Google Analytics: Tracking 3rd Party PPC

If any of you have utilized your Google analytics account to track PPC programs outside of Google Adwords you have no doubt run into a tracking issue or two. Here is a quick run-down of how to get your URLs tagged appropriately in order to track accurately:

Data from Google AdWords is automatically included in your Analytics reports (assuming you have AdWords and Analytics linked). For your 3^rd party PPC campaigns, the “how” is pretty simple. First, go to Google’s URL Builder tool, and enter the destination URL from your ad texts (i.e. landing page). From here you can enter the five parameters that will become your URL tag.

• utm_source: This is the name of the search engine or the source of traffic (i.e. Yahoo, MSN, email newsletter, blue banner ad).
• utm_medium: This is how you tell Analytics what type of traffic your source is (i.e. cpc, email, banner).
• utm_term: This is where you detail keywords! This can be manually entered or dynamically generated with Yahoo’s {OVKEY} or MSN’s {QueryString} parameters.
• utm_content: Consider this the ad variation or ad group. You choose how detailed you want to get. Typically, I designate this as the ad group for my PPC campaigns.
• utm_campaign: If the name isn’t obvious enough – this is where you designate the name of your campaigns!

Once the tool gives you the fully tagged URL, all you need to do is copy and paste that URL into your ad texts. Google Analytics will do the rest of the work for you and begin giving you keyword level data for all of your PPC campaigns!

Have any additional tips? Please feel free to add in the comments!

FAQs on Adwords Quality Score

The AdWords quality score is an ongoing mystery to both inexperienced advertisers as well as pay per click 'experts'. As with most things Google, it is shrowded in mystery - although more and more of the 100's of factors are being brought to the forefront. Regardless, there is a need for what IS known to be documented in one place for all to access. Behold the FAQs on Google Adwords Quality Score!

Luckily for us, Jeremy Mayes over at PPC Discussions has put together a very comprehensive list of questions. All of his answers are backed up with personal experience and/or references straight from the horse's mouth - ie. Google.

Here is a quick run-down of the questions covered. It is a great read!

Question 1 - How can I improve my quality score?
*answers are applicable to search network quality scores

Question 2 - How many quality scores are there?

Question 3 - Will changing to a different keyword match type, for example from broad match to exact match, give me a better quality score?

Question 4 - I have been told (and read lots of places) that when I first start a new AdWords campaign I should bid really high so my ad is higher on the page. That will give me a higher click through rate and that means I will have a better quality score. Is that good advice?

Question 5 - Having Flash on your landing page is bad for your quality score right?

Question 6 - I get a lot of clicks from the Google Search Network. Does that help improve my quality score?

Question 7 - Does using dynamic keyword insertion help my quality score?

Question 8 - Does turning off the content network help improve my quality score? My CTR is always a lot lower on the content network so I assume turning it off will help my quality score improve.

Question 9 - How can I find out what my quality score is?

Question 10 - I am the only person bidding on a certain keyword but my minimum bid is higher than I think it should be. If I'm the only one bidding how come my minimum bid isn't $0.01? My quality score is "OK".

Question 11 - I just a made a lot of changes to my AdWords campaigns and to my landing pages to try and improve my quality score. How soon should I expect to see quality score changes in my account?

Question 12 - I just added a bunch of new keywords to my account and almost 1/2 of them received a poor quality score and minimum bid of $5.00 right away before I ever received a single impression. How the hell can Google say I have a poor quality score before my ad even gets a chance to run?

Question 13 - It seems like no matter what I do or try my quality score is always poor. Are there certain types of sites that just don't work well with AdWords?
Question 14 - Is there a site or something I can sign up to find out in advance about quality score updates before they happen?

This FAQ will be updated from time to time so be sure to bookmark. If you have any questions related to the AdWords quality score feel free to contact me or leave your question in the comments.

Google Confirms Page Load Time Affects Quality Score

Google finally confirms that page load time affects your PPC Quality Score. You can follow more of the conversation in both WebmasterWorld and Search Engine Watch Forums. It will be interesting to see if Yahoo's Quality Score calculation follows!

Here are the details:

• This factor is not yet live yet.
• There is no official date as to when it will go live.
• Google thought they would launch it, so they put it in the FAQs but did pulled back and forgot to remove it from the full dump FAQs.
• Google planned an Inside AdWords blog post to announce this in advance.
• We will probably see a blog post on this within a week at Google's blog.
• Google confirmed the page load time grade will be displayed on the Keyword Analysis Page.
• "Several weeks" after you see your page load time grade, the page load time metric will be used in the overall AdWords quality score.

