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As 2007 wraps up, we'd like to take a moment to send you our warmest wishes for the holiday season. We'll be taking the next week off, but look for us again in January when we'll countdown our annual top 10 must-read posts from the past year. And before we go, here's this year's holiday doodle, featuring someone you may recognize along with his new friend:


Have a warm and wonderful holiday!

Posted by Vivian, Inside AdWords crew

Before the ball drops on 2007, we've got one more AdWords Industry Newsletter to share. The latest issue of the Tech B2B Industry Newsletter has tips and resources to help you prepare your campaigns for the new year. You'll find the latest Tech B2B tips from an AdWords optimization specialist and learn how the content network can help you meet your marketing goals.

You can sign up to receive AdWords newsletters via email through your AdWords account.

Posted by Feng, Inside AdWords crew

Today we'd like to clarify a relatively common misconception, especially among newer advertisers: that the AdWords system will automatically match keywords to the most appropriate ad within ad groups that have multiple ad variations. Here's a fictional scenario, to illustrate:

A new advertiser, Hank, wants to increase traffic to his site, on which he offers 100 different house-cleaning products in six broad categories. Within his Standard Edition account, Hank creates one ad group which comprises six different ads (one ad for each broad category of products that he offers) along with a list of several hundred keywords which describe his 100 products.

He does this, feeling certain that the AdWords system will automatically match each keyword to the most appropriate ad among his many variations.

In reality, however, the AdWords system does not match keywords to ad variations in this way. Instead it rotates the ads as the keywords are searched -- which could lead to Hank's potential customer seeing an ad for vacuum cleaners when they were actually searching for furniture polish.

How does Hank make sure that the right ad shows for each keyword? A basic solution would be to create six ad groups, one for each of his six broad categories. Each ad group would cover one of the categories and have a list of keywords closely related to the products in that category.

Or, he could advertise in an even more targeted way -- by creating a multitude of ad groups, each of which focused on a single product.

Just how granular you choose to be with your targeting depends on your business and your goals, of course. But most advertisers would agree that it's always better to show a potential customer an ad about the exact thing for which they've just searched.

Posted by Blake, Inside AdWords crew

Today, we released version 5.0 of AdWords Editor, our free, downloadable campaign management application. Among other features, version 5.0 includes support for local business ads, an export picker that lets you select specific campaigns and ad groups to save to a CSV file, and the ability to save advanced search settings. You can read our release notes for a complete list of new and updated features.

If you haven't yet downloaded AdWords Editor, visit our website to get the latest version. If you're already using AdWords Editor, you'll be prompted to upgrade automatically.

Important note: To avoid losing unposted changes or comments, export an archive of your account before upgrading. After you've completed the upgrade, download your account then import the archive file to get your account up and running.

Version 5.0 is available now for Windows and Mac. For more information about AdWords Editor, visit the AdWords Editor Help Center.

Posted by Trevor, Inside AdWords crew

As you might already know, AdWords offers a feature called location targeting that lets you specify where in the world you want Google to show your ads. You can target countries, cities, regions, or any other geographic area you'd like.

If you use the AdWords Standard Edition, you'll notice a new version of location targeting. We've added a new interactive map so you can see all the locations you've selected. We've also added more flexible targeting options that cater to your unique advertising needs. For example, let's say you run an online store, and you ship to all of the United States except Hawaii and Alaska. With these new targeting options, you can target your campaign to the U.S. and exclude those two states. Or, you might run campaigns that are relevant to markets across the United States and a few cities in Europe -- now you can target all of those locations in one single campaign.

If you'd like to learn more about the new location targeting features, please visit the location targeting section of our help center.

Posted by Heather, Inside AdWords crew

In this third post of our content network series, we would like to share some content optimization tips for your keywords and ad text. In a future post, we will write more about other tips.

Contextual targeting on the content network happens at the ad group level, not at the keyword level. That means all the keywords in an ad group, along with the ad text, are evaluated when Google is deciding whether to show your ad on a specific content page. In other words, it's important for all the keywords in an ad group to belong to a common theme.

We recommend keeping separate campaigns for advertising on content and search. Please keep in mind that these tips below are specific to contexual targeting and advertising on the content network and may be different from your search network strategies.

• Create a manageable, targeted keyword list.
  Advertisers have found most success on the content network with ad groups of around 15 to 30 keywords.
  
