[go: up one dir, main page]
We've moved! Check out the new Google Ads blog.

We've moved!

Check out and subscribe to the new Google Ads blog.

A year ago, we launched the Bid Simulator, a feature that allows you to see how different keyword-level bids may have impacted your advertising results. Using data from the past seven days, the bid simulator re-calculates the number of clicks and impressions your ad could have received with different maximum CPC bids.

Today we’re announcing a new metric in Bid Simulator, “Estimated Top Impressions,” which shows you how many times your ad appeared above the search results in the past seven days and how this metric could have changed had you used different keyword level maximum CPC bids.

Access the Bid Simulator by clicking the icon next to your maximum CPC bid.


Whether you carefully manage a handful of valuable keywords or simply want users to see your ad as often as possible, Estimated Top Impressions can be a useful metric. Ads that appear above the search results are more visible to users and tend to receive more clicks than ads that appear along the right side of the search results page.

Let's look at an example of how to use the Estimated Top Impressions column:



In this table, the current maximum CPC bid of $1.07 captures most of the impressions that a higher bid of $1.93 could have captured (7,520 vs. 7,930). However, when we look at the ‘Estimated Top Impressions’ column, we see that the current bid of $1.07 only captures a fraction of the top impressions (4,780 vs. 6,380). Increasing the bid to $1.93 would have placed the ad at the top of the search results page for many more queries, resulting in more users seeing the ad and clicking through to the site (591 vs 662).

If one of your goals is to appear in the top position and you’ve been focusing on the ‘average position’ of your ad to gauge how prominently it’s displayed to users, Estimated Top Impressions may be a better metric for you to focus on. While average position indicates where your ad is appearing in relation to other ads on the page, it doesn’t indicate whether your ad is appearing above the search results or on the right side of the page.

Note that past performance does not guarantee future results, and simulations will only be provided if there is enough traffic on a given keyword to conduct a meaningful analysis. Additionally, top of page impressions are counted only for impressions on Google, since other sites within the Search Network may display ads differently. Estimated Top Impressions data is currently only available in the Bid Simulator, and we’re working to incorporate this metric into more AdWords reports.

For an in-depth look at bidding, check out this tutorial from Hal Varian, the Google Chief Economist: Bidding Strategy Overview.

Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew
Labels: , ,

In March 2009, we announced a beta test of interest-based advertising, which included remarketing and interest category marketing, to help you reach people on the Google Display Network who are most likely to be interested in your products and services.

Early results show that interest-based advertising is helping deliver better ads and offers for your potential customers, more effective campaigns for you, and higher returns for website publishers. Remarketing was recently launched to everyone, and interest category marketing has continued to grow.

To help you better reach your customers, and to give users more control over which ads they see, we're adding some new categories that will enable you to show ads that relate to demographic categories, such as age and gender. This works exactly the same way as interest category marketing works today - Google associates categories with a particular browser by looking at the types of Google Display Network sites visited and compares that information with aggregated survey data on site visitation. For example, if someone frequently visits sites that have a majority of female visitors, we may associate her browser's cookie with the “female” demographic category. With this information, you can choose to show more ads that are relevant to women as she browses sites across the Google Display Network, exactly the same way you can currently show ads related to other categories like sports or gardening.

As with interest categories, users may view and edit demographic categories or permanently opt out of receiving interest-based ads entirely with the Ads Preferences Manager. Because the interests and inferred demographics associated with a particular browser are based on recently visited sites on the Google Display Network, and not on user data, these categories may change over time. As one of a number of companies offering ads based on inferred interests and demographics, we remain committed to providing users the highest level of control and transparency.

We're still beta testing interest category marketing (including the new demographic categories), but will be working to help more advertisers run campaigns over time.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

There’s still time to sign up for the the AdWords Train & Gain challenge which kicks off October 4.



Once signed up, you’ll receive four weeks of free advice for improving your AdWords account. At the end of the four weeks, you’ll have learned lots of different ways to improve your account performance. If you complete all the steps and answer a short questionnaire to let us know what you learned, you could win an Android Phone. Or even a free consultation with an AdWords expert — in Sydney, Australia.

