We'd like to give you a heads-up that on September 2nd, all reports in your AdWords Report Center created over six months ago (before March 2nd, 2008) will be deleted. We're clearing out old reports to make room for new ones. But, don't worry! All of your account data will be retained and unaffected by any report deletions.

Please plan accordingly before September 1st if you have reports in your AdWords Report Center that are more than six months old. If you'd like to save older reports, you can export them into Google Spreadsheets, .CSV files, Excel, HTML or another format with the click of a button.

And remember, you can always run a report again for any date range. As we mentioned, no account data is being removed. Moving forward, we will periodically delete reports older than six months.

Posted by Heather Lane, Inside AdWords crew

In the spirit of the back-to-school season, we have a very large curriculum of free upcoming advertising webinars to help you prepare, optimize, and expand your campaigns. Here's a breakdown of the material:

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Subject: Website Optimizer - Test and enhance your site - Register here

Date: Tuesday, August 26, 10:00 AM PDT
Instructor: Tom Leung, Google Business Product Manager
Class Description: Thinking of redesigning your site? With Google's free Website Optimizer, you can test different layouts for key pages of your website, and measure exactly which one generates most sales or leads. The webinar will provide you with an introduction to Website Optimizer and website testing.

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Subject: Holiday webinars - Register here

Date: Wednesdays, August 27, September 3, September 10, 10:00 AM PDT
Instructors: Members of the AdWords Retail and Tech B2C Teams
Class Description: The holidays may seem far off, but it's never too early to start planning. To help you get a jump start on the season, we've designed Unwrapped: Retail Holiday Guide, a series of three free webinars featuring tips and strategies for running and tracking successful holiday campaigns. All advertisers are welcome to register, though the sessions are tailored to retailers and those marketing to consumers. To get the most impact out of this series, we recommend attending all three webinars:

     Setting the Stage: Make the Most of the Holiday Season
     Wednesday, August 27, 2008, 10:00 AM PDT

     Expanding Reach: Find Your Target Audience
     Wednesday, September 3, 2008, 10:00 AM PDT

     Analyze & Simplify: Measure Success & Streamline the Buying Process
     Wednesday, September 10, 2008, 10:00 AM PDT

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Subject: How to effectively reach your audience on social media sites in the content network - Register here

Date: Wednesday, September 3, 10:00 AM PDT
Instructor: Anastasia Leng, Social Media Specialist
Class Description: What is social media? Learn what kind of users visit social media sites and what they're doing once there. Obtain an overview of the social media sites in the Google content network.You will also learn what tools Google offers you to effectively reach the users you need, including Demographic Bidding and Reports, User Interest Placements, and Enhanced Online Campaigns.

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Subject: Optimizing in AdWords Editor - Register here

Date: Thursday, September 11, 10:00 AM PDT
Instructor: Taylor Marcus, AdWords Editor Specialist
Class Description: If you're an AdWords Editor power user, we have excellent news. We'll be hosting an 'Optimizing in AdWords Editor' webinar to help you learn to how to more efficiently optimize your campaigns. Taylor Marcus, an AdWords Editor specialist, will demonstrate how to use AdWords Editor to achieve ROI best practices, improve and maintain account health, and utilize different ad formats.

To stay on top of these and more of our free webinars for advertisers, check this calendar for updates.

Posted by Christian Yee, Inside AdWords crew

In July 2005, AdWords introduced minimum bids for keywords based on Quality Score. This system allows us to show very high quality ads to Google users, while also giving advertisers control over their keywords. Since 2005, we've improved Quality Score in many ways, such as the inclusion of landing page quality and landing page load time as factors. Along the way, we've also received much helpful feedback from both users and advertisers.

