Last week was full of big news from the Google+ Project.  Not only did Google announce that they would finally be opening Google+ up to businesses via Google+ Pages, but they also unveiled the new Social Extensions feature in AdWords.  Social Extensions will be rolled out to advertisers this week and will allow advertisers with Google+ Pages to link their Google+ Page to their AdWords campaigns.  This means that all brand +1s that are received, whether via the website +1 button, ads or organic search results, will be complied and added together to be viewed as ONE single total visible to consumers.

How does this have the potential to affect the PPC advertising efforts you have in place for your business?  Google believes that adding Social Extensions can potentially improve the ad performance for PPC advertisers.  According to Google (via Harris Interactive, June 2010), recommendations from friends and family impact the purchasing decisions of 71% of shoppers.  The AdWords ads for current campaigns that do not have Social Extensions enabled only show the +1 recommendations for the specific landing page of the ad.  Once Social Extensions are enabled in your Google AdWords campaign, potential customers will be able to see all of the +1 recommendations that your brand has received and make their purchasing decisions accordingly.

Now that they are able to show more highly targeted and personalized ads, how will advertisers be able to study the performance data of this new feature and gauge whether or not it is working for them?  Of course Google has an answer for that!  Google has enabled a new +1 annotation AdWords reporting segment for any campaign, ad group, keyword or ad.  This new segment allows advertisers to view performance metrics by three categories.  The first performance segment category is impressions with personal annotations.  A personal annotation means that a personal contact of the searcher has +1’d your brand (your webpage, Google+ Page, organic search result or PPC ad).  The next performance segment is impressions with basic annotations.  Basic annotations are impressions that included an anonymous count of people who have +1’d your brand.  The third, and final, performance segment is for impressions without social annotations.  While both personal and basic annotations make your ad socially relevant, viewers that see people they actually know and trust +1ing something they are interested in purchasing will, in theory, be more likely to purchase said product.

If you are a PPC advertiser interested in making your brand more socially relevant, then you have some homework to do.  First, set up the Google+ Page for your business here.  Setting up your Google+ Page will not only allow you to get closer to your customers, but will allow you to create your business’s identity on Google+.  Next, you will need to use your Google+ Page URL to enable Social Extensions from the Ad Extensions tab in your AdWords campaigns.  Finally, after you have let the data accrue for a bit, use the +1 annotation reporting segment to see how the +1 features are affecting the performance of your advertising efforts.

Here at JumpFly we are very excited to see how these new Google+ enhancements will affect our clients ROI.  We expect nothing less than big things from the ever evolving Google!

Introducing Google Trusted Stores

Earlier this month Google announced the launch of their latest commerce innovation which they have aptly named Google Trusted Stores.  According to Google, Trusted Stores is “a new pilot program that helps shoppers identify online merchants that offer a great shopping experience.”  Sites that meet certain Google criteria can receive a Google Trusted Store badge to be added to their site.  So, how does this affect online shoppers and advertisers?

We all know that the amount of purchases being made online increases year after year, but research has shown that online shoppers are wary about purchasing from sites that they are unfamiliar with.  With identity theft and phishing attempts on the rise, shoppers want to know whether or not the site they wish to purchase from is safe and trustworthy.  They want to know that their payment information is secure and will not be compromised during the transaction process.  They want to know that when they pay for their goods, that they will receive them in a timely manner in the condition they expect.  Trusted Stores is Google’s answer to help alleviate these fears without customers having to do their own detective work on the store they wish to purchase from.

A huge benefit to this program is that when a customer makes a purchase from a Google Trusted Store, they are asked whether or not they would like FREE purchase protection from Google.  This purchase protection is optional, but a powerful reassurance to online shoppers.  It is basically free insurance for shoppers that the product that they ordered will arrive in a timely manner, in the promised condition and that they will be billed the agreed upon amount.  If these conditions are not met, Google’s purchase protection will cover the entire purchase amount, including tax and shipping.  It is good to note, however, that shoppers must report any issues either 30 days after delivery or 60 days after order placement, whichever is earlier.

Not only is this innovation beneficial and helpful for purchasers, but it’s great for merchants as well.  As a merchant, it is extremely important to have FAQ, About Us and Review/Testimonial pages on your site, but are potential customers supposed to blindly believe everything they read on the internet?  Shoppers are wary, especially since unscrupulous businesses have been known to do or say anything to close the deal.  Google Trusted Sites offers shoppers an objective, third party recommendation that should help allay their fears.  When a shopper hovers over the badge that is placed on the site, they see Google’s grades for the shipping and service of the particular store.  The higher the grade, the more trusted and secure the shopping experience should be.

If you are a merchant, you are probably wondering how you become a Google Trusted Store.  While the pilot program is currently limited, Google assures us that they will be expanding the Trusted Store program in the coming months.  You can find out more information from Google here.  It definitely can’t hurt to fill out the application and keep your fingers crossed that when the program opens up, your company site will be chosen.  So, why not apply for the opportunity to show potential customers that your store is a great place to shop?

Back in July Google, announced it would provide advertisers a new AdWords reporting segment.  This ad performance segmentation is called “Top vs. Side” and allows pay-per-click (PPC) advertisers to analyze how their ads perform in the top three positions (above the natural search results) compared to the ads that appear on the right side of the results.  This wealth of information will help with Google AdWords campaign optimization and bid management because we can now see the cost-per-conversion data for the different areas of ad space.

For example:  Imagine that I sell blue widgets online.  I have conversion tracking installed and it is working very well.  My average cost-per-conversion is $10.48 but I would like to try to get it under $8 in order to increase my ROI.  Using the Top vs.  Side segment, I can see that when my ads appear in the top three positions, my cost-per-conversion is $7.45 with an average CPC of $0.14 and a conversion rate of 1.93%.  However, when my ads appear on the side, my cost-per-conversion is $13.51 with an average cost-per-click (CPC) of $0.12 and a conversion rate of 0.85%.  In this example, the ads that show in the top positions are clearly performing better than the ones showing on the side.  This data shows me that I need to make sure that my ads are always seen at the top of the page, but how do I do that?

Enter Google’s Top of page bid estimate metric.  This new feature from Google AdWords gives an approximation of what your CPC bid needs to be in order for your ad to consistently appear in the top positions above the organic search results.  Google is quick to point out, however, that setting your bids higher than the top of page bid estimate does NOT guarantee top ad position and that Quality Score is still a factor.  To see your top of page bid estimates, log into your Google AdWords account and choose the Keywords tab.  Click on the Columns button, then on Customize Columns.  From there you can choose from Attributes (where the Est. top page bid button can be checked), Performance and Conversions criteria.  Click on save and see your extra column appear.  Now you know exactly how you need to be bidding to keep your ads in the coveted top positions.

Thank you Google for bringing us yet another update that allows us to better manage Google AdWords accounts for our clients.  We love when new innovations come along and allow us to be more proactive, productive and efficient for our clients – especially when it also helps us optimize.  Keep the new metric improvements coming; we love data!