Check out the Train & Gain site for more details about the challenge, who’s eligible to compete and how we’re selecting winners. Full terms and conditions can be found here.


Posted by Gordon Zhu, Inside AdWords crew
Labels: ,

In early August, we announced that the updated Keyword Tool was nearing the end of its beta phase. Today, we wanted to let you know that we’ve fully launched the updated Keyword Tool.

What does that mean for you? It means we’ve combined the best features from two previous keyword tools into one. The previous Keyword Tool and Search-based Keyword Tool are no longer available in AdWords. The updated Keyword Tool is now the only Keyword Tool available in AdWords, so you can now simply call it “The Keyword Tool.”

The Keyword Tool’s benefits include:
  • Flexible search options: Search by any combination of keyword, website/URL, and category (where available) and receive a single set of results.
  • Easy Keyword Refinement: Filter results by word or keyword match type.
  • Negative keywords: Easily add keyword ideas as negatives right from your keyword list. Just click on a keyword and use the drop-down menu to select and save your negative keyword.
  • Advanced options: View statistics for mobile search and use data filters based on local searches, search and ad share, and more.
In addition to these improvements, we’ve also changed how we calculate Global Monthly Searches and Local Monthly Searches. Statistics in these columns are now based on Google.com search traffic only. Previously, they also included traffic from search partners. We've updated these statistics based on advertiser feedback, and hope you find them more helpful for keyword selection.

While we recommend using the Keyword Tool while signed in to AdWords, you can also access the tool without signing in. We hope you like the new streamlined version of the tool and we look forward to bringing you more features soon.

Posted by Jason Shafton, Inside AdWords crew
Labels:

Back In November 2009, we announced the U.S. launch of a new AdWords feature called product extensions. Today, we’re excited to announce that product extensions are now available to all U.K. advertisers. Joining our growing family of ad extensions, product extensions are a way for you to enrich your existing AdWords ads with more relevant and specific information. Product extensions allow you to use your existing Google Merchant Center account to highlight your products directly in your search ads. When your AdWords text ad appears, and your Google Merchant Center account contains products that are relevant to the searcher’s query, product extensions show the images, titles, and prices of your products in a plusbox under your ad.


With product extensions you can show users the products from your site that are most relevant to their current query. You're charged the same cost-per-click (CPC) whether a user clicks on your main text ad or any of the offers within the product extensions plusbox; however, you won't be charged if a user simply expands the plusbox without clicking through to your site.

Advertisers using product extensions have found that the additional product information has helped improve the performance of their search campaigns. For example, SonyStyle.com, reported seeing a 9% increase in conversion rates for their ads with product extensions.

It's easy to get started with product extensions. First, log in to Google Merchant Center and add your AdWords customer ID to your account. Then, simply log in in to AdWords, select the campaign and navigate to the Ad Extensions tab. To add product extensions to an existing campaign, click the ‘New Extension’ button. No need to create new campaigns or ad groups, update your keywords or change your ad text.

Product extensions are available to all U.S. advertisers, and now, to all U.K. advertisers, but remain in a limited beta outside of these countries. Over time, we hope to offer product extensions to all advertisers globally.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Ad Sitelinks is an AdWords extension feature that allows you to extend the value of your existing AdWords ads by providing additional links to specific, relevant content deeper within your sitemap. Rather than sending all users to the same landing page, Ad Sitelinks will display up to four additional Destination URLs for users to choose from. These links can help you improve your clickthrough rates and shorten the path to conversion. Learn more about Ad Sitelinks, including how to set them up and manage them in your account in this short, online course.

This course is best suited for advertisers who are comfortable with text ad management.

Please click on the country flag most appropriate to you to watch this course now.

(US) (UK)

If you have a few minutes to spare, check out some of our other courses in the AdWords Online Classroom.

Posted by Gordon Zhu, Inside AdWords crew

For those of you who use My Client Center (MCC) to manage your client accounts, we’re launching two new features to help you stay on top of critical notifications and alerts about your accounts.

