The Value Of Landing Pages

Imagine that we're launching a brand new advertising campaign for our new e-commerce website that sells Empanadas, my favorite food. The structure of the website is simple. We have a homepage, a few category pages that lists empanadas by type (baked, fried, etc), and hundreds of individual pages for each type of empanada (ham and cheese, steak, chicken, veggie, etc.).

Website structure

(click to enlarge)

Given this site design and our goal to sell as many empanadas as possible, let's look at this question:

Which type of landing page (home, category, or product) leads people to purchase more empanadas?

To answer it, we'll use two Google Analytics features, Custom Reports and Advanced Segments, to find out exactly, in dollars, which is the best type of page. And to perform this analysis we need one of two things: 1. e-commerce or 2. goals with a goal value.

Searching for the answer in Landing Pages

First go to the Content > Landing Pages.

(click to enlarge)

This report is naturally a good place to start but it only gives us three metrics: Entrances, Bounces and Bounce Rate. I want to know dollar amount, not bounce rate. To get the value of each landing page we have to create a custom report.

Step 1) Create the Custom Report
Go to Custom Reporting and create the following report:

Dimension: Landing Page
Metrics: Entrances, Abandonment Rate, Goal Completed and Value per visitor

(click to enlarge)

Great. Now I know the average value for any visitor that starts on these pages. On average the value per landing pages is $0.07. This means for all people who arrive at my webpage, on average each person will buy $0.07 worth of empanadas. Not much huh? However, as you can see some pages have a consistently much better conversion rate than others. For example, my home page -- /home.html -- gives me a per visit value of $0.10. I'd like to compare that with my other two page types: product and categories. We could go through this list and pick out one by one which is better, or write a regular expression in the search filter box, but an easier and more flexible way to identify these page is via Advanced Segments.

Step 2) Create the Advanced Segment
Take a minute to think about the layout of your website. Is there a unique identifier that let's you segment your landing page types? If there isn't then ask your Webmaster what you can do to get around this problem. In our example, remember that our website is very simple. Every empanada page contains the word empanada.html, every category page contains category.html, and the home page is home.html. To begin with, let's create a category segment.

Create the "Category" Advanced Segment
1. Go to Advanced Segments>Create New.
2. Dimension: Landing Page
3. Contains "category.html"
4. Name it "Visits that land on Category."
5. Save and Apply to report

Ouch! Visitors that land on my category pages spend an average of $0.04. Much worse than the average of $0.07. Now let's compare with what happens when a user lands on a page of an individual empanada product page. It's the same process as above except we use Landing Page Contains "empanada.html."

Create the "Empanada" Advanced Segment
1. Go to Advanced Segments>Create New.
2. Dimension: Landing Page
3. Contains "empanada.html"
4. Name it "Visits that land on empanada."

5. Save and Apply to report

Here is what we get:

(click to enlarge)

Wow! Visits that see a product page before anything else spend $0.30 on average. That's over 7 times more than the value of the category landing pages. Which pages should we use? Our empanada pages of course! We no longer have to guess which page is best. Even if we have hundreds of different types of empanadas we can calculate to the penny the potential value of focusing our advertisements on products.

Yeah, that's nice but how do I do the same for my website?

The above is a great example of full circle analytics. Set up goals, then create the reports and segments you best need to analyze the success of the goals. We chose to look at Landing Pages, but after you have goals, reports and segments in place, you can do most analyses.

Here are the key takeaways:

1. Most importantly your URLs must have a unique identifier (like our ?type=empanadas) so you can segment by page type AND either e-commerce implementation or a goal value.

2. Instead of thinking home, category, and product think home, broad, or specific. Usually, the more specific and focused the landing pages the better.

3. If you don't use an e-commerce website don't worry, you can do the same analysis. For e-commerce websites its much easier for us to calculate exact dollar return -- but! we can also use goal value to calculate user value. So, if you don't sell a product, your goal might be to have the users fill out a contact form. If for every 100 users that fill the form you can gain 5 leads that over a month spend an average of $100 each then the value of your form is 5x$100=$500/100=$5 per form completed. This goal value can also be used to calculate landing page value.

Now that you know exactly how to use Google Analytics to identify the value of your landing pages it's time to apply the lessons to your website. How much money do your landing pages bring you?

Posted by Gabriel Francis, Google Analytics Team

An API Integration To Measure Significant Change

Sophisticated, useful and cool applications are being developed everyday through the open Google Analytics API. We're loving what we're seeing. Basically, developers are grabbing their data from Google Analytics and slicing and dicing it, mixing it and mashing it with other data and applications, creating dashboards and widgets, and innovating some of the coolest stuff a data driven person could hope for. For example, we're really impressed with an app called Trendly which makes it easier to find important movers and shakers among your data via an innovative new interface, cutting down on the time you need to monitor your profiles. The team who built Trendly is using it as their one stop Google Analytics dashboard. We asked the team to share how this application came about, and here's what they wrote:

How many of you can afford to pay someone to monitor your analytics full time? We can't. We're a small startup, and we just don't have the resources to make that happen.

