Partners Blog
What's new @ Google? Tips and tools for agencies
Top topics of 2009, an Agency Blog retrospective
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
The end of the year is typically a time to reflect on the past 12 months and plan for the next adventure. Taking inspiration from our favorite pre-holiday work distraction, we are pleased to bring you the Agency blog's own "best of 2009." Your visits and time spent on site helped us identify the information, ideas and resources that can best help you move your clients' businesses forward.
1. Google Content Network tips and tools
- Knowing that the Content Network offers the opportunity to scalably expand your clients' reach, we posted on a number of
Content Network topics
, ranging from
tools
to
optimization tips
to
training resources
. We hope that they enabled you to plan, execute and measure your Content Network campaigns in the most impactful, efficient and cost-effective ways possible.
2. Quality Score
- A key element of successful campaigns is ensuring that they have the strongest Quality Score possible. Whether you're brand new to search marketing, or were one of the first search advertisers on the scene, there's always something new to learn about Quality Score. To help you get the strongest Quality Score, we ran our
Quality Score series
and will continue to post new tips as they become available.
3. Case studies
- One piece of feedback we heard is that agencies and advertisers value case studies, as they inspire and instruct with "best in class" examples and useful data points. We also heard that sometimes they're not easy to find. As a result, we added case studies to the 2009 blog list, with topics ranging from
online-to-stores successes
to
effective integrated media campaigns
.
4. Training resources
- With the frequency of additions and updates to Google's media solutions, you could spend as much time keeping up to speed as you do managing your clients' campaigns. Knowing your time is precious, we focused on
webinars and on-demand videos
that work with your schedules and deliver just the right amount of information. In addition, we introduced you to
Google AgencyLand
, our new learning and resources platform for agencies.
5. Analytics
- Whether you love data, or love to hate data, data is central to successful campaigns. We want you all to love it, so we posted our favorite
Analytics
60-second videos, product updates, as well as useful tips delivered from in-house experts, including Analytics Evangelist Avinash Kaushik.
6. Local marketing resources
- Sometimes your clients' customer is half way across the globe; other times the customer is half a block away. Regardless, it is important to market to consumers where they are, and Google has made it easier to do that with new and improved
local marketing features
, such as
Location Extensions
and
Place Pages in Placement Performance reports
.
It's been a pleasure blogging for you in 2009, and we look forward to bringing you fresh new tips, tactics, resources and updates in 2010.
Posted by Agency Ad Solutions Blog Team
Quality Score resource: Search ads quality guide
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
It's that time of the year again, when kids dust off their textbooks and head back to the classroom. In the spirit of learning, we wanted to help you make the grade on Quality Score knowledge with the
Search Ads Quality Getting Started Guide
. The guide covers a range of topics relating to Quality Score, including how it
affects your rank
, how it
affects your cost-per-click
, and
how to improve it
. You'll even hear from our Chief Economist, Hal Varian, on how the ad auction works.
Use it to learn, refresh, or review the foundations of Quality Score. You may even want to share it with clients to help them understand how their ads are shown on Google.com.
Posted by Agency Ad Solutions Blog Team
Quality Score fact of the week
Monday, August 3, 2009
This week, we bring you the final fact in our
Quality Score series
. We hope you've found the content helpful and informative. Last but not least, our fact this week is:
Quality is given extra consideration when determining which ads appear in the top positions. For ad placement in top positions above Google search results, we use the same
Ad Rank
formula as we do for all other search ads, based on your Quality Score and CPC bid. However, in order to ensure that the highest-quality ads show above search results, only ads that exceed a certain Quality Score and CPC bid threshold are eligible to appear in these positions. The CPC bid threshold for these positions is determined by the matched keyword's Quality Score; the higher Quality Score, the lower the CPC threshold.
Posted by Dan Friedman, Product Marketing Manager
Quality Score fact of the week
Monday, July 27, 2009
Another week, another fresh fact for you. This week's addition to our
Quality Score series
is:
Low competition for a keyword does not mean that it will be inexpensive.
Competition is only one of the variables that determines your
actual CPC
. The price you pay for a click is also determined by your keyword's Quality Score for that query. If your keyword has a low Quality Score relative to the other ads on that page, you may find that your actual CPC is close to your maximum CPC, even though there is low competition for that keyword. Keep in mind that you will never be charged more than your maximum CPC for a click, no matter how low your Quality Score.
