Car insurance Channel

A couple weeks ago we posted some upcoming Google webinars, and last week, Analytics Evangelist, Avinash Kaushik, led a discussion on the 'Top 5 Things Marketers Can Do Now" in order to maximize ROI. We realize some of you may have missed the opportunity to hear Avinash speak, but may still be interested in the tips he was able to provide. As such, we've posted a recording of his talk onto the Google Brand Channel on YouTube.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

In order to provide you with more visibility into the performance of your ads and to help you make more informed marketing decisions, we are expanding the Search Query Performance report to provide more granular insight into the queries that trigger your ads.

The Search Query Performance report is a useful tool that can help you optimize your campaigns and manage your phrase and broad match keywords by tracking the performance of keyword variations that trigger your ads.

If you've used the Search Query Performance report before, you may have noticed that some of your traffic was grouped under a line item called "other unique queries." This line encompassed queries with very low volume, often occurring triggering your ad only one or two times. However, some advertisers found that a significant portion of their spend was grouped under this heading, which made it difficult to manage keyword variations.

Starting today, the Search Query Performance report will show all queries that resulted in a click, where the user has not specifically blocked their referrer URL. In other words, this includes all queries that you would see in your server logs or if you use a tool like Google Analytics. In requiring that the referrer URL be present, we are upholding our commitment to user privacy.

As a result of this update, you will likely see longer lists of queries in your Search Query Performance reports, many of which will have very low traffic. We encourage you to focus your decisions about the performance of your keyword variations on those variations that occur most frequently and have a significant amount of performance data.

We are excited to be able to make this update and believe that it will help make the Search Query Performance report even more useful. To learn more about running Search Query Performance reports, you can visit our AdWords help center.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Imagine opening your Sunday paper and seeing ads from a large supermarket chain that didn't list actual products for sale; instead, they simply listed the categories of products available - offers like "Buy discount cola" and "Snacks on sale." The ads wouldn't be useful since you wouldn't know what products are actually being offered. For many categories of advertisers, this is the problem they have faced on Google for some time.

That is why, in an effort to improve ad quality and user experience, we are adjusting our trademark policy in the U.S. to allow some ads to use trademarks in the ad text. This change will bring Google's policy on trademark use in ad text more in line with the industry standard. Under certain criteria, you can use trademark terms in your ad text in the U.S. even if you don't own that trademark or have explicit approval from the trademark owner to use it. This change will help you to create more narrowly targeted ad text that highlights your specific inventory.

For example, under our old policy, a site that sells several brands of athletic shoes may not have been able to highlight the actual brands that they sell in their ad text. However, under our new policy, that advertiser can create specific ads for each of the brands that they sell. We believe that this change will help both our users and advertisers by reducing the number of overly generic ads that appear across our networks in the U.S.

Please note that this policy update will only apply to ads served in the U.S. on Google.com and to U.S. users on the Search and Content Networks. Also, while we will start accepting new ads that contain trademark terms as of 11am PDT on May 15th, those ads will not begin showing until June 15th.

If you have ads in your account which were previously disapproved for trademark policy and that comply with the new policy, you may submit those ads for re-review and eligible ads may begin showing in the U.S. starting June 15th. For instructions on editing your ad text, click here.

In order to help advertisers understand whether their landing pages meet our policy guidelines we've added some new functionality to our Search Based Keyword Tool. If you visit www.google.com/sktool and enter your website URL, you may see a list of brands on the left side of the page if your site contains those brands. When you click on any of those brands you'll notice a column titled "Extracted from webpage." Those landing pages may be opportunities for you to show re-sale or informational ads.

We believe that this change will offer you the opportunity to provide users with more relevant information, choice and options while respecting the interests of trademark owners.

For more detail on our updated trademark policy in the U.S., please visit the FAQ in our Help Center.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

On Saturday, May 16th, 2009, the AdWords system will be unavailable from approximately 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PDT due to system maintenance. While you won't be able to sign in to your accounts during this time, your campaigns will continue to run as usual. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Posted by Emel Mutlu, Inside AdWords crew

Posted by Amanda Kelly, Inside AdWords crew

Posted by Emel Mutlu, Inside AdWords crew

Posted by Emel Mutlu, Inside AdWords crew

Posted by Emel Mutlu, Inside AdWords crew