Fortunately, running a duplicate keyword analysis is quick and easy if you have AdWords Editor. Here’s how to do it. First, go to the “Tools” menu and click on “Find Duplicate Keywords”:

On your next menu, you have the option to choose the word order of the duplicates, select if you want to find duplicates with the same match types, and decide if you want to find duplicates within the same ad group, within the same campaign, or within the same account:

When you run the report, I recommend hiding duplicates in paused, deleted, and ended campaigns and ad groups, since they won’t really interfere with your active elements. This will help reduce the amount of keywords that are listed in the final report, and will make your analysis a little easier.

Once you run the report, you’ll see the keyword spreadsheet you’re already familiar with, but duplicate keywords will be grouped together by dotted lines. Now, you can go through the list, find any keywords that are both duplicate and active, and pause any keywords that might be competing against each other. There’s usually a significant difference in conversion, CTR, or quality score metrics between duplicate keywords, so I normally pause whichever one is performing the worst on my key metrics.

Whenever you add in a lot of new keywords, it can be easy to lose track of what you already have. It’s a good idea to run the duplicate keyword report every couple of months to make sure that you haven’t added in anything that might conflict or compete with your previous active keyword selection. Remember, kids: a healthy, duplicate keyword-free AdWords account is a happy AdWords account.

This added feature is part of a trend that indicates search marketing is about to get a lot more interesting. For years, Google’s organic and paid search results have been ranked quantitatively through algorithms, keyword bids, and quality ratings. There has been little need for a human element in the rankings. Now, Facebook, Yelp, and other social sites are becoming powerful forces in information gathering. We’re also seeing a user backlash against sites that are gaming the quantitative system to get undeserved rankings – just look at the recent Google algorithm update that put the kibosh on content farms for evidence of that. Google is realizing that if they want to continue to dominate search, they need to have actual humans providing quality feedback on sites. Hiring Google employees to do the job would be such a monumental and costly task that it would be unfeasible. So, they’re crowdsourcing the task by implementing the +1 button.

Now that that tangent is out of the way, let’s talk about how this is going to affect your AdWords account. Unless you count viral video ads, there hasn’t been an easy way for search users to share ads that they like. But now, if you can create ads that are worthy of sharing, you might just end up getting some extra impressions for your buck. Plus, there’s the added bonus of having a word-of-mouth endorsement to go along with your ad. As any seasoned marketer knows, word-of-mouth is the cheapest and most effective form of marketing there is. If you saw your buddy’s name endorsing a PPC ad, wouldn’t you be a little more likely to listen to what it had to say?

Now, I’m not saying we should all go out and change 100% of our active ads to pander to the +1 button. But, it might be an interesting experiment to try and create ads that are funny, creative, or have some extra special offers in order to encourage ad viewers to share. But, at this point in time I don’t see any information on Google regarding whether or not you’ll be able to see your +1 “likes” in either your Google AdWords or Google Analytics reports. I expect that if this thing catches on, Google is sure to add that kind of reporting in the future. But for now, just be aware that you might not be able to get any reliable data on any +1 related ad experiments you’d like to try.

You can access the Google Keyword Tool one of two ways. You can follow this link to the external keyword tool: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. Or, you can access it within your AdWords account by going to the “Opportunities” tab, then clicking on the “Keyword Tool” link on the “Tools” menu on the left side of the screen:

The external version of the tool is easier to link to, but you have to deal with the hassle of a captcha. If you’re going to research one or two words, the external tool might be quicker. But if you’re going to do some serious research, you’re probably better off logging in to your account and using the tool there.

Using the tool is pretty straightforward. Type in some words or phrases relevant to your products in the search box. You can also search by using a website that’s similar to yours. You can then search based on these criteria. If you’re totally stumped, you can even browse through a list of categories on the left side of the tool. This will give you some pretty broad keywords for specific product verticals, but if you really want to drill down to the specific keywords that are going to be the best for you it’s probably best to use these as a jumping-off point to come up with your own keyword lists.

