Answering your landing page quality questions (part 2)

Recently, we answered some of your landing page quality questions here in the blog. Now, we'd like to answer a few more, focusing on landing page quality and the content network.

What is the content Quality Score?
The content Quality Score is a measure of the quality of your contextually-targeted ads and keywords and is specific to your ads that are showing on the content network. Since we use all of the keywords in an Ad Group (taken together, and defining a 'theme' for that Ad Group) in order to target ads to relevant pages in the network, the content Quality Score is only used to rank eligible ads on these pages. The information that is used to calculate your content Quality Score is different from that used for the search Quality Score and includes the relevance of your ad and keywords to the site on which your ads will appear, your ad's performance history on that site and similar sites, as well as the quality of the landing page to which your ad is linked.

Does your content Quality Score impact your search Quality Score?
Since this is especially important, we want to make sure that everyone sees the answer to this question, and that answer is 'No.' Performance on the content network will not impact your search Quality Score, and vice versa.

Are you applying landing page quality to publisher sites in the content network?
No, this change is focused on improving the quality of ads (and their landing pages) that we serve across the content network. If an advertiser is not providing a high quality user experience on the page to which their ad links, then their ads may stop showing on sites in our content network.

Thanks for tuning in to the final post in our two part series on landing page quality. We hope we've answered most of your questions, but please let us know if there are others that you'd like us to address.

Posted by Sarah, Inside AdWords crew

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Our warmest Thanksgiving wishes

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving -- a day to give thanks and rejoice with family and friends. Those of us on the Inside AdWords crew would like to offer our thanks to you, for your continued interest, readership, support, and feedback. And before we take the next few days off for our Thanksgiving holiday, we'd like to share with you our latest holiday doodle -- a little something that's become somewhat of a tradition on the blog. :-)

We wish you a safe and wonderful Thanksgiving.

Posted by Vivian, Inside AdWords crew

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New Features in Ads Diagnostic Tool

We know that one of the most common problems you face when managing your AdWords account is trying to figure out why your ad isn't showing for a particular keyword. If that sounds familiar, you'll be glad to hear that we've released a new feature that provides one-click troubleshooting for this problem. Here's an update on the feature from Peter H. on the Ads Diagnostic Tool team:

We're making the Ads Diagnostic Tool more accessible by incorporating it into the Ad Group details page. You can access this new feature via the new magnifying glass icon next to each keyword. If you are concerned that an ad is under-performing because of a particular keyword, you can point your cursor at the magnifying glass to get an instant diagnosis for that keyword. If the Ads Diagnostic Tool finds an issue that may be related to that keyword, you can receive troubleshooting suggestions by clicking the "What can I do now" link that appears inside the help bubble. If there are no issues with your keyword, the bubble will tell you that your ad is running normally on Google.com.

We've also added some very useful features to the full Ads Diagnostic Tool on the Tools page. Now you can request diagnostics for ads running in a specific geographic location. Another new feature in the Ads Diagnostic Tool is a direct link to the ad preview page for specific keywords. By clicking on "Preview search results" link for each keyword, you can now view what your ad looks like and where it's showing up on the search results page without creating an impression.

We hope that these improvements will make it easier for you to diagnose and resolve keyword performance issues!

Posted by Feng, Inside AdWords crew

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Ready for Black Friday and Cyber Monday?

The day after Thanksgiving is traditionally known as "Black Friday" – the busiest shopping day of the year, and what many retailers consider the official start of the holiday season. While you're busy marking down your products in preparation for the in-store sales, don't forget to think about your online customers, too—especially since "Cyber Monday" is just a few days after Black Friday.

Now would be a good time to take a look at your AdWords campaigns, and perhaps even create new Ad Groups that have keywords and ad text related to your promotional items. Be sure to use a Destination URL that takes shoppers directly to the most appropriate product page so that they can easily find your discounted products. These small adjustments to your AdWords campaigns can make quite a difference in helping you attract even more online bargain hunters to your site.

