.  If you can't make it to Chicago for the day, let me know if you think there is a demand for the seminar in your city.

Sign up now for Website Evolution!

Up the expertise you bring to the table. One-day intensive covers designing for search engine results, split testing of Web pages, using Analytics to arrive at a best design. Google tools provide you with a slam-dunk answers to every client design request.

I'm running a one-day four session seminar from the offices of Adam Howitt Consulting in Chicago on Wednesday, December 17th 2008.

Find out more about Website Evolution!

A client recently contacted me to ask why Google AdWords was reporting conversions but the clickbank affiliate account the Google AdWords ad linked to showed zero conversions.  The names have been changed to protect the innocent.  That includes the site - I have no idea about websites selling pipecleaners.

The "Basic" Process

1. Joe the plumber (just to be topical) searches in Google for a phrase that triggers my client's AdWords ad for bestpipecleaners.com.  
2. If Joe clicks the link, Google AdWords places a cookie on his machine that lasts 30 days to record the Ad that drove him to the site
3. Google AdWords redirects Joe to the link in the Ad, in this case my client's clickbank affiliate link
4. Clickbank creates a clickbank cookie good for 60 days to record the affiliate ID responsible for taking Joe to the clickbank destination URL, in this case, my client's landing page finally.
5. Joe goes from the landing page to a few more pages and then hits the purchase button
6. The purchase button goes to the clickbank checkout process
7. Clickbank pulls the 60 day clickbank cookie from Joe's machine
8. When he completes the sale, the affiliate ID from his cookie is credited with the sale
9. Clickbank redirects Joe to the thank you page on my client's site
10. The thank you page is tagged with the affiliate tracking code and Joe closes his browser and goes to fix some pipes.

Simple huh?  So in this case clickbank correctly accounts for one sale from my client's affiliate ID and Google AdWords records one conversion against the Ad that convinced Joe to purchase.

The Blockage in the Pipes
Josephine the plumber searches in Google for a phrase that triggers my client's ad and follows a similar path as Joe but when she gets to the landing pages, she doesn't trust the hype, leaves the website and goes to fix some pipes.  

A week later she is still trying to solve her underlying problem so she goes back to her computer and finds another website on the topic, pipecleanerreviews.com. Unbeknownst to her, this site is also an affiliate of my client and after she sees a review of my client's product, she decides it might work after all and clicks the link to visit my client's landing page again at bestpipecleaners.com.  Behind the scenes, the URL she clicked on is a clickbank link with pipecleanerreviews.com's clickbank id instead of my client's clickbank id.

1. Clickbank records the affiliate id as pipecleanerreviews.com in the cookie on Josephine's machine, replacing the original affiliate id of bestpipecleaners.com
2. Clickbank redirects her to bestpipecleaners.com and she completes the sale
3. Clickbank pulls the cookie from her machine (pipecleanerreviews.com's affiliate id) and so they get the credit for the sale
4. Clickbank redirects her to the thank you page which is also tracked with pipecleanerreviews.com's conversion tracking code (in addition to bestpipecleaners.com's code), and she goes off to fix some pipes.

The problem in this scenario, is that the thankyou page has both Google AdWords conversion codes and so both AdWords accounts (bestpipecleaners.com and pipecleanerreview.com) will record a conversion, when clickbank only credited a single affiliate with the conversion.

There are many other scenarios that play out in a similar way and she might have visited many sites.  In fact some of the links from my client's site bestpipecleaners.com points to pipecleanerreviews.com because it's a good idea to let people get third party opinions of your products to help them decide if it's worth buying.  

To accurately measure the AdWords campaign, the first search she did was not responsible wholly for the sale but since conversions are absolute we have to decide who gets the credit.  Regardless of your opinion on this, clickbank believes the last affiliate ID used should get the credit since they ultimately generated the sale.  Google AdWords however has split the credit because of the conversion code existing for both affiliates on the thank you page.  

The BestPipeCleaner for the job
If we want to change this behavior to make it match clickbank we have to show only the Google AdWords conversion code for the affiliate recorded by clickbank.  Fortunately, Clickbank reports the affiliate ID (if there was one) in the URL as the variable cbaffi when the visitor is sent to the thank you page so it is a simple matter of detecting which affiliate ID was passed and showing the appropriate tracking code snippet.  This could be a google snippet, a Yahoo PPC snippet or any other conversion code really, we just need to show one or none. 

The URL will look something like this where zzzzzzz is the affiliate ID and ... means there is much more than I want to type out:
/common/thankyou.cfm?item=9&cbreceipt=xxxxxxx&time=1224443502&cbpop=yyyyyyy&cbaffi=zzzzzzz&cname=...

For my solution I propose a database table of unique affiliate IDs mapped to their tracking code snippet but if you are only dealing with a few affiliates you could manually write this out to a property list or structure if you can carefully escape any quotes or double quotes that might break your code.

1. If the affiliate ID is blank or isn't passed to the thank you page, do nothing and skip to the rest of the page
2. If the affiliate ID is not blank, look-up the affiliate ID in the database:
   1. If there are no matches do nothing and skip to the rest of the page
   2. If there is one result, display the conversion tracking code and then show the rest of the page
   3. If there are mulitple results for the affiliate ID, loop over the rows and write each snippet out then show the rest of the page

Ideally, each affiliate would have only one snippet per ID but it is foreseeable that an affiliate might be promoting your site on Google, Yahoo and several other conversion tracking channels.  If you don't give them a unique affiliate ID per channel, they will record a conversion against each in the unlikely event that someone saw an affiliates Google ad, then their Yahoo ad before making a purchase.  It's a complex scenario but worth noting.  If you can, give them a unique affiliate ID for each separate ad medium they use (Google, Yahoo) so they can see the stats they need.

For help with your Google AdWords issues take a look thru my consulting site and contact me.  If you need help with Clickbank I have to confess it's not my specialty but I can try to help. 

I've also worked extensively with third party e-commerce providers to configure Google Analytics to ensure revenue is recorded against the correct referral sources which is a related issue.