Google AdWords Changes You Need to Understand NOW
by Michael - June 3rd, 2008 6:00 am
If you make use of the Google AdWords program, this is information you need to know now. Google is phasing in a new feature that can have a serious impact on your campaigns.  Thanks to an email from Perry Marshall (big time web marketing guru and all around great guy) and his email mailing list, I learned about this change and of course I wanted to share it with you.
When you log in to your AdWords account, you will see a notice that says:
“New! Automatic matching has been enabled in your account. Your ads will now show for additional relevant search queries based on the keywords, ad text, and landing pages in your ad groups. You can opt out by visiting a keyword-targeted campaign, and then clicking on edit campaign settings.”
So what does this mean to you?
Here is the text of the email quoted in full, since it wouldn’t make much sense for me to restate it:
Google is phasing a MAJOR feature into the AdWords program. If you log into your account you’ll see a notice that says,
“New! Automatic matching has been enabled in your account. Your ads will now show for additional relevant search queries based on the keywords, ad text, and landing pages in your ad groups. You can opt out by visiting a keyword-targeted campaign, and then clicking on edit campaign settings.”
If you edit your campaign settings, you’ll see a check box that says:
“Automatic matching: Show ads on more search queries without adding keywords.”
And in your ad groups at the bottom of your keyword list, you’ll see a new column labeled “Automatic matching total.”
What this means is, if you’re bidding on a keyword like “dog grooming”, Google may show your ad for a keyword like “pet grooming brush” even though you’re not bidding on it at all.
The question is, do you want this?
First of all, there’s no way to know for sure unless you’re using conversion tracking.
In fact, you should disable this feature immediately unless you have conversion tracking enabled and hold Google accountable for the quality of traffic they’re sending you.
***DO NOT USE THIS FEATURE UNLESS YOU TRACK THE CONVERSIONS FROM ‘AUTOMATIC MATCHING’ TRAFFIC.***
Now, if you do use this feature, I’m OK with that… it’s not terribly different from using the Content Network. Hang with me for a minute so I can explain.
When the Content Network (traffic from AdSense) was new, it was lousy. The quality of clicks was normally very poor. But over time it improved and now content traffic, for SOME people, is really great traffic.
Automatic Matching traffic will seldom be better traffic, except maybe for people who simply do not know what they’re doing in AdWords.
AdWords advertisers who learn this game from me are always control freaks. They don’t want to just take what Google gives ‘em. (Hey, that’s how you gain an advantage that Google doesn’t have.) The ideal way to do this would be to use the bootstrapping technique I’ve taught for years, which is:
-Campaign 1 has bids set at, say, $1.00 with Automatic Matching OFF
-Campaign 2 has bids set at, say, $0.75, with Automatic Matching ON
This will shift all the Automatic Matching traffic into Campaign 2 and you’ll have complete control of it.
One thing I do not see is an opportunity to adjust bid prices for Automatic Matching. Maybe someday…
You will be able to see performance reports on automatic-matched keywords by running a ’search query performance’ report.
On next month’s group Mastermind Call on June 26 (http://www.perrymarshall.com/mastermind), my Gladiators and Mastermind Club members will compare notes about what we’ve seen — we’ll mix it up with all the latest action.
To your success,
Perry Marshall
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