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.

Google’s Local Business Listings are now regularly shown within the main search results if a user searches for a local business, alongside a small map. In addition, viewing results on Google Maps provides more information and additional advertising options through Google AdWords, all of which should be used by a localised business to target their potential customer base. Google is now adding new features to this service to help advertisers gain more local business.

We first covered the value of Google’s local business listings and their increasing prominence in Google’s ‘universal search results’ back in our June 2007 newsletter. The local business listings service has developed further since then and remains an important area for companies who are targeting a localised market to gain a prominent listing. Achieving a high ranking in the 10 businesses listed in Google’s main results can be difficult, particularly in a competitive market, but if searchers click through to the more detailed business listings, or search directly within Google Maps, there are additional ways to achieve visibility and to attract searchers to your website.

One of the main ways to achieve good visibility is through the use of a local business advert, which is created as part of a Google AdWords campaign. This allows advertisers to create a specific advert to appear on Google Maps searches, with a small icon, address and contact details. In addition, Google has now announced some additional new features for these adverts to help companies attract prospective customers faster and to gauge how well their adverts are performing.

The first addition is that Google’s local business ads will now feature new interactive links within the panel that is displayed for the business. These panels are designed to provide more information for users and to connect them to the business quicker with a link to their website. Now users will be able to see more information from this panel and to take additional actions, such as a “Get Directions” option, a link to “Street View”, and “Save to My Maps” which allows users to personalise their search results.

In addition, Google AdWords will also be adding a new interaction report for local business ads in the near future. This report will help advertisers to assess the activity through the local business ads and their return on investment, with such information as how many users opened the info window and clicked on each of the new interactive links. Google says that Maps users are often looking for different information than Search users so that these new interactive links and the reports should help customers connect with a business faster as well as help the advertiser understand how to better target Maps users versus Search users.

If your business could be benefitting more from a Local Business Listing on Google, contact us now for more information on this feature and we’ll be pleased to help. We can create optimised listings and Local Business Adverts to help raise your profile and improve your visibility to your target market.

As more businesses add Google Analytics to their website, it’s important for them to use the information to develop the marketing and usability of the site. One of the main criteria that should be set up and used within Analytics are ‘goals’ – these report on completed actions within the website and can tell a business how well their website is converting visitors to customers.

A ‘goal’ within Google Analytics describes the completion of an action on a website – whether it be the purchase of an item, the submission of an enquiry form, or the sign-up to a newsletter. Goal paths can be set-up within the Analytics profile settings, with 4 goals being tracked within a profile (and therefore if a website has more than 4 goals that need to be tracked, an additional profile needs to be created). The goal paths describe the stages that a site user needs to go through to reach the final goal, which is normally a ‘thank you’ page confirming a sale or other action on the website.

Once the goals have been set, the Analytics data allows site owners to review the information provided on the way that customers move towards the completion of these goals, following their steps, page-by-page through the site. A goal-tracking funnel within Analytics depicts where the website’s users may drop out of the goal path, showing the percentage conversions at each stage of the process. Therefore if a site has a shopping cart, it can be valuable to see where potential customers leave the process before completing an order. If there’s an enquiry form, a high drop-out rate may mean the form is asking for too much information and losing potential enquirers.

Armed with this type of data, the website owner can therefore make revisions to the website to try to increase the conversion rate through to the final goal. They can also compare the goal conversion rates from different referral sources (such as Google’s AdWords v organic search visits), as well as add generic or actual values to conversions, so that the ROI of the website and different marketing campaigns can be assessed.

Goals can therefore be a very powerful tool with Google Analytics but can be complex to set up on some websites. It you’d like more information about how goals can be used as part of your website marketing analysis, please contact us now for more information.

Many of the trends likely to have an impact in 2009 have already started, but what are our predictions for some of the key developments this coming year?

1) The economic slowdown focuses attention online: there is little doubt that the economic impact of the ‘credit crunch’ in 2008 will have a significant impact on business in 2009, particularly in the US and Europe. Progressive companies will still need to maintain and grow their business in the face of any downturn and therefore even if marketing spend is cut back, the focus on online marketing will be greater, due to the measurability and proven cost-effectiveness of this form of advertising for many businesses. Search advertising will still see an overall growth in spend and market share of online advertising and despite some companies withdrawing from this sector, many others will put more spend into this targeted advertising to support their business.

2) Analytics becomes more mainstream: partly because of the widespread uptake of Google’s free Analytics tool and partly because of the greater need for advertising spend to be effective in 2009, the use of website statistics or analytics is expected to become more common, even for small companies. However, the interpretation of the data and the way that understanding can be used will still be the most important aspect of this trend, but companies can now access much better data on their online activities which in turn can help to improve their website and marketing strategy to get the most from their online spend.

3) Yahoo won’t survive in its current form: it seems inevitable that Yahoo’s ongoing saga that was the source of much news coverage in 2008 will come to some sort of conclusion in 2009. Whether this is with Microsoft eventually coming back on the scene and buying Yahoo’s search business, or some other form of takeover by another leading online brand, it’s likely that Yahoo won’t be able to survive the next 12 months in their current form, despite – or maybe because of – the change in their CEO. It would be a shame for Yahoo to lose more search market share, as Google needs a stronger competitor, but with the economic problems in the US, it’s hard to see Yahoo surviving much longer as a key player and we can expect more developments here sooner rather than later.

4) Video becomes the new marketing tool: as mentioned above, with the growth and impact of ‘universal’ search, video is now playing a more visible role within search and in 2009 this is likely to see a bigger impact in the business sector. Companies need to think about ways they can effectively use video to drive traffic and new business to their website, as it is becoming a more widespread medium and one that can play a bigger role within search and advertising channels. The ‘optimisation’ of video will be as important as the production if the effort of creating videos is to reap the rewards expected, particularly against the massive growth of user generated video content on sites like YouTube, but the creative use and marketing of videos will become more mainstream this year.

5) Reputation management becomes a core service: we’ve covered this issue before, but with the increasing growth and focus on user-generated content sites – such as review sites, blogs and comments on social networks – the need for companies to monitor what is being said about their business and brands, and to respond effectively to that content, will become a bigger requirement in 2009 as more businesses realise the potential dangers as well as the advantages of this trend. Online reputation management will therefore become a service in much demand from PR companies and search engine marketing firms, as web content is monitored and responded to in a more effective manner.