Cream of Life

One of the key improvements I enjoy the most on the new AdWords interface is the way that Google brings 2 useful reports for optimization more accessible. The first report is the Search Query Report, and it’s for generating more relevant keywords. The other report is the Placement Performance Report (PPR), and it’s for optimizing performance in the Content Network (if you opt into that).

With the Search Query Report, you will see the search terms people use to trigger your ads on Google Search Network. Because of different keyword match types, like Exact and Board, the keywords that trigger your ads are not necessarily those you added to your campaigns, and you may want to add those keywords that you don’t have in your campaigns. To dig out these keywords, on the new AdWords interface, go to “Campaigns” Tab > “All online campaigns”  > “Keywords” Tab, and hit “See Search Terms” > All. Focus on the “Match Type” column and look for keywords with “Board Match.”

If you opt into the Content Network, you may want to know where exactly my ads are displayed. While you can choose “Managed Placement” (formerly known as “Placement Targeting”) to control the website to show your ads, the “Automatic Placement” (a.k.a. Content Match) has been a mystery that scared off advertisers. Although Google provided the PPR to address the concern allowing advertisers to view performance of individual website, the PPR was too shy, and too logically and properly placed under the “Report” Tab. The net result was no one cared to discover it and appreciate its beauty.

The PPR is now in a much prominent position on the new interface. Check it out on the “Networks” Tab > Content > Automatic placements > show details.  If you find some sites that you like, e.g. the CTR is high or the CPC is low, you can add them to your Managed Placements and set a separate bid for them (see the picture below).

I find the 2 handy reports/ tools easy to use for myself and easy to communicate my optimization suggestions with my clients. If you have time, please check them out and let me know what you think. Enjoy.

When you start optimizing an AdWords campaign, usually you would have an objective in mind, e.g. lowering CPA, increasing CTR and so on, before you run any reports to collect data for your optimization. Among so many types of AdWords report you can run, I’d say the Search Query Report is very likely to be able to help regardless of your optimization objectives. Usually, I run a Search Query Report to dig out keywords that users searched on and clicked on my ads. I need to know these keywords so that I can do the following 2 things.
1. Develop some negative keywords to exclude irrelevant searches
2. Add keywords with high CTR but are not yet included in my existing keyword list

In practice, you need to filter the following info before you can get a smaller list of search queries to find the potential keywords to include or exclude more efficiently.

1. “other unique queries” in the column “Search Query”
2. “Exact” in the column “Search Query Match Type”

You may also want to descend the “clicks” column so that you can look at the high click keywords (very likely high cost as well) first to develop your lists.

Lastly, open your eyes big. Read all the filtered search queries one by one and pick those you want to kill or add. Afterall, there’s no solution called “one click does it all.”