Oh, and did we mention that there are only 38 more days until Christmas? :-)

Posted by Vivian, Inside AdWords crew

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Answering your landing page quality questions (part 1)

On November 6, we let you know that we would soon be making changes to the way that AdWords evaluates landing page quality. These changes are now live and we'd like to follow up with a two part series to answer some of the questions that we have received.

Why did you make this change right before the holiday season?
As more and more holiday shoppers turn online to find gifts, we want to do everything we can to serve the most relevant and highest quality ads to our users. By making improvements to landing page quality, we're not only able to help users (who are your potential customers) find what they want, but also help you maximize your leads because your ads will no longer have to compete with ads that are providing a poor user experience.

To give a bit more background, we had an internal debate about when to release these changes. We ultimately decided that since our focus is providing the most relevant advertising, it was best to launch these long-planned improvements as soon as we were ready to go, technically speaking.

Can a page that has a high CTR or conversion rate be considered a poor quality landing page?
In short, yes. Though the Quality Score incorporates the CTR of your keyword, when our system is specifically evaluating your landing page quality, it does not consider the CTR of your keywords or any conversion tracking or Google Analytics data in the account. Instead, it's focused on the actual content and relevance of your landing page to a user who clicks on your ad and ends up on your site. It is well worth noting that not all ads with a high CTR provide a good experience for users. For example, an ad may promote a new home for sale in San Francisco for the query 'San Francisco homes', but after clicking on the ad, the user is taken to a page that shows houses in Seattle. This is not a particularly good experience for the user -- but the ad itself could still be highly relevant to the keyword, and thus is likely to have a high CTR.

Will using Website Optimizer improve my landing page quality?
Using Website Optimizer to experiment with your landing page does not have any impact on your Quality Score or your landing page quality. Website Optimizer evaluates your conversion rates to tell you which marketing messages are converting most often on your landing page, whereas the Quality Score doesn't incorporate any conversion information. Please remember that once you've made a change to your landing page based on tests run with Website Optimizer, the Quality Score may change as with any other changes to your landing page.

We hope this helps to clear up some of your questions about this recent change. If you have additional questions, please let us know and we'll answer as many as possible the next time we write about landing page quality.

Posted by Sarah, Inside AdWords crew

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Tips on seeking AdWords technical help

From time to time our technical support team receives reports of issues with the AdWords system. While they work hard to try to resolve these technical issues as quickly as possible, they're sometimes slowed down because they haven't received enough information to diagnose the problem immediately. Today, Stephen H. from the technical support team offers some advice on the most important information to include when reporting a technical problem:

1. The complete address of the web page where the issue occurred.

2. What you were doing when the problem occurred. We like as much detail as possible, so you might make a list of the steps you took. For example, 'First, I logged into my AdWords account. Second, I clicked on the link for Campaign #2. Third, I got an error message.'

3. The complete text of any error messages. It is very helpful for us to know the exact error message you saw.

4. Information about your computer's operating system. Knowing whether you use Windows PC or a Mac can help us better identify the problem.

5. Information about your web browser. Is it Firefox, Internet Explorer, or another browser? What version? In most browsers, you can usually find the version number by selecting 'About' under the Help menu.

Including the above information in your technical help request will help the support team identify and resolve your issue more quickly. So, if you find yourself scratching your head over a technical problem, heed Stephen's expert advice so that he and the rest of his team can provide you with a thorough and quick fix.

Posted by Feng, Inside AdWords crew

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Google tools for SMBs (Part 2 of 2)

Last week, we highlighted a few Google tools that we thought could help address some of the communication needs of small to medium sized businesses (SMBs). In the second half of this series, we'll take a look at tools geared at enhancing your website - Google Checkout, webmaster tools, and the Google Mini.

GOOGLE CHECKOUT
For those who didn't see our post a few months back, Google Checkout™ is a checkout process for your website that enables your customers to buy from you quickly and securely, using a single username and password. Once customers make a purchase, you can use Checkout to charge their credit cards, process their orders, and receive payment in your bank account.

Here are some additional ways that Checkout can be of value to you:

• The Checkout badge on your AdWords ad can help attract more leads by increasing your visibility with potential buyers who are familiar with the Checkout process.
• Checkout offers a fast and secure purchasing process, which helps customers feel comfortable doing business with you.
• For every $1 you spend on Google AdWords, you can process $10 in sales for free.
• Checkout’s fraud prevention tools stop invalid orders from reaching you and the Payment Guarantee policy helps protect you from chargebacks.
  

