Get Ready for Google’s New Adwords Interface

For those of you who haven’t tried it out yet, Google’s new Adwords interface is rolling out very soon!

Many advertisers, including us here at Getupdated, received an email a couple weeks ago saying that within 30 days we would automatically be switched to the new interface. This was sent out as Google’s attempt to warn us to be prepared for the switch.

If you are an active Pay Per Click advertiser, get ready for switch and familiarize yourself with the new interface. The feel is very different, so it might take some time to get used to.

Google Suggest Tool Makes Improvements to Help Search Engine Marketing

Google is improving its Google Suggest Tool so that it can better aid the efforts of search engine marketing. The Google Suggest Tool was introduced as a way to speed up the process of finding particular information that web users are looking for.

In an official blog post product managers, Matt Kulick, Jonathan Effrat and David Kadouch said that a number of new features will be added to Google Suggest.

The first new feature will be that while suggestions were previously only offered while making queries from the Google homepage, now suggestions will also be provided to users when making further search queries from the result pages.

Google Suggest will also show relevant past searches when users have web history enabled, thereby allowing them to repeat some of the searches that they carry out most often.

Finally, sponsored links will appear in the list of suggestions. This could be beneficial for companies looking to reach those most interested in their products and services with search engine marketing and pay per click ads.

Google Adwords Trademark Policy Changes

Google is now allowing advertisers to use trademark terms in their PPC ad text in the United States. Previously, advertisers were only allowed to bid on trademark keywords and not use them in their ad text. This made it very difficult for advertisers looking to sell a specific product and weren’t able to write the brand name of the product in the ad text.

Google has outlined the following guidelines describing the ways in which the trademark terms can now be used:

-Ads which use the term in a descriptive or generic way, and not in reference to the trademark owner or the goods or services corresponding to the trademark term.

-Ads which use the trademark in a nominative manner to refer to the trademark or its owner, specifically:

• Resale of the trademarked goods or services: The advertiser’s site must sell (or clearly facilitate the sale of) the goods or services corresponding to a trademark term. The landing page of the ad must clearly demonstrate that a user is able to purchase the goods or services corresponding to a trademark from the advertiser.

• Sale of components, replacement parts or compatible products corresponding to a trademark: The advertiser’s site must sell (or clearly facilitate the sale of) the components, replacement parts or compatible products relating to the goods or services of the trademark. The advertiser’s landing page must clearly demonstrate that a user is able to purchase the components, parts or compatible products corresponding to the trademark term from the advertiser.

• Informational sites: The primary purpose of the advertiser’s site must be to provide non-competitive and informative details about the goods or services corresponding to the trademark term. Additionally, the advertiser may not sell or facilitate the sale of the goods or services of a competitor of the trademark owner.

If you adjust your ads based on this new policy, the ads will not show until June 15th. For more information, visit Google Adwords Support.

Negative Keywords are a Must!

For many companies, creating a successful Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign is of the utmost importance.  One very important PPC tactic that is often overlooked is developing a negative keyword list. As defined by Google, “Adding a negative keyword to your ad group or campaign means that your ads won’t show for search queries containing that term.” For example, if you are running a campaign for Used Cars and you do not sell Nissan’s, you would want to add Nissan as a negative keyword to your campaign. (You can add the keyword with a negative sign in front of it to your keyword list. For example, -Nissan.) The reason why this is so important is because this makes your traffic more targeted. Negative keywords will also decrease your impressions, which as a result will increase your CTR, and increase your Quality Score. Plus, there is no reason for you to generate traffic for Nissan’s if you don’t even offer them!

So before you set your PPC campaigns live, be sure to develop a negative keyword list! A great tool to find negative keywords is the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.