Email notifications
As we make this feature available over the next few weeks, you’ll be able to manage which email notifications you receive about your client accounts. From the My Account tab, click 'Notification settings' then the ‘My Client Settings’ tab to edit settings for email alerts about billing issues, campaign updates, and disapproved ads. These alerts will be emailed to the email address associated with the Google Account you’ve used to sign in to your MCC.


Custom alerts
In the past, to create custom alerts for your client AdWords accounts you had to sign into each account directly. The new MCC custom alerts allow you to create alerts at the MCC level from your single MCC login. To create alerts at the MCC level, click the ‘Custom alerts’ button from your MCC dashboard.


Please note that alerts you create when you’re signed in with your MCC login are associated with your MCC login email address and won't be accessible when you or your client sign in at the client account level. Learn more about creating and managing custom alerts within client accounts.

To let us know what you think of these new features, click the ‘Send feedback’ link in your account.

Posted by Jason Shafton, Inside AdWords crew
Labels:

Today we’re announcing the first AdWords Train & Gain challenge.

You’ve asked us how to improve the performance of your AdWords account, so we’ve put together a series of simple steps to help you become more successful online.



Sign up for the AdWords Train & Gain challenge starting October 4th. You'll receive a weekly list of simple steps for improving your AdWords account. Sign into your account twice a week and take the suggested actions on how to better manage your account. At the end of four weeks, you’ll be armed with many different ways to improve your AdWords account.

If you complete all the steps and answer a short questionnaire to let us know what you’ve learned, you could win an Android Phone or a trip to meet with an AdWords consultant in Sydney, Australia for you and a colleague.


Here’s a sneak peek of the fast and easy tips you’ll get:
Improve ad text: Stand out from your competition by writing ads that highlight your most competitive features (low price, special services, free delivery, etc).
Use negative keywords: Specify which search terms you don’t want your ad to appear on. This will help you keep costs down because it prevents clicks from people looking for things you don’t offer.
Track sales and leads: See where your ad spend is working best and focus your money on the efforts that are generating business.

This challenge doesn’t take up a lot of time and it can make a big difference for your business. Learn more and see the official rules for details about the challenge, who is eligible to compete and how we’re selecting winners. Terms and conditions can be found here.

Also, if you’d like to learn more about your AdWords account, check out our brand new AdWords Small Business Center, which we announced in last week’s post. The site is a one-stop shop for small and medium businesses. It allows visitors to explore beginner, intermediate or advanced AdWords topics and connects you to the latest AdWords news and best practices.

Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

Cross posted from the YouTube blog.


For big advertisers on YouTube, the YouTube homepage is often seen as the holy grail. It's the highest-profile placement on YouTube, providing marketers with the ability to deliver a big impact and drive attention to content, trailers or advertising. To give you an idea of the scale we’re talking about, the homepage has been delivering nearly 45 million impressions per day and 18 million unique visitors a day in the U.S. — that's the equivalent to the ratings of several top-rated prime-time television shows combined. While impressions and unique visitors are never guaranteed, users who visit the homepage are actively looking for the next video to watch, so advertisers naturally want to be part of the action.

A little known fact is that a few days each quarter, we open up the YouTube homepage to Promoted Video advertisers. These companies end up getting a bit of extra exposure from their campaigns. There are a couple of ways to make sure your ads show up on the homepage, should the opportunity arise. First, log into your AdWords account, and under "Campaign Settings," consider the following:

  • In order for Promoted Videos ads to appear on YouTube browse pages, watch pages, and on the homepage, select "Display Network"
  • To appear *only* on YouTube placements, select "Relevant pages only on the placements I manage" and add youtube.com as a managed placement.
  • To appear *only* on the homepage, select "Relevant pages only on the placements I manage" and add youtube.com::pyv-top-right-homepage as a managed placement
  • Set a specific bid for the homepage and keep in mind that it is a more competitive placement
  • Please note: this feature is only available in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the U.K., and The U.S.

Because the dates we run Promoted Videos on the YouTube homepage vary, we unfortunately don't have a set schedule for you. However, we typically know about 48 hours in advance. If you have a managed account, you can ask your Google representative to let you know when these opportunities arise so that you can increase your bids to improve your chances of showing up.