Posted by Dan Friedman, Product Marketing Manager
Quality Score fact of the week
Monday, July 20, 2009
It's Monday, which means we've got a Quality Score fact for you. The fourth post in
our series
is:
Ads may not be shown on all search results, even for queries that advertisers are bidding on.
Some keywords have such low Quality Scores that ads are unlikely to show on them. Therefore, there may be keywords in your client's account that don't show any ads at all. You may want to try optimizing the ad creatives associated with those keywords to make them more specific and relevant, thereby increasing the likelihood they'll be shown. You can also find out why your client's ad may not be showing for a given query by using the
Ads Diagnostic Tool
.
Posted by Dan Friedman, Product Marketing Manager
Quality Score fact of the week
Monday, July 13, 2009
Along with your morning coffee, your Monday Quality Score fact is here. The third fact in
our series
is:
Restructuring your account does not cause you to lose your historical Quality Score information.
The historical performance of your keywords, ads, and landing pages is preserved when you restructure your account. Therefore, we encourage you to restructure or optimize your client's account structure as needed.
Posted by Dan Friedman, Product Marketing Manager
Quality Score fact of the week
Monday, July 6, 2009
We're back with our second Quality Score fact. This week's contribution to our
newly revived series
is:
Quality Score does not suffer when your ads are paused or showing infrequently.
One of the factors that determines Quality Score is the performance of a keyword in combination with its associated ads. Pausing ads or showing them infrequently doesn't affect Quality Score since they aren't accruing any performance data while they're not active. So there's no need to worry if you run seasonal or low-exposure campaigns for your clients, your Quality Score won't drop while the ads aren't showing.
Posted by Dan Friedman, Product Marketing Manager
Quality Score fact of the week
Monday, June 29, 2009
A few months ago, we ran a
series of posts
on a hot topic among our agency clients:
Quality Score
. Due to the popularity of the series, we'll be bringing you more facts about this important metric on a weekly basis. We hope you find these useful, and here's our first installment:
A higher bid will not improve your Quality Score.
Your Quality Score is determined by a number of factors, clickthrough rate (CTR) foremost amongst them, and is normalized to compensate for the higher CTR that ads in higher positions accrue. By simply increasing your bid for a keyword, you will likely increase the position of your ad on the page, but you won't be impacting the Quality Score for that keyword.
Posted by Dan Friedman, Product Marketing Manager
Quality Score fact of the day
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
To wrap up our
series
on Quality Score and start off the new year, we've saved one of our favorite facts for last:
Changing a keyword from broad to exact match will not improve its Quality Score.
With broad match, your ads may show on variations of your keywords. However, ad performance on these variations won't affect your keywords' Quality Scores. For example, say your ad group contained the broad-matched keyword
resolution
. Your ad could potentially show when a user searched for
new year's resolution
or
conflict resolution
, although its performance in these instances would have no impact on Quality Score. The keyword's Quality Score would only be affected by how your ad performed on the search term
resolution
, since it exactly matches the keyword. Changing a broad-matched keyword to an exact match, therefore, won't improve its Quality Score.
We hope you've found these installments useful, and although this concludes our series, we're still all ears when it comes to your questions and feedback. Let us know at agencyblog-feedback@google.com.
Posted by Dan Friedman, Product Marketing Manager
Quality Score fact of the day
Monday, December 22, 2008
We're back with the fourth fact in our
series
to help clear the air about Quality Score and help you run more effective campaigns for your clients. Today's fact is:
A few bad days of test performance will not ruin your Quality Scores.
In order to optimize your clients' accounts, we encourage you to run targeted tests on your bids, creatives, and keywords. These small tests are a useful way to measure the impact of changes before applying them more widely. You should carefully track the performance of your experiments. If you find that the changes you've made don't perform well after a few days, you can revise your experiment or delete those changes and the short term impact on your Quality Score will soon be outweighed by the positive performance you have accrued in the rest of your client's account.
We'll bring you our next fact in the new year. Wishing you Happy Holidays until then!
Posted by Dan Friedman, Product Marketing Manager
Quality Score fact of the day
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Welcome to the third fact in our
series
on Quality Score. We've been posting specifics about Quality Score to set the record straight on some of the common questions we receive. Today's fact is:
Google does not keep track of your landing page Quality Score history
. We've heard some concern from advertisers who think their current Quality Score is being lowered by previous
landing pages' Quality Scores
. However, Google only uses the
most recent check
of your landing page to determine its relevance and quality.
