I’ve mentioned before that you can get automatic emails from this blog so you don’t need to come back and check it everyday. A few people have asked us how we’re emailing you each time our posts go up.
We’re using a couple of features of Google Groups and Blogger to accomplish this ‘email newsletter’ of sorts. First, we set up an announcement-only Google Group by specifying a name, email address, and short description. You can set up a Google Group here. Next, we used the blogsend feature of Blogger, which allows you to automatically send posts to one email address. The email address we send it to is the Google Group email address we created. And voila, anyone who subscribes to the Google Group automatically receives an email.
We also got some code from the Google Group site so that everyone can subscribe to the group from this blog. Check it out on the bottom right-hand side of this page.
AdWords Update - 6/29/05
Do you manage AdWords accounts for others or use My Client Center? If so, we've got a few new features that will be useful for you:
- My Client Center enhancements: you can now create an online account directly from your My Client Center dashboard, download your dashboard information into a .csv file, and manage billing information for your client accounts.
- Google Advertising Professionals: if you know any folks in the Google Advertising Professionals program in France, Italy, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, or the United Kingdom, be sure to let them know that they can now receive promotional credits for their clients to try out AdWords (previously available only in the US), and take the exam in 6 new languages as well! Client managers in Japan can now also sign up for the program.
The world is your JavaScript-enabled oyster
If you like Google Maps, but think you could do something better, now's your chance. Check out the Google Maps API, which lets web developers put Google Maps on their own sites, just like housingmaps.com and chicagocrime.org. You can also reach out to other API developers and the Google Maps team in the API discussion group.
Search gets personal
With the launch of Personalized Search, you can use that search history you've been building to get better results. You probably won't notice much difference at first, but as your search history grows, your personalized results will gradually improve.
This whole concept of personalization has been a big part our lives since some of the team was in grad school at Stanford. We shared an office, which happened to be the same one Sergey had used before, and we were pretty familiar with the research he and Larry had done. Related to their work, we thought building a scalable system for personalizing search results presented an interesting challenge. We've still got a long way to go, but we're excited to release this first step. So check out this latest addition to Google Labs and tell us what you think.
Our tools save hours
I asked Stephanie, a product manager I work closely with, to talk about one of her products in-depth today. Here’s what she has to say about the new suite of account management tools that she’s been launching since October:
If you want to provide specific feedback on Stephanie’s campaign management tools, write us and I’ll make sure that she gets your comments.
I’ve noticed that, as our advertisers expand their AdWords campaigns to support growing businesses that managing these larger accounts becomes a challenge. Advertisers have come up to me and told me that they appreciate how much traffic AdWords drives to their sites, but it gets incrementally harder to manage their campaigns as they add more keywords and ads. To help our advertisers with this problem, I’ve been working with my team on a set of account management tools that make changes across an account easy and quick.
We’ve launched three of these tools to help all advertisers manage their keywords, CPCs, and ad text. Now, rather than making these changes for individual items, you can make hundreds of thousands of changes in a matter of minutes. The names of these tools are pretty self-explanatory, but I wanted to point out some specific examples of common uses for them.These tools all support powerful filtering and searching options. For example, you can find all the keywords that are appearing above a certain position or performing below a particular CTR. If you want to find the subset of ads that have the word “roses” in them, you can just search for that word. Or even go one step further and take advantage of the download as .csv feature to generate high-performing keyword lists or a record of your best ads.
- The Find/Edit Max CPCs tool allows you to change your CPC settings for thousands of keywords at once. You can change the CPC to a set price or increase all bids by a fixed percent or fixed amount. Some examples can be seen here.
- The Find/Edit Ad Text tool allows you to change the text of several ads at the same time. Learn more about how you might use it here.
- The Find/Edit Keyword tool allows you to edit keyword match types, delete keywords, and remove keyword-level destination URLs en masse. Take a look at some specific examples of things you can do with this tool here.
So, feel free to try them out – they can be useful to accounts of all sizes. Just log in and go the ‘Tools’ page (there’s a link to that under the “Campaign Management” tab). Under the ‘Modify your Campaigns’ heading on the right side, you’ll find all three tools listed.
If you want to provide specific feedback on Stephanie’s campaign management tools, write us and I’ll make sure that she gets your comments.
Cover the earth
Last October Keyhole and Google joined forces to integrate satellite imagery with Google search technology in a single product. Now we've landed on Google Earth. You can fly from space right down to any place on the planet and take in spectacular 3D views, and for major US cities you can now see 3D city models. And more: where Google Local works today (the U.S., Canada, and the U.K.), you can search Google Local from within Earth for points of interest, businesses listings, driving directions, and lots more (like some of these excellent locations). True to Google form, there is now a free version. Ready to explore?
