PPC Without Pity

If you’ve ever had the privilege of working with a small business PPC account, you’ve probably had this conversation:

SMALL BIZ OWNER: Our ads aren’t showing up!
YOU: That’s odd…everything seems to be fine in the account.
SMALL BIZ OWNER: I just Googled our name and didn’t see our ad!

Then, you have a long conversation explaining how PPC actually works to your naive client, and hopefully get them to understand that having a PPC account doesn’t guarantee ad coverage on 100% of searches. I’ve actually been on the receiving end of the opposite conversation: when a client congratulates you on getting them a #1 Google result (clearly indicating they don’t know the difference between SEO and PPC). While it’s nice to get noticed for your good work, this may actually be a more harmful scenario for your client.

Here’s what you need to explain to your client (feel free to send them this post as a link). It’s totally impossible for Google to show every advertiser’s ads on the first page 100% of the time for every keyword they are bidding on. It’s a mathematical impossibility. That’s why we have factors like bidding, quality score, and Google’s algorithm to ensure everybody gets a chance to have their ad show up. So, depending on your daily budget, bids, and ad targeting settings, your particular ads get put in a queue to show up, along with the thousands of other AdWords advertisers.

Your ad sits in the queue until a user types in a search query relevant to a keyword you are bidding on. Then, the Google system goes to work, calculating whether or not to show your ad, and where to place it in the results. If the timing is right, your ad will show. Once it has shown up, it gets put back in the queue to wait for the next qualifying query.

Now here’s the kicker. If you just Googled yourself and saw your ad, you just took an ad impression away from a potential customer. This was an impression that might have lead to a click, which in turn might have lead to a conversion. If you sit at your desk all day, Googling yourself to check ad positions, you could be costing yourself money with every Google search.

If you’re worried about whether or not your ads are showing, don’t fret. Google will always let you know if there is an issue with your ads or keywords. If your ads aren’t showing, then Google isn’t making any money from you – they have an incentive to get your ads up and running as soon as possible after any interruption. If you’re worried about which position your ads are showing in, the stats on average position are right there in your account. You’re never going to be guaranteed a top spot every time (and in reality, this isn’t as important as you think), and you can pretty easily adjust what position your ads show in by raising or lowering your keyword bids.

If you really want to see how your ad shows up on a real-life Google search page, there’s even a tool for that. Just go to the Google Ad Preview Tool. Here, you can enter whatever keyword you like and see a sample Google results page. You’ll get results for organic and paid searches calculated by the Google algorithm, but it won’t count as an ad impression in your AdWords account. You can even use the tool to change your domain or geographic settings to see how users in other regions view your ads. This function is pretty handy if you don’t geotarget your own area in your ad coverage, or you have special campaigns for other cities, states, or countries.

Hopefully, this information will cure you of your self-Googling. Sure, we all give in to a vanity search now and again. But if you’re spending money on AdWords it’s best to kick the habit.

In the highly competitive world of PPC, sometimes it’s necessary to think outside of the box to keep ahead of other advertisers in your vertical. In this post, I’d like to introduce you to a secret weapon in the world of keyword research: the Google Wonder Wheel.

There’s no lack of good (and free) keyword tools out there. To get a basic list of keywords, you can try the Google External Keyword Tool, WordStream’s keyword tool, or Microsoft Advertising Intelligence. But, as reliable as these tools are, they do have an upper limit on the keyword suggestions you can get. Eventually, you’ll reach the point of diminishing returns and will only find keywords that you’re already bidding on, or ones that just are not relevant to your business.

This is when you’ll have to bring out the big guns. Here’s what you need to do:

First, go to www.google.com. Enter one of your most profitable or popular keywords into the search box and execute a Google search. In this example, we’ll use “web design training.”

On the left side navigation of the search results page, click on the “Wonder Wheel” link:

On the next page, you’ll find the infamous “Wonder Wheel”:

Now, the fun begins. You’ll probably get some pretty good suggestions for relevant keywords off of the first wonder wheel, but you can dig even deeper by clicking on any individual keyword. This will spawn a brand new wonder wheel, with even more suggestions related to the keyword you clicked on. Even better, you have a dynamic list of top search results to the right of the wonder wheel to help you determine the user intent behind the query, and whether or not the suggested keyword is a good fit for your advertising campaigns.

This is a great method to both expand your current campaigns and ad groups, or come up with new ideas for areas you haven’t covered. There’s really no limit to how many new keywords you can discover with this – each new keyword you add creates potential for new suggestions. If you see some success after a few test runs, you should definitely add this method to your regular keyword research.