Today, we'd like to let you know of further improvements we'll introduce in the coming weeks -- based, in part, on this feedback. First we'll outline the key points, and then dive into the details:

• Quality Score will now be more accurate because it will be calculated at the time of each search query
  
• Keywords will no longer be marked 'inactive for search'
  
• 'First page bid' will replace 'minimum bid' in your account

A more accurate Quality Score

Most importantly, we are replacing our static per-keyword Quality Scores with a system that will evaluate an ad's quality each time it matches a search query. This way, AdWords will use the most accurate, specific, and up-to-date performance information when determining whether an ad should be displayed. Your ads will be more likely to show when they're relevant and less likely to show when they're not. This means that Google users are apt to see better ads while you, as an advertiser, should receive leads which are more highly qualified.

Keywords no longer marked 'inactive for search'

The new per-query evaluation of Quality Score affects you in that keywords will no longer appear as 'inactive for search' in your account. Instead, all keywords will have the chance to show ads on Google web search and the search network (unless you've paused or deleted them). Keep in mind, however, that keywords previously marked 'inactive for search' are not likely to accrue a great deal of traffic following this change. This is because their combined per-query Quality Score and bid probably isn't high enough to gain competitive placement.

'First page bid' will replace 'minimum bid'

As a result of migrating to per-query Quality Score, we are no longer showing minimum bids in your account. Instead, we're replacing minimum bids with a new, more meaningful metric: first page bids. First page bids are an estimate of the bid it would take for your ad to reach the first page of search results on Google web search. They're based on the exact match version of the keyword, the ad's Quality Score, and current advertiser competition on that keyword. Based on your feedback, we learned that knowing your minimum bid wasn't always helpful in getting the ad placement you wanted, so we hope that first page bids will give you better guidance on how to achieve your advertising goals.

It's worth mentioning that the impact of these changes will vary from advertiser to advertiser; some might see no changes to their ad serving, while others may see a noticeable difference. As always, we recommend optimizing ads to prevent them from receiving a low Quality Score.

Putting it all together

Here's an example to illustrate how per-query Quality Score works:

Nancy's Dairy advertises on the keyword 'milk.' Nancy's ads perform better on the keyword 'milk' in the U.S. than in Canada. Her ads also perform better on the query 'milk delivery' than on 'milk,' and better on certain search network sites than on others. Instead of one static Quality Score and minimum bid that determines whether the keyword 'milk' is eligible to trigger an ad for all search queries, we will now determine eligibility dynamically, based on factors such as location, the specific query, and other relevance factors. For that reason, Nancy's keyword 'milk' will be able to trigger an ad for search queries where it's likely to perform better, i.e., in the U.S., on 'milk delivery' and on certain search network sites.

We're working to update the AdWords API and AdWords Editor so that, in the future, they will support first page bids. Until then, both the AdWords API and AdWords Editor will continue to show the minimum bid field. However, the information shown in this field will be based on the new per-query Quality Score. You may keep current with upcoming API releases on the API Blog and learn about upcoming AdWords Editor releases via the AdWords Editor Forum.

Finally, please note that we'll release these Quality Score changes to a very small segment of advertisers within the next day or two, so that we can gather feedback before launching to all our advertisers. We will, of course, post again in advance of the time that these changes go live for everyone.

In the meantime, please see this comprehensive list of frequently asked questions for more information.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Inside AdWords crew

• Experiment Pruning: This new feature allows you to disable one or more combinations from taking part in your Website Optimizer experiments. Pruning can help you achieve faster, more meaningful results by allowing you to remove poorly performing or illogical combinations. This is especially helpful in cases where your experiment may have too many combinations relative to the amount of traffic it receives.
  
  
• A/B Offline Validation: If your test or goal pages aren't accessible to Website Optimizer then no worries. You'll now be able to just upload a copy of your tagged page and Website Optimizer will make sure that everything is tagged properly.
  
  
• More Intuitive Reporting: We've enhanced our reports to more clearly show how your combinations are performing, and to better indicate when we've found one or more high-confidence winning combinations. This will help prevent you from drawing false conclusions from results or from ending experiments prematurely.

