JumpFly Blog

Normally, if I’m going to talk about Google, I’m going to have pretty positive things to say. After all, nine times out of ten, when they do something, they do it right. When they do a new version, they improve on what they already have. They seem to really test things out in the real world of PPC management, and make my life as a PPC advertising account manager easier. Well today I’m blogging about something that’s the exception to the rule, something that’s not been an improvement. It’s the Google Keywords Tool…

For those who don’t know, the Google Keyword Tool is a tool for finding additional search terms that you might be missing in your account. (You can find it here: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal.) You put in a search term or even multiple terms, and Google spits out a list of additional keywords based around your search term, or are very similar. You can add your terms directly into one of your AdGroups, or export them to a spreadsheet or text file.

Well, lately the reliability and usefulness of the Google Keywords Tool has changed. For some reason, the Google Keyword Tool has taken a few steps backwards. It’s become harder to use, harder to find the information you want, and less reliable at giving me keywords quickly.

The majority of the time the first results you get are what Google calls “Additional keywords to consider.” Well, those additional keywords are usually one’s that I DON’T want to consider, that are too broad for my narrowly targeted AdGroups or just way off base, yet I have to scroll though a very large list, usually about 150 terms, to get to the ones I actually want, which is the section “Keywords related to term(s) entered.” And there’s no way to change which shows first, so you never know where you’re going to have to look. It’s very easy to overlook that “related terms” section.

Then there’s the issue of what you get for your results. There are many times when the results don’t seem to be complete. There’s another tool that we can use, and if we put in the exact same search term, we may get an additional 20, 50 or 100 terms that Google won’t or doesn’t report on. If we were to try the exact same search a little later, we might get different results. If we reverse the order of the words, or put a space in or remove a space from a search term, we might get something different, including terms that should have been in the original results. For example, I might put in a search for “adwords management” and get maybe 10 search terms in the related category (with another 174 in the “consider” terms and 15 in the “similar” terms). Another time, I might get 14 reported terms. If I were to do a search on “ad words management” I might get another five or six or ten terms that the first search didn’t turn up, including ones with “adwords management” that should have logically come up in the originial “adwords management” search. And because AdWords caps the results at around 150, you never get to see those terms Google might consider less important, even though they are more related to the search terms I started with.

Sometimes the “consider” terms might have something actually worth considering, but there’s so many terms that are usually so off the mark (in my example above there were terms like: make money, content management, click pay per tool, overture ppc, seo, keywords, earn money, pay per click marketing, etc). Buried in that stack was the term “adword management” - which to me makes more sense as a related term, considering the only difference is that it is missing an “s” off my original search term.

It just seems like Google has taken a step backwards in the Google tool - they’re watering down the more targeted keywords with all this unrelated mess, that it’s hard to use.

So here’s my Google KeyWords Tool wish list:

1. Give me the Related Terms at the top of the list.
2. Quit watering down the related and similar terms with terms that aren’t really that related or that similar.
3. Include plurals as a rule in the Related Terms, instead of forcing me to do individual searches on it, or include a check box that allows me to include or exclude plurals from my results.
4. Let me immediately default to Phrase Match or Exact Match results, instead of always defaulting to Broad, OR include a check box that allows me to include exact and phrase match terms in one spot, instead of having to switch between screens or select from the drop-downs.
5. Allow me to add different keywords that I might find into different AdGroups. There is a function here which allows me to do it, but it’s a bit cumbersome. I might find terms that need to go in three or four different AdGroups - right now I can only do one at a time.
6. The ability to filter “in” terms instead of only “out”. If I’m searching for “product 703″, I want all my results to have the number 703 in it.
7. Be consistent on results, so I don’t have to do the same search several times in order to get all my results.
8. Don’t give me different results if I’m within an AdGroup than if I’m using the external Keyword Tool.

So c’mon Google, please work your magic. I know you can get the Keyword Tool back to giving us relevant results.

In the business of PPC Management, I am constantly reminded how everything is always changing. Today, I download the latest addition to the browser wars; the brand new BETA browser from Google called Google Chrome, and took it for a test drive. It looks like the playing field in the browser wars has changed.

Google Chrome is a free “Open Source” browser, borrowed in part from several other open source projects including Apple WebKit and Mozilla’s FireFox. This means that it is free to download and use, however it also free for other parties to use as their own source for development, or to use to help develop add-on’s and tools specifically designed to work with Google Chrome, much in the same way we can now download thousands of cool add-on’s for FireFox.

At first glance the appearance of Google Chrome seems light and stripped down. Visually, most people will not find anything very noteworthy about the initial BETA release of Chrome. It’s color scheme seems to be fairly flat and non-dimensional, which isn’t uncommon when compared to most of Google’s online administration interfaces. To quote Google, “we designed a browser window that is streamlined and simple”.