Some important questions remain, however. What happens if a site is having temporary server issues, does that advertiser have to suffer for a whole month until Google checks the page load time again? How many seconds is considered a bad page load time? And so on... I assume these questions will be addressed in the AdWords blog post that is likely coming within a week.

Geotargeting in Google Adwords

Ok, I'll say it. "I love Google Adwords." Let's be honest. They have a better interface that is more user friendly. They offer more tools that display better results whether it be for initial research or campaign management. Adwords easily drives more traffic than Yahoo and MSN. Most importantly, Google Adwords provides better geo-targeting options than any other pay per click vendor out there. All of that is, of course, my own personal opinion.
So you're running an AdWords campaign for your business, but you only want to target specific locations. How can you do that? Easy. You just go into your campaign settings and set the location to the area you want to target. But what options do you have? Simon Heseltine over at Search Engine Guide has put together a number of ways you can utilize geo-targeting and Google Adwords to benefit your business.

Google recently updated their interface to catch up with Yahoo Search Marketing's panama release in December 2006. This new release nicely integrates maps into the existing targeting system. In fact, the new features not only help them catch up with Yahoo!, they've moved them way ahead of Yahoo!.

So how granular is the targeting on Adwords?

Continent level? Country bundling is a new feature, and allows you to quickly select a group of geographically similar countries, which you can add to and subtract from as needed.

Country level? Most companies will go with the default of US, but consider your audience. If your products are targeted towards armed forces personnel you may want to add countries like Germany, Afghanistan and Iraq.

State level? Even apart from state-wide business possibilities there are interesting options here. Consider a politician aiming to influence people in certain states during the primary season.

Metro level? In the old system you had no idea whether metro level encompassed a specific suburb. Now with the map you can see for certain. (Note: The zoom capability gives you much more visibility than that in Yahoo!.)

City level? You can add as many cities as you want from to the list, not necessarily contiguous.

Radius around a point? Just don't try to go down to a 3 mile delivery radius for your pizza place.

Custom shape? - In case you wanted to target those 'inside the beltway' politicians.

So what else is new? You can now exclude areas within your target. So say you want to target the entire US except for Tennessee, you just select the entire US, then select Tennessee as an exception. Here's an example with bits of New Jersey taken out of the Philly Metro area.

Of course, you still have all of the existing issues with geotargeting, in that the ads will be shown to users based on where their IP address resolves to, which may or may not be where they're physically located, or based on the content of their search (if someone is in Peoria searching for Atlanta Restaurants, then it makes sense to show an ad for a restaurant that geotargets to Atlanta). However, these features do make the process of setting up geotargeting for your campaigns much easier.

Hey Yahoo!, Google's made the move; it's your turn to try to jump over them in this game of leapfrog.

200+ Negative Keywords for B2B PPC Campaigns

If you are a B2B pay per click advertiser this is a must read! Actually, even folks reaching the B2C market can surely pull some ideas from this list as well. As a paid search engine advertiser, I use negative keywords extensively in my Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns and/or Ad Groups to weed out unwanted clicks and an un-targeted audience.

Negative keywords are words and phrases that you do not want searchers to associate with your products and services (see Google’s AdWords blog for some high-level information on this topic).

When you add negative keywords to your PPC campaigns your ads will not be served if those words are part of the user’s search query.

Not only does this benefit you by directly saving money on wasted clicks, it also improves the click through rate (CTR) of your keywords/ads, which helps improve your ad quality scores in Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Improved quality scores can help you with bidding strategies by allowing you to bid less than a competitor and maintain a high/higher ad positions on a search results page.

Andy Komack, through 6 years of pay per click advertising, has put together quite an impressive list of negative keywords for various types of B2B search marketing campaigns and I have found this list to be an extremely important tool in building my own campaigns.

This list is by no means exhaustive, and each company has its own unique market positioning. So, do not use this list of negative keywords indiscriminately!!! The list of B2B negative keywords below is meant to be a resource for you, and a starting point when you are deciding which words you do not want associated with your ads.

