Google AdWords recently announced the introduction of ‘interest-based advertising’ which has now been released from beta testing. Called “remarketing”, this is a new feature for AdWords advertisers who are using the content network and enables advertisers to present their sales messages to previous visitors to their website.

Google claims that the testing period with selected advertisers has proved very successful and the concept allows companies to display tailored ads on sites throughout the Google content network to web users that have previously visited the site from an AdWords link. This is similar to behavioural targeting so that previous activity can be used to target new offers through text, display or video adverts.

Google provides an example of how this might work for an advertiser, such as a basketball team with tickets to sell. By putting a piece of code on the tickets page of their website, this will let them later show relevant ticket ads (such as last minute discounts) to everyone who has visited that page, as they subsequently browse sites in the Google Content Network.

Several remarketing campaigns could also be run at the same time. For example, the company could offer discount game tickets to users who’ve previously visited the tickets page, advertise VIP hospitality packages to users who clicked on a ‘How to get to the arena’ page, and advertise a sale on team merchandise to users who previously visited a YouTube brand channel.

Google states that remarketing is a great way for businesses to display more relevant and useful ads for users, and more opportunities for customers to receive special offers and discounts that may be of interest to them.

If you’d like more information about how the remarketing option from Google AdWords could improve the marketing of your business, please contact us for more information.

On March 23rd, the European Court of Justice announced its long-awaited decision in three Google AdWords cases regarding copyright infringement and the use of trademarks, all with favourable outcomes for Google. The result also has implications for AdWords advertisers who bid on the trademarks of competitors.

The Louis Vuitton luxury goods maker had sued Google in France over its AdWords policy which allowed third parties, including LV competitors, to bid on its trademarked terms as keywords. The outcome was that the ECJ supported Google’s position that it merely provides technology services to advertisers who make legally significant judgments using the technology. Therefore the ECJ ruled that advertisers, not Google, make the requisite trademark “use”, and Google can qualify as a web host of its advertisers’ content and thus is eligible for the associated safe harbour, if it remains sufficiently passive.

Google has been using a different approach to trademarks in some countries. For example, in the US & UK, AdWords advertisers can bid on competitor’s trademark keywords although the terms can’t be used in the advert text. In most other countries, including France, Google has a policy of allowing advertisers to protect their own trademark as a keyword, to stop others bidding on it.

These different approaches reflect local copyright legislation but makes for a confused policy and the latest ruling means that parties using AdWords may still sue each other if there’s an alleged trademark violation. Once Google is notified of a violation, it must act, much like copyright claims for unauthorised use of video in the US on YouTube, for example. In such cases Google removes the video at the copyright owners behest and, if it fails to comply with these requests, Google could be liable.

For advertisers that are able to bid on a competitor’s business name or trademarks, they need to determine if this is a worthwhile strategy. Such an approach can create bad feeling between companies and advertisers also have the avoid the charge of trying to ‘pass off’ their own advert and link as a competitors listing, which can also have legal implications as well as create negative feelings from the searcher. Clickthrough rates on competitor keywords tend to be low anyway, which drives up the average cost per click and it can be a policy that can backfire on the advertiser.

Although Google has escaped serious censure from the Louis Vuitton case, it will need to review its position and practices concerning trademarked search terms. Advertisers will also need to consider the implications of bidding against competitor terms within their local copyright legislation, plus companies that are affected by such tactics will need to weigh up the likely cost of responding to advertisers and taking direct legal action against them.

If you’d like more information about how this ruling and how it could affect the marketing of your business through Google AdWords, please contact us now.

At the end of March, Google announced the launch of AdWords Search Funnels, a new series of reports made available to advertisers that provide a greater insight into the ad click and impression behaviour on Google that leads up to a final conversion – such as a sale, contact enquiry or newsletter signup.

The new Search Funnels reports are being rolled out to AdWords accounts over the next month or so and are more detailed than the information previously shown about a conversion, which just mentioned the details about the last search term and advert used before the conversion occurred. Now advertisers can see when customers perform multiple searches before finally converting and also show the full picture by giving an insight into the ads customers interact with during their shopping process. With more advertisers trying to track the ‘attribution’ of a final action, Google is adding a new level of data to try to explain this process.

