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As 2005 comes to an end, businesses close out their books, people start making New Year’s resolutions, and AdWords advertisers like yourselves start planning for 2006. To help you review this past year’s campaign performance, we’d like to remind you of the handy tools available in the Report Center. To drill down on specific metrics, try generating a custom report for the past year, 6 months, or whatever date range you specify.

Here at Inside AdWords, we’re also doing our own annual review of sorts – reading over your emails and the topics we’ve covered in our inaugural year in order to plan for 2006. We’re taking a bit of a break for the holidays (and hope that you’ll do the same), but we’ll be back after the New Year with more tips, insights and otherwise interesting AdWords tidbits to share.

Happy Holidays and see you in ’06!

Posted by Arielle & Vivian, Inside AdWords crew

There's a long history at Google of creating a variety of logos, or Google doodles, to commemorate holidays and special events. Now, publishers of sites in the content network have the option to display themed ad units for various celebrations as well.

And with the holiday season officially upon us, AdSense publishers who've opted into this feature will begin showing ad units adorned with holiday packages and polar bears like the ones below.


Just like the Google homepage logos, these themed ad units are temporary -- this particular version will only appear today through December 26 -- but the AdSense team is already planning designs that celebrate more holidays and events around the world for next year.

Posted by Arielle, Inside AdWords crew

Especially around the last minute holiday crunch, advertisers are often looking to maximize their ads' exposure to targeted audiences. To that end, they often contact our friends over in AdWords support to ask how their ads can appear on other Google properties, like Froogle and Groups.

Well, it's simple: the Google search network not only includes partner sites, but many of Google's own properties as well. And as long as your campaigns' distribution preferences includes our search network, they're eligible to appear for searches on Froogle, Local, Book Search, and Groups.

In addition to these Google sites showing keyword-targeted search ads, your ads can also appear alongside the content of books on Google Book Search and related to discussions in Groups and Gmail as long as your campaigns are opted into appearing on the content network. These contextually targeted ads work the same way as ads on content pages across the web -- the keywords you provide in your campaigns are automatically matched with the content of books, postings, or emails on Google's pages, and the ads which most closely match the subject at hand are eligible to show.

As always, the goal is to provide users with useful, relevant ads, whether they're browsing books, looking for the local dry cleaners, shopping for holiday gifts, or checking their email with Google.

Posted by Arielle, Inside AdWords crew

It's been a big year for the Google content network. In the past few months, we've written about site targeting, site exclusion, and, most recently, content bids. Now we'd like to introduce a new resource page that gives you additional information about the network and its features. Here, you can learn how many unique users you'll reach through the content network or check out a selection of our partners.

Intrigued? Take our content network quiz below. If you don't know the answers, you can find them on the site (though we'll also point you in the right direction).

1) In how many different ad formats can you show your ads across the content network?

2) If you target the United States, how many unique internet users will you reach through the content network?

3) Name two of our partner sites who specialize in news.

Once you've found the answers to the questions above, try our new Optimization Demo, which is also located on the site. It will give you tips for setting up your content campaigns and help you maximize your ad's potential.

Posted by Sarah, Inside AdWords crew

The story so far: back in October we invited our readers to summarize AdWords success in 25 words or less. We got quite a number of responses and published a few of them later that same month.

Today we have our latest installment, which starts out with a witty observation from Richard R., who writes:

Just realized that the whole notion of writing ads that are 25-35 characters is a new form of Haiku! Dare I say it?: Google-ku!

Here are 25 words from James F.:

Understanding what the searcher is looking for and giving it to them in the most efficient way from keyword selection through to landing page content.

And an efficient 20 words, submitted by Randy M.:

Focus on converting clicks into sales via a great landing page. Track your conversion rate by ad copy and keyword.

And lastly (for today at least), six key points in 24 words, sent to us by Lisa H.:

1. Relative keywords for your site
2. Specific keywords -- not general ones
3. Landing page with keyword item
4. Good positioning of ads
5. Relevant negative keywords
6. Measure results

Feeling inspired? Send us your 25 words or less, and we may publish your tips for success in a future post.

Posted by Blake, Inside AdWords crew

Have you ever found yourself browsing content on a particular site and realized that it would be the perfect place to promote your product? Perhaps you even logged in to your AdWords account to add this site to your site-targeted campaign. Now, with Onsite Advertiser Sign-Up, we've made this process even easier.

The next time you see AdWords ads on a site that you'd like to target, look for the 'Advertise on this site' link in the ad unit. After clicking that link, you'll be taken to a page that provides additional information about the site and allows you to log in to your existing AdWords account. Upon logging in, you'll simply complete the three step site-targeted campaign creation wizard, and your ads will be eligible to run on that site. Easy, right?

So, remember to keep your eyes open when you're surfing the web, you might just find another great advertising opportunity.

Posted by Sarah, Inside AdWords crew

This past summer we introduced Google Sitemaps and explained how you can use this feature to submit all of your URLs to the Google index and help improve your visibility in the Google search results. In August, we let you know that we expanded the product to include mobile web pages. And now there's more.

Here's Shaluinn from the Sitemaps team to tell you about the latest release:

Google Sitemaps now offers detailed statistics on your top Google search queries, crawl status, and more. These reports show you how Google search is driving free traffic to your site and can help you make your pages more crawler-friendly.

The best part: you can start getting these new stats today. Just create a Sitemaps account and add your site to it. Once you verify site ownership we'll start showing you these detailed reports. You can always add your Sitemap later and, in the meantime, you'll be getting useful feedback on your Google traffic and crawl status for pages already in the index.

