Adwords begins to show its golden colours of Autumn! Earlier in the month I mentioned a new Adwords beta tool for testing landing pages – that of Google’s Website Optimzer – it doesn’t stop there! Google has been busy, very busy.
Adwords Account Snapshot (Beta)
Kevin Gibbons has discoved a cool AdWords account snapshot new feature that sneaked into one of his clients accounts. Yes, it’s beta and no there appears to be little documentation, but it looks very useful indeed. It gives a high level campaign overview of cost, clicks, impressions and CTR – all in graphical format. It also shows a snapshot of alerts, announcements, help and tips.
Keywords Ad Diagnostic Tool
AdWords released a Keyword Ad Diagnostic Tool earlier last month as discussed in a DP Furum’s post and at the SEO roundtable. Beta testing has finished and the tool appears to be available for all.
You will notice that each keyword in your AdWords account will now have a magnifying glass associated to it. Viewing the magnifying glass will reveal the status of the keyword and if inactive, a reason will be provided. So I gave the tool a spin and discovered that one of the keywords I was bidding on became inactive and the reason given is that it is now a trademark brand term. Less ambiguity, I like it!
AdWords Advertisers Can Site Target Specific AdSense Publisher Channels
Searchenginewatch recently discussed a new AdWords feature that targets specific areas on AdSense publisher’s website. This means an advertiser can target an AdSense website by genre that may be more relevant to the products and/or services that they sell.
This looks like a good feature, but the advertiser requires the publisher to turn it on and segment the site areas which may or may not result in relevant units for advertisers to make use of. I would imagine that large AdSense publishers would initially adopt the feature early on and it will be interesting to see if smaller publishers follow suite.
Quality Score Algo Update
AdWords has updated its quality score algorithm for landing pages. Jen Slegg provides a good summary of the affects it could have on businesses and in particular affiliates.
“The official AdWords blog just updated to include new information about their landing page quality scoring system, where advertisers whose ads lead to a “poor user experience” on the landing page could see their minimum bid prices hiked up in the coming days. The goal is to provide a better user experience for those who click the ads, with Google saying there will only be a “small number” of advertisers who will be affected.”
“Who will be the small number affected? I suspect the first to be targeted will be those whose landing pages consist of nothing but ads…” Jen’s blurb
This is causing immense stress within the affiliate community and the changes are certainly not on their Farther Christmas’ list for this year! The result is that the cost per click for certain keywords is sometimes going up as much as ten fold! Luckily, Shoemoney offers some useful tips to mask a page from being identified by Google’s quality score bot as purely being an affiliate page.
On the flip side, some advertisers are really benefiting as Google’s quality bot senses a good quality experience for its customers and competition slowly drops off!
Links:
AdWords Landing Page Quality Score Impact, on Content Bids
Google AdWords Landing Page Quality Ranking Initiated
Google AdWords Advertisers Up In Arms Again Over New Algorithm
Google’s Response to the Uproar Over the Landing Page Score Updaes
