Google Adwords Blog

Should I split my keywords down into one per Adgroup?

Thursday, April 24th, 2008 Chris Rowett Comments

One Adgroup Fits All: Should I split my keywords down into one per Adgroup? This has been a topic of much debate with even the most experienced PPC advertisers coming to blows. This blog doesn’t aim to solve the mystery once and for all, but simply to look at the pros [...]

Google Adwords, PPC Campaigns

Automatic Matching - I Can Hardly Contain My Enthusiasm

Thursday, March 20th, 2008 Steve Baker 1 Comment

Google are currently beta-testing a new service, called ˜Automatic Matching’. The premise is simple , if you aren’t spending your complete budget, then they will show your adverts on searches that you aren’t bidding on, if they think it will be successful. On the face of it, this may sound like [...]

Automatic Matching, Budget Optimiser, Campaign Optimiser, Expanded Matching, Google Adwords, Optimised Ad-Serving, PPC Campaigns, Pay-Per-Action, Preferred Cost Bidding, Standard Delivery Method

Adwords Can Work For Small Businesses

Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 Steve Baker Comments

I read an article in Business Week the other day. This bloke called Gene Marks, who (scarily) heads up “The Marks Group” and has written numerous books about business, explained why Adwords was a bad idea if you’re a small company. Here’s his explanation in full:
“John’s a pretty smart guy. He runs a company that [...]

Advert Text, Google Adwords

Google and the 80:20 click ratio

Friday, January 4th, 2008 Steve Baker 2 Comments

Just before Christmas, Stuart Small from Google revealed the shocking fact that 80% of the clicks on Google’s SERPs are on natural search results, and only 20% are on PPC adverts. Should us Adwords folk be concerned? Are we really all competing for 20% of the traffic? Well, no, actually. There’s a fundamental flaw [...]

Advert Text, Google Adwords, SEO

Google’s Christmas Bonus

Thursday, December 6th, 2007 Steve Baker 2 Comments

What does Christmas mean to you? Carol singing? Eating too much? Morecambe and Wise repeats? GIving people nice presents, and getting socks in return? If your online business sells the sort of things people buy at Christmas, and you have a PPC campaign, it means high bids and high traffic volumes. There are a [...]

Advert Text, Bidding, Competitors, Content Network, Dynamic Keyword Insertion, Google Adwords, PPC Campaigns

The Sixteen Most Common Adwords Questions

Wednesday, December 5th, 2007 Steve Baker Comments

I regularly post on PPC forums, particularly Digital Point. And the same questions seem to crop up time and time again. Now, for the first time, the answers to all these questions can be found in the same place.
1. My minimum bid is too high! Why?
Simply put, your minimum bid [...]

Advert Text, Dynamic Keyword Insertion, Google Adwords

The Seven Myths Of Adwords

Friday, November 23rd, 2007 Steve Baker 5 Comments

Actually, there are probably a lot more than seven myths - feel free to reply with some more if you like! There are two types of myth - assumptions made by people who haven’t used Adwords, and inaccurate conclusions drawn by people who’ve tried it, and failed. The first lot are easy to dispel, [...]

Advert Text, Google Adwords

When The Adwords Sweet Spots Turn Sour…

Thursday, October 18th, 2007 Steve Baker Comments

I blogged a while back about the sweet spot for your campaign, and how to find it.Basically, you estimate the conversion rate, cost per click and clickthrough rate for each position that your advert can appear in, and calculate how profitable each one is. You should find that one position is more profitable than the [...]

Advert Text, Bidding, Competitors, Content Network, Google Adwords, PPC Campaigns, Pay-Per-Action, Testing

Small Budgets And Big Keyword Lists

Tuesday, September 18th, 2007 Steve Baker Comments

I recently saw somebody describing their campaign on a forum. They said that they had 250,000 keywords, and were concerned that Google may ban them.

Really, this was the wrong question - what they should have been asking was how they could possibly manage a campaign with 250,000 keywords.

Do a few sums, and you [...]

Adgroups, Advert Text, Content Network, Google Adwords, PPC Campaigns

Should You Put The Content Network Into A Separate Campaign?

Friday, August 31st, 2007 Steve Baker 3 Comments

The answer to this question should be yes. After all, that way you can easily monitor it’s performance as a whole (rather than produce a separate report for it, or having to flick through your adgroups all the time). Also, you may find that different advert text works more effectively on the content network - [...]

Advert Text, Content Network, Google Adwords, PPC Campaigns