But now you can tag each account with labels!

Say you wanted to sort your AdWords accounts by budget size, Account Manager, or business category. Well, you can now apply a label to that account in your MCC, and then sort by label to save you the time of searching for each one.

Let’s take a look.

Many readers of this blog will know Jon, one of our Campaign Analysts and resident Analytics expert. I have labeled all of the clients he is responsible for with the label “CA:Jon”. I have also done the same with clients looked after by Thomas, another Campaign Analyst.

When I open the MCC, this is what I see with these labels applied to the accounts.

Now, if I want to view only Jon’s accounts, I simply click on the new “Find” pull down menu below the main tabs and select “CA:Jon”, and the page now displays only Jon’s accounts.

Alternatively, I could create labels such as “Budget $1000+”, “Chiropractors”, or “Top Performer” for higher monthly budgets, chiropractors, and accounts that convert well or have a high Click Thru Rate.

There’s more about this MCC Labels feature at the Official AdWords Blog. Check it out.

A quick summary of the new features can be found on the official AdWords Blog post about the new Keyword Tool, including new flexible search options (keywords and website content together!) and removal of duplicate keywords. In addition to those features, you will have the ability to view mobile search data only. This mobile-specific data will only become more relevant as the mobile search market in North America catches up with the rest of the developed world. The one feature I am happy to see back is the ability to add negative keywords from words suggested by the tool. Access to this feature on the old interface was included with options for adding words to your campaign, but seemed to disappear in the latest version. Having quick access to negative terms will save a lot of time and means no longer adding to 'notepad' first or copying keywords to the Adwords Editor before uploading. The new version is already rolling out, and it is visible in a number of our client accounts already, but is not completely finished. I'm already excited about the amount of hours I will be saving thanks to the new Google Keyword Tool!

Yahoo! Japan is not tied to the forthcoming MSN-Yahoo! search merger as the Japanese site is only a strategic partner with Yahoo! Inc, who only own 35% of the portal, versus the 40% of majority owner Softbank.

I find this an interesting choice for a couple of reasons.

First, it gives Japanese web users access to Google's large search market share compared to it's current partner, the soon-to-be-deceased Yahoo! Search. Google Japan owned 0.15% of the worldwide search market versus 0.07% for Yahoo! Web Sites Japan based on 2007 numbers.

Domestic numbers are much different. In 2008, Yahoo owned 51% of the search engine market in Japan, versus 39% for Google. By using Google's technology with the Yahoo brand, Yahoo! Japan appears to be taking over the country's entire search engine market.

Now, I am not going to tell you that the 2007 and 2008 numbers have not changed, but the shares the two search engine giants possessed shows they were not really challenged by any other search engine. By combining in a way that allows the two to work together in this unique way, search engine market share in Japan will no longer be an apples-to-apples comparison with other nations.

But what happens when/if branding changes in any way?

This is an interesting story for search marketers to follow over the coming years.

Influence of Search and Social Networking

It seems like a small number, but it's actually quite incredible that Canadian users made 13% of all visits to search engines. Google's share of the search market in this country is huge, and considering 13% of all visits are to search engines, it's even more mind-boggling that people visit the site as much as they do.

Not surprisingly, Bing has moved in to the number 2 position in Canada in terms of search engine market share (May 2010), while Yahoo! continues to fall, coming in third place at 7% market share. The surprising tidbit gathered here was that Bing currently has the highest success rate when it comes to search results serving up what users are looking for. Bing is successful 80% of the time, meaning 8 of every 10 searches show results that satisfy a user query. I guess the name "The Decision Engine" isn't far off.

And did you know Ask.com is the number 4 search engine in Canada? Just don't mention it only has 1% market share…

With regards to social networking, 17% of all search traffic is to social networking sites. An incredible share of the total search traffic in Canada alone. It shows us that sites such as Facebook,  Twitter,  Digg, and others are growing to a point where they have become a part of routine online searches and activity.

Important Google AdWords Information

It was encouraging to hear Matt Rogers from Google tell those in the 'Advanced Paid Search' presentation that Click Thru Rate is the "most important factor in your Quality Score". What does this tell me?