And, as always, if you've got questions or feedback, let us know at agencyblog-feedback@google.com
Posted by Dan Friedman, Product Marketing Manager
Quality Score fact of the day
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
We recently began our
series
on Quality Score to help dispel any myths or misconceptions about this factor in your account. For the second installment of our series, we bring you this fact:
Your ad conversion rate does not affect your Quality Score.
Some advertisers using AdWords
conversion tracking
mistakenly believe that they should set an easy conversion event on their landing pages to artificially boost their conversion rates. In reality, this will not actually have any effect on your Quality Scores. Feel free to use conversion tracking to meet your clients' needs and don't worry about its impact on your Quality Scores.
As always, feel free to send us your questions or comments at agencyblog-feedback@google.com.
Posted by: Dan Friedman, Product Marketing Manager
Quality Score fact of the day
Monday, November 17, 2008
In our conversations with advertisers, we hear a number of questions about
Quality Score
, a key metric in the accounts you manage. Quality Score measures how relevant your keywords are to users' search queries and influences CPCs and first page bids in your account. We'll be bringing you a short series of facts about Quality Score to help answer the questions we frequently receive, beginning with this one:
Showing up in a higher position will not benefit your Quality Score.
Although higher-ranked ads may typically earn better clickthrough rates, Quality Score is normalized to compensate for performance differences resulting from ad position.
Stay tuned for more facts, and we're always open to hearing your suggestions via email at agencyblog-feedback@google.com
Posted by Dan Friedman, Product Marketing Manager
Labels
Account Manager
88
Account Planner
100
Ad Planner
21
AdWords Editor
23
Analytics
38
Case study
44
Coffee break with clients
5
Creative/Production
39
Display
42
DoubleClick
40
Google Display Network
47
Google Media Solutions Series
4
Holiday
16
Industry Resources
114
Local Marketing
9
Media Buyer
71
Media Planner
108
Mobile
42
Optimization
63
Quality Score
13
Search Specialist
133
Tools
94
Training
141
YouTube
51
Archive
March
( 2 )
December
( 4 )
November
( 1 )
October
( 3 )
September
( 2 )
August
( 2 )
July
( 4 )
June
( 4 )
May
( 3 )
March
( 2 )
February
( 1 )
January
( 2 )
December
( 1 )
October
( 1 )
August
( 1 )
July
( 1 )
June
( 3 )
May
( 3 )
April
( 2 )
March
( 2 )
February
( 3 )
December
( 1 )
November
( 2 )
October
( 2 )
September
( 1 )
July
( 1 )
June
( 4 )
May
( 1 )
April
( 1 )
February
( 1 )
December
( 2 )
November
( 4 )
September
( 1 )
August
( 2 )
July
( 3 )
June
( 5 )
May
( 6 )
April
( 5 )
March
( 7 )
February
( 5 )
January
( 1 )
December
( 8 )
November
( 4 )
October
( 8 )
September
( 3 )
August
( 8 )
July
( 6 )
June
( 5 )
May
( 8 )
April
( 8 )
March
( 7 )
February
( 4 )
January
( 2 )
December
( 5 )
November
( 3 )
October
( 4 )
September
( 3 )
August
( 5 )
July
( 2 )
June
( 6 )
May
( 11 )
April
( 3 )
March
( 8 )
February
( 4 )
January
( 6 )
December
( 6 )
November
( 5 )
October
( 9 )
September
( 10 )
August
( 8 )
July
( 4 )
June
( 10 )
May
( 6 )
April
( 9 )
March
( 7 )
February
( 4 )
January
( 3 )
December
( 4 )
November
( 9 )
October
( 6 )
September
( 3 )
August
( 7 )
July
( 6 )
June
( 17 )
May
( 9 )
April
( 11 )
March
( 17 )
February
( 12 )
January
( 8 )
December
( 8 )
November
( 12 )
October
( 16 )
September
( 18 )
August
( 16 )
July
( 10 )
June
( 10 )
May
( 7 )
April
( 9 )
March
( 10 )
February
( 11 )
January
( 5 )
December
( 11 )
November
( 11 )
October
( 19 )
September
( 14 )
August
( 14 )
July
( 18 )
June
( 15 )
May
( 13 )
April
( 12 )
March
( 11 )
February
( 7 )
January
( 8 )
December
( 8 )
November
( 5 )
October
( 8 )
September
( 8 )
August
( 8 )
July
( 9 )
June
( 12 )
May
( 10 )
April
( 9 )
March
( 5 )
Feed
