Over the last few weeks, Google has introduced without a lot of fanfare several important features into the AdWords platform. And they're not just cosmetic changes, so it's worthwhile for advertisers to become familiar with them. Here's a recap of what's new.
Content Network Placement Report
One of the reasons that many advertisers have been hesitant to use the Content Network is the limited information about where their ads appear. The Placement Performance Report for the Content Network opens the curtain for a very revealing look at that data. Among the stats you can see for each page your ads are shown on are the URL, impressions and clicks, CPC, and conversion data.
Anyone that is already using the Content Network has to take a close look at this sort of information. If your reports look anything like mine do, you'll start excluding irrelevant sites from your campaigns (or reporting them for using hidden text to target keywords not at all related to the site) and start site-targeted campaigns for those that are providing a good ROI. This is a terrific improvement that was sorely needed for the Content Network.
Search Query Report
Another new reporting feature that looks promising is the Search Query Report, which lists the search queries that triggered your ads. If you're using broad match and phrase match within your ad groups, then all you have seen previously in the AdWords reports is the aggregated data for the associated keywords. The new Search Query Report breaks down that data into specific keyword variations for which your ads appeared.
Like the Placement Report, this is another attempt at transparency from Google; unfortunately, it's not nearly as useful. In the reports that I've run, I've seen a significant number of impressions listed as "All other queries" rather than the actual query text. According to Google, this is done for "queries that don't meet [their] privacy and volume requirements." But I see plenty of queries with just 1 or 2 impressions that have the actual search query listed in the report. And in my server log files, the referrer info shows the keywords used for many of those that Google lumps into "All other queries." Google's reason for aggregating the data doesn't quite make sense to me.
In any case, because the information currently provided by the Search Query Report isn't quite as thorough as it could be, it's still important to mine your server log files to extract the keywords yourself. But Google's report can help you supplement that effort, especially with the conversion data.
IP Address Exclusion
Have you ever had an annoying competitor that kept clicking on your ads regularly? Or maybe you like to use the Search Network but you don't particularly like getting traffic from AOL. Well, now you can use the IP Exclusion Tool to prevent up to 20 IP address ranges per campaign from seeing your ads. I think this feature may get limited use, but those that do use it will find it extremely useful.
Ads Customized to Your Search History
You may be surprised to learn this, but Google is now customizing ads based on your search history. If you search your own keywords frequently to check up on your ads, you may have noticed that the ads often do not appear in the position where you expect them. The reason for this is that the AdWords engine is taking into account your search history and the ads you clicked, and then trying to show you ads that it thinks will interest you most while giving less weight to ads you don't really want. For example, if you've been served a few dozen ads for eBay for a variety of different search queries and you haven't clicked on a single one of them, then you will probably see the position of eBay ads dropping as you continue to perform more searches. This customization sounds a lot like personalization of organic results, doesn't it? I believe there are some difference between the two, but there are certainly some similarities also.
The easiest way to get around the customization feature is to use the Ad Preview Tool, which will show you the ads unchanged. Another way is to remove the 'PREF' cookie for google.com from your browser. Interestingly, whether or not you're logged in to your Google account is irrelevant to the way ads are customized. That behavior seems to indicate that ad customization is tied to your cookie rather than to the web history of your account.
I do have to include a disclaimer: most of what I've discovered about ad customization is from my own testing, because there has been virtually no communication from Google about this recent change. So if any of what I have written is incorrect, I would appreciate it if someone 'in the know' (like a Googler who knows what's going on) could correct it and hopefully provide more details. This is potentially a very important change for the AdWords platform.
There you have it -- a few small but significant changes in the functionality of the AdWords platform. I've started to use them to further optimize my campaigns, and I think it's worthwhile for most other advertisers to try them out as well.
Have any of these new features made a difference in the campaigns you manage for yourself or for your clients?
Update from Rand: Since we're getting into the PPC game ourselves, and since ghoti has done such a marvelous job with coverage, I figured that this is a must-have post for the weekend.
This is great news. If I understand what you are saying this looks like the beginning of the end for Made For Adwords scraper sites. Assuming those kinds of sites convert poorly, once advertisers are able to prevent their ads from appearing on them, the rest of the pie should divide up better for quality content sites.
Since I haven't used adwords for about 3 years I'm pretty out of touch on it, but this sounds like a good thing for both advertisers and quality publishers.
Thanks for the information.
great stuff. i actually hate doing ppc although i am google certified, but it's nice to get some tips for ppc on the seomoz. i'm excited to check out the exclusion tool too!
Nice post - I wouldn't have noticed that search query report part otherwise. Brought up some interesting results (and made several changes based on what it showed). :)
>> Google is now customizing ads based on your search history
I don't know if this is even new but I was very surprised to see Google adwords changing the headers of their own ads based on my search history. I was searching for SEO the other day and noticed google adwords as the first paid result with the Header "SEO". I found it funny and thought it could make a good friday post. When I returned to get a capture there was another header "ads google adwords". I kept on refreshing and got at least a third one (SEM with google adwords; these are translations). It wasn't untill I cleread the cookies from google that I got the "SEO" header back.
That sounds like they might just be rotating a set of adverts... Did you continue to only see the SEO one every time you refreshed after removing the cookie?
Rotating different headlines is common (good) practice for improving your PPC campaigns.
Thanks ghoti. I hadn't seen the search phrase report - that could be very useful (especially if they open it up as you say - I can't see any reason for not doing that - like you say, you can see it in your logs).
I knew about the user history thing (don't know if I quite broke that story, but certainly when I wrote it, I couldn't find anyone else talking about it since it was trialled last September) but I hadn't seen this new report - not quite sure how I missed that. I had been puzzled about the difference between the personalisation of ads and the personalisation of natural search though - it doesn't seem to rely on your preference for turning on or off personalised search. Thanks for doing the research into the cookie. The adpreview thing can be dead useful - because you can also use it to see how the ads look if you are in a different locale as well.
Really good to see this kind of useful PPC stuff on the seomoz blog :)
Great summary. Thanks for the update.
This is great thanks
Excellent post about some new features that haven't been talked about to much. The IP Address Exclusion is a much needed addition to the Ad Words system. I have had numerous clients who have assumed their competition has been clicking on their ads and running up their bills. Combining a free click fraud application and analyzing the reports will show which IP's are constantly clicking and allow the campaign manager to exclude them.
I've been all over the Search Query Report to mine negative keywords. It's great to see some of the wacky "broad-match" terms that people get to your site with. I had a campaign going for an equipment finance company (industrial, agricultural, technology) and it was getting good traffic with a lack of conversions. Turns out Big-G was broadmatching "buying agricultural seed" and "buying agricultural fertilizer" queries with my "agriculture finance" ad group. It was great to get all the nonsense out of the way and although the number of clicks went down, impressions-to-conversions jumped.
How to exclude specific content sites from a campaign? Also, if I start a new site targeted campaign, not all the sites that display adsense are included in the chosser box for content targeting...
AshRo1
Yes, good update, thanks a bunch.
Wow, this is super news. Thanks!
Just a m a z i n g. I have a couple of clients from whom the Exclusion Tool would be the Chrismas gift in July :))
Thanks for keeping us updated, I wouldn't have heard of that in the next 3-5 days.
I was not aware of this. This is very interesting.
Thanks for sharing!
I agree, it's almost like having a quality score for each user now!