We also just learned that Checkout will be processing all transactions for free for a limited time. You can find more information about this offer here.

For more information on Checkout or to sign up, please visit the Google Checkout™ website.

GOOGLE WEBMASTER TOOLS
Google’s free webmaster tools offer you, or your webmaster, an easy way to make your site more Google-friendly. Webmaster tools help you see Google’s view of your site, diagnose problems, and share information with Google in order to improve your site’s visibility in Google’s search results.

Webmaster tools can assist you in answering questions such as:

• How can I let Google know about all the pages on my site?
• What search queries bring my site the most traffic?
• Why is my site being returned for particular keywords?
• What page does Google see as the most important one on my site?
• How can I make sure that private information on my site stays private and Google doesn't index it?

If the answers to any of these questions are of interest to you, please visit the webmaster tools website for more information. You can also direct your questions to owners and webmasters who use webmaster tools today in the Google Webmaster Help group.

GOOGLE MINI
In order for a customer to purchase a product, they first have to find it on your website. According to Jupiter Research, 85% of website searches don’t return what the user was looking for and research firm IDC reports that 80% of visitors abandon a website if search functionality is poor. The Google Mini, a hardware and software appliance, makes searching your website as easy as searching for information on Google.com.

The Google Mini can power website search over multiple websites and delivers search results that seamlessly integrate with your website's design. In contrast to the statistics above, AdWords customer Toolfetch.com implemented the Google Mini search appliance and saw a 30% increase in searches on their website and a 15% increase in sales within the first month.

If you think the Google Mini might be right for you and your website, you can find more information here.

We've come to the end of our two part series on Google tools for SMBs. We hope that you found a tool or two that can help address some of your day-to-day business needs. Remember, you can always find information on these tools, as well as a few others we didn't get a chance to tell you about, by visiting the Google Business Solutions page.

Posted by Judy, Inside AdWords crew

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Please plan ahead...

This just in, straight from our tech team:

On Saturday, November 11th, the AdWords system will be unavailable from approximately 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. PST due to system maintenance. While you won't be able to log into your account during this time, your campaigns will continue to run as usual. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Posted by Sarah, Inside AdWords crew

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Ad Preview column for Ad Performance reports

With so many ad variations available in AdWords today, it's easy to lose track of which ads or types of ads you're running in your campaigns. To help keep things straight, the Report Center team recently introduced a cool new feature called the Ad Preview column. The Ad Preview column is viewable in the HTML version of Ad Performance reports and shows your text, image, video, mobile, or local business ad alongside the ad’s performance statistics.

To include the Ad Preview column in your Ad Performance report, simply check the ‘Ad Preview’ box under the Attributes section in Advanced Settings: Add or Remove Columns on the Create Report page.

Posted by Judy, Inside AdWords crew

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Landing page quality update

In early July, we sat down with Andrew C., product marketing manager for Ads Quality initiatives. At that time, Andrew spoke of our continuing efforts to improve the quality of our users' experience when they visit an advertiser's landing pages. Today he returns with a heads-up regarding an upcoming development:

In the next few days, we will be making two changes to how AdWords evaluates landing page quality. First, we'll begin incorporating landing page quality into the Quality Score for your contextually-targeted ads, using the same evaluation process as we do for ads showing on Google.com and the search network. Advertisers who may be providing a poor experience on their site will notice that their traffic across the content network decreases as a result of this change. Second, we're improving our algorithm for evaluating landing page quality and incorporating landing page content retrieved by the AdWords system.