If your company is large enough and popular enough, your company name and trademark may suddenly become valuable pay per click search terms not only for yourself, but for your competitors as well. In some cases, your competitors may find that by bidding on keywords related to your company they can reach out to customers who originally intended to purchase from you. Obviously, this is a situation most of us would like to avoid. Unfortunately, most PPC companies do not explicitly ban the use of trademarked terms in PPC keyword lists. And why should they? The more keywords they make available for bidding, the more money they make. If you are having an issue with competitor use of your branded terms, you will need to resolve the issue yourself.

If you see your competitors running pay per click ads with your branded terms, the first step you should take is to contact the advertiser directly. That way, you can ensure that your key terms are removed from all advertising campaigns instead of just one PPC account. Be firm, but polite. There is no need to threaten legal action, but you should be clear that if they do not comply to your request you will register a complaint with the PPC advertising services, and their account will be affected. If your request is acknowledged, you may be able to resolve the issue quickly and easily with no need for intervention by the search engines.

However, if the offending competitor chooses to not take down the ads that are in violation, you may need to lodge a trademark complaint with the search engines. While it is not against the rules to bid on a competitor’s trademarked keywords, there are some restrictions on using trademarked terms in text ads. Be aware of this before you lodge a complaint. You can’t stop a competitor from running ads when users search for your branded or trademarked terms, but you might be able to prevent those competitors from using the terms in their text ads.

If you see some text ads running with your branded terms (and reaching out to the advertiser directly doesn’t help), you may need to issue a trademark complaint. This is about as effective as lodging a complaint with any other major company (that is, it’s kind of a crapshoot), but it may be worth your time if you really think that it is negatively affecting your business.

To lodge a trademark complaint with Google, first read their trademark policy here. If you still think that the advertiser is violating Google’s terms, you can send them a complaint by filling out their Trademark Complaint Form. If your complaint is valid, then your brand terms will be added to Google’s blacklisted terms, and future ads containing the keywords will be rejected through Google’s automated editorial process.

For trademark complaints about Yahoo ads, read their editorial guidelines here. If you would like to report a violation, you can send an email to trademarkconcern-ysm@yahoo-inc.com. Be sure to include the following information in your email:

1. The search term(s) that caused the ad in question to appear.
2. The trademark on which your claim is based.
3. The registration number of the trademark you own (if it is registered at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office).
4. Evidence of consumer confusion arising from the offending ad.
5. A copy of any communication you have had with the offending advertiser about the matter.

If you have a complaint about an ad on Bing or another Microsoft network property, you can read their guidelines on intellectual property at this link. To lodge a complaint, you can fill out their trademark complaint form.

Keep in mind that all search engines explicitly state in their terms of service that they are not responsible for mediating trademark disputes. However, if you have a compelling case and the offending advertiser is clearly in the wrong, the search engines can be a great help in standing up for your intellectual property rights. Just be civil, communicate with the advertiser directly first, and use complaint forms as a last resort. As long as you remain respectful in your request, you’ll find that protecting your brand in the PPC marketplace is simple and effective.

This week in Google Analytics news: German officials are trying to ban websites based in their country from using Google Analytics (you can read the full story at TechCrunch). They claim that Google is collecting personally identifiable information without users’ consent, and that this could potentially break privacy laws. To me, this is a great example of people being terrified of technology that they don’t understand.

Before all the German villagers bust out the pitchforks and torches, let’s get one thing straight: Google Analytics does not collect any personally-identifiable information. Period. As a frequent user of Google Analytics, the most I can tell about someone is what city they (or most likely, their internet service provider) is from, what pages they’ve visited on the site, and how long they spent there. Sure, there’s a lot else that I could do with that information to improve my website or marketing campaigns, but there is no freaking way that I could decode an individual’s identity from my Google Analytics data. And that’s assuming that I would have the time or inclination to do so, since there’s no way I could possibly benefit from that information. The value of Google Analytics comes from analyzing web traffic data in the aggregate, not on an individual level.

Of course, the majority of the German government’s ire is likely directed at the data that Google itself collects. Everyone likes to paint Google as this totalitarian vacuum of internet data, parsing our identities and dirty little secrets in their data centers. Let me ask you this: assume you were leading a company that collected petabytes of data every day. How the hell could you even look for one individuals data in all of that mess? What possible benefit could you get from that? Picking the needle of one user’s data out of the mile-high haystack of Google data would take hours (maybe even days) and cost a ridiculous amount of money in payroll and resources. Even if Google wanted to figure out your individual browsing history, it would not make economic sense for them to do so. Like I said before, the value of Google data is in the aggregate, not in the individual.

If Germany is so worked up about web analytics data, why aren’t they going after Omniture, Woopra, or any number of other web analytics providers? I’ll tell you why: because the bureaucrats who want to make this happen probably don’t even know they exist. Everyone knows who Google is. Just say that Google is collecting data from web users, and the average layman knows what that means. But try to say that similar analytics solutions can be had by installing a javascript tag or looking at web logs? Only us geeks would get that.