It’s also a good idea to define match types in your keyword research. You can do this by selecting the Match Types checkboxes below the Categories menu on the left. Note that the results won’t explicitly say what type the result keywords are. Instead, it will display them with the appropriate search operators around the keyword, such as broad, “phrase”, and [exact]. This should help you determine which keyword match types you should bid on by letting you know what kind of traffic you can afford. It can also determine what kind of long-tail traffic you’re likely to get for each search query. Just subtract the amount of exact match traffic from the amount of traffic the broad match counterpart gets. The remainder should give you a rough estimate of how many people are searching for longer, more specific phrases on a particular search query.

First off, let’s define that data that you can get out of the tool. There are a few different data points that Google will provide during the research:

Keyword – keywords related to your query or category selection. Note the use of search operators to indicate match type.
Competition – this is a rough estimate of what the competition is like for this keyword on Google AdWords. A fuller bar indicates that more advertisers are bidding on it, and your CPC is likely to be higher as a result.
Global Monthly Searches – the total number of Google searches on this term worldwide, per month.
Local Monthly Searches – the total number of Google searches on this term within the area specified by your country and language selections, per month.
Estimated Avg. CPC – the average cost per click you can expect to pay for this keyword to get top positions (1-3) on Google search results.
Ad Share – the percentage of time your ad will show on the exact match version of this keyword, specific to your geographic area. Stats for this don’t show up too often, so it may not be helpful for most users.
Search Share – describes the percentage of time your website shows up for this keyword on the first page of Google results. More helpful for SEO than PPC, and stats are pretty sparse for this one as well.
Extracted From Webpage – this statistic appears when there is a keyword match to a relevant landing page. Helpful for diagnosing Quality Score relevancy issues, or getting SEO diagnostics.

That covers the basics. Next week in Part 2, we’ll discuss some advanced options for the Google Keyword Tool, as well as a few more tips and triicks.

You might have noticed that you can no longer run account, campaign, or ad group reports in the reporting tab. Instead, Google has decided to move these features to the “Control Panel and Library” section of the campaign and ad group level views. To me, this seems utterly ridiculous. Why would you move a reporting feature from a section of your application titled “Reports”? Or, at least offer users the option to get their reports in both sections of the platform?

What’s more, the part where you actually get your reports is unlabeled and counter-intuitive. When I first found my reports missing, I checked the Google help file. It said to look for the reports in the “Control Panel and Library” section of the campaign tab. After I went there, I spent a good ten minutes looking for the small text link that would take me to the section (it’s on the left side of the page, halfway down, by the way). What really got me frustrated was that after I clicked on the link, there were no reports and no way to generate new ones. After a few days of yelling at my computer and finding no help from the “help” pages, I finally figured out that the solution to generating a new report was in clicking on an unlabeled button with an ambiguous graphic. Of course, even after all of this you can only export your current view in report form. No looking at stats by day or using other segmentation features that Google has rolled out over the last couple of years.

This reporting change screws over both veteran users and customers new to the AdWords platform. Vets lose functionality that they’ve grown accustomed to, and have to change their way of doing things unnecessarily. Newbies are bound to be perplexed by the terrible usability of the new feature and stuck looking frantically for their reports where they should be – in the “Reports” tab. All of this hassle for a feature that wasn’t even broken in the first place.

I really hope that Google wises up to their error and reverts their ill-guided change. You would think with the legendary obsession with user testing that Google supposedly has, they would at least split-test the reporting feature before they rolled it out. Unfortunately, it looks like somebody went with their gut instead of their head on this change, and we’re stuck with this ill-guided “improvement.”

So how do you prove your PPC chops to potential employers? Right now, the gold standard is Google’s AdWords certification. Just about everyone who is running a PPC campaign is running it in Google, so if you’re going to learn how to do PPC, you had better know how to run a Google AdWords campaign effectively. The Google AdWords certification tests your knowledge of the platform, and best practices to ensure that your campaigns are profitable.

Preparation for the test is totally free, so there’s no reason not to study for it. You can access all of the lessons online at the Google AdWords Learning Center. Lessons are available in text or video format, and they cover just about everything you need to know about what’s going to be on the certification exam.

