AdWords Campaign Watcher

Welcome to the new home of the AdWords Campaign Watcher. The AdWords tool had to be taken down, but the content remains.

Recent blog posts:

Google Website Optimizer: A Secret Trick for Testing Multiple Pages
The Google Website Optimizer is quite possibly the best tool in the AdWords tool palette, simple because it will help you increase conversions easily, and increased conversions will do more for your internet business than any other metric.

Some Thoughts on Peel and Stick
"Peel and Stick" is a keyword management technique made popular by Perry Marshall. The concept has been around for at least 3 years. Its a derivative idea of the 80/20 rule, which Perry is extremely fond of, and for good reason.

Search Query Reports & "See Search Terms" Option
If you're only bidding on exact match keywords, skip this post. But if you're bidding on any phrase match or broad match keywords, you need to be running search query reports or using the "see search terms" option at the adgroup level on a regular basis.

The Adwords Wrapper
I thought I'd give a pitch for one of my all-time most used AdWords tools: the AdWords Wrapper. If you have a list of keywords that you want "wrapped" with phrase and exact match denotations - plain quotes for phrase match, brackets for exact match, its the fastest, easiest way to get it done.

Ad Positions, CTR and Profitability
Too many AdWords advertisers want to be in the first position of results either because of their egos or their enthusiasm to spend money without much thought about profitability.

Ways to Break up Keyword Lists
Various techniques to break up keyword lists so large they make your head hurt. Of course, smarter marketers are now moving away from huge keyword lists for PPC.

How to See Ads in Other Countries, and GeoTargeted Locations
Running a campaign in Germany, or only in St Louis, and what to see how your ads are appearing, and what the competition looks like? Go to ...

Keyword Quality Score
Its mostly the clickthrough rate of your exact match keywords appearing on Google.com (not the Search Partners or the Content network) that determines your keyword quality score. Keyword quality score is only a portion of overall quality score, which includes account level quality score, ad quality score, campaign quality score and landing page quality score.

What Does Google Think Your Site's About?
With all the anxiety about landing page quality score, and because one of the key factors of good landing page quality score is relevance, it might be nice to know exactly what Google thinks your landing page - or your site is about, right? Enter the site tool.

The Wonder Wheel
The Wonder Wheel is a graphical representation of how keywords are related to each other. You can access it from any Google.com search results.

25 Things to Test in Adcopy
Testing can get really complicated, but it doesn't have to be. The longer I've been testing, the simpler I tend to make it. Simple A/B split tests sometimes work better than elaborate multivariate experiments.