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!

Why is this so great you ask?  Well, I begin my keyword research with root words and descriptive words.  For example, let’s say I am building a new campaign for a company that sells colored hanging file folders.  They have 20 different colors of folders and they can be called hanging file(s), hanging folder(s) or hanging file folder(s).  To begin the keyword research for this project, I would use an excel formula to create every possible variation of each color with each root word (yellow hanging file, yellow hanging files, yellow hanging folder, yellow hanging folders, hanging file yellow, hanging files yellow, hanging folder yellow, hanging folders yellow, etc.).  With 20 colors and 4 root words, this would give me a list of 160 possible search terms to research using Google’s Keyword Tool.  With the old tool I would need to paste the first 100 words in, star the ones with advertiser competition and/or search traffic, then paste the remaining 60 words and do the same thing.  With the new tool I can paste the entire list in one easy step – which is great!

Once I have several hundred keywords starred in the Keyword Tool, there is a “More like these” option which allows me to search for terms that are similar to the ones I have already chosen to star.  In the previous version of Google’s Keyword Tool I would only get search results for the first 100 keywords that I had starred, which was an inconvenience.  I would have to download the list, break it down into groups of 100 keywords and perform multiple searches again and again to get potentially great keyword suggestions for my new account.  With the new version, as long as my starred keywords do not exceed 2500, the Keyword Tool will provide me similar search terms for all of my starred keywords.  Hooray!

Another update to the tool that is worth noting is the “Group by” feature.  By default the Keyword Tool is set to “Group by None” but if you click on the dropdown, you can choose “Similarity to search terms” and the most pertinent words (keywords that include search terms) will show up grouped together below the search terms, but above the related keyword suggestions.  This is great for weeding through the hundreds of irrelevant keywords that the Keyword Tool often provides.

All in all, the Google Keyword Tool is getting better each and every time there is an update.  I am excited to see how it will progress through the rest of this year and beyond.  Keep up the good work Google!

Google made this update to description line 1 placement after performing tests and coming to the conclusion that it not only improves the user experience by providing searchers with more, relevant information easily and rapidly, but also improves the performance of the ad for the advertiser.  After doing some A/B ad testing with and without the punctuation at the end of description line 1, JumpFly’s account managers have seen the clickthrough rates (CTR) of the new ads with punctuation at the end of description line 1 skyrocket over the old ones without punctuation.  So much so that the JumpFly pay-per-click management teams now make sure that description line 1 ends in punctuation as often as possible.

Another change that Google recently announced is that top position ads will now be showing the display URL domain in the headline.  This update to how ads are displayed will allow Google searchers to be able to see and identify what site they will be taken to after they click on the ad and will help them decide whether or not they want to go to that site.  For AdWords advertisers, this is another huge change that is going to be great for them, especially for branding.  With the display URL being more prominent in the headline and still being shown in the display URL, your company name and web address exposure is doubled.  Sounds good to us!

Now, the question is:  How will Google AdWords decide whether to show the display URL or description line 1 after the headline?  Well, according to Google, BOTH can be displayed as long as the resulting headline is sixty-eight characters or less.  Imagine having a sixty-eight character, attention grabbing headline.  The amount of information you can get to potential customers in bold, blue text is unheard of and something all advertisers should try to capitalize on.

These changes to how Google AdWords ads are displayed are hugely important for advertisers.  In order to capitalize on them, you might want to call a professional PPC Management company like JumpFly.  We know the ins and outs of Google AdWords and we love implementing new, innovative ideas for our clients.

But how will advertisers and professional PPC management companies like JumpFly know what keywords mobile searchers are looking for?  As usual, Google is two steps ahead with their new Keyword Tool.  In September, Google announced that it was officially launching the latest version of their Keyword Tool within AdWords.  Since then, there have been several notable improvements to the tool including the addition of new ways to filter and refine the keyword list, starring keywords and the ‘view as text’ button.