Several advertisers – large and small – have found great success showing Promoted Videos on the homepage. One YouTube advertiser, Dynomighty Design, grew their entire business by using Promoted Videos and getting placements on the YouTube homepage. Founder Terrence Kelleman says: "YouTube helps us sell our product, learn about our audience and build a strong brand image. And as a small company with a limited advertising budget, YouTube has become our main advertising strategy. Not only are costs low with Promoted Videos, but healthy conversions also make YouTube our #1 referring site in terms of traffic and revenue." To read more about Dynomighty's story, check out their original YouTube video and their feature on the Official Google Blog.

The YouTube homepage has a captive, engaged audience and it's our goal to let advertisers understand how best to reach customers that would be interested in hearing from them. For more information about advertising on YouTube, visit youtube.com/advertising, and for more information on Promoted Videos, check out ads.youtube.com.

Posted by Mark Sabec, Product Marketing Manager, YouTube
Labels: , ,

Today we’re announcing the second annual TV for All contest, where your business has the opportunity to win $25,000 in national advertising with Google TV Ads and online video partner sites, including YouTube.


We originally launched this contest last year and received nearly 250 submissions. Three winners, including Owners.com, won free TV media through Google and successfully extended their brands across the nation.

“It’s always exciting to see what other marketers think of your work,” says George Karavaras of Owners.com about why the company entered TV for All in 2009. The best part, he says, is that “it doesn’t take a lot of time or money to create a high impact TV ad through Google’s creative network.”

Now it’s your turn! Entering is easy: simply create a video ad for your business, upload it to YouTube and submit it to our TV for All YouTube Channel between September 15th and October 12th. If you don't have a video ad or the tools to create one, professional tools by SpotMixer will be available for free to help you make a polished ad in just minutes.

Three winners whose ads best exemplify creativity and a compelling message will receive $25K, $15K, or $10K in national TV and online video advertising using Google AdWords.

If you've never promoted your business using TV and video, the TV for All contest is your chance to get started. For more details and to enter the contest, visit www.youtube.com/tvforall.

Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew



Labels: , ,

Cross posted from the Conversion Room Blog:

Are you eager to optimise your Conversion Rate, but feel a little bit overwhelmed by all of the tools available to help you? Today we're delighted to introduce Improving Online Conversions for Dummies.

We have just released a simple, easy to follow mini book, in conjunction with John Wiley Publications, to help you get a better grasp of the conversion improvement tools offered by Google. Improving Online Conversions for Dummies explains how you can make sure your ads show on searches that are most likely to convert into sales. Understand which ad clicks and impressions lead to conversions, better apportion your marketing spend and even develop your own conversion attribution model. Discover the secrets to getting more bang for your buck with this ebook.



For more information, visit www.google.com/conversion/fordummies

Posted by Gordon Zhu, Inside AdWords crew


Labels: ,

Following a successful launch in the U.S., AdWords Campaign Experiments (ACE) is starting to roll out globally. For those who missed the last blog post, ACE is a free tool that makes it easier to test and precisely measure the impact of changes to your keywords, bids, ad groups and placements.

How ACE can help you
ACE reduces the guesswork and potential risk involved with making changes to your campaign. Its scientific split-testing approach gives you valid measurements regardless of changes in demand, competitor movements, or other sales and marketing activity that can complicate traditional before-and-after measurement approaches.

If you can relate to any of the following scenarios, you’ll probably find ACE useful:
  • You’re considering adding (or pausing) a bunch of new keywords, but you aren’t sure how it will affect your overall campaign clicks, costs, and conversions.
  • You have a few keywords that account for a significant fraction of your total AdWords clicks, conversions and cost. You’d like to know what happens if you raise (or lower) bids by 10%. Do your clicks and conversions change by 10% -- or maybe less than that? How would your cost per click and cost per conversion change?
  • You want to easily test a new landing page design tailored for a few high-value keywords against your existing landing page*.
  • A colleague suggests you might improve your Google Display Network campaign performance by adjusting keywords and adding some placement-specific bids, but you’re concerned you might wind up with fewer conversions and no improvement in cost per conversion.
In each case, you can set up the experiment to measure the impact with just 10-50% of your traffic -- whatever you specify. ACE runs the experiment side-by-side with the existing setup. In AdWords, easy-to-read visual indicators show you wherever performance is significantly different between the two.

