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October 20, 2005
 
Posted by Adam Viener
How valuable would it be for you to pick a domain name and see what PPC keyword terms and pay per click advertisements that site was using to market their site?
What if you could monitor the keyword and campaign purchases of your competitors?
That was the initial promise and sales pitch for CompetiorKeywords.com.
They are offering a 7 day free trial, so I thought I would login and play with the tool.
At first glance, the interface was a little clunky, but I was impressed when I dug into the reports. I was able to quickly type in the name of one of my merchant's sites and get an extensive list of keywords. Many that had not come up in my prior research, which I thought had been extensive. I found terms that made me smack myself in the head and say "how could I have missed THAT one!".
Here are some of the "quick reports" that they offer:
Monitor Your Competitor's Keywords
Enter up to 20 domains and this report will quickly display a list of keyword searches that generated ads that marketed these domains. It's interesting to note, that these are "actual searches" that triggered ads, not necessarily terms those companies or their affiliates bid on. So if the competitor bid on IPOD as a broad match term and the actual term the user type in that triggered the ad was ipod nano, than this term would show up in the report.
Monitor Your Own Domain
This is very similar to the competitor keyword report, but is for your own domain. I am not sure why I couldn't have just put my own domain in the competitor report. The results are the same. My guess if I had configured a specific domain in my account than the competitor report would have excluded my listings. I did a search on one of my domains and it did pull up only a limited number of terms. My guess is that their panel hasn't search all of the terms.
Find Competitors Bidding on Specific Terms
This report lets you specify a keyword and see who is currently bidding on that term.
View User Searches by Keyword
This report lets you enter a term and see specific searches that included that term. This report is not nearly as powerful as Wordtracker. It is limited to searches that incude the term specified, where Wordtracker will list derivative terms. For example, a search for costumes might pull up Tony Arma Halloween Costumes it wouldn't pull up terms like Halloween Decorations.
View Your Competitor's Text Ads
This is a quick way to get an idea of the types of ads your competitors are running.
View Text Ads Containing Specific Keywords
This report let's you select a keyword term and display the text ads that contain that term. It might be a bit more useful if the urls accompanied the text ads.
View Text Ads Triggered by Specific Keywords
Again these text ads don't contain urls, it might just be easier to go and do a search on one of the search engines to see these ads. It should show multiple ads being run for the same merchant though, so it might have some uses, I just can't think of any off the top of my head.
View Competitor Landing Pages (Basic URL)
This report should pull up landing pages being used by a specific domain. My test indicated that it pulled up a few landing pages and some for competitive sites under a specified sponsor domain. I am not sure why that is, but seeing the landing pages used by a site is interesting.
View Competitor Landing Pages (Full URL)
Similar to the Basic URL report, this one actually shows the full url. I found this report to be a bit more interesting, it identified affiliate codes and tracking codes that the other report didn't reveal. I could see using this report to identify is a competitor is using specific tracking and bid management tools.
In summary, it's an interesting tool that provides some extra incite into competitive behavior and actual searches being used to trigger ads. The cost is a bit steeper than Wordtracker though. At $49.95 per month (approx $600 per year) it's 143% more expensive. If I had to pick one tool for keyword research I would go with Wordtracker, if your doing well and want to expand your research, this tool is interesting choice.
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September 02, 2005
Posted by Adam Viener
After informing it's customers that they had 30 days to re-activate any disabled keywords in their account, Google has confirmed that they had a technical glitch in the past few days that caused many previously disabled terms to be labeled again as disabled, even after they had been deleted and re-added.
Although Google claims that the problem has been fixed so it no longer occurs, this still negates a lot of the work that we all have been doing over the past few weeks as SEO firms and Adwords clients with many keywords have been scrambling to re-enable disabled keywords in their accounts and those of their clients.
Google should at a minimum extend the time frame in which disabled keywords will be purged from accounts. Additionally, they should offer significant monetary credits to clients who have been spending so much time trying to get their terms re-enabled.
Finally, this issue has gone unreported by Google. They should immediately email all clients and let them know what they are going to do to help resolve the issue. I would be really upset if I was a client who had re-enabled all my terms only to find them purged without notice.
What do you think Google should do?