Web analytics is not a threat to online privacy, and causing a ban on it would do a great disservice to web users everywhere. Without analytics data, you can’t improve for usability, or determine what the most-needed features of your website are. I sincerely hope that the folks in the German web industry wake their government up to what a stupid, ill-advised idea this is, and stop the Google witch hunt.

By now, you’ve probably heard about the Yahoo/Microsoft online advertising deal. Yahoo search is history, replaced by Bing. Yahoo PPC accounts will be merged into MSN AdCenter, except for display and content advertising, which will remain independent to each company.

So what does this mean to us PPC folks? Obviously, the usual online advertising triumvirate of Google, Yahoo, and MSN PPC advertising accounts is gone. Those of us who bothered to deal with MSN AdCenter are rejoicing, since we might actually start to get traffic in our accounts. Also, I get to stop complaining about how much Yahoo search marketing’s user interface sucks.

All kidding aside, this is a huge development. Google is still going to be the king of paid search, but combining Yahoo search traffic with Bing search traffic (which seems to be picking up, thanks to Microsoft’s PR blitz for their new tool) will offer a bigger chunk of the search market than we’ve seen with the respective traffic numbers of Yahoo or Bing alone. This could mean a big influx of advertisers to the MSN AdCenter platform. It also could be the end of good cost-per-conversion in your MSN account, now that there might actually be some serious advertiser competition on there.

This deal also benefits advertisers thanks to MSN’s superior account management tools, like their AdCenter desktop client. I’ve been promised a Yahoo desktop app for at least a year now, but I’ve yet to see it. Obviously, that’s out the window entirely. With AdCenter benefiting from the influx of Yahoo traffic, and Yahoo accounts getting the benefit of decent account management tools, it’s going to be easier to manage larger accounts in the new, combined platform. This means increased competition, but potentially better results from your Yahoo traffic.

What I’m most concerned about is how users will react to this. Are there really any true fans of Yahoo search out there? Will they be disgusted with the merger and make the switch to Google search? Or will there be a smooth migration of Yahoo traffic over to Bing? We have until early 2010 until the deal really goes into effect, so that’s a lot of time for Microsoft to ramp up their Bing PR campaign, and a lot of time for us marketers to mull over how this will affect our accounts.

Ah, summer. Full of fun in the sun, awesome vacations, and general outdoor frolicking. And, unfortunately, mediocre results for a lot of pay per click advertising campaigns.

With all that nice weather outside, it’s hard to blame people for not wanting to spend their time in front of a computer. If you’re seeing your PPC stats perform a downward spiral, remember that people aren’t really looking to shop for stuff online in the summer in the same ways that they shop around during the holidays (if you’re an online retailer) or at the beginning of the year (if you’re in the business of New Year’s resolution self-improvement, like weight loss products or education). A lot of PPC campaigns just don’t do very well during the summer, and that’s okay. It’s not your fault – it’s just a seasonal cycle.

If you want to get a visual representation of your seasonal cycles, Google Trends can help you research what times of year are most popular for your main keywords. Chances are, you’ll see a pretty big lull during the summer months for a lot of industries.

Of course, not everyone has a bad PPC summer. Some industries, like travel agents or swimwear vendors, might have fantastic summers and terrible winters. Whether or not you’re suffering from the PPC summertime blues, make sure you keep an eye on your seasonal search trends to see if the trouble is with your PPC efforts or your yearly search cycles.

It’s been almost a month since Microsoft launched their new search/decision engine, Bing. Initial reviews have been pretty positive, and traffic data seems to indicate that it’s a close contender for the #2 search engine spot currently occupied by Yahoo. But is it really possible to get people to start using a new search engine in a world where the word “Google” is synonymous with the term “search the internet?”

According to this article on TechCrunch, probably not. Here’s the rundown: according to a study by the Catalyst Group (a usability and design consulting firm), users prefer the layout and organization of Bing, and eye-tracking studies indicate that users spent 150% more time viewing the top-result ad on a test search on the Bing interface. However, users in their focus group indicated that both search engines delivered equally relevant results.

So is Bing really going to make people switch with their more appealing design? Probably not. The problem is that Google is so ingrained in our collective search engine psyche, that user’s won’t be changing their habits for a marginal advantage. Furthermore, Google has embedded their search bar on so many of our software solutions and web sites that actually going to a webpage to enter a search query seems somewhat antiquated. I have my Firefox search bar permanently tuned to the Google option, and it seems like I hardly ever go to Google.com anymore. I’m sure I’m not alone on this one.

The eye-tracking study does seem promising to advertisers, though. The difficulty of competing on the Google network seems to be increasing with each passing year, and Bing/MSN has been an increasingly appealing option to a lot of advertisers for ROI reasons alone. The problem is that no one can match the volume of Google’s lead-generating capacity, so all serious marketers are stuck using the platform for now. However, if Bing takes off as an e-commerce portal in the way Microsoft is branding it, you might see a major exodus of advertising dollars as sellers migrate to where their buyers are going. Then, Google might be the one playing catch-up.

