Adwords Updates Summary – Vol 1 & Vol 2 Combined
Welcome to another PPC blog post. Last week I published vol 1 of the adwords updates summary where I listed and described the most prominent new Adwords features to have appearing in the last few weeks. This week I have uploaded volume 2 but to save you having to go back to volume 1 and read this also if you missed it (how could you?!), I have uploaded volume 1 also. So what you basically have here is the entire article with no breaks, as nature intended some may say…enjoy.
Adwords Updates Summary
There must have been something in the water over at Mountain View (Google HQ) in April because they busted out a load of new adwords features. I’m not complaining, I like new features and so far I’ve found the updates helpful and time saving.
If you don’t use Adwords everyday though, it can be difficult to keep up with what is new. So, as a special treat, please find below a list of the most notable updates to arrive in the last few weeks and a brief explanation of what they do.
1. New Match Type Behaviour
Basically, phrase and exact match types will now match close variants, misspellings, singular and plural forms, stemming, accents and abbreviations. Why? Google says, based on their research that these changes will be beneficial for users and advertisers as it allows you to build keyword lists more focussed on user intent. I don’t disagree and it’s an added bonus as you won’t have to spend as much time sifting through lists of misspelt keywords to add to your campaign.
2. Adwords Labels
A pretty simple new feature; you can now label your data with coloured labels to make it easier for you to find. Google’s official blog states ‘you can quickly and easily filter and report on the data that is of most interest to you.’ Say no more, it looks like this:
3. Quality Score Transparency
I like this little update because it gives you more information about your quality score in one short, sharp burst. You hover over the speech bubble next to a keyword and instead of simply saying ‘Showing Ads Right Now’ and ‘Quality Score,’ it now says this plus a quick review on the expected click through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience; like so:
What I like about this new feature is if a keyword is causing you a bit of grief, you can use this tool to see what aspects affecting quality score you could improve. Simple but effective.
4. Ad Rotation
Ad rotation is a setting you can use to control the way your adverts are shown. As the name suggests, ad rotation will evenly rotate your adverts allowing you to run A/B testing on them and establish what copy is best for your campaign aims. In the past, if you chose this setting, your adverts would simply continue to rotate evenly until you chose another option.
Not now, as this update means, if you set a campaign to display adverts on rotation, this will only occur for 30 days. After this period it will automatically adjust to showing your advert which the system deems the best to gain additional clicks, known as optimise for clicks. If you don’t want this to happen, you have to reset the rotation setting.
5. Mobile App Extension.
I really like the ad extension in Adwords, as they allow you to make your ads stand out a bit from the crowd and I’m yet to find one that doesn’t impress clients when you tell them you have set them up. This new extension allows you to offer up your mobile app for download in the same place you are advertising, which could be particularly useful for branded searches.
Not only does the extension allow an option for the searcher to download an app, it also allows the searcher to preview the app before download; as can be seen below.
I believe as apps become more and more prominent in our lives, this new extension will become a real success amongst PPC advertisers. Google’s beta test of this product suggests CTR’s could also improve by up to 6% so this extension could turn out to be a double winner for you.
6. Adwords Community Now On Phones
Well, that’s not strictly true as you could always get Adwords Community on your phone, but now it’s been optimised for mobile phones, which basically means it fits. Still, if you’re travelling home one Friday with some Adwords related question niggling you, this new mobile compatibility may be the difference between ‘problem solved’ and come Monday ‘we’ve got a problem!’
Hopefully this quick rundown of the new Adwords features has being useful and informative. Please join us again soon for more Adwords news and tips.
