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Click forensics reports significant drop in clicks:
Written by power
@ 4:05 AM
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Tuesday, April 28, 2009
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Click forensics a company that monitors invalid clicks in pay per click search engines has reported significant drop in click fraud. We monitor number of PPC campaigns and yes we do notice significant drop in fraud clicks. It's a very good sign especially for advertisers who spend their hard earned money to make business.
According to click forensics
"- The overall industry average click fraud rate was 13.8% for Q1 2009. Thats down from 17.1% reported for Q4 2008 and from the 16.3% rate reported for Q1 2008.
- Click fraud traffic from malicious scripted programs increased in Q1 2009. Unlike botnets or malware, these new threats exist as simple Javascript programs that execute upon a page view or site visit. Ad networks were found to be especially vulnerable to these attacks during the quarter.
- In Q1 2009, the greatest percentage of click fraud originating from countries outside the U.S. came from Canada, United Kingdom and Germany. "
What I think we're really going to see, is Google and the other click advertising distributors take a long hard look at technological ways of detecting/defeating the fraud.
And just like with Spam, the hard core fraudsters are gonna stay up late at night trying to figure out new ways of beating the system. Eventually, it will become prohibitively costly to try and beat the system, for the vast majority.
Until then, any script kiddie with a bit of patience can come up with ways of beating the click advertisers for quick cash. Labels: pay per click
Keyword suggestion tool goes regional:
Written by power
@ 3:24 AM
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Friday, April 24, 2009
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Google search based keyword suggestion tool is the top tool in search engine industry. Since the data comes directly from Google's results its very much reliable. Google keyword suggestion tool searches both by user input as well as analyzing the content of a website. Now Google adwords team made solid improvement by adding new attractive features.
Before you cannot select your country or language, now you can do it just by a single click.
If you haven't tried the tool yet, getting started is easy:
Go to https://www.google.com/sktool.
Sign in to your AdWords account.
Enter the URL of your website.
Use the Language or Country/territory settings to get results specific to your selection, or keep the default settings to show global data.
Click Find keywords.
Google also added new features to enable greater customization and help you get even more targeted results:
Language/Country-specific results: Narrow your results by adjusting your country/territory and language settings. For example, you can use this if you only want to have the tool match your website against searches from Canada or Australia.
Ad/Search Share filters: Filter by Ad Share and Search Share, in addition to the other advanced filtering options. These filters help you customize your results to focus on queries where you're not showing up in the natural search-results. Labels: pay per click
Bidding against you :
Written by power
@ 9:49 PM
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Wednesday, April 22, 2009
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 Is it possible? May be I am a bit crazy today thinking all weird stuff. Well what happens if I setup multiple sites with same or similar content. Then I setup different adwords accounts for different sites bid for same keywords on different adwords accounts. What will happen if I do that? I will virtually be competing with my own sites. Though this might not have any impact on keywords it could have some impact on quality score. Today quality score plays an important role and when I am my own competition I can see the movement of quality score right?
One other way is to have the same set of keywords for different landing pages in different ad groups under same campaign it's possible. The only disadvantage with this is your Quality score might get split when Google triggers your ads for same keywords searched. I want to test out the different site theory to see how it works. It just came out of my mind. Labels: pay per click
Performance trends on CPA on content network:
Written by power
@ 6:04 AM
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Google has published an interesting article on improving your CPA on content network. Most of us don't have luck with content networks. In most of our PPC campaigns we just turn off content network because it rarely converts. I am happy to see Google has brought something effective to tackle this problem.
How do Content Network ads perform for advertisers? We recently analyzed conversions, cost, and cost-per-acquisition (CPA) on the Content Network, and compared them to performance metrics on the search network across thousands of campaigns and many geographic regions.
This white paper presents the findings from this analysis. It shows that advertisers who advertise on the content network see good results on a number of levels:
1. Ads on the Google Content Network are likely to be as cost-effective - or even more cost-effective - than ads on the search network.
The median advertiser has a content CPA that's about 2% lower than their search CPA.
2. The Content Network drives a significant share of total conversions.
The Content Network drives nearly 20% of total conversions for the median advertiser.
3. Conversion rates are higher for advertisers who used either of two AdWords campaign management controls: the Conversion Optimizer and site exclusion. Labels: pay per click
Bad performing keywords delete or temporary pause:
Written by power
@ 11:47 PM
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Sunday, April 19, 2009
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 If you are running PPC campaign for a long time you would have come across lots of keywords that either doesn't perform well or not converting properly. So what do we do with these keywords I recommend deleting non performing keywords than just pausing them.