The traditional administrative menu featuring commands like; file, edit, view, tools, help, are all missing. Most of this old functionality is now included below two icons located to the far right, along with some new and very interesting functionality like “Incognito” and “Developer Tools”.

The popular tabbing feature, which allows multiple pages to be open in the same browser, is now located prominently at the very top of the application. This might throw some users at first, although I quickly became accustomed to the new layout and actually grew to enjoy it. Tabs can actually be dragged and dropped from one window to another, or simply dragged to create a new window in itself. All in all the tab functionality takes a nice step forward in Chrome.

The new home page layout provides a very visual representation of your recent history and most visited website’s. Links with Favicon’s are located above a large thumbnail version of these pages. The content of this homepage updates as your history builds. I found it to be a somewhat useful feature for quickly jumping to my most frequently viewed web pages. Another nice feature is that you can customize this homepage with your own chosen web pages or use a traditional web page as your home page.

A short list of recent bookmarks appear at the right of the home page along with the brand new ability to search your history. This makes for a great way to find those pages you recently visited or locate an article or product that you saw recently but can’t remember the exact location. I was surprised to find out that the search history results page was not laced with Sponsored Search ads. In fact, it provided honest results from several search engines, directories, and even website’s that I had recently visited that contained data related to the search term I used in my search history query. Since I had visited Yahoo, MSN, and eBay, the results from all 3 of those sources were provided, along with an additional ecommerce website that I had visited.

Many of the common features introduced in Google Chrome will also be available to some extent in the upcoming release of Internet Explorer 8, which is also available for BETA download, however the real power behind Google Chrome is located behind the scenes, under the hood, in the fundamental design. Basically, Google started from scratch and has taken the technology that powers a web browser and made it more efficient in the hopes of providing a faster, safer, more stable, browsing environment. You can actually read about this new technology and the amazing engineering used in Chrome by viewing Google’s Chrome Comic Book. You won’t find any superhero’s or arch villains in this comic book, although you will find a fairly detailed, all be it dry, explanation into the thought processes and ingenious solutions that the Google wizards have brought forth in this new browser.

The bottom line here is that Google knows that it lives on the Internet and it has chosen to give back to this community with a new Open Source free browser that is designed to provide faster downloads, more security, and a more efficient and stable browsing environment. What’s more, since it is an Open Source software, it is available for anyone to download and customize to their hearts desire. Considering the complete lack of embedded advertising, and non-partial integration of other search engines and website’s, I find this act to be a very generous offering to the online community as a whole. Just like my old 79 Trans Am, Google Chrome might not give you a visual wow factor upon your first use, however I believe that you will enjoy the unseen power that lurks under the hood.

It is important to understand Google’s Negative Matching features in order to best refine your searches.

The negative match feature in Google ensures that your ads do not show when the search term entered includes certain keywords or phrases.  For example, one of the most common negative keywords we use is “free”.  If you are selling a new video game, chances are you are not going to want to appear when a user types in “free video games”.  In order to guarantee that you don’t show up for that phrase, you should include “free” as a negative keyword.

Similar to Google’s regular match types, you can include a negative keyword and select a match type of negative broad, negative exact or negative phrase.  With proper PPC Management extremely important to understand these match types so that you do not accidentally prevent your ads from showing on important keywords.

Negative Exact Match
When you select negative exact match, your ad will not show if the search term matches this keyword phrase exactly.  Nothing before, after or in the middle.

This match type is particularly useful if a subset of your important keyword phrase would not be appropriate.

With the video game example, we may decide to include the keyword phrase video game in our campaign, but we might add “video” as a negative exact match so that we do not show up for any searches on just the word “video”.

Negative Phrase Match
When you select negative phrase match, your ad will not show if the search term contains the keyword phrase in the proper order.

For example, if you have a negative phrase match keyword of “video camera” and a user enters the search term of “buy a video camera”, your ad will not show.  However, if they enter “camera with video”, your ad could show.

Negative Broad Match
When you select negative broad match, your ad will not show if the search term matches or contains the keyword phrase in any order and if the search term is a synonym or considered relevant to the phrase.

This, of course, is very vague and negative broad match should be use very, very carefully.

When we use broad match on a keyword phrase, we run the risk of showing our ad on a search term that is not really relevant, despite what the Google algorithm thinks.  But we are able to see the actual results in the search query report and make adjustments to the account.

However, when we use negative broad match, we run the much higher risk of our ad NOT showing for a search term that really would have been relevant.

And I never want my clients to be “missing” when their potential customers are looking for them!

Learn how to use these match types properly to make sure your ads are showing at the right time and not showing when they would be irrelevant.