It tells me that Google places importance with AdWords advertisers choosing relevant keywords that serve up relevant ads, which results in users clicking on their ads. The same as they have always told us. But by placing importance on the CTR of your campaigns, Google are saying, "We will reward you for bringing in as many visitors as you can from as few impressions as possible." By doing so, you have proved relevancy. Users like your ads because they match the search query they entered and are composed with keywords in the copy that encourage a click!   I always tell clients and AdWords users  to move away from generic, bland, or irrelevant ad copy.

Great ad text is the first step in a successful PPC campaign!

Next, think about your keyword lists. Some people think that advertisers develop a list of keywords and then leave them on auto-pilot as the campaigns run. This is possibly the worst thing you can do with your AdWords.

We've seen things like seasonality, increased competition, and new product lines affect keywords and where your ads rank in the search results. But the biggest thing you should remember is this:

20% of all Google searches every day are new terms. These are words that may not be covered by your keyword lists, and could cause you to lose potential customers and leads.

Continue to use keyword tools like the Google Keyword Tool to include new terms, but also use the Search Query Report in your AdWords reports tab. Discovering new terms through this report could save you money by adding new terms with lower competition levels, that target specific locations, or add descriptive words like colours, model numbers, or product sizes that you may have missed by restricting yourself to general terms.

Again – I really enjoyed the education sessions at SES Toronto this year! Nice job guys putting this together.

Finally, for those of you running tests on ad copy or ad images, ask yourself this question that was brought up in the presentation:

Are you testing apples to apples, or apples to oranges?

Think about how that applies to your campaigns.

Stop right there.

So maybe it's not always as simple as following three basic steps. But for the AdWords beginner, following these Google-recommended steps can help your ad groups and your AdWords campaign build better Quality Scores, rank higher in search results, and attract more clicks.  Here are 3 easy steps to building your keyword lists.

1. Review Products One At A Time

The first thing to do is develop a list of products and services you offer with your web site. Take each one and develop relevant ad groups for each. Ask yourself,  "what words or phrases would customers use?" Be sure to include brand names, as well as variations of each word, like plurals, synonyms, and spelling variations.

2. Develop New Keyword Lists As They Happen

If each keyword list strays too far from the initial word or phrase your started with, consider starting another list related to the words that have deviated. This keeps each keyword list focused on a particular product, brand name, service, or product type.

Keeping each keyword list focused on a specific word or phrase also allows you to write more focused ad copy. By using the keyword as the focus, the web user is drawn to your ad because you present them with exactly what they are looking for. They are not greeted by a generic ad, a general company ad, or a slogan.

3. Scrub Your Keyword Lists

Remove any words from your list that, upon further review, are irrelevant, extremely broad, or poor matches for your product or service. Even if you follow the steps in point 2, you can always find words or phrases that are poor choices for your advertising campaigns with some sober second thought. This could include brand name you don't sell, no longer sell or are yet to sell, colours you don't offer, or styles you don't, won't or will never offer. Basic descriptive words can make all the difference when it comes to converting a potential customer.

Keep your budget in mind when you develop keyword lists, as you might not have enough money to spend if you create too many keyword lists. Focus on the most important words and phrases, especially common words and phrases that will ensure your site receives qualified visitors.

These three steps will start you on your way to a better, more focused pay per click campaign. Simply populating one ad group with a list of words and leaving it on "auto-drive" will do more to ensure your failure online than anything.  It will also likely lead you to believe that PPC doesn't work.  We hill that all the time.

Take the time to think about your words. Don't throw words in to a list willy-nilly or leave it up to a machine. You'll be glad you put the effort in.

In the top right corner, you should see a green beaker icon beside the word "New!". Click on this icon to open up the list of features you can enable or disable within Google Maps. 

The New Lab Tools For Google Maps Include:

1) Drag 'n' Zoom: Allows you to drag a box on a certain part of your map in order to zoom in quickly to the outlined area instead of multi-clicking the zoom bar on the left of the map.

2) Aerial Imagery: Rotatable, high-resolution overhead images, but currently for certain areas only.

3) Back to Beta: Add the Beta tag back to your account. I think that's it, really…

4) Where In The World Game: Guess the country from satellite images. Take that, Alex Trebek!

5) Rotatable Maps: Because viewing maps the right way up is sooo yesterday.

6) Latitude & Longitude Tooltip and Marker: I've never been smart when it comes to latitude and longitude, so for those of you keen on this function, have a go and let us know what you think.