The latest improvement to the Google AdWords Keyword Tool is the ability to create keyword lists targeted to mobile users.  Underneath the box where you type in the keywords you wish to research, there is a ‘+’ button next to ‘Advanced options.’  Click on this ‘+’ and you will see a dropdown menu to show ideas for all mobile devices, mobile WAP devices and mobile devices with full internet browsers (like iPhone and Andriod phones).  This enhancement to the already great Keyword Tool will allow AdWords advertisers to create better, more highly targeted campaigns for mobile users.

As an avid smartphone user, I can honestly say that I browse the internet more from my phone that I do from any desktop or laptop computer.  I am excited to see what new, more highly targeted advertisements are shown to me in the next few months.  It should be interesting to see how this new feature can help mobile search evolve.  Stay tuned!

What does this mean for you, as a Google AdWords advertiser?  Here are some practical examples:

*  You have a post-holiday super sale that you want to make sure to advertise on starting on December 26^th, but you are out of town with limited access to email or technology.  No problem!  Simply write the ads, set the Automated Rule to turn them on at midnight on December 26^th then sit back and relax knowing that they will be taken care of for you.

*  You have done extensive research that shows that your peak shopping days are Monday, Friday and Saturday.  You have also found that your least productive sales day is Tuesday.  Using AdWords Automated Rules, you can create a rule to automatically increase your budget on your peak days and automatically decrease it on Tuesday.  This ensures that your visibility is improved on days when you know people are most likely to purchase.

*  You know that your keywords convert best when they are in position 3 or higher.  AdWords Automated Rules allows you to create a rule in your PPC campaign or ad group that will automatically increase the maximum CPC (cost-per-click) bids for all keywords with a position below 3.  You can choose to increase the bids either by a percentage or by a static amount.  Automated Rules will look at the data for the timing parameter that you determine in order to make the adjustments that you require.

Another important feature of AdWords Automated Rules is that you are encouraged to preview the results of the rules that you create.  This preview function allows you see a list of the changes before they are actually implemented so that you can make sure that you are making the most beneficial changes to your account.  Automated Rules are also easily managed within the Google AdWords interface using the Control Panel and Library section.  There, you are able to view, pause and keep track of the changes that are being made automatically to your account every day.

With Google AdWords and their plethora of available tools, anyone can advertise online.  However, a professional PPC Management Company like JumpFly is highly recommended.  Professional account managers know the tricks of the trade to keep your PPC accounts optimized and running smoothly.  Contact us today to see how we can help increase your ROI.

After testing out Google Instant, the first question we had here at JumpFly was: “How will this affect the Pay Per Click(PPC) Marketing for our clients?”  With ads showing up before the entire search term was typed out, we were curious about the effect this would have on the number of impressions and click-through-rate (CTR) of our ads.  So we dug a little deeper and found out some details that may help explain Google Instant’s impact on PPC a little bit.

There are three different situations that Google Instant counts impressions:.

1.  Any click on the page – If the user begins to type a search query and then clicks anywhere on the page, an impression is counted.  This includes clicking on a search result, a sponsored link, spelling correction or a related search.

2.  Search selection – If the user clicks the Search button, presses Enter or clicks on one of the predicted queries, an impression is counted.

3.  ‘Three second rule’ – If the user stops typing and the search results are displayed for at least three seconds, an impression is counted.

That being said, we must anticipate that Google Instant will increase the amount of impressions received by the keywords in our accounts.  Hopefully this increase of potentially frivolous impressions will not have the negative impact on CTR that we would expect.  As we have talked about before, a poor CTR can be a detriment to Google AdWords Quality Score forcing advertisers to increase their maximum cost-per-click (CPC) in order to be seen in higher positions in the search results.

Only time will tell how Google Instant will impact the Google AdWords accounts of the hundreds of thousands of businesses who advertise their goods and services on Google.com.  Hopefully Google Instant will be a good thing, providing timelier search results to users and more qualified clicks to advertisers.  Fingers crossed – Google, please don’t disappoint!

How can I show my Google AdWords ads with Seller Ratings Extensions?

