Car insurance Channel

Here's a tip from Ann-Lee, on the account management tools team:

This week, you may have noticed an Advanced Search link next to the search box on the Campaign Management page, as well as on the Tools page of your account. These new links bring you to our suite of account management tools, such as the Find and Edit Max CPCs tool. While we haven't changed the way you use these tools to make account-wide changes, we hope this makes searching your account easier and faster. So, if you need to find ad text across multiple campaigns or keywords that meet certain criteria such as number of clicks, average position, or clickthrough rate, these searches are now just a click away.

As always, check out our past posts to get a refresher on how to leverage these account management tools or to read up on our latest additions.

Posted by Arielle, Inside AdWords crew

You may have heard of Google Base, a beta product we launched a few months ago which allows content owners to easily make their information searchable online. Well, to provide you the most up to date and accurate info, we recently caught up with Denise from the Google Base team:

What's Google Base?

Google Base is an extension of Google's existing content collection efforts like the web crawl, Google Sitemaps, Google Book Search, and Google Video. It's a place where you can post all sorts of information and have it show up on Google.com and other relevant properties like Froogle and Google Local for free.

The goal of Google Base is to improve the overall quality and breadth of Google Search results by collecting an even wider diversity of content. Allowing content owners to describe and assign attributes to the information they submit will help us use this meta-data to better target search results to what users are looking for.

So how might an AdWords advertiser use it?

Google Base can direct traffic to specific URLs on your own websites for free! It complements Google AdWords by driving additional traffic to your sites from another Google property. Though you can't control the rank of your site in the search results, Google Base allows you to help decide how people find you -- you can add relevant item details and define your own keywords to help others find your stuff more easily.

Can content owners submit lots of information at once?

We make it easy for you to post lots of items at once through feeds or bulk uploads in tab-delimited, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, and Atom formats. In addition, you can create custom attributes in your bulk upload files. Attributes, or item details, are words or phrases that help describe the characteristics or qualities of your items. For example, if you're trying to describe a recipe you want to share, you might include attributes such as 'Cuisine: French', 'Main Ingredient: Eggs', and 'Course: Breakfast'. You can also add images in JPEG and GIF formats.

What's new with Google Base since its initial launch?

Since its launch, Google Base has proven useful for both personal and business use. People have uploaded their favorite recipes, podcast links, events, personal profiles, clinical trial information, and even protein databases. And, as expected, a subset of Google Base items have been listed for sale. To improve the user experience for these item types, we're planning to start letting people buy Google Base commercial items using their Google Accounts.

Many of you may already use your Google Account to sign in and pay for a number of Google services, like Google Video and Google Earth. Now we're introducing similar functionality for Google Base: buyers will have a convenient and secure way to purchase Google Base items by credit card, and sellers can take advantage of easy to use transaction processing as they manage their Google Base items. We're starting off with a very small number of sellers, and we expect to include more over the next several months. If you're interested in getting an announcement when this feature is generally available, let us know.

By providing buyers and sellers a convenient and secure way to purchase and sell Google Base items, we hope to make it even easier for people to use Google Base to post and distribute a wide range of content, from details about a family reunion to a used bike for sale.

Posted by Arielle, Inside AdWords crew

On occasion, the AdWords support team receives emails similar to the one below, which we've paraphrased to shorten it up a bit:

On my Campaign Summary page, the number of clicks and impressions has not accurately been displayed. This has led me to a big charge of $52.39 which I was not aware of. According to my Campaign Summary, I have only accrued $11.23 in clicks... If there is something I'm missing please let me know as soon as possible. - Five days with AdWords

The issue at work here is that many newer advertisers (and even a few old timers) are not aware of the date range for which they're viewing their account statistics.



This date range setting is designed to allow advertisers to quickly view account statistics for a day -- or range of days -- of their choice. This extremely useful setting is found near the top right of your Campaign Management pages and provides the eight pre-set date ranges shown above -- as well as the opportunity to select any individual day, or range of days, since you first created your account.

One important point to mention is that the date range setting is "sticky" -- your selected date range stays where you put it until you modify it again. For example, if you set it to look at your stats for February 14, 2006 (Valentine's Day), that's where it would stay until you actively changed it.

So, be sure to check your date range setting immediatly upon logging into your account. This'll help to avoid unhappy surprises such as the one experienced by 'Five days with AdWords,' whose date range may well have been set to February 14, 2006 when he actually wanted statistics for 'all time.'