  
• Use tightly themed ad groups.
  For contextual targeting, we look for pages that match most of the keywords in your ad group. For example, if your ad group has a number of keywords about lilies and tulips, we try to find pages about these two topics together. If you have an ad group with diverse keywords on different themes, it may decrease the number of pages on which your ad is likely to appear. When picking keywords, imagine what keywords would likely appear on the pages that you are trying to target, and create tightly themed ad groups around those keywords.
  
  
• Use duplicate keywords for appropriate ad groups.
  To continue the previous example, let's say you were creating a campaign for flowers and had ad groups for lilies, roses and tulips. Unlike search, we would recommend that the general keyword flowers be included in all three ad groups to help establish a floral theme.
  
  
• Use ad group level URLs instead of keyword level URLs.
  Because no one particular keyword is used to trigger your ads on the content network, keyword level URLs are not relevant. We recommend using ad group level URLs instead.
  
  
• Measure content performance at the ad group level.
  We've found that measuring your performance on the content network at the ad group level offers a better gauge of what strategies work best.
  
  
• Build a comprehensive negative keyword list.
  The more negative keywords you include on a particular topic, the less likely your ad is to appear on pages that match that topic. If a page is predominately about your negative keywords, while partially about your positive keywords, our system is not likely to show you on that page. If a page is principally about your positive keywords, but mentions a few negative keywords, then your ad may still appear on this page. We recommend that you include multiple negative keywords on topics you would like to avoid. If you sold camera film and wanted to reduce the likelihood of your ad showing on movie-related pages, you should include multiple negative keywords like -movie, -movies, as well as synonyms like -cinema, -cinemas.
  

We hope you found these tips useful. As always, we recommend that you track performance of your content network ads using Placement Performance reports and set up conversion tracking or use Google Analytics. And please let us know what content network topics you would like to read about in this blog.

Posted by Feng, Inside AdWords crew

One of the most common questions we hear from advertisers is, "Why can't I see my ad?" As you may already know, the Ads Diagnostic Tool can help you determine why your ad might not appear on a Google results page. Now, instead of showing just one reason why your ad may not appear, the Ads Diagnostic Tool lists multiple reasons -- saving you time by listing everything that needs to be fixed in a single page of results.

What might these multiple reasons be? Consider a situation where your campaign has met its daily budget, causing your ad to stop showing for the day. Additionally, the specific keyword might be inactive for search. You'll now be able to learn about these multiple issues immediately so you can adjust your budget settings and modify the keyword based on the Ads Diagnostic Tool results.

You can start using the Ads Diagnostic Tool now by pointing your mouse at the magnifying glass icon next to an individual keyword in your ad group or by going to your account's 'Tools' page.

Posted by Trevor, Inside AdWords crew

As part of our ongoing effort to improve your AdWords experience, we've launched the AdWords Template Center.

Template Center is a free tool available via My Client Center (MCC). It allows MCC account managers to create templates for pre-defined AdWords campaigns and share them with their directly linked AdWords accounts. Advertisers with these linked accounts can quickly and easily view and select campaign templates from their Template Library, then customize them to run their own AdWords campaigns. The MCC account manager can also create policies to restrict the use of certain keywords as well as to restrict or require certain text for ad copy in each campaign template.

Template Center is especially useful for distributed marketing organizations (like franchises) that want to help less savvy or time-constrained marketing partners quickly build out their AdWords accounts and start running high-quality AdWords campaigns. It also helps ensure that marketing partners follow brand and messaging guidelines when marketing products or services through their AdWords campaigns by creating policies for keywords and ad text. The Template Center can also benefit agencies and SEMs that want to share campaign best practices with their clients.

If you are interested in learning more about Template Center, please visit the Template Center section of the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Trevor, Inside AdWords crew

In a post last month we told you about the location names that appear beneath locally targeted ads. We've recently made updates with the introduction of the AdWords Local PlusBox. The Local PlusBox is a feature that displays more geographical information for a local business ad that appears in the top position above Google search results. When users see the Local PlusBox and click on it (see the 'closed' screenshot below), the ad expands to include a map, address, driving instructions, and phone number, in addition to the location name that appears beneath the last line of ad.


We are in the process of rolling out this feature to AdWords accounts in the US, Canada, UK, and Germany. It should be available to all advertisers with top placement ads in these countries within the coming week or so.

Posted by Christina, Inside AdWords crew