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Pay Per Click Management Tools
August 16, 2005
Posted by Adam Viener
Google has released their new "simplified account management" system which does away with keywords being "on hold" or "on trial". Now keywords will be labeled as either active or inactive. Additionally, any disabled keywords will be purged from the system in a few weeks. Google announced the changes several weeks ago, (see Google Adwords Gets Rid of on Hold Keywords.
In Google's FAQs, they say the following:
"We've created this system to give you more control over the quality and cost of your own ad. By choosing highly targeted keywords and creating relevant ad text, you can pay less per click. On the other hand, if you want to run on an obscure and less-searchable keyword, you can. But you'll likely have to pay a higher CPC for it."
This seems rather counter-intuitive. If the goal for the new system was to increase quality of the ads, then I can understand them charging more for less relevant ads on popular keywords, but why charge more on obscure and less-searchable keywords with little to no competition?
My guess is this new "simplified" account management system may be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. If what they say is accurate about having to bid more on obscure keywords is true, than this could be no more than a way for Google to drive up their average cost per click fees on people who have done their research to identify non-competitive keyword niches.
It may not be "fair" but it should be good for Google's balance sheet. First they get to purge out a large amount of disabled keywords that are clogging up their databases, and secondly they get to drive up costs for inexpensive keywords without having to come out and say "We are increasing our minimum CPC". In fact they way the have approached this so far, they have actually indicated that the minimum CPC could drop below $0.05, but if you read carefully, this would only happen on highly completive keywords and already bid up keywords. So on those you might be able to bid $0.01 but your not going to show up.
Nice! What are you thoughts on the new system?
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July 15, 2005
Posted by Adam Viener
Google announced pending changes to their adwords platform and keyword bidding policies today. We are tentatively optimistic about these changes. On one hand we should see a better opportunity to keep keywords running, on the other we are concerned about forced increases in costs per click across the board. Here is the meat of their announcement and some answers to some clarifying questions:
Google's Announcement:
What's changing
- Simplified account management: Your keywords will be active or inactive — instead of normal, in trial, on hold, and disabled. In addition, accounts will no longer be slowed. Currently, accounts are slowed when they don't meet our performance requirements and your ads appear rarely for your keywords.
- Quality-based minimum bids: Soon, each keyword will be assigned a minimum bid based on its Quality Score. Keywords with a higher Quality Score will be given lower minimum bids to stay active and trigger ads. Keywords with a lower Quality Score (including those that are currently on hold) will have the opportunity to run if your keyword or Ad Group's maximum cost-per-click (CPC) meets the minimum bid.
- The Quality Score is determined by your keyword's clickthrough rate (CTR), relevance of your ad text, historical keyword performance, and other relevancy factors.
- Ad Rank, or the position of your ad, will continue to be based on the maximum CPC and quality (now called the Quality Score).
Questions for Google:
Goyami:
Do you have a more specific target date for implementation?
Google:
Google has not set a specific launch date for this change to the AdWords system. The announcement indicates sometime in the next few weeks. We will notify you as soon as we have an update on the target date.
Goyami:
It says that keywords will be assigned a minimum bid based on it's
quality score. What is the range of minimum bids and where will we be able to see these bids?
Google:
The current range of bidding possible within the AdWords system is $0.05-$100. With this upcoming change, the minimum CPC will be reduced to $0.01, and therefore the possible CPC range for AdWords will be $0.01-$100.
Goyami:
When a keywords in deactivated, what is the process to re-activate?
Will the interface display how much you need to bid to display this ad?
Google:
After we determine your quality-based minimum bid, your keywords will fall into one of two states: active or inactive. If your keyword or Ad Group's maximum CPC meets the minimum bid assigned to it, your ad will remain active. If it doesn't, your keyword will be inactive. Our interface will show the minimum CPC required to reach an active status for specific keywords.
Goyami:
Can you explain in more detail how the Quality Score is calculated?
Google:
The quality score is the most important factor we use to determine your keyword's performance and ad's position on a search page in the Google Network. Your Quality Score is determined by your keyword's clickthrough rate (CTR), relevance of your ad text, historical keyword performance, and other relevancy factors. The first 3 factors mentioned will be weighed heaviest in determining ad positioning.
Goyami:
In the past you have looked at how others performed on specific
keywords to decide if terms should be placed on hold, will these new rules apply only to my individual account and performance on the specified keyword?