Posted by Blake, Inside AdWords crew

This just in, straight from our tech team:

On Friday, February 24th, the AdWords system will be unavailable from approximately 8 p.m. to 12 a.m. PST due to system maintenance. While you won't be able to log into your accounts during this short downtime, your campaigns will continue to run as usual. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Update: System maintenance will take place from 8 p.m. to 12 a.m., not 12 p.m. :)

Posted by Sarah, Inside AdWords crew

Once every four years, all eyes are focused on bobsledders, speed skaters, and ski jumpers as they take center stage to compete for Olympic gold. This year, Olympic glory is being achieved in the mountains of Turin, Italy...or is it Torino? Though Americans primarily refer to the city as Turin, the English translation of the Italian Torino, these two names for the Olympic city have become interchangeable during this year's competition.

So, what does this mean for AdWords advertisers? Well, it's a good reminder to always include keyword variations in your keyword list. If you're running an Olympics campaign for shirts, you want to ensure that you include both 'Turin Olympics shirts' as well as 'Torino Olympics shirts' in your keyword list. This will ensure that you reach your entire target audience.

Remember, you can always use the Keyword Tool to find additional variations. So, take a minute to add any relevant keyword variations to your account, and then sit back and enjoy a few more days of curling and figure skating.

Posted by Sarah, Inside AdWords crew

Last week, we told you about a special test we were running to place ads from our AdWords advertisers in select print publications. The auction allows you to bid for ad space in well-known magazines. Since the auction is a new process for many, we are providing some extra time for you to get your bids in; the auction will now close on February 24th. So for those of you who are reading about this for the first time, and for those who are interested but have been procrastinating, be sure to visit http://www.google.com/printadsauction and name your price.

Posted by Vivian, Inside AdWords crew

Some time ago we asked for your ideas about how we could make this blog more useful and effective for you. And while we didn't exactly receive a flood of responses (can this mean you're all satisfied?), there were several messages that had "well worth doing" written all over them. So, here are a few of the excellent suggestions that we will work on implementing in the near future:

I wish you would have more descriptive subject lines. I file most of your bloggings in an email file...and sometimes go back to them. "Now, where is that note on how to advertise on selected content match sites only?" I ask myself but the titles of the email says things like "Advertise smarter" or "Because you don't want Hallowee..." Notice how that last one got cut off, which is typical, since most of your email already has [Inside AdWords] taking up valuable subject line real estate. Nuf said. - Robbin

Robbin, both of your points are well taken. We'll focus on creating short, descriptive titles that'll also catch the attention of our readers. We love a challenge!

As an aside, if a truly powerful search function within your email account would interest you, we just happen to know of an email program you might want to consider. (Oh, and don't forget that you can search right here on Inside AdWords by using the search box over on the top right.)

Our next email is from Cheri T., who writes:

Okay, I'm new at this, but I'm finding these explanations rather mystifying. I have to click on all these words, read more mystifying stuff. How about walking us through an EXAMPLE or two of what you mean? That would really help.

We'll definitely keep in mind that examples would prove useful. It's worth mentioning that we've also heard that some of our posts are "too basic," which just confirms for us that our readers include advertisers at every experience level. Examples are a good idea for everyone, though, so thanks for the suggestion.

Finally, we'll hear from two readers who are clearly on the same wave length:

How about some case studies? - Ted F.

I suggest...you use examples of different small businesses in a “narrative” to show your customers how your service, the Internet and related can be used relative to improving their marketing... - Wayne C.

Ted and Wayne, we think case studies and real-world examples are a great idea, and we'll plan to include more of them in the future.

That's about it for now. By the way, there's still time for you to influence the future of the Inside AdWords blog. How? Well, tell us what you'd like to see!

Posted by Blake, Inside AdWords crew

Instead of sharing your letters in our regular ‘Dear Inside AdWords…’ feature today, we’d like to send you one of our own:

Dear Inside AdWords Reader,

We want to take this opportunity to express our appreciation for you, our blog readers. Your positive reactions to the blog have made our late night brainstorming and writing sessions worthwhile. We’re happy that you find our blog useful and that you continue to read us, whether it be on the website, via our posts-by-email, or via our site feed. We thank you for your continued support—and wish you a very Happy Valentine’s Day.

Love,

Arielle, Blake, Sarah & Vivian
The Inside AdWords crew

Posted by Vivian, Inside Adwords crew

We often post tips for driving traffic to your site with targeted AdWords ads, and we've mentioned how Sitemaps can help users reach your business through the Google search results by making your pages more crawler-friendly. As an ad­vert­iser or site-owner, you may be in­ter­ested in how some of the recent changes to Sitemaps can help you.

Here's Shaluinn from the Sitemaps team with the details:

Sitemaps now shows you a list of the most common words in your site's content and in external links to your site. This can help you build and refine your keyword lists to target your audience. It also gives you additional information about why your site might come up for particular search queries.