Mapping the known world
I think we could all agree that AdWords is a great way of getting lots of new people to visit your site. But many advertisers want be found in Google's search results as well. If this sounds like you, here's a tip that'll interest you. It comes from Shaluinn on the Product Team:
We recently released a new product called Google Sitemaps - a free, easy way for you to help people discover more of your web pages. It's a web crawling system that enables you to directly inform Google about when you make changes to your web pages or create new ones. That, in turn, enables Google to crawl your site more effectively and comprehensively. Learn more here.
Google Video. Now with ... video!
A couple of months ago we launched a video uploader so you could add your own videos to
I've been amazed by your cool videos. I had never seen a robot dog harassing an iguana before, or a monkey doing karate, and I had no idea you were such good dancers. There's more than home video, too - like this UNICEF story featuring David Beckham.
The clips play right in the page using the brand new Google Video Viewer, which was created by our engineer Aaron Lee using code from the open source Videolan project. It works great in both Firefox and IE, and we've designed it not to fight with any other video plugins you might have. We're releasing the Windows version first, with Mac coming soon.
A feature we're especially pleased with is search within a video, which means you will get a result pointing to the precise spot in the video that matches your query. Try looking for sergey brin and you'll see what I mean. There are even more people getting creative with video here. So have fun watching, or shoot your own videos - and keep sending them in!
Turning clicks into customers
If you're like most advertisers I've talked to, I'll bet you're looking for pre-qualified customers - in other words, people who are actively looking for the very thing you've got to offer.
Here's a short quiz that hints at the secret of attracting these customers:
Given a choice between the two potential customers below, who would you rather have click on your ad?
Make sure that you create highly targeted Ad Groups. What are those? Well, a targeted Ad Group is simply a carefully chosen list of specific keywords, all regarding a particular something that you wish to advertise, combined with a crisp, specific, and well written ad about the very same thing.
When you advertise in this targeted way, users searching on one of your keywords will see an ad about the exact same thing they've just searched for. And when they click on your ad, they effectively arrive at your site as a pre-qualified customer; they're already interested in exactly what you have to offer.
Want more tips like this? Take a look at the Optimization Tips page in the AdWords Help Center.
Here's a short quiz that hints at the secret of attracting these customers:
Given a choice between the two potential customers below, who would you rather have click on your ad?
- User #1: someone who has searched for something only slightly related to what you offer, and who clicked on your ad in the hopes that you might have it.
- User #2: someone who searched for exactly what you have to offer, and who clicked on your ad because they're certain you have it.
Make sure that you create highly targeted Ad Groups. What are those? Well, a targeted Ad Group is simply a carefully chosen list of specific keywords, all regarding a particular something that you wish to advertise, combined with a crisp, specific, and well written ad about the very same thing.
When you advertise in this targeted way, users searching on one of your keywords will see an ad about the exact same thing they've just searched for. And when they click on your ad, they effectively arrive at your site as a pre-qualified customer; they're already interested in exactly what you have to offer.
Want more tips like this? Take a look at the Optimization Tips page in the AdWords Help Center.
Just call him Bruce
You'll never guess how I uploaded this photo of Brewster. Okay, maybe you could guess, but I'll tell you anyway: Blogger Images.
All Blogger users can now upload photos to their blogs. There's a button in the posting interface that looks like a little image, and when you click it, you can browse for an image on your computer or input the location of an image on the web. If you don't have cat photos to share on your blog, that's okay. We accept non-cat photos as well.
Please plan ahead...
Another update, straight from the tech team:
On June 24, 2005, advertisers will be unable to login to their AdWords accounts from approximately 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. PDT [?] due to system maintenance. Please rest assured that your campaigns will continue to run normally during this short downtime, and we apologize for any inconvenience.
Food for thought
You’ve heard us mention the AdWords API a couple of times on this blog, but today you’ll hear about it straight from the horse’s mouth. Here are a few words from Rohit D., our guest blogger and Product Manager for the AdWords API:
The AdWords API is our way of opening up AdWords to the world. Using the API, developers and advertisers can write creative applications to manage their accounts. I like to think of it this way: if the AdWords online interface were a finely prepared meal, then the AdWords API would be all the raw ingredients. Instead of serving the meal to you directly, we’re letting you go in the kitchen to prepare it your own way.