Google:
The keyword statuses normal, in trial, on hold, slowed, and disabled will be replaced with active (triggering ads) and inactive (not triggering ads). In addition, accounts will no longer be slowed. Currently, accounts are slowed when they don't meet our performance requirements. The historical keyword performance is one of the factors and this will incorporate historical performance for your specific account on a keyword as well as the overall historical performance of that term.
We will keep you posted as we learn more, also let us know if you have any additional questions / concerns for Google.
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: ! Hot Topics | PPC Search Engine Marketing | Pay Per Click Management Tools
July 07, 2005
Posted by Todd Tweedy
The team at Click2Customers.com has been hard at work with MarketingExperiments conducting click fraud research. You can access their findings and the new click fraud assessment tool here on the Click2Customers site.
Thanks to Vinny Lingham for the heads-up!
=====================
Thursday, July 07, 2005
Clicks2Customers releases Click Fraud Risk Charts & Calculator
Hi Guys
I've been hard at work with the Clicks2Customers team and MarketingExperiments, doing click fraud research. I've also made a couple of postings regarding click fraud on WebmasterWorld recently.
We have just released a Click Fraud Risk Calculator which can help you assess your PPC Click fraud risk.
In the end, it boiled down the following charts, which will help estimate the RISK of click fraud. This is not definitive and results will vary, but we believe it is a good guideline.
The results are pretty intuitive, bordering on obvious, but I think it's nice that we get it in one place.
I'm going to run through a quick written analysis, based on the charts.
1. Higher Individual Click Prices lead to higher Click Fraud (CF) risk.
2. Higher Click volumes lead to lower click fraud risk.
3. Higher number of keywords in the terms being bid on lead to lower CF risk.
4. More Active (receiving a click in a given month) keywords lowers CF risk.
5. More distribution partners (content targeting, etc), leads to higher CF risk (Google Adwords offers the ability to negative match content partners - very nice, and this will mitigate risk).
6. More competitors on keywords lead to higher CF risk.
7. Higher AVERAGE click prices lead to high CF risk.
8. More countries being added to your campaign, more CF risk.
Please email me your comments to vlingham@gmail.com - I would love feedback on these charts. Also, feel free to distribute the image above, or link to this blog or the Clicks2Customers Click Fraud page (http://www.clicks2customers.com/click-fraud.asp).
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May 27, 2005
Posted by Adam Viener
Anyone who has run keyword advertising on Google's Adwords network knows that the budget you set for your ads has little to do with how much you will actually spend on ads. In fact, most people realize that a low budget actually reduces the chances of your ads displaying at all during the day regardless if you have hit your budget figure or not.
Yesterday I realized how far off this budget tool actually is. I have a small campaign for a merchant and had my budget set for $5,000 per day, significantly higher than necessary to insure my ads would display at full capacity. I had generated less than $7 in clicks for the day and my ads stopped running. I ran the ad diagnostic tool and it said I had reached my daily budget.
I have Google looking into the problem, but for now you may want to set your campaigns to the maximum budget setting of $250,0000 per day just to make sure they run at all!
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February 28, 2005
Posted by Adam Viener
In a world of instant gratification, Overture has announced that 80% of new paid ad listings should be online within an hour, while the remaining 20% shouldn't take longer than 2 days.
"We previously promised a three-to-five-day turnaround on new listing submissions, and we recognized that that was unacceptable," says Lisa Morita.
Wow, amazing...
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October 29, 2004
Posted by Adam Viener
Have you ever wondered why your ads are not appearing under specific term when you search for it on Google's site? Now Google has released a new tool for advertisers that will let them put in the phrase they expected to see their ad appearing under or the url from the search where they thought your ads should have appeared.
Once you enter in your terms, you get a complete diagnostic off all the ads that could appear for that term and their status. Is the keyword slowed in one of your ad campaigns? Does the term appear in multiple campaigns?
This used to be hard to hunt down, now it is quick and easy. Great job!
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October 20, 2004
Posted by Adam Viener
At the Search Engine Strategies convention in San Jose, I heard the term “Ghetto SEO" used to describe the practice of creating pages to get to rankings that were “quick and dirty" without a whole lot of original content.
