Category: Google AdWords

Years ago, the keyword tool in Google AdWords actually was okay. Then Google decided to sanitize it maybe afraid of legal implications and they introduced these silly green bars showing search amounts. This effectively made the tool ineffective. We’ve limped along with this “new” tool for months now.

Just today in one of the forums I saw a link, click my post title and you can see the image too. This resource is seeing figures – as in the old days – next to their keyword research.

I don’t see it in my accounts yet or using the online keyword tool, but maybe this means that I will soon. I am hopeful as the way the keyword tool is now, it is good for identifying other possible words, but to try to isolate top performing or hot words, it is woefully pathetic.

While I’m on my rant, I will mention how bogus the estimate click cost is using this same keyword tool. Here is a specific example, reverse mortgage California. The tool three days ago said that a click cost of $7.22 would get the advertiser in the top three positions. Well guess what, the auction bid for my client is now at $14 and the last measly click came in at $11.89 and it was in position 10. The keyword tool needs some serious adjustment. I tell clients not to trust the cost per click figures there, they are way low and do not reflect the current marketing mix that they will be competing with to get their ads to show and for current click cost expectations.

If you don’t check your Google AdWords account frequently, here is a good reason to take a look. Google turned on a new feature in the AdWords control panel. Now you can see your quality score, well somewhat. At least you know from Google’s viewpoint whether it is GREAT, OK, or POOR. If it is poor, rest assured that it will most likely end up being disabled for search in the next several weeks.

Now is a good time to go in and to review your list, take action to drop keywords, create new break out ad groups that are more targeted, and revise your landing page. Google is aggressively disabling the keywords that it considers poor or assigning them a high CPC to show in search.

If you looked on Friday, you should take a look today as on Friday Google has announced that they had a big glitch and that many words that were not to have been disabled showed as disabled. They have announced that it had nothing to do with the Quality Score that was rolled out Friday, but sure seems like a very funny coincidence. I just about had a cow on Friday when I looked at my accounts, but the picture is much rosier today.

Oh, this is so great! I am totally excited! Google AdWords has just released that by week’s end they will be adding a quality score rating in Google AdWords accounts by keyword.

The quality score has always been a real factor for Google AdWords accounts and now finally we are going to get some real direction from AdWords on quality score problems. Before we just had to guess what our score was and to try to guess why certain keywords were disabled from search. Now as professional account manager we will at least have some real information from Google on how they see our program. That is great news.

In addition to changes in transparency on the quality score, Google has announced that it is changing the landing page algorithm and is also changing its ratings on “virgin keywords”. This is also great news. Watch for all of these changes in the next several weeks and the new quality score indicator by the end of this week.

Great news CBS and Google look like they are nearing closure on a deal that will help push the Google AdWords radio format ads out of beta. This is good news, but what does the typical small to medium size business owner do with this information? Well, they can get started on a professional creative to take advantage of the wave.

Just click our blog post title to go to one of our client’s sites. This client produces professional Google AdWords radio advertisements to be loaded onto Google AdWords. Audio can be confusing and radio even more confusing to the novice, and that is why it is important to work with a pro like Ken Kohl.

So click in to his site and read the wealth of information that he has there on Google radio ads and then get the jump on your competition and get going with Google AdWords on the radio.