Companies that offer many different products or services have one thing in common - the potential for large keywords lists. If your clients fit this description, here are a few tips on how to manage a keyword list when you find it's getting, well, too hard to manage.

First: Focus on the big players

To break down a massive keyword list into more manageable pieces, consider starting with the keywords that receive the most traffic or represent your client's most popular products. Create ad groups with customized ad text for these top keywords, rather than writing specific ads for every product your client offers.

For example, let's say your client sells DVDs. You can create ad groups for the top ten movie titles per genre and write specific ads relating to those keywords.

Second: Organize the rest

What about the rest of the keywords that are more obscure or aren't as popular? Here are some options to effectively manage those:

• If you have keywords that are very specific, such as product model numbers or small-town names, group them together and use keyword insertion in the ad text. Remember to continue to organize your keywords into ad groups with closely-knit themes so that your ad text is as relevant as possible.
  

• Use AdWords Editor when making large-scale changes to your clients' accounts. By importing account statistics directly into AdWords Editor, you can easily make changes based on account performance. For example, you can locate and delete keywords that haven't received any traffic in the past.
  

Lastly, be sure to test various approaches to keyword management to find the optimal method for you. For more tips on managing your keyword lists, visit our Help Center.

Posted by Sarah Hobbs, Optimization Specialist, Agency Team

We've added a brand-new industry newsletter to our line-up: the AdWords Health & Wellness Industry Newsletter.

This resource is designed for advertisers who market products and services related to medicine, health, fitness and wellness. If you have clients in the health and wellness industry, check out the newsletter for useful information such as a study of the vitamins and supplements market, and tips on how to think holistically about your clients' healthcare businesses. If you'd like to receive this newsletter in the future, please let us know at health-newsletter@google.com.

Remember: If you or your clients would like additional tips to help your AdWords campaigns maintain a clean bill of health, pay a visit to the AdWords Health & Wellness Industry Knowledge Center.

Posted by Ashley Kibler, Creative Team

The back-to-school season is rapidly approaching, and although students everywhere may be dreading it, this time of year can bring big sales for online retailers. To help you and your clients make the most of this year's back-to-school season, our Retail Team will be holding webinars to cover industry trends, profile demographics of your target audience, and provide tips to reach your clients' key customers.

Each of the hour-long webinars will cover the same material, so feel free to choose the session that fits into your schedule, and register using either link below.

Wednesday, July 30, 10:00AM PDT: Register
Thursday, July 31, 10:00AM PDT: Register

Posted by Laura Hood, Creative Team

As part of our Advertiser Education series on the Google Business Channel, we've recently added videos that can help you answer your clients' questions about Google's content network. For newcomers to the Google Business Channel, it's a YouTube channel designed to bring you videos about Google's business solutions.

The three-part video series begins with an introduction to the content network, and also covers optimization tips and demographic bidding strategies for the content network.




We hope you'll find these videos helpful in managing your clients' content network campaigns, and you may even want to share them with newer members of your team as training modules. For more information, please feel free to visit the content network microsite.

Posted by Cathy Bishop, Creative Team

We recently announced the launch of Google Ad Planner, a research and media planning tool that provides demographic information about websites, both on and off the Google network. To help answer questions about Ad Planner and to provide an introductory look into how to use it, we'll be holding two webinars this week. Geared towards media planners at agencies, these webinars are free and open to all.

You'll need to register before the webinar using one of the links to the events below. Both sessions will cover the same material, so you'll only need to register for one.

Intro to Ad Planner

Date: July 16, 2008 4:00 – 5:00 pm EST
Link to event
Call-in toll-free number (US/Canada): 866-469-3239
Registration password: agency1
Event number: 573 433 113
Event password: planner1

Intro to Ad Planner

Date: July 18, 2008 2:00 – 3:00 pm EST
Link to event
Call-in toll-free number (US/Canada): 866-469-3239
Registration password: agency1
Event number: 577 712 627
Event password: planner2

Posted by Annie Hsu, Product Team

It's always nice to put faces to names, so we're happy to announce the launch of the AdWords Events page. This page will be a centralized location for you to find all the conferences, events, and speaker sessions that Google will be attending or sponsoring. Additionally, you'll find links to attend our online webinars as well as our offline AdWords Seminars for Success. Finding the next Google event that's relevant to your agency is as easy as browsing or searching the calendar.


We hope you'll join us for some of these events and continue to use the site as a reference in the future. You'll find it permalinked on this blog, so come back often for the latest updates.

Posted by Christina Hill, Events Team

When faced with a question that stumps us, we tend to ask others. The next time you've got an AdWords inquiry, you can pose your question to more than 18,000 members on the AdWords Help group, a user-to-user community for AdWords advertisers.

In this community forum, active since August 2005, a wide variety of AdWords advertisers ask and answer questions, share their knowledge and offer useful tips. Although the focus is on members assisting each other, the AdWords team also contributes as well. You'll see their posts marked with a small 'G' icon.

If this sounds like a place you'd like to visit, ask questions, share your own knowledge, or direct your clients as a self-service resource, we'd be pleased to have you. You'll find the AdWords Help group on Google Groups, right here. Anyone may browse to their heart's content without joining the group, although a free and easy membership is needed in order to post.

We hope to see you there.

Posted by Alla Tolchinsky, AdWords Team

If you weren't able to attend our webinar on June 10 about AdWords Editor - our free application for managing and making bulk changes to your ad campaigns - not to worry. You can watch the recorded version that's now available on the Google Business Channel. The hour-long webinar session is geared towards experienced users of AdWords Editor, as it covers the new features available in version 6.0 as well as advanced use cases for the tool. Check it out if you want to brush up on your knowledge or want to get more acquainted with version 6.0.

Posted by Cathy Bishop, Creative Team

In this series, we've covered the basics of a strong content campaign and the use of negative keywords. Now let's take a look at how to improve the performance of an existing campaign.

Our first stop for data is almost always the Placement Performance report (PPR). The report provides site-by-site performance metrics – including clicks, impressions, cost, and conversion data – for domains or URLs on Google's content network where your ads have appeared. With this data, you can identify the specific sites and placements in the content network that are meeting your ROI objectives, and focus on those areas.

Here are some tips for using the Placement Performance report:

• Run the Placement Performance report at the URL level, not the domain level. Remember your ads are contextually-matched to specific pages within a domain.
  
  
• Too much data? The ‘Advanced Settings’ section of the Report Center can help.
  Filter the data you receive to only include the metrics you want to see. For example, you can filter your results to see only the sites that got more than 100 impressions, with a CTR above 0.05%, and a conversion rate above zero. Use the dropdown menu to set these restrictions.
  
  
• Sort it out. Locate the sites that stand out from the rest – whether it’s the highest cost or the fewest conversions. Sort the data in your report by the metrics that matter to you so you can quickly identify which sites are strong performers.
  
  
• Use site and category exclusion to prevent your ads from showing on the sites that are not performing well for you, as indicated by the report.
  
  
• Use placement targeting to show your ads on sites that convert well for you. With CPM and CPC pricing available, you can choose the option that best meets your goals.

For more tips on running Placement Performance reports, visit our Help Center.


Posted by Alice Lin, Danh Ly, and Thu Nguyen, Optimization Specialists