I had dismissed the term all together, until reading my monthly Planet Ocean Unfair Advantage search engine updates newsletter. In the Q&A section, one of the readers asked “Why is it that so may search engine results-type pages are now ranking high in searches at Google?" Planet Ocean’s response indicated that they are seeing more and more of these sites being removed from Google, but then went on to say the following:
"With reserve we’ll tell you the program that generates these pages is called Traffic Equalizer."
They go on to say that you should be careful about using this type of tool on sites that are deemed permanent since they feel Google will start banning such sites.
I decided it was time to visit the Ghetto and find out what they were talking about. I purchased Traffic Equalizer and played around with the software.
Traffic Equalizer is a piece of html page generation software that takes an html template (either their default templates, or one that you create) and a keyword list and merges the two together to create a site map with links to individual pages that the tool creates for each keyword term in your list. These individual pages can also include a directory style list of other sites that are related to your page that are pulled from 1 of 5 search engine resources. Assuming the template is good, and they placement of your keyword terms are well designed for search engines, they theory is that these pages would rank high.
I’d point you to my sample site that I threw up to test, but I realized that the downside to these sites, is that their structure and sitemap also make your entire keyword list that you are using to generate the site available to all. I did however find an example of a site using the software, I did use the program to add a related sites section to the pages of my Folk Art Site that I created to test out eBay's affiliate editor's kit tool. The site hasn't been doing great, and I figured out a way use the tool to enhance esiting pages and quickly build other artist pages by turing my existing page into a template. I suppose I could have done that by hand, but the tool did save me a lot of time by doing the work for each page and then all I have to do is add the pages to my site archectecture.
In marketing, the theory always goes, test, test, test, and then when you are done testing test some more. Find out what works and keep the good and drop the bad. I do think this is a useful tool, so it’s worth a test. I think you may find a lot more ways to use this type of auto-generation tool, than the specific task it was create for.
Other similar tools include:
Ranking Power
Traffic Turbocharger
Other Resources:
Traffic Equalizer Templates
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Organic Search Engine Marketing & Optimization (SEO) | Pay Per Click Management Tools
September 23, 2004
Posted by Adam Viener
I was talking to my Google Rep today and she showed me a great trick. Some of you may know this already, but just in case, I thought I would share it with you.
I wanted the ability to track the performance of my content ads separate from my search ads, and I didn't want to have to create separate campaigns with duplicate words with one campaign set to search and the other content. (I had heard this approach presented as a work around at Search Engine Strategies in San Jose).
You can use a dynmaic call in your url called "ifcontent" and "ifsearch" it works like this.
www.CJ-URL?sid={ifsearch:Search-SID-Code}{ifcontent:Content-SID-Code}
Using the dynamic insertion, the correct tracking code will be used for search and content targeted ads.
Of course this can be applied to any of your links to add parameters.
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September 09, 2004
Posted by Todd Tweedy
I’m taking a little survey of goyami readers, and I’d appreciate hearing from you on the question: How many PPC accounts do you manage?
Presently I’m managing 36 unique PPC accounts on Google alone. The average Google AdWords account has approximately 15 campaigns and 45 ad groups per campaign with 15,000 keywords per account.
How many PPC accounts do you manage??
Please post your response, and I’ll tally numbers in early October or send me or Adam an email.
Todd
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August 18, 2004
Posted by Todd Tweedy
Earlier this summer, I boarded a Carnival Cruise ship in route to Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and attended a well-organized affiliate marketing conference called Affiliate Summit.
During the Conference, I sat in on Rachel Honoway’s presentation on integrated performance marketing. Rachel is VP Sales & Marketing at Kowbunga, a provider of affiliate marketing solutions, and software tools supporting paid search marketing. During Rachel’s presentation, she unveiled the beta launch of a new combined Pay Per Click (PPC) Management and ROI tracking tool specifically designed for Overture and Google with planned support for additional engines. The tool is a PC-based solution. I’m in the process of beta testing the offering for two major publishers personal finance news and information. The suite I’m testing is actually two integrated tools – PPC Track (bid management) and MyAffiliateProgram (ROI tracking). I’ll provide more insight on my beta test experience shortly.
Todd
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Affiliate Marketing | PPC Search Engine Marketing | Pay Per Click Management Tools | SEM Company & Industry News
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