Since late January, developers around the world have been programming amazing applications with the API. Googlers are also using the API to create tools to automate some of their work. We’ve seen large customers improve their productivity when handling hefty keyword lists, and smaller advertisers who have increased their ROI through more efficient bid management. We heard about one customer who sells tiramisu in the UK and how she used the API to change her bids as her product got closer to its expiration date and her inventory levels dropped. Other customers have hired third party developers to use the SOAP-based API for reporting purposes; one example is automating the process of importing AdWords campaign reports into financial management systems. You’ll find more of these success stories and active discussions on our developer forum.
The API certainly isn’t for everyone, but if you have the technical resources to write even a simple program to automate some of your campaign management tasks, be sure to check it out. You can also read more about the API at our blog.
One man's food pyramid
We may choose to eat only healthy food here at the Googleplex. The cafes serve sumptuous veggies and subtly seasoned fish, meat and pasta dishes, and the various kitchenettes always have a tempting array of fruits to choose from.
Photoblog Friday, however, is today devoted to the Dark Side.
On Friday mornings, one must resist this gooey, glazed array...
...the kitchenettes emit a psychedelic aura of caloric evil...
...and at lunchtime, how is one to avoid the table of doom?
The name game
A longtime AdWords Specialist by the name of Annie kindly provides us with today's easy (and useful!) tip:
It's easy and effective!
>
If you have multiple campaigns with riveting (yet unrevealing) titles such as "Campaign #1", "Campaign #7," and "Campaign #23", then consider renaming your campaigns to describe the Ad Groups they contain.
If you do this, you'll save time that might otherwise be spent searching for your "teddy bear" ads in a couple of dozen numbered campaigns.
Want to quickly change "Campaign #17" into "All Stuffed Animals"? Then just visit the appropriate "Edit Campaign Settings" page. Once there, it'll only take you a moment or two.
It's easy and effective!
>
Targeting in a whole new way
Today, we introduced Site Targeting. Here are the details from Bismarck on the Product team:
AdWords text ads can be incredibly effective, but we're constantly searching for ways to make them better, both for users and for you. We're pulling the curtain off of Site Targeting, a new set of features that will help you reach prospects in a whole new way. Here's what you can now do with AdWords:The effect of all these features is clear: we're giving you more control over your campaigns and allowing you to do more with AdWords. Interested? Find out how to get started with Site Targeting.
Target Sites (Not just Keywords)
Now, you can select specific content sites where you want your ads to show. This will allow you to precisely communicate with those individuals who are most likely to be interested in your offerings.
Get Creative
Within site-targeted campaigns, you can use not only text and image ad formats, but also animated image ads.
Make an Impression
Site-targeted campaigns allow you to bid for placement on a CPM (cost-per-thousand-impressions) basis. These ads will compete in the same auction with CPC (cost-per-click) ads.
The world in your pocket
Since millions of people across the globe already use mobile phones like there's no tomorrow, we're launching Mobile Web Search in many languages. Try it the next time you visit Google on your mobile phone - you'll see a new option to search the Mobile Web. How different is it than standard web search? There are sites out there that have already been designed for your mobile phone, which makes them more navigable on the small screen. So we've created an index specifically for these sites. And so your phone can now be that much more useful.
Some Feedback About Feedback...
I'm glad some of you are taking advantage of the "Got a question or comment about Inside AdWords? Send us an email" link over there on the right hand side of the page. We really do want to hear what you have to say about our new blog, and have enjoyed your comments. Keep 'em coming!
On a related subject, more than one person has taken the opportunity to use that link to provide feedback about the AdWords program itself. And while we're delighted to get your feedback about AdWords, a much better place to send that type of message is adwords-feedback@google.com. While the email sent to this address is not ordinarily replied to, it is certainly read every business day, and then forwarded to the most appropriate teams for review. It's actually a great way to make sure that your feedback will be heard by the right people within Google.
And for questions regarding particular AdWords accounts--well, of course the very best way to reach us is by using the "Contact Us" link from within the account itself.
P.S. to G.J.D., who wrote in with comments and questions about the AdWords API:
G.J.D., you'll probably be glad to hear that there is a blog devoted solely to the AdWords API, which is cleverly named the "AdWords API Blog". (We really have a knack for this naming thing, don't we?) You'll find it here.
In addition, there's an active forum for developers on Google Groups that focuses entirely on the AdWords API. (It also is rather stylishly named, as the "AdWords API Forum".) I'm sure the forum's 500+ members would be very happy to have you aboard.
On a related subject, more than one person has taken the opportunity to use that link to provide feedback about the AdWords program itself. And while we're delighted to get your feedback about AdWords, a much better place to send that type of message is adwords-feedback@google.com. While the email sent to this address is not ordinarily replied to, it is certainly read every business day, and then forwarded to the most appropriate teams for review. It's actually a great way to make sure that your feedback will be heard by the right people within Google.