7) Smart Zoom: You know when you zoom in on a map and it shows "We Don't Have Imagery At This Level?" Don't you want to scream at Matt Cutts for that? Or maybe his cat, at least? Well, now you can add this feature, which stops the map from zooming in past the last point on the map with an actual image.

Add a few to your Google Maps and play around. I've become a bit of a 'Google Maps/Earth/Street View' junky lately, so these new features please me. As do random pictures of The Stig on Google Street View. But that's a blog for another day.

What Is It All About?

Yahoo! and MSN/Bing have long been the numbers 2 and 3 players in the search engine field, lagging far behind Google in search engine market share. While changes in market share do occur, these changes have never been drastic enough to affect Google's dominance and restore a large portion of the search market to either Yahoo or MSN.

The two companies have decided that pooling their resources and market share into one would be a better solution to the dominance of Google in the search engine field. According to Yahoo's numbers, it will result in 62% more search users over their current levels, or around 150 million searchers.

How Does It Affect Me?

First of all, there will be no immediate change to either search engine because of this agreement alone. The merger is expected to be completed by the end of 2010, or even early 2011 if that's what the companies decide is needed.

In terms of the web user experience, it won't affect you either. Yahoo! and MSN/Bing will continue to exist as "separate" search engines and web domains. The merger affects the search software on the back end, meaning the two domains will be powered by the same program for both organic and paid searches. Under this assumption, the only change you may notice if you pay close enough attention, is the results on both search engines may reflect each other closer than previously.

How Does It Affect My Paid Search?

For advertisers using both paid search platforms this will save you or your internet marketing company a lot of time and effort, as well as money (well, if you're paying separate management fees for both!). It may cost you the same or more if you do your PPC work in-house or on your own, as actual click numbers and per-click costs can vary between the two.

Both pay per click platforms will be powered by the MSN AdCenter program, which currently displays ads on Microsoft's Bing search engine. This means you will need to create and optimize only one account for both PPC platforms instead of two, you will need to track only one referring source in your analytics program instead of two, and you will need to add conversion code for only one platform instead of two.

You should also see a higher total numbers in terms of impressions, clicks, and conversions in your AdCenter account should you combine your Yahoo! and MSN budgets in to one larger budget, as all PPC data from the two search engines will be combined into this one account.

The partnership should not drastically affect the way you work in the AdCenter platform, if at all. For now, no major changes have been announced and it would be safe to assume that the two companies will want to make the transition as comfortable and easy as possible. 

Reaction To The Partnership

I can't wait for this deal to be finalized and the MSN AdCenter to take over all PPC work for the two companies. I've really come to like the AdCenter platform (behind AdWords, of course), and MSN has done some good work in improving the ease of use of the platform. It's not perfect, but it is miles ahead of where it once was, and is certainly easier to use than Yahoo! Search Marketing at this point in time.

Im sure other search marketing professionals would agree.  Bring it on!

It seems that Google quietly expanded the service to pretty much every paved road across Canada. You can now use Street View almost anywhere across the country. So maybe there’s not a lot in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, but you get the idea from the coverage map. Street View can be used anywhere you see the blue colouring (no, not the water, funny guy).

It appears that the images were captured around the time Toronto’s were (late summer of 2009), as you can see by the date listed on this church in my old hometown. Thanks to Kip for pointing it out!

It’s nice that smaller towns and rural areas are being added, as those of us from such places who don’t get back to visit much now have a chance to see what’s changed, or even what has stayed the same.

There was one more addition to Street View in Canada that was announced and that was the addition of images from the slopes of Whistler, British Columbia, courtesy of the Google Street View snowmobile.

Now we can all see places in Canada that we always wanted to! Thats cool.

They mentioned that they were attracted to our emphasis on measurement. Right away, this told me that we were talking to someone who understood the power their data plays as a part of their online marketing efforts. The number of clicks or the number of visitors is not the be-all and end-all of their marketing.

Your AdWords data alone holds so much more information than just the number of clicks. Measuring the effectiveness of your campaigns tells you how well your ads work, how well your web site or landing page works, and what keywords work best for you, amongst other things.

Here are 4 areas you can start looking at now to dramatically improve the results of your pay per click campaigns.

KeyWord Effectiveness

Stop looking at clicks alone. When you look at your keyword data, read right across the line in order to interpret that word's effectiveness. 250 clicks over 5 days is nice, but how many impressions did it take for you to acquire those clicks? If those 250 clicks were acquired from 400 ad impressions, it that the resulting click thru rate of 6.25% means your keyword or keyword phrase is an effective one. But if you acquired those clicks on 50,000 impressions, then the resulting click thru rate of 0.5% tells us that the keyword(s) might not be a strong one for your product or service.

(We are assuming in this case that your ad copy is "effective and optimized" and appearing in the same average position between the two examples)

In this case, the first measure we are watching is clicks, followed by the click thru rate. The more clicks you acquire for with fewer impressions, the more effective or appropriate your keyword is to the search conducted.

Additionally, review the performance of all of your words, and the numbers they produce. Are there clicks on those words at all? If it has a low number of clicks, does a fantastic CTR (and therefore, a low number of impressions) mean you keep the word active?
There are even more numbers to review when making decisions about your AdWords keywords and measuring their effectiveness, but we'll touch on those when we get to them.

Web Page/Landing Page Effectiveness

While Google Analytics allows us to dig further into the numbers associated with your landing pages, we can still make informed decisions, albeit limited, based on the information gathered by AdWords.

The prime piece of data in this instance is conversions.

Are you tracking conversions? If not – forget everything Ive said so far until you have got that done!

Is your web site or landing page converting? Are people completing the assigned goal you have designated in your conversion tracking code? This goal might be contacting the company via a form on your page, completing a purchase, downloading documents or software, or a page view.

Yes, page views are important to some people and businesses.

The most important thing to realize about tracking conversions on your site is, "What is a good number of conversions for my web site or business?" Are you happy with 5 per month? What about 500? If you have no idea what an acceptable number is, then you won't be able to make prudent business decisions about your marketing results.

Once you have established this number, then measuring the effectiveness of your web or landing page is much easier. You can now compare the number of conversions and the associated conversion rate with your clicks and click thru rate. Don't forget that the more relevant the landing page, the more likely you are to have a better conversion rate. Visitors want to find exactly what they are looking for.

Ad Group Effectiveness

On the whole, how are your ad groups doing? Interpreting their performance based solely on clicks is pretty much the wrong way to go.

Of course, we're assuming that your ad groups or well optimized, relevant keywords are grouped together, and your ad copy addresses that particular ad groups keyword set.

Across your Ad Groups, you are examining all of the above information, as well as comparing them to each other. Are they attracting clicks? Which ones are attracting the most? Which ones are converting and which ones are not? Does one ad group attract tens of thousands of impressions and very few clicks, while another attracts a lower number of clicks but ten times as many clicks? Are any of your ad groups just not working on the whole?

You want to ensure that your money is best spent on keywords that both attract qualified visitors that convert. Visitors need to be interested in your offer and should be taking you up on it. Comparing data across your ad groups allows you to concentrate your budgetary spend on ad groups that work.

Will you pause the ineffective Ad Groups? Are you pausing them for en extended period, because of seasonal issues like holidays (who does Christmas shopping in February?), because of out of stock products, or because an associated group is doing a much better job for you?

Will you delete an ad group completely? Is another group doing a much better job? Are you no longer selling a product or service? Has the fad you're trying to capitalize on passed? Or is it just not working the way you had hoped?

All of these questions can be answered in some way by reviewing all of your AdWords data. But not by one column of data alone.

Campaign Effectiveness

Yes, you can even measure the effectiveness of your AdWords efforts at the campaign level. Did you think of this before you opened up a new campaign?

Now there are external factors that can affect your data and how you measure your results.

Your campaign settings can affect performance in any number of ways. It makes sense to advertise to the people of Portugal in Portuguese instead of English. It would also make more sense to schedule ads for your restaurant to run during business hours, when employees are present to answer the phone to take reservations.

You can also choose if you want to run your ads on Google search, Google search partners, the content network, or any combination of the three. Is your web site mobile device-friendly? If not, you can choose not to advertise to mobile device users.

How, where, and on what device you run your ads can make a huge difference in the success or failure of your AdWords campaign. Thoroughly research your target market (demographics) before starting a campaign!

Finally, how has your campaign, at all levels, performed over time? Do seasonal changes affect your campaigns, or is your traffic steady, increasing, or decreasing? Comparing data form one time frame to another is important to check and take in to account when making changes or minor tweaks to your keywords, ad copy, or settings. Know how all levels of your campaign have performed, are currently performing, and expected to perform

Wrapping It Up

It takes an in-depth investigation to make informed decisions about your Google AdWords and any pay per click campaign. Never base a decision on one set of data like clicks or impressions. Never be afraid to trust your instincts when it comes to how you interpret and measure data and success – it's all part of testing. And you never stop testing and trying new things in Pay Per Click.  If you care about how your money is spent that is!

As we enter 2010, the Bing-Yahoo merger inches ever closer.  But is interest in Yahoo! and Yahoo Search Marketing on the downslide?

On January 22, Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Land reported on the growth of search in 2009. While Search as a whole grew 46% globally, Yahoo saw only a 13% growth in use over their already small market share. Compare that number to the 58% growth experienced by Google sites, while Microsoft experienced a growth of 70%, and in many cases is the number 2 search engine now. Even Ask.com experienced an impressive growth of 43% over the past year.

(Note that the above numbers are for searches performed, and not actual clicks on organic or paid search results)

Rumours have bandied about the past few weeks about an update being performed on the Yahoo! site. The webmasters and marketers seeing these results only have speculation to work with, as they have seen spikes in traffic recently from Yahoo!. A quick check of a few TechWyse Analytics accounts pinpointed increases in a few accounts today, but nothing resembling a "spike" that others have seen. When these webmasters and marketers looked to Yahoo! for information, there was no post on the Yahoo Search Marketing Blog, nor anywhere else. The most recent post (the first in a month) was about employment changes at the executive level. Is the YSM Blog losing interest among it’s employees or have they scaled back in light of the coming merger?

I don’t know many people who use Yahoo! as a default engine anymore. Unless their computer came set up with it as the default search engine on their browser, and they lack the necessary "geek skills" to change it. Google is now a part of the "Kleenex effect", where a product name or company trademark becomes the accepted generic name for a product or service, while MSN has ramped up their advertising for the Bing "Decision Engine" across traditional media, especially television in the United States, and has seen their share rise in recent months. (see above).

Is It Right Or Left?  Up or Down With Yahoo!?

Then we are presented with evidence that counters the appearance of diminished interest and use. On January 20, we received an interesting mail from Yahoo! outlining recent updates to the YSM platform, including new features like a Network Distribution Performance Report (performance on Yahoo! pages versus their partner sites), as well as an Ad Delivery Report, outlining where your ads appeared on partner sites and monetary data for those sites).

If the merger is planned for some time this year, what’s with the system upgrades? Are Yahoo! looking for a way to increase the value and functionality of YSM in the face of the merger? I’m just speculating again, but why the changes now? Why not last year, and why at all given the impending nuptials with MSN?

TechWyse has moved spend for some clients using both MSN and Yahoo! over to the MSN AdCenter area. Not all of it mind you, because both systems are still separate and to eliminate one target audience all together means missing out on potential leads and sales. But this past year has seen a number of accounts on MSN return a better CPA than those on the Yahoo! Search Marketing network, meaning that a client’s money is better spent on MSN.

I’m not advocating to drop Yahoo!, but I would say that MSN is probably my PPC engine of choice after Google AdWords. It drives some decent  traffic and stastically is showing a CPA that is 45% of the CPA we see in Yahoo! for our clients. It’s important to note that these are with pretty much the same clients and number of campaigns across both PPC engines.

Bing Better For Conversion Than Yahoo!

It makes me wonder about the search habits of users on Yahoo! and Bing. Users seem to be better prepared to buy or request information from Bing.

Higher conversion rates from fewer total visitors resulting in equal actual conversions on MSN show me a highly qualified visitor. Is Yahoo’s searchers simply not as qualified?  I think the change toward a higher qualified visitor on MSN/Bing comes from their decision to focus on search itself, and move away from the "portal page" idea that so many MSN/Live/Hotmail/Passport/whatever… visitors were previously presented with. Bing is similar to Google in that the search query field dominates because that’s the purpose of the site. Yahoo! remains a portal site, with News links, advertisements, services, surveys, and a number of other distractions.  It just doesn’t seem as serious about search with some many other things going on.

I hope that once the MSN merger is completed we will begin to see better conversion numbers at Yahoo!  But only time will tell and I probably shouldn’t hold my breathe.  Competing with Google? MSN appears prepared to challenge Google unlike they have previously.