If you're unfamiliar with Website Optimizer, we've developed some great new videos for you. These include a new product tour, A/B experiment demo, and multivariate experiment demo. You'll see how quick and easy it is to create Website Optimizer tests in just minutes. You can always find these and all of our other tutorials on the videos page of the Website Optimizer microsite.

We hope you'll enjoy these updates. Remember, you can always find out the latest product news and industry insights straight from the Website Optimizer team by visiting the Website Optimizer blog.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Inside AdWords crew

Due to the success of the AdWords Seminars program, we’ve recently added a third level which builds upon the two existing AdWords Seminar levels. To help our attendees find the right session(s) that will best meet their need, we’ve renamed the sessions as AdWords 101, 201, and 301. These new sessions will be held in various cities over the rest of 2008, including Houston, New York City area, Atlanta and Charlotte, NC in the upcoming months.

Currently there are three different levels of AdWords Seminars:

AdWords 101: Beginner - This introductory session is designed for those new to managing an AdWords account. Topics covered include navigating your account, creating a campaign, measuring results, and an introduction to optimization.

AdWords 201: Intermediate - AdWords 201 builds upon the material learned in 101, and dives deeper into tools such as the AdWords Editor, My Client Center, and Website Optimizer. Additionally, bidding options, ad copy best practices, and Google Analytics are discussed in greater detail.

AdWords 301: Advanced - The 301 session is recommended for advertisers who already understand the basic fundamentals of advertising on AdWords. Topics include campaign best practices, advanced optimization techniques, and split testing. There is also a deep dive into the Content Network and advanced bidding strategies.

You'll find more information about these seminars, including dates, course outlines, and registration instructions at http://www.google.com/awseminars. And of course, if you'd like to be informed when AdWords Seminars become available in your area, simply fill out this form.

Posted by Vivian Leung, Inside AdWords crew

We’re happy to announce that we'll soon be enabling a number of new features made possible by a new DoubleClick ad serving cookie on our content network. All advertisers will soon be able to take advantage of features like frequency capping, better reach and frequency reporting, and view-through conversions.

On Saturday, August 9th, 2008 the AdWords system will be unavailable from approximately 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT, for maintenance. While you won't be able to sign in to your accounts during this time, your campaigns will continue to run as usual.

In June, we updated Google Trends with numbers and the ability to download results to a spreadsheet. We received a lot of great feedback from agencies and advertisers on how they're using the new version; from identifying new growth markets to optimizing their Google AdWords campaigns.

We have Elan Dekel and Niv Efron to tell us about a new tool for fans of Google Trends:

Today, we're launching Google Insights for Search, a new product designed with the advertiser in mind. It provides more flexibility and functionality for advertisers and marketers to understand search behavior, and adds some cool new features like a world heat map to graphically display search volume and regional interest.

Like Google Trends, you can just type in a search term to see search volume patterns over time, as well as the top related and rising searches. You’ll also have the ability to compare search volume trends across multiple search terms, categories (commonly referred to as verticals), geographic regions, or specific time ranges.

Let's take the example of entering the term apple. You'll notice that the majority of top related and rising searches are associated with the brand Apple.

(Click the image for a full-size version)

Google Insights for Search allows you to filter this query by the Food & Drink category, resulting in a dramatically different view of search volume trends and related searches of apple, the fruit. You can also use this filter to compare search terms with the category (for example, apple compared to the Food & Drink category).

(Click the image for a full-size version)

This is just an example to get your ideas flowing. If you love Trends, we hope you’ll fall in love all over again with Google Insights for Search.

You can get started at the Google Insights for Search homepage, and, just a note, you'll need to sign into your Google account to see numbers or download results to a spreadsheet. You can also take a look at more examples of how you can use Google Insights for Search. As always, we love to hear your feedback about the tool and the insights you discover.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Inside AdWords crew