The exam itself is about 100 questions, and has a two-hour time limit. It is open-book (which means you should probably leave a tab open to the AdWords help center as you take the test), but you’re going to need some serious time management skills in order to finish before the clock runs out. In order to pass, you’ll need to score 85% or better. There is a $50 fee to take the test, but keep in mind you have to pay that every time you retake that if you fail. Use that as a motivator to get it right the first time around.

Passing the AdWords certification exam isn’t all you need to get certified – it’s only the beginning. In order to be registered as a qualified professional, you also need to manage $1000 or more in AdWords spend over a 90-day period. You can either do this with your own account, or link to an existing account through your own client center account. The trickiest part of getting certified is getting someone to trust you with their AdWords spend. If you pass the test beforehand and show that you know your stuff, you’re going to have a better chance of landing a client who will help you finish your certification requirements.

Here’s some advice from someone who has taken and passed the exam. First, keep in mind that the correct answer on the Google test may not necessarily be the best real-world answer. I know this may sound counterintuitive, but think of it this way: Google has a vested interest in training people to spend as much money as possible on AdWords. So, a lot of Google test answers go like this: “Q: How do I improve performance in my Google account? A: Spend more money on Google!” So, be extra careful on the strategy questions. Second, two hours is definitely not long enough to finish all of the questions. Study and memorize as much as you can before you start, because looking up the answers burns up precious time. Skip too many questions, and you won’t make it to 85%.

Once you pass the test and meet the ad spend management requirements, you’ll get a nifty icon to put on your website that tells the world that you passed the certification. As an added bonus, you’ll also get some AdWords promotional credits to give to your clients. But, most importantly, you will be recognized as an expert in the field. This will help you get work if you’re a freelancer, or help you land a job if you’re looking for a 9 to 5 gig. Good luck!

Regardless of my snarky commentary, this is great news for any advertiser trying to make mobile-targeted PPC campaigns in 2010. Clearly, Google and MSN are betting big on mobile PPC marketing in 2010. Yahoo, not so much. I’m not aware of any ways to target mobile devices in Yahoo (feel free to prove me wrong in the comments!), but we’ve seen a lot of developments lately from Google and Microsoft. I’m still not totally convinced that users are going to be on board with mobile PPC just yet. I don’t think that people are ready to be advertised to on their mobile devices – it seems like a little too intimate of a medium to me. We’ll see if my cynicism is justified by the end of the year.

Either way, now would be a good time to make sure you have mobile-specific landing pages, and optimize a mobile version of your homepage for tiny smartphone screens. Whether you’re ready or not, people are going to start looking for information about your company on their mobile phones. It’s better to have a mobile version of your site ready to go and no one using it than having to scramble to make one once you see your mobile traffic take off in your web analytics program.

I should preface this by saying that you can also import AdWords campaigns into MSN AdCenter, although you do need to take a side trip into Microsoft Excel to get it done. At least you have to use another Microsoft product. Yahoo just seems to be rolling over and admitting that there are much better tools for creating PPC campaigns out there, and you should probably just use those instead of the Yahoo Search Marketing platform.

I assume that most of the people reading this blog have created a Yahoo PPC campaign before. And you would probably agree with me that making changes to a Yahoo account are pretty tedious and boring. Compared to the agility and ease of use of AdWords Editor (or for that matter, the AdCenter Desktop Beta), Yahoo is light years behind the competition in terms of useful tools for large-scale PPC accounts.

So instead of creating a tool of their own, Yahoo decided to take the easy route and just assume that you are using their competitors tools (which you probably are) and outsource their PPC tool creation to the other guys. I admit that Google has some pretty awesome tools for PPC, but I hardly think that’s an excuse for just rolling over and giving up, especially if you’re one of the web’s largest companies. I guess I can’t really blame Yahoo for phoning it in, though, since their PPC platform is probably on the outs, pending the upcoming Yahoo/Bing merger.

If you are still interested in importing AdWords accounts into Yahoo, you can find instructions here. In the future, I’d recommend having a Google AdWords export handy for all of your PPC campaigns, since it seems like it has become the gold standard for pay per click accounts. I doubt that any of the other providers will be taking away their AdWords import abilities any time soon.