Google is tracking activity by searcher over a 30 day period, so that it can link previous activity to an eventual conversion. Using a similar report format to Google Analytics, the following reports are now being made available to AdWords advertisers:

• Overview – shows the total conversions; average days to conversion; average ad clicks to conversion; and average ad impressions to conversion
• Top Conversions – gives the number of conversions for each particular conversion type and the value of those conversions (if being tracked)

Sources Analysis

• Assist Clicks and Impressions – shows results based on the number of assisting clicks and impressions, as well as those just from the last click. This means that the keyword was clicked upon, or the impression was shown, on the path to a conversion, but wasn’t necessarily the last click or impression that resulted in a conversion.
• Assist/Last ratios – helps to identify keywords that might be more valuable than they appear from a last click perspective, i.e. they might have been instrumental in getting the conversion, but wouldn’t otherwise get the credit they deserve, as they weren’t the last click. The best way to confirm the assist value of a keyword is by testing it to see if increased bid levels yield improved ROI.
• Assisted Conversions – as above, but performance based on the number of assisted conversions.
• The difference between Assist Clicks vs. Click-Assisted Conversions - the easiest way to understand this is via an example. For a conversion path like: keyword 1 (clicked) > keyword 1 (clicked) > keyword 2 (clicked) > conversion
  keyword 1 would earn 2 Assist Clicks, but only 1 Click-Assisted Conversion.
  The same definition applies for the difference between Assist Impressions vs. Impression-Assisted Conversions.

Interaction Analysis

• First & Last Click Analysis – these reports are based on what was first clicked leading to conversion, or was last clicked prior to a conversion in terms of each campaign, ad group, or keyword. The reports are designed for advanced analysis of conversion paths by being able to drill down into the next hierarchy from campaign level.
• Top Paths (clicks, impressions & transitions) - shows the most common conversion paths based on ads that were shown and/or clicked prior to conversion.
• Click paths - represent the sequence of keywords that were clicked by customers prior to converting.
• Impressions paths - are useful for exploring the breadth of related keywords customers were searching for prior to converting.
• Transition paths - are useful for seeing conversion paths that consist of different keywords and how customers transition between keywords.

Time Analysis

• Time Lag – shows how long it takes for a customer to convert from the first click, first impression, or last click on your advert.
• Path Length – details the percentage of conversions that had a certain number of clicks, or impressions before them. e.g. 1 click 20%; 2 clicks 30% etc. If the majority of conversions happen after multiple clicks, the next step is to identify opportunities to take action using the other reports.

As shown above, the range of different reporting options are now much more extensive and also quite complex. Advertisers therefore need to understand what the data is showing and how it has been tracked. However, this change will allow advertisers to analyse keywords far more effectively and will help with one of the biggest problems companies have when trying to filter out ‘research only’ terms from ‘buying terms’, since research terms like ‘fashion’ or ‘cruise holidays’ or ‘TVs’ are often very broad. So through these AdWords funnels, advertisers can now identify which keywords are for research and which keywords are the money terms and develop a strategy accordingly.

If you’d like more information about how Google’s new Search Funnels could improve the marketing of your business, please contact us.

As Google Analytics becomes more widely used by business websites to track online activity, it’s also possible to link a Google Adwords account into the data, which helps to add an extra level of information about the effectiveness of this form of pay-per-click advertising. However, a common issue that arises from this data is the discrepancy between the numbers of clicks reported by an AdWords campaign, and the visits data shown by Google Analytics.

Once a Google AdWords campaign is linked to an Analytics account, it’s possible to view additional data within Analytics on how the PPC activity is working. The Analytics reports show data for clicks – which most closely match the figures shown in the AdWords interface – as well as for visits. There are often differences for each of these numbers between the two accounts and this discrepancy can occur for a number of reasons, even if the Google Analytics code has been implemented correctly.

Many people believe that AdWords clicks and Analytics visits are the same thing, but this is not true. In Google Analytics, there is an important distinction between the clicks in an AdWords Campaigns report (which shows how many times the adverts were clicked by visitors) and visits, such as the numbers shown in the Search Engines and Visitors reports, which are the number of unique sessions initiated by visitors.

Of course the first thing to check is that the Analytics code has been implemented correctly on all pages of a website and that the AdWords account is linked. If these elements are working correctly, then there are a number of reasons why the numbers may not match, such as:

• A visitor who clicks on the PPC advert and gets re-directed to another page wouldn’t be tagged by Analytics as an Adwords referral visitor. This would record one click and no Adwords visit.
• Visitors who do comparison shopping may move between different adverts, clicking on each advert multiple times to remind themselves of particular products or prices, after having seen others. Adwords would record this as multiple clicks, whereas Analytics recognises the multiple page views as the same visit, (if performed during the same session). This would record multiple clicks and just 1 visit.
• A visitor may clicks on the advert but doesn’t progress through to the site, by either pressing the stop or back button. This would not activate the Analytics code and would therefore record 1 click, but no visit.
• Website visitors must have JavaScript, images and cookies enabled in their browsers in order for Analytics to report their visit. However, if these settings are disabled for any reason, the data will not be recorded by Analytics, although AdWords will still be able to register these visitors because it only tracks clicks to the advert.
• Google AdWords automatically recognises and filters out invalid clicks, such as those from an industry competitor who clicks on your advert multiple times from the same IP address (possibly during multiple sessions), in a misguided attempt to raise your advertising costs. These invalid clicks aren’t included in Analytics reports, but the visits to the site are included. So, this would record 1 click and numerous visits.
• There can also be an issue with repeat visitors. This is because a campaign-tracking cookie will remain for 6 months after a visitor clicks on an AdWords advert and so if the visitor returns to a website within that period, Google Analytics will still be able to credit the visit to the original campaign but AdWords won’t show this as another click.

It’s therefore important for Google AdWords advertisers to understand the reasons for these discrepancies, so they can accurately assess the figures reported by Analytics to maximise the Google Adwords campaign’s performance.

If you’d like to know more about this issue and how it might affect your Analytics data, please contact us for a discussion.

The Bid Simulator is a new tool that has recently been introduced by Google as part of their new AdWords management interface. The tool can be used by advertisers to view the potential impact of a different bid level within the advertising results for each search term being used, but what value does it really offer?

Using data from the past 7 days, the Bid Simulator tool re-calculates the number of impressions for which an advert could have shown had the advertiser chosen a different maximum CPC, as well as how many clicks the ad could have received for those impressions and how much those clicks could have cost.

According to Google, the new feature provides “increased transparency into the AdWords auction and provides the insight to make more informed bidding decisions about advertising objectives”. The figures are, of course, estimates based on expected behaviour and recent trends, and the initial feedback from professional PPC marketers has been mostly negative about this new tool’s real intentions.

The way in which the tool regularly indicates the benefits of an increase of bid levels has been treated with wide-spread scepticism. It often shows that raising bid levels by large amounts can increase the number of impressions (which doesn’t necessarily correspond to a rise in clickthrough rates). So it would seem to be more beneficial to focus upon improving quality scores to lower cost-per-clicks and improving advert copy, rather than just manipulating bids levels to increase impressions.

A Google spokesman stated, when questioned about the high frequency of raising bid levels within the tool, that “shown bids are not recommendations but are simulations for various bids to give insight to the advertiser. The feature aims to show missed opportunity”. Also that “past performances cannot guarantee future results so the simulations should not be taken as exact, they are simply predictions”.

It’s an important point that an advertiser should keep in mind when using the Bid Simulator so that the predictions need to be viewed with a pinch of salt, like most of Google’s PPC projections. In other words, rather than being recommendations, they are just projection models with a large frequency of incredibly high simulated bids.

Professional PPC marketers have the impression that Google created this tool to take advantage of ‘rookies’ and other irregular users of AdWords by encouraging advertisers to bid highly in order to simply make more money from their clicks - so not encouraging the creation of highly optimised campaigns, or the reduction of cost-per-clicks through improved quality scores.

Thus, it is suspected that many full-time search marketers will find the Bid Simulator will only demonstrate the projection that they really don’t want to pay any more than they already are, and so the focus on bid management needs to be placed in different areas.

If you’d like to know more about this new bid management tool and the implications for your AdWords management, please contact us for further information.

The use of Keyword Matching in Google Adwords is an important concept for advertisers to understand for fine-tuning a keyword list so that targeting and bid management can be improved. Without it, much of a budget may be wasted by casting the advertising net too widely or too narrowly.

There are three types of keyword matching available to AdWords advertisers: broad, phrase and exact matching. Broad matching is the default setting for all keywords included in an AdGroup list of search terms, unless otherwise specified by the advertiser. With this type of match, the sponsored link advert will appear when a searcher types in the targeted keywords anywhere within their search query. With a phrase match, the advert will appear if the searcher types in the keyword phrase in the same order, even if they include additional words before or after it. With an exact match, the searcher must enter the same word or phrase appearing in the keyword list, with no additional words before or after it.

Therefore by using exact matches in an AdWords campaign helps to reduce the potential number of advert displays generated by common words and phrases because they cause the advert to be displayed less often than through a broad or phrase match. For example, the use of a broad match for the term ‘jump start’ (used to sell vehicle jump leads), would cause the advert to appear each time someone queries anything with ‘jump’ and ’start’ in their search query, which could have no relevance to what’s being advertised. Searchers would see the advert, but not click on it, thus reducing the clickthrough rate (CTR) of the keyword, which would also reduce the Quality Score⁷ and increase the potential cost per click. So, by enclosing [jump start] in square brackets as an exact match, the advert would only appear if both words are used in the correct order and nothing else was included in the query, thus improving the relevancy of the ad to the searcher and also the chance of achieving a click from a prospective customer.