Avoiding Job Seekers
Prevent your ads from appearing for common employment and career-related searches:

career
careers
employment
hiring
intern
interns
internship
internships
job
jobs
recruiter
recruiting
resume
resumes
salaries
salary

Reference Keywords
Don’t waste money on people looking for information that is only loosely related to your products/services or industry:

about
definition
diagram
example
examples
history
map
maps
sample
samples
what are
what is

No Research & Stats
Assuming you have a limited advertising budget, avoid people doing research, and make sure your are using your advertising $$ to generate sales and qualified leads:

association
associations
book
books
case studies
case study
guide
guides
journal
journals
magazine
magazines
metrics
news
research
review
reviews
statistics
stats
success stories
success story
tutorial
tutorials
white paper
white papers

We Don’t Provide Education
Prevent your ads from being shown to people looking for classes and education:

class
classes
college
colleges
course
courses
education
school
schools
training
universities
university

No Bargains
These negative keywords will help if you are positioned as a premium provider. If you do want visitors for these keyword concepts, create an additional campaign or ad group to focus on these discount concepts, and specifically bid on keywords that contain these words. And then make sure to add this list of negative keywords to the campaigns or ad groups that do not target the discount audience:

bargain
cheap
clearance
close out
close outs
closeout
closeouts
discount
discounted
free
inexpensive
liquidation
odd lots
overstock
remainder
remainders

Avoiding Price Shoppers
You may want visitors to your site looking for pricing and/or quotes, but if not, make sure to add in these words as negative keywords to avoid prospects who may be more concerned with price than with quality or service:

price
prices
pricing
quote
quotes

Avoiding DIY
In many industries there are “do-it-yourselfers” or hobbyists who are searching for information on how to take on a project themselves. It’s a good idea to screen out this audience if you do not cater to it:

craft
crafts
create
creating
hand made
handmade
home
homemade
how to
make
making

Selling Commercial Software
This is a tricky one. If you are a company selling commercial or enterprise software, a) you are likely to want to avoid the thousands of software developers who are looking for free resources, and b) you want to avoid confusion with consumers looking for tools and home-use products. Use this list as a starting point, but also brainstorm and use keyword suggestion tools to find potential negative keywords that are specific to your software space:

burn
burner
cd
code
community
desktop
developer
developers
disk
download (if you don’t have one)
downloads (if you don’t have any)
dvd
error
file
files
forum
free
freeware
game
games
gnu
hack
hacks
libraries
library
microsoft ( )
open source
public domain
retail
retail
retailer
retailers
shareware
shortcut
shortcuts
template
templates
tip
tips
video
windows

Manufacturing & Industrial
This is a very broad list of words, covering many different concepts related to manufacturing and industrial companies. Use this list to start the process of generating negative keywords specific to your industry, product lines, and business model.

antique
consumer
export
exporter
exporters
hobby
import
importer
importers
measurement
model
models
regulations
rent
rental
repair
repairs
retail
retailer
retailers
rules
safety
specifications
specs
standards
store
toy
toys
used
vintage

Product Materials
Obviously not all of these materials will apply to one business. I created this list of product materials as a reminder to screen out searches for product types that a company does not offer. One might wonder if it is OK to not screen for these in the hopes that someone will search for one type of product, but be convinced to buy a different type once they see what is available. Most B2B marketers have limited PPC budgets, so usually it is a better idea to only show your ads to people who don’t have a specific alternative to your products already in mind:

aluminum
ceramic
cotton
fabric
glass
gold
iron
leather
metal
paper
plastic
rubber
silver
stainless steel
steel
stone
vinyl
wood

Legal/Law
It is probably a good idea to prevent your ads from being shown to people looking for information related to legislation and regulations. There will be cases where this might not apply, especially if your product/service solves a regulatory/compliance issue (and if you have a landing page on your site that speaks to the legal issue AND provides a conversion action right there on the page):

act
act of
compliance
law
laws
legal
legislation
regulation
regulations

Other Negative Keywords B2B Marketers May Consider
Here are just a few more words that seem to come up in B2B search advertising campaigns…

club
clubs
consultants
consulting
gift
gifts
online
photo
photograph
photographs
picture
pictures
send
sending

Remember, the list above is not comprehensive, and does not apply to all B2B marketers.

While you're at it, check out this free trial for Market Samurai - it truely is one of the best keyword research tools available!

Google Analytics 101 - Part 1

In the past, we've often mentioned Google Analytics as a great tool that helps you learn more about how visitors reach your website and what they do once they get there. But now's a good time to take a step back and talk about how to get started with Google Analytics from the very first step. The Google Analytics Blog is providing a series of "Analytics 101" articles that will walk you through sign up, installation, and using reports.

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a free, hosted web analytics service that provides useful data for website and marketing optimization. Site owners and marketers can make better informed decisions about their sites and campaigns by using metrics from Google Analytics reports. Google Analytics works by collecting information about your site traffic and advertising campaigns, combining this with e-commerce and conversion information to provide insight into the performance of your marketing efforts and site content.

Anyone can sign up using a Google account by visiting http://www.google.com/analytics/. You don't even need to have an AdWords account beforehand.