As with our July system update, both of these changes will affect a very small portion of advertisers, so the vast majority of advertisers will not be affected at all by either change. However, those who may be providing a low quality user experience will see an increase in their minimum bids for Google.com and the search network and/or a decrease in traffic across the content network. In most cases, we expect that the higher minimum bids will cause the low quality ads and keywords to become "inactive for search." Since July, we've received quite a few questions from advertisers about our landing page quality initiatives, and I'd like to address the most common ones today:

Why are you focusing on landing page quality?
The goal of our ongoing landing page quality initiative is to improve the experience of our users by providing high quality results not only in the ad text, but also once the user has clicked through to the site. We strongly believe that an excellent experience on the advertiser's site is an essential element in earning the continued trust of our users. Clearly, the better the user experience, the more likely it is that users (who are also your potential customers) will continue to seek out -- and click on -- AdWords ads over the long term. This is to the advantage of everyone: users, advertisers, and Google alike.

What do you consider to be a high quality landing page?
While we suggest landing page and site guidelines, we don't provide more specific recommendations because there's no one-size-fits-all approach to best create landing pages. We therefore encourage you to focus on building landing pages that are best for your users, whether they come from AdWords or other sources. In doing this, it may be instructive to put yourself in your customer's shoes and closely examine what it is that leads you to explore and do business with a site rather than simply click the "Back" button.

Will my landing page quality affect my ad's position?
Not for Google search. While one's landing page quality is directly correlated with the minimum bid required for one's ads to run, it does not affect your ads position (or 'rank', as it is often referred to) at all. However, since there is no minimum bid requirement for contextually-targeted ads, low quality landing pages will result in the need to bid higher to compete in the auction, which could also impact your position on pages in the network.

Update: Clarified that the term 'search' in the second paragraph means 'ads showing on Google.com and the search network.'

Posted by Sarah, Inside AdWords crew

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Google tools for SMBs (Part 1 of 2)

Generally, we like to stick to our guns and focus on topics related to AdWords; however, we know that many of you are owners or managers of small to medium sized businesses (SMBs) that use AdWords as just part of a suite of business solution products. In a two part series, we’d like to highlight a few non-AdWords Google tools that may help address some of your everyday SMB needs.

Today, we'll highlight Blogger, Google Apps for Your Domain, and Google Docs & Spreadsheets - free communication tools that can be used for internal or external purposes. Learn more below:

BLOGGER
Blogger is a web-based tool that helps you publish to the web instantly. Because it's quick and easy to use, it's the perfect tool for connecting an SMB with customers. For example, you may want to create a customer feedback blog, or, as we do here on the Inside AdWords blog, post updates about changes or enhancements to your business.

Here are some of the other reasons for using Blogger for your business:

• Set-up is fast and free
• Blogger's customizeable design templates do not require HTML knowledge
• Comments are a great way to generate customer feedback and multiple authors can contribute to one blog
• It's easy to include AdSense to monetize

If Blogger sounds right for you, you can quickly create an account today by going to the blogger website.

GOOGLE APPS FOR YOUR DOMAIN
Google Apps for Your Domain enables employees to communicate, collaborate and work more effectively together. You can use any combination of Gmail, Google Talk and Google Calendar with your own user accounts (like chris@your-company.com). Plus, create and publish web pages to your Google domain with Google Page Creator. It's free, and it's all hosted by Google -- no hardware or software required.

To learn more about Google Apps for Your Domain, please visit http://www.google.com/a.

GOOGLE DOCS & SPREADSHEETS
Google Docs & Spreadsheets is our new, free web-based word processing and spreadsheet program that can help you manage company documents and easily share them with others.

For example, you might use Docs & Spreadsheets to collaborate in real time and share information about your online ad activities, draft proposals and budgets, and keep track of your Google Analytics tags all in one place. Many of the entries on this blog wouldn't have turned out quite so well without team collaboration made possible by Docs & Spreadsheets.

With Google Docs & Spreadsheets you can:

• access your files from any computer via a web browser
• easily send them to collaborators to review and edit
• view all past document revisions and revert back to a previous version if necessary
• easily distribute content by pointing your colleagues or customers directly to a file from your website

Google Docs & Spreadsheets is free, secure, and requires no downloading. Check out the product tour for an overview of how the product works, or sign up today.

Stayed tuned for part 2 of our Google tools for SMBs series, in which we'll discuss tools to enhance your website. In the meantime, to learn more about Google business solutions, visit http://www.google.com/services/.

Update: Blogger links corrected.

Posted by Judy, Inside AdWords crew

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