What would the top 3 things be, to improve the value of AdWords in your marketing mix?
Shak
more choices in selection of partner/content/domain park sites etc etc, not a blanket policy.
better inventory tool/estimator, rather than taking a wild guess every time its used.
equal rules for all, including www superstars worth 100s of millions of $$$s, who play by their own set of rules.
oh yea, and bring back premium listings ...
Shak
1) more choices in selection of partner/content/domain park sites etc etc, not a blanket policy. I personally shy away from content ads in almost every case, but would reconsider them with more control.
2) better inventory tool/estimator, rather than taking a wild guess every time its used. In addition, I would like to see estimated impression data in this tool, since I often can ballpark my ad's CTR based on similar ads in similar environments. Maybe even let me enter an estimated CTR myself.
3) [ok, I know this may be unrealistic, but...] faster reporting. Especially when using AdWords for testing, the delay in getting data can be very frustrating. For high-volume terms, it is possible to spend a lot of money before knowing if something is working. Therefore I sometimes set daily limits that increase the time for testing and increase the time before I can roll it out and give Google lots of money if it is working well.
4) [following Shak's lead by including 4] a "spend $xx" or "continue for x,**** visitors" setting for testing. For instance, I may want to get 1,000 visitors to a particular page to test conversion. It would be nice to have the campaign automatically go into Pause mode at the 1,000th click. This one would largely eliminate my issues in #3 above.
5) [okay, I'm totally ignoring the 3 thing now] allow more control over bids by time of day and day of week. There are certain things that convert well at certain times and not others, and some I cannot make profitable without this control, while others could be more profitable (and allow for higher bids at times) with this control.
MQ
more choices in selection of partner/content/domain park sites etc etc, not a blanket policy
That is my number one by far.
What I think G really needs is better communication - not necessarily for each support request (that's a different issue), but a bimonthly newsletter that contains information about the small updates, and how to take advantage of them.
A newsletter about how to GeoTarget, what the matching options are in details, how to find negative keywords (often WW thread type info), I think would make people understand AdWords more - and therefore spend more.
Much of this info is in the FAQs, but try to find dynamic insertion in the FAQs if you don't know the name. You need a clue about what you're searching for to find the answer - there is no 'just browse here to see what other features really exist' feature that's easy to find from the AdWords page.
This communication also goes to the account level. I get email for a variety of names becaue Google doesn't realize the account is being managed by a 3rd party. Calling G, and them asking 'Is this Karen?' when its obviousally a guy's voice is kinda weird.
Lastly, stop being so 'secretive'. G likes to make everyone guess how things work. Let us know the search numbers for keywords, the 'average bid price' (not necessarily everyone's but an average/medium. Estimating a budget for a campaign is almost impossible, and this secretiveness goes a long ways towards people thinking G is mysterious and not quite sure how to do business/approach them.
Its obvious by the posts here, people aren't willing to give G a call for issues that make their accounts not work - when a five minute phone call could solve their problems, and make G more money as those ads would be running.
That might have sounded more like a rant that I intended, but I do belive the points are valid.
- bring the graphical relevancy bar below the ads back
- better communication with support, a personal support representative for all my needs (I don't like to explain the same issue again and again and again)
- ads should be reviewed by the same rules; the rules should mean the same for all reviewers. What one reviewer approves should every other reviewer approve as well and vice versa. Google is far away from this.
- abbility to pause keywords (set bidding to $0.00) instead of deleting them, adding them again and waiting for review again.
- abbility to see why a campaign doesn't show up. Keyword red flagged, title or description red flagged? 100k review, review after doing changes, or whatever reason. Abbility to make changes based on that or at least to know why campaigns are not running.
Also, I'd like a free Google shirt. :)
more choices in selection of partner/content/domain park sites etc etc, not a blanket policy. I personally shy away from content ads in almost every case, but would reconsider them with more control.
That's pretty much my number 1 as well.
2.) More information + communication - I want to find out that I can get a .pdf invoice from my account when the feature becomes available - not when I stumble over it a week later... A monthly newsletter (as suggested above) would be a great way of doing this.
3.) Less reporting lag (sorry, I know its an old one)
1. If Google can tell when someone "clicks" on my ad, why can't they me if a purchase was made, or at least if the person followed through to the order page. If we spend so much money with Google, help us out and let us know WHICH keywords produce....after all, it means more money for you...more for me....we will ALL be happy.
2. I liked the shaded ads....it separated all the "letters" on the page. Now all I see is a bunch of letters.
3. A way to SAVE all the negatives from an ad group and transfer them to a similar, but NEW campaign. As it stands now, I can't even highlight and save them.
4. A better way to stop affiliate link theft... Cookies? Can I get a cookie?
Thanks Guys for Making this forum a great place to visit!
Shelbeesmom
Shelbeesmom,
1. If Google can tell when someone "clicks" on my ad, why can't they me if a purchase was made, or at least if the person followed through to the order page. If we spend so much money with Google, help us out and let us know WHICH keywords produce....after all, it means more money for you...more for me....we will ALL be happy.
They actually do this. It has to be your own site though. You can use any good tracking program to do this, as long as it is your own site. You can use Google's tracking code, or another programs.