How do I sign up and install Google Analytics?

After signing up for a Google Analytics account comes the most important part of installation -- the tracking code snippet. Every Analytics user is given a unique piece of JavaScript code to insert in all site pages immediately before the </body> tag. The code snippet may look like something like this example below:

<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js ' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-#####-#");
pageTracker._initData();
pageTracker._trackPageview();
</script>

(For illustrative purposes only.)

Your "UA-#####-#" number will be unique to you. It's important to insert the code on all of your site's pages; otherwise Analytics won't be giving you the whole picture of what's going on.

If you're not ready to insert the code now, you can always retrieve this code later. Depending on the size of your site and the number of pages you need tagged, you may want to discuss installation with your webmaster, if you have one.

How do I view my reports?

After you've finished signup, you'll be taken to the Analytics Settings page. The Status box on the right side of this page will let you know whether the code has been properly inserted. It's important to note, however, that it takes anywhere from a few hours to a full day after code installation for your reports to start gathering and showing information.

Once the Status box in the Analytics Settings page says that you're receiving data, you can click the View Reports link to receive reports about your website traffic.

That's it for this first installment of Google Analytics 101. Try playing around with a few reports. If you want to learn more right away, the Analytics Help Center is a great resource for information. Look for the next installment soon, when we'll explain more about administering your account and using your reports.

New Adwords Seminars

AdWords Seminars coming near you

I posted a quick blurb on Yahoo's free search marketing webinars yesterday so I thought I would give Adwords seminars a shoutout as well.

If you are ready to kick-start your AdWords account in 2008, be sure not to miss these AdWords Seminars. The seminars are offered by search marketing professionals who are also Qualified Invididuals in the Google Advertising Professionals program like myself. Sessions have just been added in St. Louis, Miami, Las Vegas, Denver, and San Francisco.

If you sign up 7 days before the seminar date Google is even throwing in a $50 AdWords advertising credit. (View the terms and conditions of advertising credits.)

You'll find more information about these seminars, including dates, course outlines, and registration instructions at http://www.google.com/awseminars. On the site, you can browse through the schedule of upcoming seminars in the new handy calendar. If you would rather be informed when AdWords Seminars become available in your area, simply fill out this form.

Google Updates Keyword Tool

Adwords Keyword Tool Update

Google seems to have updated the look of the AdWords Keyword Tool.

Here is a before shot:

And here are after shots:

They have updated their keyword tool a "website content" option as well:

Google Adwords Launches Local Plus Box

Google announced the launch of the AdWords Local Plus box. When you conduct some local searches, the sponsored listings may contain a plus sign, which you can click and expand into a map. There have been reports of this 'coming soon' but it is nowofficially live. Here are a couple screen captures:

Here is a picture of the AdWords plus sign closed:

Here is a picture of the AdWords plus sign open:

Advertisers will not be charged for clicking on the plus sign, they will only be charged for clicks on the link that takes the searcher to the advertiser's destination.

How do you get your ads to show up like this? If you are already a local business advertiser with Google, then you won't have to do anything. The only requirement is that the ad be in the top yellow ad position, ads on the right side of the page, will not contain the plus sign.

eBay Pulls AdWords Advertising Dollars!

Well, it isn't often that Google gets a slap in the face ... hardly ever actually ... sure, there are teh impending lawsuits here and there but usually whoever has the most expensive lawyer wins that battle ... and we all know how deep Google's pockets are!

So, now eBay has signed an exclusive advertiser deal with Yahoo! Could Yahoo be making a move to take back some market share?

Read below:

Report: eBay Pulls AdWords; Google Protest Crumbles

eBay has discontinued its advertising through Google's AdWords platform in the U.S., reports InfoWorld.

The move comes as the latest in the equivalent of a corporate chess match between Google and eBay. The two have been circling each other for a while, largely over eBay's decision to disallow use of Google's Checkout system for auctions on the site.

eBay owns PayPal, one of the biggest online payment services, and a direct competitor to Google Checkout. The camel's back may have been broken over Google throwing a protest party on the same night eBay held a merchant's conference dubbed eBay Live.

Officials within eBay deny the decision to divorce AdWords is tied to the party plans but the company also admitted it isn't thrilled that Google was making such a move.

Yahoo signed a deal with eBay making it the sole provider of search and display ads on the auction site, something that also might be playing into making this decision. The move affects only US AdWords campaigns and was labeled by eBay as simply an experiment in ad dollar relocation.

UPDATE: Google apparently canceled the party, reports TechCrunch. You can read Google's statement on the cancellation here.