Where to find ACE and learn more
After signing into AdWords, you can access ACE on the Campaign tab under Settings. For those outside the U.S., this is a rolling launch so you should see it within a week or so.

To learn more about using ACE, check out these videos and the Help Center FAQ.

* ACE makes it simple to test two different landing pages for a keyword, an ad, or an ad group directly in AdWords. If you want to test more than two landing page designs at a time, test a landing page with multiple traffic sources (for example, all search traffic, display and email campaigns, etc.) or simultaneously test multiple elements on the landing page, we instead recommend Google Website Optimizer.

September 14 Update: ACE is fully supported in the newest AdWords API version announced today.

Posted by Jason Shafton, Inside AdWords crew

Over the years, many of you have told us that you'd like to be charged a consistent amount each calendar month. We're happy to help you by introducing a monthly charging limit for campaigns, which is automatically calculated based on your daily budget.

When your daily budget is unchanged throughout an entire calendar month, We'll set a monthly charging limit for that campaign by multiplying your daily budget by 30.4, which is roughly the average number of days in a month (365 days in a year / 12 months = 30.417 days/month). For example, if your daily budget is US$10 throughout a month, you won't be charged more than $304 during that month (US$10 daily budget * 30.4 average days per month). As usual, actual daily spend may vary.

Accounts will transition to monthly charging limits over the next several weeks. When you edit your budget from Campaign Settings, a new tooltip will also be visible describing this change.

To learn more about this change, please see our FAQs on the monthly charging limit and on what happens when you change your budget.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew
Labels:

On Saturday, September 11th, the AdWords system will be unavailable from approximately 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT due to our regularly scheduled system maintenance. While you won't be able to log into your account during this time, your campaigns will continue to run as usual.

AdWords system maintenance typically occurs on the second Saturday of each month during the above times. We'll continue to update you here as we always have, but you may want to take note of our intended dates and times to help you plan for any scheduled downtimes further down the road.

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew
Labels:


Today we're happy to announce the launch of a new website - the AdWords Small Business Center. Many of you asked for an AdWords resource focused on learning and the top tips for small and medium businesses, and we listened. This new central learning hub allows you to share AdWords best practices and provides the key information you need to know to run a successful AdWords account.

,


Learn the essentials
Whether you're new to AdWords or not, the AdWords Small Business Center allows you to explore insightful topics as a beginner, intermediate, or advanced user. It covers everything from strategies for writing great ads to ways to improve your website, all in an easy-to-navigate format.

Stay up-to-date
Stay in the loop by visiting the Inside AdWords blog right from this new site. It makes it easy to read about the latest trends and product updates and use them to grow your business.

Explore new possibilities
Want to discuss one of the tips on the site with another small business owner? Visit our recently launched AdWords Small Business Corner, a discussion forum in which other small and medium business owners who use AdWords exchange advice on the strategies that have helped them grow their businesses. Use it to share your AdWords experience or simply learn from others.

We hope you find the AdWords Small Business Center useful. Check it out today!

In the coming weeks, make sure you're also on the lookout for our blog post on AdWords Train & Gain, a challenge to help you become more successful with your online advertising. We'll be giving away cool prizes like Android phones and, for one lucky winner, a trip to Sydney, Australia for a free consultation with an AdWords expert. Sign up now or find out more details and official rules.

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew
Labels: ,

This post is also available on the following local blogs:
(FR)    (DE)    (IT)    (ES)    (RU)

Today, we announced the launch of Google Instant, an innovative new Google.com interface that creates an interactive search experience for users by predicting their query as they type and instantly showing updated results. By providing users with this immediate feedback, they’re able to refine their searches more quickly and find the results that more precisely match what they need.

This new interface applies to both search results and related ads. Therefore, we expect increased user engagement with our search services, including ads.