And for questions regarding particular AdWords accounts--well, of course the very best way to reach us is by using the "Contact Us" link from within the account itself.
P.S. to G.J.D., who wrote in with comments and questions about the AdWords API:
G.J.D., you'll probably be glad to hear that there is a blog devoted solely to the AdWords API, which is cleverly named the "AdWords API Blog". (We really have a knack for this naming thing, don't we?) You'll find it here.
In addition, there's an active forum for developers on Google Groups that focuses entirely on the AdWords API. (It also is rather stylishly named, as the "AdWords API Forum".) I'm sure the forum's 500+ members would be very happy to have you aboard.
Google got me a camera...
...so from now on, we can all look forward to weekly slices of digital-photography life from the Googleplex, along with contributions from Googlers in our offices around the world.
A few hours ago, in honor of Photoblog Friday's maiden voyage, I walked over to the volleyball court, where, every lunchtime, a group of disturbingly fanatical volleyballers gathers to spend an hour or two in fierce competion, to the briefly entertained delight of hundreds of less athletically inclined Googlers passing by on our way to getting in even worse shape in the Cafe.
Is the ball going up or down here? I can't remember.
A giant yellow globe falls from the roof of Building 41.
The eternal triumph of the human volleyballing spirit.
Put Your Business on the Map
A bunch of you have been signing up to use local targeting for your ads, which helps you drive traffic based on region and language. To help you direct more of this targeted traffic to your website, we also wanted to let you know about a related free service. We've asked Samantha, from the Product Team on Local services, to tell you more:
And an important note: Google Local listings and AdWords display separate business information, so you should review your Google Local listing even if you know your AdWords account information is correct.
Everyone should check to see if their business is listed correctly on Google. To find out, visit Google Local or Google Maps and search for your business. If you find anything you'd like to change, you can add or update your business information at the Google Local Business Center. This way, when someone's looking for you on Google Local or Google Maps, they'll be able to get accurate, up-to-date information.
And an important note: Google Local listings and AdWords display separate business information, so you should review your Google Local listing even if you know your AdWords account information is correct.
When Your Ads Need a Vacation Too...
As summer approaches and vacation time looms pleasantly on the horizon, many advertisers wonder if they can pause their ads if they're gone and can't fill orders for a long-ish time. And if so, for how long? A week? A month? A year?
Well, the answers, in the order asked, are: "Yes", "For as long as you wish", "Yes", "Yes", and "Yes, but isn't that a rather long vacation!?"
It's very simple to pause your campaigns, and there is no time limit involved at all. (Although we certainly wish that you'd come back sooner rather than later, because it's nice to have your business.)
Since advertisers often ask in their emails, I'll also mention that there is no charge to either pause one's ads or to resume them after one returns from that arduous month on the beach.
Vacation. A tough job, but somebody's got to do it.
Well, the answers, in the order asked, are: "Yes", "For as long as you wish", "Yes", "Yes", and "Yes, but isn't that a rather long vacation!?"
It's very simple to pause your campaigns, and there is no time limit involved at all. (Although we certainly wish that you'd come back sooner rather than later, because it's nice to have your business.)
Since advertisers often ask in their emails, I'll also mention that there is no charge to either pause one's ads or to resume them after one returns from that arduous month on the beach.
Vacation. A tough job, but somebody's got to do it.
AdWords Update - 6/7/05
We've got a bunch of new features for you to try out this week:
- New sign-up wizard - a simplified process for you to add new campaigns or Ad Groups to your account and for new advertisers to sign up for AdWords.
- Updated Learning Center - participants of our Google Advertising Professionals program know that this is the place to find in-depth lessons on every aspect of AdWords. Now you'll find text-based lessons in addition to the current Flash presentations.
- Find / Edit Ad Text Tool - locate and edit your ads across multiple campaigns quickly and easily. You can find it in the 'Tools' section of your AdWords account.
Content with Content?
Today's tip, from Chris O., an AdWords specialist, can help you keep better track of the results you're getting from AdWords ads on the content network:
If you are using your web server logs to help you track your clicks and referrers, add tracking code to your destination URLs to help you identify which clicks are coming from Google AdWords. For example:
www.yoursite.com?referrer={ifsearch:GoogleAdWordsSearch}{ifcontent:GoogleAdWordsContent}
If that sounds like an alien language to you, then we'll tell you lots more here.
Dot what?