Non performing keywords are always non performing they will never perform even if paused. If you pause non performing keywords later you will have double mind whether to re-enable them. It's better to delete keywords so that you are not confused. There is only one disadvantage when deleting keywords in Google adwords you might lose quality score that you had before for that keyword. But then again if the keywords are not performing I am sure they will not be worth even if they have decent quality score. From my personal experience most non performing keywords are not properly related to the landing page or website. One other reason is the keywords are more generic than the products you are selling. So I recommend just delete keywords that are not working for you and relax.
You need to decide carefully which keywords you need and don't need.
Bidding rules using bid management:
-Great converting keywords and low CPL's -> own adgroup per keyword, budget for 100% sov and bidding for pos. 1
-Great converting keywords and medium CPL's -> Own adgroup per keyword, budget for 100% SOV but bidding according to lead needs at that time/in that country (the whole quantity vs quality debate)
-Great converting keywords and high CPL's -> Own adgroup per keyword, budget for 100% SOV but bidding for lower positions
-Converting keywords and low CPL's -> up budget and bids for 100% SOV
-Converting keywords and medium CPL's -> same budget but lower bids
-Converting keywords with high CPL's -> minimum budget and minimum bids
-Non converting keywords with low cost and low positions -> Look at relevance, if relevant up bids for higher position in low budget campaign. If not relevant delete
-Non converting keywords with low cost and high positions -> Look at relevance, if relevant keep as is, if not relevant delete
-Non converting keywords with medium and high cost -> delete
Then all is left is setting objective standards for High, Medium and Low: impressions, positions, CPL's, number of leads and budgets.
Ads texts are always set up as follows:
-2 per adgroup; both are similar except for one line
-Always make the ad - line 1: headline with keyword, line 2: benefit, line 3: offer/call to action
-Only keyword insertion on relevant long tail keywords
-After enough data has been collected (look at statistical significance) we decide on a winner ad, pause the other and make one additional ad (with again only one line changed). This is a continual process. Labels: pay per click
Cant login to Adwords?
Written by power
@ 4:53 AM
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Friday, April 17, 2009
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Sometimes you might keep trying to login to your adwords account but you won't be able to. The primary reason is here most of the time Google adwords system is down due to maintenance. Google does maintenance to their system weekly or once in 2 weeks. When we have some new PPC managers work on adwords campaign they get over excited because they are unable to login to the system. Some of them feel there is something wrong with the campaign or the system is not working because of something they did to the system.
I recommend don't freak out check insideadwords.blogspot.com for updates directly from Google guys about the performance and uptime of adwords system. Or if you are lazy to follow all the postings just check this thread in webmaster world from adwords employee:
he regularly updates on system maintenance here.
Latest announcement:
AdWords system maintenance on April 18th
On Saturday, April 18th, 2009, the AdWords system will be unavailable from approximately 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PST 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.
Labels: Adwords
More ad variations - instant positive quality score:
Written by power
@ 9:46 PM
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Tuesday, April 14, 2009
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Recently few of the keywords I setup for my client got a bad quality score around 3-4 and were rated poor. My client was worried and he complained we need to fix it immediately. I know we are good with landing pages just our ads are not too relevant. So I told my junior to make more ads relevant to the keywords that got bad quality score and boom next day the quality score of the bad keywords were back to 7 or 8.
I have seen many people afraid of this quality score. Personally it's an excellent feature if done right you can use it to your own benefit. Some high quality score keywords can perform better even with lower bids. So make sure you maintain a healthy quality score for all the keywords you are advertising in a ad group.
Remember if you are an affiliate site you are not welcomed both in PPC and SEO. Bad quality scores are common in affiliate PPC campaigns. Labels: pay per click
Is Adwords difficult for new user?
Written by power
@ 1:53 AM
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Monday, April 13, 2009
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When I was reading through webmaster world I came across this interesting thread , this thread discusses some interesting issues whether Adwords is compatible for new users.
Most people in this thread say Adwords is not easy for end users. New people who sign up for Adwords find it difficult and they take time to get adapted to the new terms and interface. For new users I agree its too complicated and time consuming when we take new PPC manager trainees it takes us atleast a month to train to get used to Adwords. People who are not used to internet marketing get confused with the terminologies used in Adwords. To get good decent knowledge they need to go through the whole learning center documents.
According to netmag Google *must make changes* to the Starter Edition. For one thing, the Search and Content networks need to be separate. The advertisers MUST know what they're getting into before they go bellowing headlong into Content, and they should have to OPT IN to it before it's active. The tool for selecting the types of traffic (social sites, video sites, parked domains) should not be buried in the Tools section, but be right up front when setting up the campaign.
The budget optimizer needs work too, at least the language around it. It should be easier and more clear to put a maximum CPC on any given keyword - I took over an account where the customer was paying something like $12 for a broad matched keyword that costs him no more than forty cents with a 10/10 QS once I got him straightened out.
