Googland

[G] AdWords Myths - common misperceptions about keywords
[G] Creating Targeted Tests using DoubleClick Ad Planner and Website Optimizer
[G] Picasa photo challenge goes to Europe!

[G] AdWords Myths - common misperceptions about keywords

Posted: 03 Aug 2010 03:00 AM PDT

Inside AdWords: AdWords Myths - common misperceptions about keywords

We're back to dispel a few more of the myths you may have heard about AdWords. If you missed the first AdWords myths post last week, check it out to learn about common misconceptions around AdWords billing and spending.

Today we'll cover three myths related to keywords and click-through-rate:

Myth # 3: Your conversion rate can impact your quality score

Fact: The conversion rate of your ads does not affect your quality score. Some advertisers using AdWords conversion tracking mistakenly believe that they should set an easy conversion event on their landing pages to artificially boost their conversion rates. In reality, this won't have any effect on their quality score and will simply make it harder to measure the true value of their AdWords investment.

Myth # 4: The AdWords keyword tool suggests keywords to use

Fact: The keyword tool doesn't make any kind of recommendations about which keywords you should be using. The keyword tool just analyzes related queries that might be of benefit to you and displays them. It's up to you to decide which keywords you want to include in your account.

You should always assess the tool's results in the context of your advertising goals. When you do so, the keyword tool can be a helpful way of finding new, meaningful keywords, including potentially profitable ones you aren't currently using and those that you might have excluded as negative keywords in order to protect your click-through-rate.

Myth # 5: Upper and lower case letters in AdWords keywords matter

Fact: The AdWords system doesn't distinguish between uppercase and lowercase letters.

"NYC" is the same as "nyc"
"Android Phone" is the same as "android phone"

For the sake of simplicity, we recommend that you enter all of your keywords as lowercase letters.

Check back in with us next week for the truth behind myths related to the AdWords auction!

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

URL: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2010/08/adwords-myths-common-misperceptions.html

[G] Creating Targeted Tests using DoubleClick Ad Planner and Website Optimizer

Posted: 02 Aug 2010 03:47 PM PDT

Official Google Website Optimizer Blog: Creating Targeted Tests using DoubleClick Ad Planner and Website Optimizer

This guest post was contributed by Daniel Waisberg, the Founder and Editor of Online Behavior, a Marketing Measurement & Optimization website. Daniel looks at how you can use DoubleClick Ad Planner to find ideas for testing.

Testing is probably the most effective way to optimize websites. Through testing we can understand what our customers like, which ultimately will help us create a better customer experience for our audience. But "our audience" is usually not a unique type of person; it is important use techniques such as Test Segmentation to understand the differences in the tastes of each cluster of customers.

However, where can you get ideas for tests? How do you choose, for example, if you should use an image of a man, a woman, a couple, a baby or a family? Most of us do not have the privilege of testing the YouTube homepage: traffic is limited for most sites, so it is important to run tests that have a high chance of making a difference. We have to focus our efforts on our best guesses. In this post, we will show a way to use DoubleClick Ad Planner to research for testing ideas that will be tailor made to the segments you are trying to target in your website.

Finding Your Audience on Ad Planner

In a recent blog post on the DoubleClick Advertiser Blog, the DoubleClick Ad Planner mission is described as:

...to provide the deepest, most accurate insight into online audiences possible. This insight helps display advertisers select the best sites for their media plans and drive results for their campaigns.

However, I believe this description is missing an important part, which is not less important to advertisers: to understand your audience tastes and which kind of websites they like. The DoubleClick Ad Planner provides important insights into how to design your campaign landing pages and your website at all.

So, let's suppose I am working to optimize the eMetrics Summit website for the San Francisco conference in 2011. The Summit targets marketing managers, web analysts and business intelligence experts that are trying to understand how to increase the return on online investments. Here is how to find the tastes and preferences of this audience:

Sign in to DoubleClick Ad Planner and create a new Media plan;
Go to Research tab, choose the Research by Audience secondary tab;
Choose among the various segmentation options in order to narrow the audience and the websites they visit. Below are the segments chosen for eMetrics San Francisco audience:

Geography: chose country USA and refined it to include only West Coast states. That's the main target for this show since eMetrics also hosts a Washington DC conference
Demographics: included both males and females, between 25 and 44 years old, with at least a bachelor degree, with a household income above $75K. I think this segment is very close to the audience of the conference (but I have no inside information)
Online Activity: chose a large website that the audience is likely to visit: Google Analytics
Interests: chose everything under 'Business' and 'Computers & Electronics'
Ranking Method: chose the ranking method to be 'Best Match' since we are not doing this analysis in order to find a place to advertise (in which case we might sort the websites by reach), but to find a place that our target likes to visit

Below is a screenshot from DoubleClick Ad Planner showing all the segmenting options and the audience created above. We can call the list created below "Website Testing Inspiration"

Click for full-size image

Getting Ideas for Your Test

Once we find the "Website Testing Inspiration" table, which shows the websites where our targeted audience is surfing around, we have the raw material necessary to get ideas for our testing efforts. Continuing our example above, we can visit the websites in the Top 10 websites that match our audience and start analyzing them.

So, here are a few insights from the analysis above for the eMetrics San Francisco home:

First of all, looks like Jim Sterne chose the right color, blue is very prominent in all the websites;
Idea #1: it could be worth a try to add some geeky machines to the page, such as in the Pitney Bowes, Kaiser Permanente and Frys websites;
Idea #2: call these companies and have someone present at eMetrics and feature it at the conference homepage;
Idea #3: submit a post to both TechCrunch and Gizmodo, which would certainly be happy to feature interesting content about social media metrics. The posts would be useful in order to promote the conference and, in terms of testing, the eMetrics homepage could try featuring in a prominent place that the conference is being quoted in these websites (something like "In the news");
Idea #4: interesting to see that Stack Overflow is number 5 on the list, a website for "professional and enthusiast programmers". It looks like many technical people are inside this audience. Maybe it could be worthwhile to try showing a classification on the site targeting different types of people: "Programmers only talks", "Business Minded talks", "Marketers, Statisticians and liars"...

These are initial ideas that should be discussed and improved based on the website and the target being studied. As the analysis gets deeper, the insights will become more valuable.

Bonus: Instead of looking for your audience and which sites they visit, you can also look into your competitors' sites and understand which segments they are attracting that you are not. Read more about it on Avinash's post: Competitive Intelligence Analysis: Google / DoubleClick Ad Planner.

URL: http://websiteoptimizer.blogspot.com/2010/08/creating-targeted-tests-using.html

[G] Picasa photo challenge goes to Europe!

Posted: 02 Aug 2010 08:47 AM PDT

Google Photos Blog: Picasa photo challenge goes to Europe!

Posted by Christina Lin, Picasa Forum GuidePost content

Last fall, as northern hemisphere-dwellers were enjoying the picturesque crisp days of autumn, we had an idea to host an Autumn photo challenge to uncover the hidden talents of the Picasa community. We were excited by the creativity and skill that our Picasa lovers displayed in our gallery &mdash see for yourself!

On a recent visit to Europe, we were so impressed with the architectural variety of the historical and contemporary buildings there that we were inspired to host the first Picasa Photo Challenge in Europe. We invited Dutch, French, German, Polish and Spanish communities to show off their best photo of architecture. Our Picasa community in Europe impressed and delighted us all. Unfortunately we could only choose one winner for each language group. The most 'liked' picture won the challenge and they are proudly featured on our Featured Photos page.

We want to thank all of our European users for their enthusiastic participation and a send a big congratulations to the winners!