Google Adwords News & Views from our Blogs and Blogs that we follow.

The posts on this blogs page are manually selected to include the latest news and opinion about search engine marketing and Google AdWords as well as some classic posts that still stand the test of time.

'Improved' Adwords Exact & Phrase Matching 17th April for mid-May 2012

Google's Adwords exact and phrase matching have been expanded to automatically include:
  1. Misspellings and typos.
  2. Plurals and singulars will be treated the same.
  3. Stemmings; foster, fostering, fostered 
  4. Abbreviations
PPC Promotion have encountered real problems with stemming and plurals and typos have delivered fewer clicks that you would expect. Read more over on Rob's blog on when and how to opt out with a link to
Perry Marshall's post on the signal that singular searches provide to marketers.

Changes to Ad Rotation 30th April 2012

Google announced a change to their Ad rotation that will reduce the time that true scientific split-tests can run to 30 days. See my CCM Blog post to learn more about scientific split-tests and some ways to manage this change.

Double Length Headlines

Rob has been triggering double length headlines since these went live in the UK.
If your Ads show in the top positions, above the free listings, the main tip is to add a full stop
at the end of description line 1.

double-length headlines

Otherwise Adwords can assume lines 2 & 3 of your Ad should be read together.


The link above expands on this is from the site of my old student Kunle Campbell,
now a real Adwords master.

True Conversion Rates of over 50% from Google Adwords? 27th August 2010

A quote request form with 8 fields to fill in has been returning average conversion rates of 30%. 
The 2 best Ad Groups have constantly achieved conversion rates of over 50%. 
This data was from August 2010 and their best group has been pushing 70% conversion rates in 2011.

How a Small Order led to Big Deal. 26th April 2010

A small order for a single hand pallet truck helped build a relationship with a new customer that produced a valuable service contract despite the highly competitive, low margin, pallet truck business.

Google Adwords Broad Matching finds wide new meanings for 'vehicle sell' 
4th February 2010

This week I found some more amazing, creative, matches for the keyword ‘vehicle sell’;from a search for a pawn broker with a yard, vehicle can be a tyre and sell a typo for sealer!

Don't exclude Customers who speak other languages from your AdWords. 28th January 2010

The fading art of article spinning 15th October 2009
This post takes an indepth look at article writing writing and article spinning services that are sold to improve your websites PageRank by creating relevant backlinks. If you pay for such a service do NOT just accept the numbers published but check if thet are in Google's index. Over 66% in this extensive sample were not.

Google Sitelinks - What they say about your Navigation Links 15th August 2009 
Sitelinks panels help visitors to go straight to the part of the site they want to use. These also highlight your navigation panel words. If visitors cannot see the home page will they know what the pages are about?

Nominet selling .UK by the Pound and all Trust is lost! 4th August 2009
A sad story of the loss of .co.uk trust and some thoughts about replacing this.


Google Search Has Changed Forever with Google Search Options 13th May 2009

Rob was going to Blog about this but Kunle's post over at Fuzz One has it covered;

"Google’s search options adds an extra layer of dynamic filters to the search engine result page (SERPs) – with a single click a search result has extra filters (on the left) that shows your search query results as Video, Forum posts or Review only results." 

Click on the link above to see Google's YouTube video.

How searchers with poor search results click on Adwords because they see no better answer.
25th March 2009

This post follows up an example of how Google Adwords broad matching is selling clicks for bad search queries. You can see how a search for‘template for circuit chart in house’  can trigger an impression for the Keyword 'circuit design'. But why would the searcher click on the text Ad on the right?

Three Essential 'Search Engine Friendly' Additions for your Websites. 26th March 2009
This website has just had a clear-out of old links to a missing page thanks to 
Google's Webmaster Tools. The insights in the post above were made possible by Google Analytics and a couple of neat filters & sitemaps save the planet.
 
These search engine friendly components should be embedded into every website template empowering website owners to understand how their sites are working.
 
Why do US Visitors bounce so often? 11th March 2009
Read the results of our quick survey of over a dozen websites. American visitors bounced at least 25% more frequently.
 
Split-Testing Domain Names using Google Adwords has just got more difficult! 5th February 2009.
Claud Hopkins

This Google Adwords policy change came into force at the end of February.
To read about split-testing see our beginners guide to AdWords. 

Split-testing is an idea perfected in US magazines over 100 years ago with the codes in the corner of cut-out coupons and recorded in Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins, pictured left. Follow the link to a free PDF edition.
 
How to improve your Google Adwords Quality Scores with Terms & Privacy Pages.
10th February 2009.
PPC Promotion Ltd's experience from client's Quality Scores, why-not e-commerce testing and the Collaborative Marketplace's research on Ethos information are brought together in this post.
These lessons have been applied to our own Ethos section.

Some Classic Posts by Rob's old student Kunle Campbell

How Google is experimenting with over 25 character Ad titles. 20th March 2009.
They appear to be testing this feature on text ad headlines using dynamic keyword insertion as Kunle noted over at Fuzzone.


Twitter as an aid to decision making? 17th February 2009. 
Kunle's use of search in Twitter is the key to his method – Search, Research and Reach Out to fellow twitters for advice.