There's been a lot of talk lately about ICANN's preliminary approval of some new top level Internet domains (.cat, .jobs, .mobi, .post, .travel, and .xxx), some more controversial than others. I've followed the various social and political debates only peripherally, but it seems like this could lead to a broader trend of sites assigning themselves to categories like jobs and travel.
Using the Site Search feature, you can narrow searches to a specific website [admissions site:www.mit.edu]. But what many people don't know is you can also use Site Search to narrow searches to a top level domain, which I found handy during tax season: [1099 site:gov].
Right now, Site Search can be used for top level domains (.org, .edu, .mil, .com, and .net), as well as country domains like .it (Italy) or .sz (Swaziland). As more of these come into play, topic-specific searching could become even easier.
Webmaster-friendly
We're undertaking an experiment called Google Sitemaps that will either fail miserably, or succeed beyond our wildest dreams, in making the web better for webmasters and users alike. It's a beta "ecosystem" that may help webmasters with two current challenges: keeping Google informed about all of your new web pages or updates, and increasing the coverage of your web pages in the Google index.
Initially, we plan to use the URL information webmasters supply to further improve the coverage and freshness of our index. Over time that will lead to our doing an even better job of delivering more search results from more websites. (Danny Sullivan interviewed me about this if you want to read more.)
This project doesn't just pertain to Google, either: we're releasing it under the Attribution/Share Alike Creative Commons license so that other search engines can do a better job as well. Eventually we hope this will be supported natively in webservers (e.g. Apache, Lotus Notes, IIS). But to get you started, we offer Sitemap Generator, an open source client in Python to compute sitemaps for a few common use cases. Give it a whirl and give us your feedback.
Where Are My Ads?
One of the questions most frequently asked of our support team goes something like this:
The most common reason that your ad may not appear every time you search for it is that your budget is lower than the recommended amount. For any given list of keywords within a campaign, the AdWords system will recommend a daily budget to you. You can use our recommendation as a guideline to set your daily budget so that your ads will appear for the greatest number of relevant searches possible. For example, if there are $100 a day worth of clicks out there for your ad and you set your budget to $75 a day, your ad will appear in about 3 out of 4 relevant searches. Since the AdWords system spreads out ad delivery throughout the day, your ad may not appear every single time you do a search with your keywords, even if you still have budget left for the day. If you want to edit your daily budget, here's how.
If your daily budget turns out not to be the issue after all, you may want to check out the Ads Diagnostic Tool. This tool provides you with a possible reason why your ad may not be appearing. It will also provide a recommendation to help you get your ad up and running, so be sure to give it a try. A little tidbit of Google trivia for those who are interested: when we were developing this tool, some people started calling it ‘WAASUP?’, which stood for ‘Why Aren’t Ads Showing UP?'
P.S. For those of you wondering what a Tapir is: when I was a kid begging for my first pet, it was the only one my dad would let me have. Let’s just say I didn’t want a pet for long…
"Would you please tell me why I can't see my ad from the "Friendly Tapir" campaign? I think I've set everything up correctly, and I still have budget left for the day. So why is my ad not appearing?"
The most common reason that your ad may not appear every time you search for it is that your budget is lower than the recommended amount. For any given list of keywords within a campaign, the AdWords system will recommend a daily budget to you. You can use our recommendation as a guideline to set your daily budget so that your ads will appear for the greatest number of relevant searches possible. For example, if there are $100 a day worth of clicks out there for your ad and you set your budget to $75 a day, your ad will appear in about 3 out of 4 relevant searches. Since the AdWords system spreads out ad delivery throughout the day, your ad may not appear every single time you do a search with your keywords, even if you still have budget left for the day. If you want to edit your daily budget, here's how.
If your daily budget turns out not to be the issue after all, you may want to check out the Ads Diagnostic Tool. This tool provides you with a possible reason why your ad may not be appearing. It will also provide a recommendation to help you get your ad up and running, so be sure to give it a try. A little tidbit of Google trivia for those who are interested: when we were developing this tool, some people started calling it ‘WAASUP?’, which stood for ‘Why Aren’t Ads Showing UP?'
P.S. For those of you wondering what a Tapir is: when I was a kid begging for my first pet, it was the only one my dad would let me have. Let’s just say I didn’t want a pet for long…
The Summer of Code
We're very excited to launch our newest Open Source initiative, the Summer of Code, a program that aims to help students enter the world of Open Source software development by honing their skills on real problems with real programmers. It's not only intellectually rewarding, though - we're offering stipends to each student who successfully completes a project by the end of the summer. If you're up for it, go for it!
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