To make your site more crawl-friendly, don't forget about your robots.txt file. As Matt Cutts explained in a recent blog post, "The robots.txt file is one of the easiest things for a webmaster to make a mistake on.” Your robots.txt file is a sort of note to web crawlers that tells them which pages on your site it may and may not crawl. Having an over-protective robots.txt can limit how many of your pages can be indexed in Google and discovered in the natural search results. With the newest release of Google Sitemaps, you can get a report that shows you Googlebot's view of your robots.txt file. This way, you or your webmaster can find out if you've accidentally blocked Google from crawling parts of your website.

And, if you're not quite clear on how Sitemaps can help your site, here’s a neat new Sitemaps success story about how it's helping a fellow advertiser, ApartmentRatings.com -- check it out!

Posted by Arielle, Inside AdWords crew

Since we last posted about Google Analytics, we've gradually been sending out invites to more and more AdWords advertisers. A growing number of you have access to this service, and Christine, from the Analytics team, has some info to share:

Once you have an awesome web analytics service like Google Analytics, the next thing you'll want is a community where you can get answers and help out fellow Analytics users -- 24/7. We heard from our friends over in AdWords about how helpful their online forum AdWords Help has been to advertisers, so we followed suit and built our own forum called Analytics Help.

Powered by Google Groups, Analytics Help is a place where you can discuss Google Analytics with other users. Our vision for this forum is for it to become a resourceful, diverse community where you can post questions, share knowledge and best practices, and meet other Analytics users. And when we say diverse, we mean it! Beginner or expert, AdWords advertiser or not, webmaster or marketer, you'll be able to communicate with Analytics users all over the world. In other words, you're in good company when you visit the forum.

So on that note, we'd like to invite you to stop by and check it out. So far, membership is at 1619 and growing. We hope you'll make it 1620. ;-)

In addition to the forum, the Analytics Help Center is also a helpful resource for getting answers to frequently asked questions, how-to articles, troubleshooting instructions, and more. You may notice forum members referencing the Help Center in their posts from time to time. Also, to find out what industry experts recommend to optimize your marketing efforts and site content, take a seat at Conversion University, where you can learn more about driving traffic to your site and converting visitors into customers.

If you're interested in using Google Analytics but haven't yet signed up to be notified when new accounts become available, you can do so here.

Posted by Arielle, Inside AdWords crew

We've been hearing it for a while...

I would like to suggest that you allow advertisers to put in a backup credit card in case there is a problem with the primary card. I've had 2 cases recently where my credit card was declined and all campaigns stopped. If this happens when I'm away on a trip, it's not good to have all campaigns stop for a period of time until I get back to a computer.

Allow for more than one credit card as an emergency backup (this will allow customers not to go offline).

...and we made it happen! Now, you can enter a backup credit card to help ensure continuous delivery of your ads, even if your primary card is declined. In the event that we're unable to process a payment on your primary credit card, we'll attempt your backup card. Only if both cards are declined will your ads stop running. So, you or your billing manager can finally rest easy when you go on vacation. ;)

Entering a backup card is simple -- you can do it right from the My Account tab of your account -- but if you want step by step instructions, you can find them here.

Posted by Arielle, Inside AdWords crew

Here at Google, we like to test things. Some of these tests eventually become full products or features -- in fact, we have a whole section of Google Labs dedicated to Labs graduates like Google Scholar and Personalized Search. On the AdWords front, features such as image ads and site targeting were once small scale experiments too.

Recently, we've been testing the placement of ads from our AdWords advertisers in select print publications. To help us figure out where and how we can best bring value to print advertising, we've experimented with text ads, templated ads, and full page display ads. And now, in the continued spirit of testing, we're auctioning ad space in well-known magazines. Why? Because we want to better understand our advertisers' interest in this ad space and see if this type of auction makes sense for print.

So if you've ever wanted to see your ads in print, check out http://www.google.com/printadsauction where you can view information about participating publications (including popular titles in the automotive, lifestyle, and technology verticals) and bid on full, ½, and ¼ page ad units. The deadline to submit a bid is February 20th, after which your bid will compete against other advertisers' bids to appear on the publication's page. Similar to the online AdWords auction, you'll never pay more than the maximum price you set, and you may end up paying even less. After the auction closes, we'll contact the winning bidders and work with them to deliver print-ready ads to the relevant publishers. For more information, be sure to check out our FAQ too.

Who knows, you just might see your ad in print at the price you set...happy bidding!

Posted by Arielle, Inside AdWords crew

We've been getting a lot of questions lately, so let's get right to them--here are a few more from our mailbox!

Can campaign performance (clicks, impressions, etc) be observed by country/region? I am planning to expand my current campaign from the US only to worldwide. – Jessica M.