3. A way to SAVE all the negatives from an ad group and transfer them to a similar, but NEW campaign. As it stands now, I can't even highlight and save them.
Go into the adgroup with the negs that you want to transfer to the new Campaign. Click on Edit KeyWords or Ad KeyWords, (I forget which one). There will be a text box with all of your KeyWords in there. Go to the bottome and copy the negatives. Then you can simply paste them into the new Campaign. If you want negatives spread across a whole campaign, you can do that now too with the new feature they added a little while back.
. A better way to stop affiliate link theft... Cookies? Can I get a cookie?
This has nothing to do with Google. They are simply an advertising medium. What do you mean by affiliate link theft? Parasite ware? Other aff's putting in their code instead? If it is other Aff's doing it, then they will get the commission either way. Parasite ware needs to be stopped though... But again, that is not AdWords issue.
All the Best,
C.K.
2.) ABILITY TO BLOCK - Ability to exclude certain Adsense sites and ability to exclude all or part of WebSearch sites.
3.) CLICK FOR SEARCH - I want to be able to click the adword in the reports and pop open a window with a G search on that term. Search should respect the matching type.
4.) AWA ALERT - Button in the reports which pages AWA's cellphone 24 hours a day.....
I STILL routinely cannot run reports on my MAC which PC's can run. This is clearly a MSIE-MAC related issue. Has been there since the begining.
If my 'Mac' money is just as green, why do I get second class service?
Google
Search Partners (excluding web search)
Content
WebSearch
2. To make "Google only" the default option (would lead to less competition on other categories so we would therefore get far more involved in the other categories - appreciate that this would be very costly for Google)
3. Have ability to bid on only content adverts - some products work well in this environment but can't get the minimum search click through.
3 and a quarter. Be able to see the actual phrases clicked on (and better still, those not clicked on but which received an impression)
3 and a half. Rank exact matches higher than broad match so local advertisers have more of a chance.
I plan to pass on a link to the entire thread, as well as quote some of the posts verbatim. Your chance to be heard!
Helpful stuff. Many thanks!
* Ok, well, that may be overstating it a tiny bit.
AWA
This won't cause me to spend more money, but it will make me happy :-]
1. A place where you can see duplicate Keywords that are in various AdGroups, per Campaign.
All the Best,
C.K.
Ideally, Google would use that information and optimize my keyword rotation in terms of time and place based on when it's most likely to convert for strict keywords.
Ie, this means that if I broad match on "blue widgets", and if at 3am on AOL "great blue widgets" convert well for me, google would see that and increase my bid / rankings for AOl at that time. If 2am on some content website I suck, then they would decrease my rankings for that content website at that time.
I'd probably need some control, like to say optimize on a daily/weekly/monthly/yearly basis.
In another thread AWA fears it could be technically overwehlming, but it's got to be worth investigating. It is the key to making intelligent pricing decisions, intelligent pricing decisions = happy advertisers, happy advertisers = happy google...
2) More choices in selection of partner/content/domain park sites etc etc, not a blanket policy.
Impossible to overestimate the importance of this one.
tennis shoe
should work for:
tennis shoe
tennis shoes
shoe tennis
shoes tennis
ONLY. I doen't want it to work for:
green tennis shoe (a phrase match)
Maybe it's because I'm lazy, because I could just add a list of keywords as above, but when you have three keyword phrases or more (all of which can be pluralised), it becomes a real pain.
Also, the ability to set a click threshhold so that we can test new ad groups. I should be able to add a new ad group, set a number of clicks (I'd probably use 1000), and have the ads show until around 1000 clicks occur. Then, I could evaluate the cost and conversion of the new ad group and decide to continue or kill it.
I often need to make many changes across many different adgroups. It means lots of mousing, cutting and pasting, etc.
If only I could do it all in a spreadsheet and then upload it!
2. ability to nuke competitors using our brand name / trade mark.
3. ability to avoid constant disablement for 3% and 4% CTR by some simple method.
2. like others suggested, more control over where ad appears (beyond search network/content network)
3. Perhaps longer time before my session times out? :)
*** accuracy in reporting ***
(this is not a new feature request, but more like a 'please fix the exisiting feature(s) so it actually works...' type request)
I notice that when I have an adword that is cycling from one status to another, the reporting interface (csv download) only shows the most recent status all the way back to the beginning of time...
This is particularly annoying as I want to see the 'arc' of the status - from strong to moderate, etc - nevermind the client will REALLY want to see this...
Right now, some of my soon-to be diabled adwords start off in their first day as 'at risk'.
Please fix this - please fix this retroactively so the status column shows the actual change in status over time.
PS -- I am also seeing some anomalies in the reporting interface where MAX CPC is .15 and Average CPC is more than 300% of this - and this is for an account where I am not changing CPC.
Seems to me, with all due respect, this is a couple of issues that a good QC/QA Kaizen team would smoke out and fix - I sure hope there is such a thing as QC/QA going on over at the 'Plex.
(edited to report additonal anomaly)
2. More intelligent analysis of content network partners pages as related to negative keywords. "e.g. if I've set "plus size" as a negative keyword, I should never get hits from pages specifically about plus size clothing."
A page listing what hits occured, where they came from, and some boxes that allowed me to manually turn off sites/pages would be perfect.