Phrase matching, by using quotation marks around a search phrase of 2 or more words, would cause the advert to appear only when “jump start” was queried in that order, with other words either before or after it. Therefore ‘jump start my car’, or ‘how to jump start’, would lead to a relevant display of the advert that searchers are more likely to click upon, especially with a fairly specific phrase such as this. It is a good balance to achieve between the number of times an advert is displayed and its relevancy to the search query.

Broad matching is the least targeted method of search term selection and can pull the CTR percentage down quite dramatically if not used carefully with common or general words. If the term ‘jump start’ is used in the keyword list with no brackets or commas surrounding the phrase, then the advert would appear every time the words ‘jump’ and ’start’ appears in any length of search query and in any order. Thus the advertising would be targeting a much wider audience, but with a lower chance of the advert being clicked upon, as the search queries may have nothing to do with starting a car.

Therefore by fine-tuning a keyword list with these types of matching, it helps to improve the targeting of the PPC adverts to particular types of searches and also helps to provide more information on how searchers may be using the search terms in a query. It also allows more flexible bid management around a search phrase to target these different uses and to try to focus on the right intent of the searcher, thereby making substantial cost savings possible and a more effective, targeted campaign.

If you’d like to know more about how keyword matching can be used in your Google AdWords campaign, please contact us now for advice and recommendations.

Google has made a number of notable changes to their search results in the past month. The first development has increased the frequency of local business listings being displayed within the first page of the search results, which has a significant benefit for local advertisers. The second enhancement concerns the inclusion of additional ’sitelinks’ below selected search listings, which offers the searcher more opportunities to enter the listed website at different points.

The recent change that Google has made to the use of the Local Business Listings means that the small map and accompanying business listings for up to 10 companies are now appearing across more search results, rather than ones that specifically include a location within the search phrase. Google is trying to recognise typical search phrases that would have a local search intent (such as ‘plumbers’ or ‘accommodation’), even if the searcher has not included a location term in their search. When this happens, Google will display the business listings below the top 3 ranking results and bases the map and location details on the recognised IP address of a searcher’s ISP (Internet Service Provider).

The intention is clearly to focus the results to meet a searcher’s intended need and although the method of targeting is by no means a perfect solution, this is an important enhancement that may improve clickthroughs for companies listed in the local business listings. Therefore it’s now more important than ever that companies who are targeting a local market ensure that their business is listed on this section of Google and is optimised as effectively as possible to increase the chances of being found.

The second recent change to Google’s rankings concerns the ’sitelinks’ displayed below selected websites in the ranking results. These have been visible for some time for large websites or when a specific business website is searched for, with the intention of giving searchers an idea of what the site includes and also more opportunities to click directly into a prominent section of the site. Previously these were displayed as a short list below the main ranking result and for the first search result only. Google has now introduced an expansion of these sitelinks into a single row of links, which will be displayed even for results that aren’t in the first position. This will help to show searchers some relevant sub-pages within more sites and potential increase the opportunities for people will clickthrough into the ranked website.

Google says that, just like the previous sitelinks, the new one-line sitelinks are generated algorithmically and the decisions on when to show them and which links to display are entirely based on the expected benefit to users. Therefore site owners can’t tell Google which links to include, but they can block some or all of these links if there is any reason they may not want to show them. This can be done through a Google Webmasters account, but removing these links is not recommended in most cases because the inclusion of these additional links will probably increase the visibility of, and traffic to, a website, whilst also improving the experience of users.

To find out more about increasing the marketing opportunities for your website on Google’s search results, please contact us now for more information.

Google has announced a new feature for AdWords advertisers that will be launched as part of the third-party content network (AdSense). In addition to matching ads with the topic of a web page through contextual advertising, advertisers will now be able to reach users based on their interests, independent of the content they are currently reading.

This new ‘interest-based’ advertising option is initially being introduced in beta for selected advertisers. Companies will be able to advertise to users based on their previous interactions with them, such as visits to their website. A number of interest categories will be offered, such as “sports enthusiasts,” so that targeting can be improved to drive brand awareness or increase advert responses.