Dear Jessica: While at present you can't view campaign statistics by country/region, an easy way to compare performance across different countries or regions would be to set up separate campaigns for each of your geographical regions and label them accordingly. Then, you can create a report that includes the campaigns for which you want to compare performance.

Recently I have changed most of the destination URLs in our ads from going to our homepage to going straight to specific pages on our site. My question is: is there an easy way to look at search through all of the destination URLs in my account to make sure that I haven’t missed any? – Don M.

Dear Don: We’re glad you asked. The Find and Edit Ad Text tool will allow you to quickly locate ads in your account based on search terms you specify. The tool will also allow you to quickly replace ad text or URLs all at the same time! Check out one of our previous posts for a more detailed explanation.

Is there an easy way to differentiate between my organic search hits and my paid hits? I think even if I create a different landing page that I only use for my pay-per-click ads, there is a strong likelihood that the page would be crawled by Google and therefore show up in unpaid search results. – Ed P.

Dear Ed: The easiest way to differentiate your organic versus paid clicks is to utilize ValueTrack in your destination URLs for your AdWords ads. By adding the ValueTrack parameters to your URLs, you will not only be able to differentiate between your search and content clicks, but also see which clicks came from organic search. The key lies in your site's web logs. Your internet service provider should be able to provide you with a report listing the details of your website’s traffic—more specifically, how each of your site's visitors arrived at your site and on which page they first landed when they got there.

After you implement ValueTrack parameters in your ads' destination URLs, all AdWords traffic will show up in your weblogs as "hits" on the following example URL:

www.YourSite.com?type=GoogleAdWordsSearch , for clicks from the Google search network,
or
www.YourSite.com?type=GoogleAdWordsContent , for clicks from the content network

These hits should be originating from a click on an ad on google.com or one of our search or content partners. You can verify this by checking the referrer URL of each hit. For example, a click on your ad from Google search would look like:

http://www.google.com/search?&q=XYZ
(where "XYZ" is the keyword the user typed in order to see the results and ads which led to your site)

Your other clicks, originating from organic search results or links, will show up as "hits" on:

www.YourSite.com

Because you're using ValueTrack, you don't have to set up a separate landing page for your AdWords traffic. (Similarly, you can also get the same site traffic information using web analytics software such as Google Analytics or other third-party web analytics programs.) For more information on ValueTrack, check out one of our prior posts.

Keep your questions coming; you know we love hearing from you.

Posted by Vivian, Inside Adwords crew

This Sunday, millions of Americans will gather around their televisions, with a bag of chips in hand, to watch the Seattle Seahawks and Pittsburgh Steelers play for the NFL championship. Although it's the most watched NFL game of the season, and the first Super Bowl appearance for my beloved Seahawks, many viewers don't actually care how many touchdowns are scored. Instead, their eyes are glued to the TV as soon as a team calls a timeout and the latest ad for brand X flashes across the screen.

So, as you relax on the couch and enjoy the premiere of this year's commercials, take a moment to consider how your online advertising can complement your offline campaigns. We've found that users often search the internet for the brand or product that they've seen advertised or promoted on TV. So, running an online campaign that represents the products that you're advertising offline could really boost your traffic.

If you're lucky enough to have a spot advertising brand X in this years Super Bowl lineup, you can create an online campaign that focuses on the theme of your commercial to drive additional traffic to your site. Remember, to ensure that this campaign only runs during the days surrounding the Super Bowl, you can set specific start and end dates.

But, since the vast majority of viewers will be armchair quarterbacks (or marketers) on Sunday, remember that this tip applies throughout the year. Whether you're running a local real estate commercial or a nationwide branding campaign, you can tailor your AdWords ads to the specific region that you're targeting to ensure that the people who see your ad on the air, will also find it when they search online.

With that, enjoy this years crop of Super Bowl commercials, cheer for the team that's never won the big game, and consider using online advertising to enhance your return on your offline advertising investments.

Posted by Sarah, Inside AdWords crew

Last week, we quietly launched a beta version of AdWords Editor -- our downloadable AdWords account management application which allows you to quickly and easily navigate your account and make changes. Since then, our friends over in AdWords Support have been hearing from quite a few of you interested in this beta product, so we caught up with Andrew from the AdWords Editor team to get the scoop:

Although we'd like to give all of our advertisers access to AdWords Editor (we really would!), for now, we have limited the number of users so that we can manage the load on our systems.

Our goal is to make this product available to all advertisers as soon as possible, so if you haven't received an invitation to try out the product, please be patient. We'll be selecting beta participants from advertisers opted into participating in market research, so if you're interested in being a part of this and other limited betas, you may wish to opt-in to "Market research" on the User Preferences page of your AdWords account.

Posted by Arielle, Inside AdWords crew