Click any Ad Group name (see Figure 8-4) to see the keywords and ads in that Ad Group. Getting inside the Ad Group is where the rubber meets the road.
Where the pedal hits the metal. Where other half-baked analogies that I can’t think up take place. On these screens lurk Google’s evaluations of your key-word performance, in all their mystery, occasional threats, and sometimes encouragement. This page is where your click, impression, and CTR statistics are broken down by keyword and by the two parts of Google’s extended net-work: search partners and content sites. In addition to detailed reporting, this page contains your ad(s) associated with this Ad Group’s keywords, with the chance to edit those ads, delete them, or create new ones.
Figure 8-4:
Viewing the Ad Groups statistics of a campaign.
The table that you see within an Ad Group (see Figure 8-6) present statistical totals above the reporting details. A curious arrangement, and there’s noth-ing to do about it. Notice, also, the two Total rows — one for “search” and one for “content targeting.” These cryptic labels need some explaining.
If you read Chapter 7, you might remember that you have a choice, in Cam-paign Settings, to run your ads across the Google network of sites. (If you’re next to the computer, try going to Campaign Settings to see that choice.) Specifically, you can opt to distribute all the ads of any campaign in one of four distribution patterns:
Just on Google’s search pages.These pages include search results pages in Web search, Google Groups, Google Directory, and Froogle. Your ads must run on these sites, regardless of how you adjust the other two settings.
On Google’s search pages, plus Google’s search partners.These other search sites include Web-search portals to which Google provides AdWords advertising. As of this writing, these sites include Excite, About.com, Teoma, AskJeeves, Netscape, AOL Search, and Go.com. You may opt in or out of this extended network of search sites. If you opt in, your keyword statistics corresponding to Google pages plus other search pages are totaled in the Total — search row.
Figure 8-5:
Set the maximum CPC bid across multiple Ad Groups.
On Google’s search pages, plus content sites in Google’s network.
Content sites are AdSense publishers that run AdWords ads (see
Chapters 11, 12, and 13). On these sites, ads are chosen according to rel-evance to the content of the pages on which they appear, whereas on search pages, ads are matched by relevance to keywords used at those search engines. You may opt in or out of the content network. If you opt in, your keyword statistics corresponding to the content network are totaled in the Total — content targeting row.
Distribute everywhere.By opting into both the extended search network and the content network, your ads appear throughout both those systems and on Google’s pages. Keyword statistics for the entire arrangement are totaled on the row containing the keyword (see Figure 8-6), below the Total rows. These totals combine the broken-out totals (search and con-tent targeting).
In reading about how the totals work, you perhaps noticed that you don’t get keyword statistics corresponding to onlyGoogle pages. You get Google pages plus extended search pages bundled into one line of totals, but no statistics describing how your ads are performing on Google exclusive of the extended networks.
Figure 8-6:
Looking inside an Ad Group at statistics
for each keyword and, in this case, the only ad.
In my opinion, this lack is an outright deficiency, but you’re not totally clue-less about how your ads are faring in Google. The Control Center issues one of five status levels for each keyword, displayed in the Status column. These status levels are
Strong andModerate.(Both in green.) Strong and Moderate keywords are cooking along fine. No action is necessary.
At risk andSlowed.(Both in yellow.) At risk keywords are in imminent danger of being disabled by Google. Slowed keywords cause the ad(s) associated with those keywords to suffer infrequent displays until you correct the situation.
Disabled.(In red.) Disabled keywords take their associated ads out of cir-culation on search pages and content pages matching those keywords.
You may resuscitate your disabled keywords, but keeping them alive becomes harder after they have been disabled.
Note:Chapter 9 explains in detail how to correct keywords that are at risk, slowed, or disabled.
Figure 8-7 illustrates a keyword statistics screen in an Ad Group, on which three different status levels are exhibited. The warning atop the page (whose red background is quite alarming in color) appears when any keyword on the page has been slowed. Figure 8-8 illustrates another page with the Disabled status in full display.
Look at Figures 8-7 and 8-8, particularly at the keywords labeled At risk (devel-opmental disabilities), Strong (charity auction), and Disabled (maroon 5). Look at the CTR column for all three keywords. Notice anything peculiar? The Dis-abled keyword (maroon 5) owns a robust clickthrough rate of 1.7 percent — well above Google’s danger threshold of 0.5 percent. The charity auction keyword, labeled with the Strong status, owns a weak CTR of 0.4 percent. The keyword immediately above it (developmental disabilities), labeled At risk, has performed better than the Strong keyword!
None of this seems to make any sense, but there’s a simple explanation. Google computes a separate clickthrough rate based on the performance of ads on Google’s search pages, exclusive of the extended search and content networks.
Google uses that CTR to evaluate the performance of keywords and their ads.
Performance on the extended networks doesn’t matter in determining whether a keyword is slowed or disabled. However, Google doesn’t provide the result of this Google-only CTR calculation, preferring instead to furnish the status warn-ing system instead. Because that crucial CTR number is not broken out from the total CTR figures that doinclude the extended networks, the status warning (and status praise) sometimes seems out of touch with reality as expressed in the CTR numbers. This strange reality warp occurs when an ad performs much better or much worse in the extended networks than it does on Google’s pages.
(The disparity isn’t too uncommon.) File this odd fact away for now; I come back to it with a vengeance in Chapter 10.
Figure 8-8:
Google disables keywords after placing them at risk in the Status column.
Figure 8-7:
Google warns of underper-forming keywords, and praises those performing well, in the Status column.
One final note about this page: You can see how your ads are positioned on Google pages by looking at the Avg. Pos column, which shows you the ad’s average position in the AdWords column. No more than ten AdWords ads appear on any Google search page. You can achieve a higher position through a combination of a higher cost-per-click and a better clickthrough rate.