Google has been looking to add this type of feature for some time, following the user-profile options offered by Microsoft’s adCenter PPC tool in the US. This latter system is supported by Microsoft’s network of user details from Hotmail or Messenger, whereas Google has been lacking that level of targeting data. However, Google is now developing a base of information on user habits and offers searchers the additional relevancy that interest-based ads can provide. Users can visit the new Ads Preferences Manager to see what interest categories Google thinks they might fall into, or they can add and remove categories themselves. This Ads Preferences Manager can be found by clicking on most “Ads by Google” links on ads throughout the web.

The question will be how many web searchers will provide their details or be comfortable with the privacy issues that drive this new service. Clearly more relevant advertising should be of interest to most people, but the ways of serving that up may not be so acceptable. Google’s official blog has also posted an article explaining the new system and outlining how they are making the option transparent to users, in the hope that they will encourage a wider uptake of this service for the benefit of advertisers and web users.

If you’d like to find out more about this new option and how it might benefit your online advertising, please contact us for a discussion.

Yahoo! is currently testing with a new form of PPC advert in the US, which integrates images and video. Although this is something Google already offers for selected advertising with their third-party content network, Yahoo!’s new test has been targeting their main PPC channel on the Yahoo! search network.

Called Rich Ads in Search, Yahoo! is hoping that the higher profile and better clickthrough rates shown from the initial tests will attract more advertisers to use this format of advertising, and will also drive more clicks - and therefore revenue - from their search results.

Yahoo!’s traditional strength has been in display advertising, but as the current economic recession has deepened in the US many advertisers have shifted money to search, which gives them direct, measurable results. Yahoo!’s recent fourth-quarter results have reflected this trend, with search revenue showing an 11% growth and display revenue falling by 2%.

Yahoo! has been testing these new adverts in a number of formats which can be seen with brand name searches of yahoo.com. For example, searches for dog-food company Pedigree display a small video for a commercial and the video opens up into a larger format and plays once clicked. Similarly, a search for Staples displays in a similar light-blue box with the company’s logo on the side, which is also a link to the corporate site. Alternatively, retailers can include a search box within the advert panel to enable searchers to enter a ZIP code, which will then take them to the advertiser’s website that lists the nearest stores or branches nearby.

Yahoo! is currently charging a monthly fee for the service, compared to the traditional auction-based pricing of search advertising. It is reportedly only allowing a selected number of large, brand-focused advertisers to test the program at present and, according to Yahoo!, some advertisers in the pilot program have seen an improvement by as much as 25% in click-through rates, although an independent agency reported lower results, around 5-10% higher than the regular text adverts.

Yahoo! clearly hopes that this new type of search advertising will prove attractive to companies who pay high prices to develop their commercials and logos and want to be able to show those wherever they can. It may prove an important development for Yahoo!’s search performance as the company remains under pressure from financial analysts to consider selling its search business to Microsoft, who continue to express an interest in such a deal to grow their share of the search market.

If you’d like to know more about this trial and the different formats available to PPC advertisers, please contact us now for more details.

One of the features that is often overlooked within the Google Analytics service is the ‘Site Overlay’ option. This can visually display the percentage of visitors who click upon standard links that are embedded on a particular page of a website and can be a valuable source of information on the ways users are actually navigating through the site.

For example, one way that Site Overlay can be used is to visually show what percentage of visitors clicked through to the main pages linked from the website’s Home Page, or within the main navigation menu. This is a great benefit to website owners as it gives them a clear depiction of which page most of the visitors go to from the initial home page, or the primary landing pages used in a search advertising campaign. Therefore it’s instantly possible to see the most popular paths that visitors follow and the most visited pages. By hovering the mouse over the percentage box in the Site Overlay, another box appears that displays the actual number of clicks to that page and the number of conversions to a particular goal on that page.

If the link is clicked upon, the Site Overlay takes you to that next page and then displays the information according to the links from that page. It’s therefore possible to see which are the best performing links or pages in terms of click density and what the most popular route to a particular goal is, without necessarily having to set up small qualitative research groups. This information can enhance a website’s optimisation by allowing site marketers to experiment with different landing pages, layout, content and navigation routes, leading to a much more effective streamlining of visitors to converting customers.

The Site Overlay tool does have some restricted functionality, however. Currently the results are only displayed on static (as opposed to dynamic) pages that have unique links to content located elsewhere on the website. So if a page has numerous links pointing to another page, the total of clicks for all those links will be displayed in each of those site overlay boxes. Other limitations include the inability to function within frames, with URL redirects, or with Javascript or subdomain links so that in these cases the Site Overlay stats are not displayed.

Overall though, the Site Overlay is a very useful addition to a website’s analytics toolbox, and should be reviewed at least monthly. If you’d like to know more about how Google Analytics could be used to enhance your website’s performance, please contact us.