New Changes in Google Adwords & Yahoo Paid Search

June 16th, 2008 Jackie

Google and Yahoo have recently added new features to their paid search platforms, some of which are extremely useful and some, well, not so much. It’s important for advertisers to pay attention to these changes because they often have a direct impact on your campaign. Here are a few of the latest changes, broken down by engine.

Google Adwords

Adwords Editor 6.0 was released on June 4, 2008. Advertisers can now create site-targeted campaigns, implement geo-targeting, export performance statistics to a CSV file, and a few other things which make this awesome tool even more awesome. Google provides a full list of the new features via their release notes. If you’re not using the Adwords Editor to build and manage campaigns, then you should download it immediately. As far as I’m concerned, it’s THE best tool out there to manage Adwords, plus it’s a great way to build a campaign which can be transferred to the other engines.

Landing Page Load Time Analysis is now available via the Keyword Analysis page if you log into your Adwords account online (thus, it’s not available via the Editor). Load time will be factored into Quality score any day now (mid-June according to Google). Needless to say, it’s important to check out your landing pages to see if your keyword quality has been effected.

Monthly Budgeting now Available - From the earliest days of Adwords, a campaign budget could only be set at the daily level, so if you wanted to spend a certain amount per month, you’d need to multiply it by 30. Now Google also gives advertisers the option to specify a monthly budget per campaign as well. This is a helpful way to assess how much you’ve budgeted per month at-a-glance, and I’m guessing they rolled it out to complement the “automatic matching” feature explained below. In my opinion it would be more useful if advertisers could set their budget at the account level, so you can never overspend. Yahoo actually has this functionality (go figure).

Automatic Matching - This is a new feature that’s currently in beta, so it’s not available in every account. Automatic matching is a setting at the campaign level which allows Google to automatically show ads for keywords that you’re not bidding on, based on the content of your web site compared with the terms in your campaign. The aim is to spend your budget in its entirety, so this option will only work if you’re not meeting your current daily spend limit. This can be dangerous, since many of us look at the overall daily spend across all campaigns, rather than the individual campaign daily spend. If you have been chosen to participate in this beta, you’ll see an alert when you log in (see screenshots, below). My advice is to opt out of this feature immediately! Google uses CTR to determine keyword relevancy, and we all know that can mean bupkus when it comes down to the bottom line.

If you’ve been chosen to participate in the “Automatic Matching” beta, here’s what you’ll see in your Account Snapshot when you log into Google.

CPA Bidding Out of Beta - Google recently enabled CPA bidding for all campaigns that qualify (you have to have received at least 200 conversions over the past 30 days). The way it works seems relatively simple - you adjust your CPA at the ad group level and Google automatically adjusts bids but never goes over your desired CPA. Per Google, “The Conversion Optimizer uses algorithms to predict, in real time, which clicks are likely to be most valuable. Based on these predictions, the Conversion Optimizer sets higher CPC bids for more valuable clicks and lower CPC bids for less valuable clicks. The predictions are based on your ad’s conversion history.” I haven’t tried this feature yet and it really seems too good to be true (thus it probably is). My recommendation is to test, test and test again.

Yahoo Search Marketing

Usability Enhancements - Yahoo added a bunch of enhancements to the search console in mid-May which makes managing keywords and ad groups easier. All disabled objects (keywords, ad groups or campaigns) will appear in red text, a status column now appears beside all watched campaigns which helps identify why a campaign is offline, and a host of other usability tweaks were added. Check it out on Yahoo’s blog when you can.

New Click Filter Report - This is a new report that Yahoo rolled out in April 2008 which lets advertisers see the number of clicks deemed invalid and thus not charged to your account. You can customize the report to show invalid clicks by campaign or ad group, which is very helpful in determining what categories produce the highest amount of invalid clicks. Yahoo suggests reviewing this report for sudden spikes and also comparing the total clicks against your web traffic stats in order to determine if there’s been any incidents of click fraud. You can file a click investigation request with Yahoo if you feel there’s a problem.

Minimum Bid Changes - In late February 2006, Yahoo implemented a change to their reserve bid pricing structure. Previously, all keywords could enter the auction at a minimum bid of .10 or higher. But throughout February and March, Yahoo changed the reserve bid to a variable amount which could be lower, but oftentimes higher, than the minimum bid of .10. In short, Yahoo is using a quality score system, similar to Google’s quality score algorithm, to determine the minimum bid for each keyword in the auction. Quality is based on various factors with CTR being the most important. Other quality indicators include keyword value (e.g., level of competition on a particular keyword) and that appears to be it for the moment (e.g., landing page is not currently a factor).

New Keyword Generator Tool - Yahoo enhanced their keyword generator tool at the start of 2008. The tool enables you to add up to 500 keywords to your account instantly, provides a list of related keywords for a given ad group, and provides suggestions for keywords based on a given URL or description.

Keyword Exclusion - Yahoo now enables advertisers to add up to 250 excluded keywords at the account and ad group levels (up from 50 keywords). You can only use excluded keywords on “expanded match” terms in Yahoo. Excluding irrelevant terms is an excellent way to refine your campaign and get more targeted traffic.

Entry Filed under: E-Marketing Advice