AdWords Search Funnels (beta)

[engine]

AdWords Search Funnels [adwords.blogspot.com]

AdWords Search Funnels are a set of reports describing the ad click and impression behavior on Google.com that leads up to a conversion. In addition to a Top Conversions report, Search Funnels consist of 7 reports including Assisted Conversions, First and Last Click Analysis, Time Lag, and Path Length.

In order to help you make more informed decisions about your AdWords keywords, ad groups, and campaigns, we're excited to release a new set of reports for your AdWords account: AdWords Search Funnels (beta). Currently, conversions in AdWords are attributed to the last ad someone clicks before making a conversion, masking the fact that many customers perform multiple searches before finally converting. AdWords Search Funnels help you see the full picture by giving you insight into the ads your customers interact with during their shopping process.

[netmeg]

This is pretty cool.

[LukeC]

All this information is great but do they give us any tools to help us optimise our campaigns in an efficient manner?

For instance there are various PPC management tools out there that already do this, you can set up rules to divide credit to different sources, or in this case, different keywords.

How do other forum members think that this will help them optimise their campaigns?

[UserFriendly]

Does that mean that one advertiser will see a list of rival advertisers whose sites the user visited but with whom the visitor chose not to spend cash?

[Petrogold]

Does this change Google policy on AW? There are many loopholes in AW campaigns. They are very hard losing a lot of $ on the table while other PPC companies grab it with easy policy. Will they review their position?

[LukeC]

Does that mean that one advertiser will see a list of rival advertisers whose sites the user visited but with whom the visitor chose not to spend cash?

No they will not show competitor info, only your own.

[LukeC]

I see this will not be integrated with Google Conversions for sometime, which would make it really useful as I would imagine you could distribute credit to all keywords in the keyword path.

There are PPC management tools that already do this though and they do it with all your incoming traffic, so you can see whether other channels are involved in the sales cycle, but of course they are not free..

[beetricks]

I'm curious to know how other folks anticipate using this information? How do you see it influencing your decisions? What if your brand keyword is a heavy last-click contributor to conversions, but a more expensive head term is driving the first click to the brand? Would you ever minimize spend on or give up your brand keywords?

Also - is anyone seeing any unexpected results? For example, I'm seeing several paths which have multiple clicks on the same keyword.

[roots]

There are PPC management tools that already do this though and they do it with all your incoming traffic.

I would say that there are analytical tools that are offering such a feature for a long, long time. They are not free, but you can develop a tool that will log the 1st, 2nd to last external referrer. Real problem is with success allocation. Most people are just looking at last referrer, some are using first, some are allocation a portion to each one.

I'm seeing several paths which have multiple clicks on the same keyword.

Are you looking at bid keywords (broad of phrase matching), or searched keyword?

[beetricks]

Keywords - and you're right, I wish the query path were visible!

[LauraWView]

I'm a bit concerned that I might be missing something here - when I look at the search funnels, they don't actually drill down to keyword level? Am I mistaken?

[LauraWView]

Ignore that - got it ;)