This week, Google announced that they were revamping their search query reports. It’s about time. I don’t know about you, but I was getting awfully sick of seeing that “6,783 Other Unique Queries” field every time I run a report.

It looks like Google finally realized that these enhanced reports are essential to their business model. Smart PPC managers were already using these search query reports, along with detailed keyword filters in Google Analytics. Adding a little more information to the mix will only improve AdWords ROI results and convince advertisers to pump more money into online ads. Advertisers get better results, Google gets more money. Sounds like a win-win situation to me.

If you haven’t tried one out already, run one of these reports for yourself and see the difference in accuracy. I’m sure you’ll be pleased with the results. With this greater detail, you can see what keywords are working and expand on the themes in your keyword lists. If you see that a certain keyword is driving a lot of junk traffic, you can always add in negatives or switch around your match types. I highly recommend that anyone running a serious AdWords account should run a search query report at least once a month and thoroughly analyze the results.

But here’s the best part – you don’t even have to run a report to see the results! The detailed search query report appears within the new interface that Google recently rolled out. Under your “Campaigns” tab, choose “Keywords.” Then, select a date range and choose the “See Search Terms” button. A report will instantly appear with the keywords that triggered your ads without all of that report waiting time.

Yahoo and MSN (not to mention all the third-tier engines) should pay attention to this. Better information and reporting makes it more appealing for PPC managers to optimize accounts. More info equals better ROI results equals more money for the search engines. If anyone is going to beat Google at their own game, they need to learn this valuable lesson.

No doubt some of you have heard of Wolfram Alpha, a new search engine set to launch this month. Word on the internet is that it could be a real Google killer – initial demos show that it offers a much more structured and relevant search on some search results. What’s more, the creator of Wolfram Alpha (Stephen Wolfram) has an impeccable resume – creator of groundbreaking software (Mathematica), Ph.D. in particle physics by age 20, etc. Obviously, Wolfram’s a pretty smart dude, but can he kill a search engine whose very name has become synonymous with search? And more importantly for us, will we need to start learning how to do Wolfram Alpha PPC when he decides to monetize it?

While I think that Wolfram Alpha is a pretty cool tool as advertised, I remain skeptical about its ability to displace Google as King Search. Anyone remember Cuil? The constant, fawning buzz that promised that it would deliver us from Google’s monopolistic grasp? Let me ask you this – when was the last time you did a Cuil search?

Despite Wolfram Alpha’s pedigree, I don’t think it will be taking any ad customers from Google any time soon. First, it seems like Wolfram Alpha is geared more toward the academic set. Not a very juicy demographic for advertisers. Do a couple of searches at Google Scholar and see if any ads pop up. Second, Wolfram Alpha isn’t as automated as Google is – Wolfram himself admits that he’ll need a team of at least a thousand people to curate the information that goes into his search engine. That seems to me like a system ripe for collapse, especially considering all the buzz that’s being built up pre-launch. I’m betting that we see a monumental crash on launch day, and intermittent service until interest cools.

Bottom line, Google is not a perfect system. But it’s the best system we have for online advertising for now. Wolfram is focusing on providing better search results, not serving relevant ads to consumers. I wouldn’t let your AdWords Certification expire anytime soon if I were you.

If you want more info on Wolfram Alpha, I suggest you check out this article here.

I am by no means the first person to talk about the marketing implications of Twitter. In fact, I confess that I’m a little late to the game – I only joined up a few months ago (although I think I should get additional street cred for beating Oprah to the Twitter party). In that time, I’ve been able to shift my perspective on Twitter from “pointless waste of time” to “interesting tool with some potential.”

This isn’t a post about how to use Twitter for SEO or branding. Instead, I want to talk about Twitter as an analytics and forecasting tool. With all of the focus on Twitter as a social media tool, it’s easy to forget that it has a powerful search function as well.

If you haven’t already, point your browser to http://search.twitter.com. The beauty of Twitter search is that it is real-time. How many times have you done a Google search for a software how-to or some company information, only to find a blog post that’s years old? Google rewards websites that have been around longer (among other nebulous factors), and it shows. Twitter, on the other hand, gives priority to only the most current information.

So what does this mean for PPC? Think of it this way: if you want to get information about what people are talking about online, you can do a Google search, or use tools like Google Trends. However, this information can be days, weeks, or even months old. Twitter search, on the other hand, delivers what people are talking about right now. If you can get a jump on the current cultural zeitgeist, you can build a PPC campaign, ad group, or ad around it in a matter of minutes. Since a PPC campaign can be created instantaneously, you can use real-time search statistics to come up with a real-time advertising campaign to beat your competitors to the market. How cool is that?