Posted by Arielle, Inside AdWords crew

The folks on the AdWords support team often hear the question "why can't I see my ad?" If you've ever had this question yourself, you'll probably know that there are a number of reasons why an ad may not be appearing.

To assist advertisers in getting to bottom of 'can't see my ad' mysteries, there are some excellent resources available. One of these, the new "Can't see your ad?" troubleshooting wizard, will walk you through an ordered list of possible reasons why your ad is not showing.

And, of course, the already popular Ads Diagnostic Tool can help you to identify why a particular ad, or group of ads, may not be appearing -- as well as provide tips to get things up and running again.

If you ever find that one of your ads is not running as expected, give these a try.

Posted by Blake, Inside AdWords crew

In August, we introduced the Quality Score along with the launch of quality-based minimum bids, letting you know that we evaluate many factors, such as your ad text and clickthrough rate (CTR) to determine the minimum bid for your keyword. Today, we started incorporating a new factor into the Quality Score -- the landing page -- which will look at the content and layout of the pages linked from your ads.

Why are we doing this? Simply stated, we always aim to improve our users' experience so that these users (your potential customers) will continue to trust and value AdWords ads. Have you ever searched on a keyword, found an ad that seemed to be exactly what you wanted, and then clicked on it only to find a site that had little to do with what you were searching for? It's not a great experience.

Incorporating landing page assessment into the Quality Score will help us improve the overall advertising experience for users, advertisers and partners by increasing the quality of the sites we present in our ad results.

Advertisers who are providing robust and relevant content will see little change. However, for those who are providing a less positive user experience, the Quality Score may decrease and in turn increase the minimum bid required for the keyword to run. To help define site quality, we've created a general set of website design tips and guidelines that should help you evaluate and optimize your site.

So, take a look at these guidelines and remember that the more valuable and relevant your site is to your user, the more effective your advertising will be -- and the better your chance of converting a click to a customer.

Posted by Sarah, Inside AdWords crew

As the year comes to a close and you're starting to plan for 2006, perhaps you're thinking about ways to re-organize your AdWords campaigns. Or maybe you're like many of the advertisers we've heard from who've been requesting more efficient ways to make account-wide changes. Well, you're in luck!

This week, we're giving you another time-saving tool with the newest of our suite of account management tools. This latest addition, Move or copy keywords and ad text, can be found on the Tools page of your account.

Now, on top of making account-wide changes to maximum CPCs, ad text, keywords, and destination URLs, you can search for, select, and move or copy keywords and ad text from one Ad Group to another. It's worth mentioning that when you move components, your account will treat relocated keywords or ad text as new -- so any statistics your keywords or ad text have accrued will not transfer across Ad Groups.

If you've been meaning to move keywords and ad text into a separate promotional campaign, separate your high-traffic keywords to better control campaign budgets, or copy keywords and ad text into separate content Ad Groups, you now have fast and easy way to do this and more.

Posted by Arielle, Inside AdWords crew

One of the most frequently discussed topics over in the AdWords Help group revolves around getting top placement. Specifically, lots of advertisers wonder how they can have their ad appear "in the blue" above the search results.

Since the evidence suggests that many Inside AdWords readers also participate in the AdWords Help group, our blog seemed like the ideal place to answer the questions for lots of folks at once. So here goes:

Long ago, there did exist a program that allowed advertisers to guarantee the top spots on Google. But in the interest of leveling the playing field, AdWords stopped offering a way to buy these top placements. Today, all ads on Google.com are ranked based on their maximum cost-per-click (CPC) and Quality Score.

While there isn't a way to ensure top placement, there are certainly some best practices that may well help your ads rise to the top. Really, there are no secrets: these are the same best practices that affect the positioning (or ranking) of your AdWords ads wherever they appear, and they also happen to be the same best practices we wrote about just a few days ago.

At the bottom line, highly relevant keywords and ad text, a high CPC, and a strong CTR will result in a higher position for your ad and help you rise "into the blue."

Posted by Blake, Inside AdWords crew

One of my favorite categories on Jeopardy! is “Potpourri” because you never know what you’re going to get. Our inbox also resembles the potpourri category since we get such a wide range of questions from all of you. Today, a few more answers to your questions…

Can I have the same list of keywords for different campaigns? Both of the campaigns contain different ads. I would like to know if both the ads will get listed for the same keyword. –Uma

Dear Uma: While it's technically possible to have the same list of keywords in different campaigns, the two campaigns will end up competing with one another in the auction for the same keyword search. For example, if you have the keyword "potpourri" in two campaigns in your account (with different ad text), the AdWords system will use a combination of CPC, CTR, and other relevance factors to pick the best ad to show. The bottom line is that only one ad per account can be displayed for any given keyword search.

One of your past posts mentioned creating a blog as a means to communicate with my customers. How do I create a blog? I am not sure how that works. –An Inside AdWords reader

Dear Reader: We have just the solution for you. Our friends down the hall on the Blogger team have made it super easy to create your own free blog in just three steps. All you have to do is create a Blogger account, name your blog, choose a template, and off you go. We’ll let them give you the details here.

Can you please tell me what a negative keyword is? Can you give some examples of them? --Prakash

Dear Prakash: We discussed negative keywords a while ago in a post, but as a quick recap, they are essentially keywords for which you do not want your ads to show. For example, let’s say your store sells flowers, but you do not carry wreaths or plants. You would probably want to choose '-wreaths' and '-plants' as negative keywords so that ads for your store do not show when a user types in these search terms. (The hyphen in front of the word indicates that you want to choose it as a negative keyword.)

Thanks for all your great questions! Keep them coming and we’ll keep answering them here on Inside AdWords.

Posted by Vivian, Inside AdWords crew