Here is what we found out: Only certain ads are eligible to appear with the new Seller Ratings Extensions and none of the current account settings need to be changed in order to be eligible.  Once a Google AdWords advertiser meets the criteria listed below, the distribution of their ads with the Seller Ratings Extensions is automatic.  This means that the ads are automatically opted in to showing seller ratings with the ads on Google Product Search.

Here are the criteria:

* Advertiser’s campaign must be opted in to Google search.

* Advertiser’s campaign must be targeted to the United States ONLY.

* Advertiser’s business must have at least 30 unique reviews and a rating of four stars or higher on Google Product Search.

* Advertisers do NOT have to have a Google Merchant Center account to be eligible to have their ads shown with the Seller Ratings Extensions.

* Advertisers will only be charged if the headline of the ad is clicked on.  Clicks on the review link are free.

While this is a wonderful extension to Google’s ever growing list of product extensions designed to help merchants provide their potential customers with highly targeted and relevant information when searching, some merchants may not be too keen on the idea.  To opt out of this extension, the merchant will need to complete a form requesting that Google disable the Seller Rating Extensions in their ads.  Google does not recommend this as the Seller Rating Extensions “is likely to increase the amount of qualified traffic” to their website from their ads.

Personally, I think this is a marvelous addition to Google arsenal of Ad Extensions.  With the internet FULL of sites like Yelp, Ripoff Report, Consumer Reports, Trip Advisor, Epinions, etc. it’s blatantly obvious that reviews and ratings matter to the average consumer.  This is Google’s way of inching one step closer to the ideal, perfectly targeted and extremely relevant PPC ad. If you think that your business could benefit from a professional PPC Management Company, please feel free to contact Jumpfly.  PPC is all we do.

I have to respectfully disagree wholeheartedly to Steve’s last statement.  I use my Droid smartphone WAY more than my desktop or laptop – even when I am at home and the computers are easily accessible.  It’s just more convenient to have the information right there at my fingertips to be able to sift through quickly.  The amount of searches I perform for local restaurants, stores, coupons, song lyrics etc. from my smartphone is staggering (admittedly, I’m probably addicted to my phone more than the average user, but still…).  I truly believe that Apple has no chance in overtaking Google in any advertising arena, even Mobile.

The iAd announcement will, however, hopefully prove to the FTC that Google’s acquisition of AdMob is not the monopoly maker they thought it would be.  Google seems to love healthy competition and barely even flinched when Bing.com was born – they seem to realize that there is plenty of business to go around in the paid search world.

With mobile advertising anticipated to become a HUGE revenue producer in the next few years, who can blame Apple for wanting to capitalize and take their share of the pie?  Industry numbers indicate that over $400 million was spent by mobile advertisers in 2009 and analysts predict that by 2013 that number is expected to nearly QUADRUPLE!  This is definitely enough projected revenue for all the key players to make their fair share of profits and make their shareholders happy.

So, like I said in my last blog post…no one knows who will win this battle OR the raging war between Google AdWords and Apple iAd, but as long as people are using their PCs and mobile devices to search the internet – Google wins.

So, how else does Twitter plan on making a profit?  Answer:  PAID SEARCH

Twitter recently announced that it is planning to launch its own online advertising program this year which will resemble the Google AdWords PPC platform.  According to reports, these future Twitter ads will use the same 140 (or fewer) character parameters as users Tweets.  Ad results will be tied directly to Twitter users’ searches and will not appear unsolicited in their Tweet Stream – which is critical.  The fact that Twitter will not show unsolicited ads to their users is greatly appreciated by this Twitter user.  There is already enough “spam” in most Tweet Streams, adding advertisements to the mix would be enough to drive some users crazy.

Although the proposed Twitter advertising platform will be similar to Google AdWords, it will also have one major difference.  Instead of offering Twitter advertising direct to advertisers, they will be targeting ad agencies and buyers.  This is just one more reason to take you online advertising business to the next level and use a professional PPC Management Company like JumpFly.