Although Google Instant doesn’t change the way ads are served, ads and search results will now be shown based on the "predicted search." For example, if someone types "flow" into Google.com, our algorithms predict that the user is searching for "flowers" (the predicted search) and therefore display both search results and ads for “flowers”. However, if that user then adds the letter "c" to the query, our algorithms may predict that the user is searching for "flowchart" and show the corresponding natural and paid results for flowchart.

Example 1: User types "flow"

Example 2: User types "flowc"

As a result, Google Instant changes the way we think about impressions. With Google Instant, an impression is counted if a user takes an action to choose a query (for example, presses the Enter key or clicks the Search button), clicks a link on the results page, or stops typing for three or more seconds.

It's possible that this feature may increase or decrease your overall impression levels. However, Google Instant may ultimately improve the quality of your clicks since it helps users type queries that more directly connect them with the answers they need.

Google Instant is starting to roll-out to users on Google domains in the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Russia who use the latest browsers (Chrome v5/6, Firefox v3, Safari v5 for Mac and Internet Explorer v8). Please note, users on domains other than Google.com can only access Google Instant if they are signed in to a Google Account. We will continue to add new domains and languages over the next several months.

For more information on this interactive new feature, please visit the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

For those of you who use My Client Center (MCC) to manage your client accounts, we’re introducing a new interface for the Client Reporting tab. Over the last few months, we’ve developed a new reporting interface to help you get your reports faster, easier, and more securely.

These changes will only affect reporting for MCC users. If you use the AdWords Reports Center in an individual AdWords account, see our earlier post to learn about the reports that have moved to the Campaigns tab.

Key features of the new interface
  • No more templates: We’ve removed templates. Each report today can be the basis for a different report. Just click ‘Create Similar’ next to the report, and you’ll create a new report based on the one you just selected.
  • Faster report generation: We’ve built new infrastructure that allows you to create complex reports more quickly and easily.
  • More reports: We’ve increased the number of reports you can store from 15 to 100. Now you can build many customized reports to meet your unique needs.
  • Increased security: To allow you to better control who receives your reports, we’ve changed the level of access for emailed reports. With the new interface, only email addresses that were invited to the account can receive emailed reports. You can modify the access levels by clicking ‘Account Access’ in the My Account tab. Learn more.
To learn more about all of the new features, visit the Help Center.

Migrating from the old interface:
Over the coming weeks, you’ll see a message in the old interface inviting you to switch over and experiment with the new interface. The old interface will still be completely functional, and all of your previous reports will continue to work.

When we start migrating your reports, you’ll be redirected to the new reporting interface when you click on the Client Reporting tab. Once this happens, you’ll be able to see your reports in the old interface, but you won’t be able to create new reports or modify scheduled reports. You’ll also notice that your scheduled reports will be generated twice – in both the old and new interface. You can delete reports from the old interface to stop seeing duplicate reports.

If you send scheduled reports to email recipients, we’ve introduced a way to give you more control over who receives your new reports via email. Only email address invited to the account will be able to receive emailed reports.

At the end of the transition to the new reporting interface we’ll remove the link to the old interface, reports scheduled through the old interface will no longer run, and you’ll need to schedule emailed reports using the new interface.

How to prepare
We recommend experimenting with the new reports available in the Campaigns tab of any individual AdWords account. You can also take a tour of these new reporting tools in the AdWords Online Classroom. Once the new reporting interface is available in your MCC, you can try out the new features and start creating reports. To learn more, visit the Help Center.

To let us know what you think of these changes, click the ‘Send feedback’ link in your account.

Posted by Omry Pruzan, Product Manager, My Client Center
Labels: ,


If you think AdWords reporting is looking a bit different these days, you’re right! Since we announced some important changes to reporting in late June, we’ve been regularly adding statistics and features into the Campaigns tab that were previously only accessible through the Report Center (with many more additions to come).

At the same time, we’ve begun to move reports out of the Report Center entirely. In fact, new Account, Campaign, and Ad Group reports can no longer be created from the Reports tab. Now that the transition is in full swing, we thought it would be a good time to address the feedback we’ve gotten so far, point out available help resources, and highlight a few new features we’ve recently released.