1. Yahoo and Bing will join forces, but still won’t match Google for PPC marketshare.

In July 2009, Yahoo and Microsoft announced a deal that would eliminate Yahoo search and replace it with Bing. Of course, as in all major business transactions, this deal has taken quite a while to materialize. Yahoo and Microsoft just finalized their deal in December 2009, and are anticipating a rollout of the new functionality in early 2010.

This is obviously big news for the PPC world. With Yahoo Search Marketing leaving the market space, that only leaves two major PPC providers – Google and Microsoft. With billion-dollar budgets at their disposal, this is sure to be a corporate slugfest for the ages.

However, I’m convinced that Google is still going to come out on top on this one. Let’s crunch some numbers. An August 2009 study by Search Engine Watch indicates that Google gets about 65% of total searches, Yahoo gets 15%, and MSN/Bing gets about 10%. Looking exclusively at PPC market share, a Rimm-Kaufmann group blog in March 2009 shows that Google dominates with 80% of PPC market share, while Yahoo gets about 15% and MSN/Bing lags with only about 5%. Even after Yahoo and Bing join forces, they will only get about 25% of web searches and 20% of the PPC money out there. I’m optimistic about Bing, since it has showed some great momentum since it’s launch, but I think we need to be realistic here. Google will dominate PPC spending for quite some time, since their company name is synonymous with web searching in a lot of web users’ minds. Microsoft is going to have to do a lot more than just take over Yahoo’s search market share if they want to put a dent in Google’s profits. This won’t happen any time soon, and certainly not in 2010.

2. Mobile PPC spending and use will continue to increase.

This is a pretty obvious one. More smartphones are being purchased with every passing year, and with that comes an increase in mobile internet use. Google made a big bet on the mobile ad market in late 2009 when they announced the acquisition of mobile ad provider AdMob. Google has also made significant improvements this year to mobile ad tracking in their Google Analytics platform. Yahoo offers a robust mobile advertising platform for display advertising, and Microsoft inked a deal to be the exclusive search and advertising provider for Verizon mobile phones. With the big three making such big pushes into the mobile advertising space, we’re sure to see some interesting developments in the coming year. The only question that remains is how will users of smartphones react to the encroachment of advertising on their mobile experience?

3. Social network PPC advertising rises, then falls flat.

Social networking has definitely been on everyone’s mind in 2009. With the explosive growth of Facebook and Twitter in the last year, advertisers have been wondering how to capitalize on the user bases of these extremely popular sites. To better monetize their products, both Facebook and MySpace have created advertising platforms to businesses who want to reach out to their users.

This is a really tempting proposition. Social networks have access to an unparalleled amount of demographic data that allows for hyper-specific targeting. On the surface, this seems like a great deal, and I think it’s going to attract a lot of advertising dollars in the coming year from businesses who don’t understand social media, and are looking for a shortcut to get presence on these sites. However, from my personal experience (and a few other folks I’ve talked to), social media ads tend to get really terrible results. You can already target MySpace, YouTube, and a few other social sites through Google’s content network, and let me tell you that the results aren’t pretty. You certainly get a lot of impressions due to the massive amounts of users, but you’ll also get a lot of errant clicks. What you probably won’t get, though, are conversions.

People go to social network sites to be social – they’re not there to buy things, fill out lead forms, or learn more about companies. This is the inherent flaw in any social network PPC campaign. Sure, you can pick up some good brand recognition through clever banner ads, but I wouldn’t expect anything good from text ads. The reach is good, the demographic targeting is good, but the user intent just isn’t there.

So here’s what I think will happen in 2010: businesses will get sucked in by the promises of awesome demographic targeting, and consultants telling them they need to get into “the social media thing.” Then, after a few months of mediocre results, they’ll realize that the ROI just isn’t there and they will pull the plug on their social network PPC campaigns. 2010 will be the year of boom and bust in the social media PPC space, unless Facebook and MySpace can figure out how to make ads more engaging to their user base, and more profitable for their advertisers.

There you have it – three PPC predictions for the coming year. We’ll see if I’m right this time next year. Got some predictions of your own? Let’s hear them in the comments.