AdWords Account Management

June 1, 2016May 27, 2016

AdWords Changes Its Bidding Algorithms

Clear Strategy — Get Results on Google AdWords When You Use a Google Partner Like McCord Web Services.

Just a few month ago, Google AdWords quietly retired the old auto bidding with a built-in enhanced CPC algorithm. If you change out of this old bidding model, you can’t get back in.

Here are the new/revised bidding models for Google AdWords and my thoughts on each.

eCPC Manual Not the Old Auto
This bidding model uses the enhance click setting algorithm from AdWords but now starts not with an auto bid and bid cap but rather a manual bid. I have found that the traffic results are lower with this bidding model than the old eCPC auto bid model, but the ability to control costs is a big plus. For some accounts we are seeing roughly a 5% drop in costs. But the downside is that you really need to watch bids more carefully to boost them to the first page bid or set up bid automation rules. Traffic is lower as much as 20% less for some accounts. With eCPC Google is restrained in how much more than you max CPC bid it can set in the auction. That number is up to only 30% more. CPA bidding is unlimited.

Maximum Clicks
Google says that this bidding algorithm is the old auto bid with eCPC component, but I say it is not. This model is good to get maximum clicks and traffic, but does not take any conversion history into account when setting your bid. It is great to start a program out with when you are not sure what the click cost should be. You cannot set individual keyword bids unless you opt those specific keywords out of the Maximum Clicks algorithm, but you can using a bidding portfolio strategy. If you need traffic and have a low budget this is a good choice to get strong traffic.

CPA Bidding
This bidding strategy and algorithm have been around for a while. It works well for some clients and crashes the account for others. Google says that it is improved and now in the Bidding section of the shared library you can see how the algorithm is learning to serve your bids. Remember with this one there is no bid cap. Google can automatically bid as high as it wants to win you the click auction. So far I have several clients that are really getting excellent results with CPA bidding with increased conversions at a significantly lower cost.

Google has spent significant resources on making these bidding tools valuable and many use your account history to keep you well placed in the AdWords auction.

To learn more about Google AdWords, I invite you to review our website and services.

May 30, 2016May 27, 2016

What’s Google Got in Store for the Rest of 2016?

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I watched the Google Live Stream this past week with curiosity. What was Google going to cook up next to wow us with and when would it launch? I was not disappointed.

Here’s what’s in store from Google for the rest of 2016 and early 2017

Longer AdWords Ad Text
AdWords will be moving to a title and ONE line of descriptive text not two 35 characters each long lines. This single longer line will be 80 characters long. Doesn’t sound like much, but in the world of AdWords this is huge!

AdWords Bid by Device
This is a really big one and one I have wanted for a while. Now I will be able to bid by device, not just do a bid adjustment. This will allow me to fine-tune my strategies for mobile and give me more flexibility as an AdWords account manager.

AdWords Google Display Network (GDN)
The AdWords display ad builder will now take your image and make it device responsive in the GDN. Excellent news!

Google Maps is Now Ad Inventory
Promoted Pins are in the queue, expanding AdWords more fully into Google Maps. Google Maps is now part of the search network. This will be very important for mobile advertising. But be ready to see these as you use Google’s driving directions.

Local Search Ads are Coming
In an effort to increase store foot traffic Google AdWords is revamping location extensions. Google will use beacon signals to record local store visits and these will now be recorded as conversions in AdWords.

RLSA – Remarketing for Search Improvements
Google AdWords is continuing to refine and revise RLSA ads and expanding your reach in this product by offering similar audiences now for RLSA and search ads.

Demographics for Search Ads
This one is pretty big, but Bing Ads has been doing it for a while. Google AdWords will now offer demographic targeting for search ads. Just another way to refine your targeting by age, gender, and potentially income.

It’s a Mobile First World
Google stated that search activity is now a “mobile first” world compared to just one year ago a “desktop first” world.

Google Analytics Updated for Mobile
Tying in with a mobile first world, Google Analytics is undergoing a major platform update and redesign. Many of the best features are in the paid model, but expect to see some nice changes even in the free version.

Google Data Studio
Interesting, this new application could be very good. It connects all your data together and let’s you build dynamic reports that are very visual. They are allowing some free reports in the trial beta.

What interesting plans and great new improvements. I am looking forward to each one of them.

May 25, 2016May 20, 2016

Can’t Figure Out the Google Shopping Data Feed Consider Dynamic Search Ads

The Role of Social Media on Your Website: If You're Not Using It- Lose It

As a Google Partner and Google AdWords Account Manager, creating the Google Shopping Data Feed for some clients is a real stumbling block to them using Google Shopping Campaigns and Product Listing Ads.

Several shopping carts make the creation of your Google Data Feed easy (like BigCommerce) and others like WooCommerce are buggy and sometimes do not validate when imported into the Google Merchant Center. I am not sure if the problems some of my clients have had with WooCommerce are due to user error or the actual application.

That being said, if you just cannot figure the feed structure out or do not have the time, AdWords Dynamic Search Ads may be a good workaround for you.

With Dynamic Search Ads, Google takes what it knows about your website from spidering it for Google.com and then automatically matches queries to the exact location on your website, auto-filling in your ad’s title and ad’s destination URL. With a little bit of tweaking using negative keywords or selecting words that must appear on pages Google will show with your ads, you can do a pretty good job with website coverage for an ecommerce store.

Although these ads will not appear with images like Product Listing Ads will, it allows you to get wide advertising coverage of the products in your store while you work to figure out how to get your Merchant Feed set up and validated.

Need savvy help with your AdWords account? Check out our ratings and services for Google AdWords.

May 18, 2016May 14, 2016

AdWords Bidding Changes Impact Performance

Does a negative review have you feeling like sharks are circling?

Google AdWords made some changes to their automated bidding programs and has disabled the ability to use automated bidding with enhanced auto bid features.

What Exactly Changed?

Previous eCPC bidding as a strategy has been altered by Google. Previously Google would auto bid and adjust the bids automatically based on historical performance data. Sometimes as much as 30% more than your maximum cost per click setting.

Current eCPC is now a manual keyword or ad group bid with no automatic bid adjustment. Google will now simply raise or lower Your Own bid by historic conversion performance. We are finding that this new automatic bidding approach is more expensive for clients and requires a greater level of oversight. Setting a bid by ad group instead of by keyword is driving up client bid costs even on non-converting keywords.

Max Clicks, Google says that this is the previous auto bid setting that the old eCPC bidding was, but now unfortunately does not contain a component for a review of historical conversion data. This bid strategy simply tries to get the most clicks, not the most potentially converting clicks.

These bidding automation changes have certainly impacted the performance for clients. Although in some case they may give greater control to some accounts over the cost per click for others they are negatively impacting results.

We work to mitigate performance issues caused by these changes by using bid automation rules, greater analysis and oversight. Rewarding our managed accounts with improved performance metrics. Find out how McCord Web Services can help your AdWords account achieve profitability.