What we’ve heard from you

We believe that reports can be faster and more powerful in the Campaigns tab. You get the flexibility to quickly switch views when you want to dig deeper into performance trends, and to act on the insights you discover by making changes on the same pages where you run your reports.

That being said, we’ve heard that the changes have created issues for some of you. We’ve gotten feedback that it’s been difficult to find all the reporting features you used to access through the Report Center, and that some statistics and segmentation options aren’t available in every place you’d like to use them.

Your input on this first set of changes has been incredibly helpful, and we’re acting on the feedback we receive. For example, in the next few weeks we plan to add “Total” rows to every report you download from the Campaigns tab, and new options to view overall search network traffic (Google search + search partners). We’ll keep making changes based on your requests, so please continue to send us your thoughts.

Help resources

If you’re having trouble finding a specific statistic or reporting feature in AdWords, we’ve created materials that we think will help you out.
  • Download our PDF guide for a handy and comprehensive resource you can consult if you're wondering where to find particular metrics.
  • We also have a recorded webinar and extensive FAQs available on a regularly updated page in the AdWords Help Center.
New features

While we’ve focused most of our energies adding Report Center options to the Campaigns tab, we’ve also added some new reporting features to campaign management. In fact, some advanced reporting options are only available in the Campaigns tab, such as segmenting statistics by device and click type. Additionally, you can now use the Dimensions tab to view and segment performance by the dimension of your choice.



This new reporting feature lets you quickly see reports such as:
  • Your campaign statistics segmented by hour of day (answer questions like “how much shopping do my customers do on their lunch break?”)
  • Your account statistics segmented by quarter (get an executive summary of how your performance has changed since your account started running)
  • Your account statistics segmented by Destination URL (see which pages on your site are getting the most AdWords traffic, or which pages are the most profitable)
Over the coming weeks we’ll add even more reporting functionality to AdWords, and we also plan to continue removing reports from the Report Center as they become supported on the Campaigns tab.

Thank you for all the work you’ve put into the transition already, and for bearing with us throughout this ambitious set of changes. We think you’ll find the new integrated reporting even more valuable once you've had a chance to get used to the changes and the full transition from the Report Center is complete. Until then, please keep letting us know how we’re doing by submitting feedback as any issues arise.

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew
Labels: ,

Cross-posted from the Google Mobile Ads Blog

Do you have several business locations in one city? For example, are you a national retailer of consumer electronics who wants to increase foot traffic to your Los Angeles area stores?

Every day, consumers are using their high-end mobile devices to find directions to local businesses, making mobile an ideal way to reach this audience. We’re excited to streamline this experience by announcing a new enhancement to the location extensions ad format: location extensions with multiple addresses. This new feature will ensure that your customers connect with the right location of your business at the right time.

Now available on Google Maps for Mobile (GMM) versions 4.4 and above on Android devices, location extensions with multiple addresses allow consumers to find the most relevant location of your business on a Google mobile map.

Featuring your business location alongside your mobile ad is a powerful method to drive foot traffic and in-store sales. For instance, if a potential customer is looking for a wireless communications store like Sprint, an ad within GMM can display all Sprint locations near them. This not only delivers a relevant search experience, but also enables customers to visit the closest and most convenient Sprint store location.


Here’s how location extensions with multiple addresses work:
  1. Based on a user’s search and location signals, AdWords can display a clickable banner with the option to show all locations for a particular business in Google Maps for Mobile.

  2. When the “Show all” banner is clicked, the map displays just the locations of your business as indicated by your business icon. Using your business logo as the icon is a great opportunity to build awareness and loyalty for your brand.

  3. Clicking on a specific business location leads the user to a page with more details about the business -- including ad text, business address with directions and the ability to call or visit the website.

  4. After the search is completed, the business icon and location are automatically saved as a GMM Layer and will continue to appear on the map in subsequent search results until turned off by the user.
To take advantage of this enhancement, you must be a primary business owner and have enabled location extensions within your Google Places account. Additionally, your campaigns must target the iPhone and other high-end mobile devices with full mobile browsers. You will only be charged when users click on the website URL or the phone icon displayed on the details page of a particular business location.