I could go through step by step of the Starter Edition set up and list out everything that's wrong wrong wrong, but I don't have time. I have too many clients who need AdWords help.
(And I'm not cutting off my nose to spite my face - there will always be clients who need more advanced AdWords & Analytics help, or who just can't take the time themselves. But Google making it easier on the small business user can ONLY make the brand better, and make more money for ALL of us - advertiser, search marketing professional, and Google themselves)
And by the way - all that said - believe it or not, AdWords is still yards above the competition (MSN & Yahoo) in ease of use, tools, and time spent managing accounts. But that competitive edge may not last forever. Labels: Adwords
Non performing keywords - how to identify them?
Written by power
@ 9:47 PM
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Thursday, April 9, 2009
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Everyone using Adwords or YSM will know some keywords convert well some keywords thought they get good CTR still those keywords don't perform well. So how do we judge non performing keywords. Based on my experience I can suggest few ideas
1. Check the number of clicks a keyword is getting if you get a lot of click yet no conversions then I am sure you can deem it as a non performing keyword. Make sure conversion tracking is enabled or you cannot get proper information.
2. Compare your ads with the keyword you are advertising if you think your keyword is not properly related to your ad try changing your ad or target a different keyword for that particular ad
3. Active monitoring of your campaign can also help with identifying non-performing keywords. Professional PPC management companies can help you on this. Some companies have good expertise in managing PPC campaigns.
4. If you suspect a keyword is not performing try lowering the bid for that keyword if you feel still you get lot of clicks and some conversions then compare the profit margin with the amount spent on that keyword? If you are making money from that keyword then I am sure you can continue using that.
5. If I was you though I'd also take a look at your matching - run a keyword report - separate out your broad, exact, and phrase matches in a spreadsheet - then look at the ROI on each of them. You may well find that your broad matches are dragging your entire account down and may just have to pause the broad matches, whilst exact math may well still be profitable
Adsense competitor ad filter had been raised to 500
Written by power
@ 9:33 PM
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Wednesday, April 8, 2009
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Recently Google made major change to competitor ad filter they increased the number of competitor ads to be 500. Means you can actually filter upto 500 ads now it was 250 before. I am sure this will bring a lot of changes since its much needed option. Many people feel its not good to see competitor ads on your site when you run adsense and I am sure you will enjoy this option now.
Apart from that adsense advisor has mentioned top 5 requests made to adsense people:
Top 5 Adsense Publisher Requests
1. Minimum CPC
2. More channels
3. Block ads by keyword
4. Bigger competitive filter
5. Smart pricing information
After Google implemented filter by competitor now people are asking filter by keywords. I am sure Google will implement something like that or similar in future.
One problem you will have filtering out competitor ads is if you filter one ad you will be served an ad that has a lower big value. I am sure it will hurt your earnings. You need to decide between peace of mind or earnings if you want more earning them I am sure blocking competitor ads is not a great idea.
Some niches don't need to too much policing some sites where we run adsense ads we don't filter even a single competitor ads we earn around 400$ a month per site and we are more than happy with it. I hate ads which carry phone numbers I feel its too much aggressive and prefer to filter those ads. Labels: Adsense
Bad conversions when PPC ads show up in Yahoo shopping search.
Written by power
@ 9:45 PM
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Tuesday, April 7, 2009
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 Unlike Google products adwords ads, yahoo shopping search seem to have people only looking around and not buying anything. We have many clients who do yahoo PPC and when we get clicks from yahoo shopping search conversion rates are below 0.15 %. For Google adwords we have conversions ranging from 0.8% from content network to 2% in search network. But yahoo conversion rates are poor especially traffic from shopping search is bad.
We tried blocking yahoo shopping search but there are no options for it. We are unable to stop ads from showing up in Yahoo shopping search if anyone has ideas on that please let us know.
Is PPC dead or on the death track?
Written by power
@ 10:01 PM
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Thursday, April 2, 2009
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 Some suggest PPC is dead or heading towards to a lower trend there are other online marketing ideas taking over PPC. But is PPC really dead?
I don't think PPC is dead at all, in fact I think that in a lot of industries it is about to blossom. There are a that a lot of companies have been throwing money at it, and needing a second or third purchase to return a profit, but many companies are pulling back on that now, as they can't afford a loss leading marketing channel, so they're focusing on a realistic CPA and account optimization, and in many cases I believe they are finding that they can generate a similar level of sales with a "clever" campaign, rather than a "money black hole" campaign.
I read an article on tech crunch that PPC traffic is flat in January or even less in February but I feel its mostly due to people's spending power in this crisis period. We are still in global crisis and people are holding back their money. I am sure when things get back to normal people will start using PPC more.
PPC is far from dead there is still a lot more to go in PPC sometimes PPC is better than SEO and will be here for a long time. Labels: pay per click |
