Google AdWords has finally relented and now shows advertisers the exact keyword behind every click on our ads.

It's very simple to view this new data:

Select the "Search Query Report" under the "Reports" tab in your AdWords account.

In the example above, we are prompted to place a negative match on the keyword "Free".

Use this report on phrase match and broad match groups to find negative keywords as well as surprise phrases that generate better-than-average conversion. …

I'm shopping for another new bicycle chain. My wife suspects I buy them based on fashion because I get a new one every season (oh no - that's last season's chain - everyone's riding titanium this season). No, sweet girl of mine, it's not the passing seasons per se that dictate a new chain, it's the stress of being propelled up the Santa Cruz Mountains. This causes the chain to stretch, which in turn causes the gears to wear rapidly because the chain spacing no longer lines up with the gear teeth. I change chain every 1-2000 miles of… Continue reading

Or: Three ways to get around misleading paid search reporting:

Most of us feel good when we see a positive ROI on our paid search campaigns. And most analytics tools give us plenty of opportunity to feel good about our campaigns.

But there is an inherent lie in the majority of PPC reporting tools, and that lie is based on the assumption that you have zero cost of goods. With few exceptions your products DO cost you something and thus any ROI analysis should be influenced by profit which in turn requires knowledge of margins.

When your campaign performance is measured by… Continue reading

I'll be sharing four of my favorite ways to 'game' AdWords quality score this next Tuesday at WebMasterWorld Pubcon Las Vegas. It wasn't too hard to figure out how to fool the Adwords Bot into thinking every page was relevant (I'll show you how). But (warning, spoiler ahead) in the end, this exercise simply came back to a clever way to create relevance among keyword, ad copy, landing page and adgroup semantic grouping -- which is good marketing in the first place. So there you go. It'll be informative, I promise. But what might… Continue reading

Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft AdCenter all allow you, the advertiser, to set up unique URLs to point back to your website. In fact, each ad may (and should) have it's own unique URL. You don't need to create unique landing pages for each ad. But instead, you can make each URL unique through the use of URL parameters. By adding parameters to each URL, you will be able to track performance of each campaign in a variety of web analytics tools. It looks like this:

Display URL = www.site.com/special_offer Actual URL = http://www.site.com/sp.php?src=gglp&camp=1&grp=62&ad=2 The Display URL is what will show up… Continue reading