Location extensions with multiple addresses launched for desktop earlier this summer and we’ve worked hard to bring it to mobile. For now, this feature is only available on Android devices, but we hope to expand to other platforms in the near future.

Location extensions ad formats can show in the United States as well as a number of other countries. To learn more about location extensions with multiple addresses, please visit our Help Center.

Posted by Surojit Chatterjee, Google Mobile Ads Product Manager
Labels: ,

In order to make it easier for you to manage your account and take advantage of location extensions, we’re releasing a new version of AdWords Editor, 8.0.1, for Windows and Mac.

AdWords Editor 8.0.1 now supports location extensions, our new and improved way to run local ads. To support this change, we've transitioned the local business ads in your AdWords account to ads that are compatible with location extensions, added the Extensions tab in the AdWords Editor interface, and removed the Local Business Ads tab. This new Extensions tab should help make it easy for you to create and manage your location extensions. Learn more.

To help you focus on just what you need when you’re managing your AdWords account, AdWords Editor 8.0.1 also introduces collapsible and expandable panels, progress bars for tasks that can take some time, improved adding of My Client Center accounts, simplified exception requests, and more helpful error messages.

To learn more about all of the new features in version 8.0.1, such as support for campaigns using target CPA and enhanced CPC bidding options, read the release notes.

If you're already using AdWords Editor, you'll be prompted to upgrade automatically, as soon as it's available for you. After you install the new version, you’ll need to download your account again. To preserve your comments and unposted changes, select the 'Backup then Upgrade' option in the automatic upgrade prompt, then import the backup file after downloading the account. We’re launching version 8.0.1 to all users over the course of the next few weeks, so don’t worry if you don’t get it right away.

If you’re not using AdWords Editor, you can visit our website to download it. Find more information and answers to your AdWords Editor questions in our Help Center.

Posted by Jason Shafton, Inside AdWords crew

Back in June, we announced the Conversion Champion Challenge, a contest to help motivate you to get your conversion rates in shape for summer. Many of you embraced the challenge - with increased profits to show for it! However, one advertiser stood out among the rest as the true Conversion Champion. We’re delighted to invite Elliott Antal from Richard Petty Driving Experience, to the Google Headquarters in Mountain View, CA, to spend a day with the Google Conversion team. Elliott told us a bit about his journey to the finish line:

“The Conversion Champion Challenge was the perfect opportunity [for Richard Petty Driving Experience] to try some new tools in regards to our paid search marketing.

Richard Petty Driving Experience is the world's largest provider of NASCAR ride and drive entertainment and the exclusive stock car experience at premiere tracks such as Daytona International Speedway, Las Vegas Motor Speedway, and Walt Disney World Speedway. A conversion for Richard Petty Driving Experience is a completed e-commerce transaction. Customers have the opportunity to purchase a ride, drive, or merchandise through www.DrivePetty.com.

On June 11, we activated the Conversion Optimizer for our primary search campaign. In the time after the activation we have seen our conversion rate increase by 10% and cost-per-acquisition drop 2%. We’ve also seen our clicks double, with average cost-per-click decreasing by 30%. Conversions are coming in at a healthy pace while maximizing the reach of our budget. Conversion Optimizer has most certainly made a positive impact on our account and performance is continuing to improve over time.”

Well done, Elliott! We look forward to meeting you in person and exploring more ways to boost your ROI.

To learn more the Conversion Optimizer, an automatic bidding tool for increasing your ROI, visit the Conversion Optimizer site.


Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew
Labels: , ,

We’ve just added a new course to the AdWords Online Classroom about the Opportunities tab in your AdWords account.

In case you’re not familiar with the Opportunities tab, it’s designed to help you discover ways to potentially improve your campaign's effectiveness by providing keywords, keyword bids, and budget ideas. These ideas are specifically catered for your account based on your campaign's past performance and may help increase your AdWords return on investment.

Our newly added course will help you learn to use the Opportunities tab to its full potential. You’ll also hear stories from other advertisers who have used the Opportunities tab to extend their advertising reach and improve their account performance.

Click on the country flag most appropriate to you to watch this course now:


Posted by Jason Shafton, Inside AdWords crew
Labels: