5 Conversion Tracking Tips For AdWords

Last month, I covered how to use call tracking for AdWords to shed some light on how to track phone calls as conversions. This month, I’d like to continue in that vein and share some more tips for tracking and optimizing by conversions, whether they are of the call or online variety. When I…

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New AdWords Ad Ranking Formula: What Does It Mean?

AdRank in AdWords is a key AdWords marketing concept that plays a huge role in determining how prominently your ads are displayed in a SERP and also your cost-per-click. So, when Google quietly announces huge changes on how AdRank is being calculated, …

Google Testing Huge Top Banner Ads For Branded Navigation Queries

Google has confirmed that they are testing incredibly large banner ad for specific branded queries. @SynrgyHQ posted an image on Twitter showing for the query [southwest airlines a huge “sponsored” ad at the top of the search results. A Google spokesperson confirmed this is a…

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Google Expands International Targeting In AdWords

Google has tweaked how location targeting works for international searches. It’s a change that allows ads to be seen across countries, not just within countries, when the search query has local intent. According to today’s announcement, advertisers that use either the…

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Coping With Enhanced Campaigns & The Problem Of Modifier Stacking

As we predicted a few months back, Enhanced Campaigns and mobile modifiers have been a benefit to those companies that employ them wisely. We’re excited to fold Google’s cross-device and in-store tracking into this mix as well as our own system for understanding micro-conversions….

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New Data Suggest AdWords Enhanced Campaigns Actually Work

Nearly two months after the forced roll-out of Enhanced Campaigns in AdWords, at least one key question remains unanswered: are we better off today than we were before? In my column this week, I’ll try to answer that question using some data-driven analysis — but first, I thought it…

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Demystifying Call Tracking In AdWords

Recently, I’ve been helping more companies in the local vertical; and for many of them, the ultimate goal of buying search ads is to get a phone call from a new prospect. Tracking these types of offline conversions has always been complicated, and I have to admit that one of the product areas…

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Google Expands AdWords Conversion Window Settings

In a small but significant change, Google is doing away with the 30-day conversion window in AdWords. Now advertisers can customize the conversion window from 7 to 90 days. Extending the window up to 90 days is good news for marketers whose sales cycle…

The PPC Experiment You Never Dare Run

A question that PPC account managers frequently have to deal with is, “Why are we paying for this traffic? Aren’t we going to get that traffic anyway?” It’s a fair question, even if it is completely annoying to hear for the twentieth time by the twentieth new accounting…

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Bing Ads Launches Google Enhanced Campaigns Compatibility Update, Tablet Targeting Stays, Still

Today Bing Ads launched the updates the company announced in June to make the platform more compatible with the changes Google ushered in with enhanced campaigns. The updates were implemented to support uploading of now-enhanced AdWords campaigns into …

Hacking Quality Score: How One Advertiser Got A Quality Score Of 8.8/10

In previous articles, I’ve discussed why I believe that Quality Score is so critical to PPC success. To illustrate the point in a more concrete way, I want to present a detailed case study of a WordStream client that is absolutely crushing its AdWords Quality Score. In this case study,…

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How To Automate Mobile Bid Multipliers — And Other New AdWords Scripts Tricks

September 5th marks the first anniversary of AdWords Scripts. I’ve been using them extensively to automate tasks ranging from reporting Quality Score to creating entire AdWords accounts from spreadsheets of products and services. Scripts have come a long way since they were launched, so to…

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Innovating In The B2B Search Space: Testing Geo Bid Multipliers

In a recent article in AdAge, Bert DuMars cites Forrester research which found that “only 11% of marketers set aside a specific budget for marketing innovation efforts, and only 9% make marketing innovation a part of every marketer’s budget.” I won’t go into how to secure…

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What The Heck Is AdWords Quality Score And Why Does It Matter Anyway?

Last month, Google announced some changes in how Quality Score is being reported. While it’s been described as just a reporting change (as opposed to a change in how Quality Score is calculated), some of my respected colleagues have pointed to the news as evidence that Quality Score somehow…

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Google AdWords Geo-Targeting: Have We All Been Doing It Wrong?

It’s rare that a true challenge to a best practice (and a seemingly straight forward one at that) arises. But, when Marta Turek, Group Manager, Performance Media at Mediative presented case studies showing what happened when they tested an opt-out versus the traditional opt-in approach to…

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