We use Google Analytics to track visits to our website, www.dabbledb.com. We'd love to have someone watching the hundreds of keywords, referrers, and campaigns that drive traffic to our site, someone who would send us a quick email whenever something really interesting happened: "Hey guys, thought you'd like to know that your average visitors from 'online database' doubled last week, and it's staying there - guess that SEO is working!"

So, using the Google Analytics API, we created Trendly, a monitoring and visualization tool which you can look at anytime and easily see what's changed. In short, Trendly uses mathematical models to take noisy data like this:

and figure out when significant changes have happened, marking it like this:

According to Trendly, our average daily visitors from the search words "online database" went up from 18 to 32 in mid-January, and then up again to 50 in early February. Also, Trendly sends us periodic emails to let us know about changes like these, saving us a lot of time. It also prepares a news feed with attractive charts that put the changes into perspective relative to everything else that's going on. Take a look at this - it calls out significant changes and makes them easy to notice with a timeline on the right.


When we first built Trendly for our internal use, we cobbled it together by screen-scraping and downloading exports from Google Analytics. But part of what made this tool exciting to us is that it solves a pretty universal problem. Trendly is your analyst until you can afford to hire a full time analyst. Heck, it probably keeps a clearer log of important changes than an analyst would! And with Trendly, you can delay this much longer since it cuts down your worflow by hours per week.

The new GA Data API allowed us to share it! With no signup and a couple of clicks, anyone can authenticate with Google and authorize us to grab their data and generate the reports. Suddenly our internal tool became a new product offering which can help any Google Analytics user. Give it a try and see for yourself.

What the guys at DabbleDB built is amazing. If you have developed a useful new tool or integration on top of Google Analytics, drop us an email at analytics-api@google.com. If it's innovative and useful we'll highlight it to our readers on this blog.


Nick Mihailovski, The Google Analytics API Team

More High Quality Templates and New Premium Fonts in Display Ad Builder

Last week we announced new high-end "Elegant" ad templates that can help you build great looking ads in minutes. Today we're releasing additional "Elegant" templates in the "General" category, as well as templates in a brand new "People" category. This new category enables advertisers to use templates that have professional images featuring people

In addition to these new templates, we also added 13 premium fonts that you can use to make ads with maximum visual appeal. They include: News Gothic, Gill Sans, Futura and Nimbus Sans. Here are some examples of the new ad templates and fonts:

(click here to see full size image)

With some of the new templates, you don't even need to upload any logos or images. With just a little bit of text you can create an appealing display ad in seconds.

To start creating your ads, visit the "Ads" tab in any campaign, click "New Ad," and select "Display Ad Builder' from the drop down." If you want to learn more about creating and running display ads, visit the Display Ads 101 tutorial.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

New Interface Thursdays: Tips for keyword management

Now that most advertisers are using the new interface exclusively, we want to share some efficiency tips to really unlock the potential of the new interface.

Focusing on what's important

In the Keywords tab you have several tools that help you focus on what matters to you.

First, you can customize columns to show only the metrics you care about and in the order you want. You can then use filters to focus on keywords that match a certain criteria. For example, you might only want to look at keywords that aren't converting well. Filters let you hone on what's important. You can find examples of good filters to try in this Help Center article.

And once you know what you're looking for, you can put AdWords on the look out. Using custom alerts you can tell AdWords what changes are important to you and be alerted when they happen both in your account and via email. For example, using filters you identify your best converting high volume keywords. You could create an alert to be notified if the conversion rate on those keywords drops compared to last week.

If you're working through a My Client Center account, note that you'll need to log in directly to an individual AdWords account to set custom alerts for now.

Changing many things at once

Once you've found what's important, the new interface makes it easier to make bulk changes to your keywords. First off you can select many keywords at once and click Edit to open up all fields for editing. To save time, you can do this all with your keyboard: select keywords with X, move up and down rows using J and K, and press E to get into edit mode. If you want to select a consecutive list of keywords, select the first keyword then hold the Shift key, and then click the last keyword you want selected.

While in edit mode, you can pause keywords, adjust your Max CPC, change the destination URL, and switch the match type. You can also copy bids and destination URLs to all rows. We've also recently added the ability to raise all applicable keyword bids to their first page CPC. From edit mode, just click Prefill all CPCs to first page bid.

You can also use spreadsheet editing to make bulk changes. Spreadsheet editing lets you work with your keywords as if you were using a spreadsheet. You can use formulas, copy and paste, and even find and replace. You'll find spreadsheet editing by clicking More actions then Spreadsheet edit. Remember that spreadsheet editing can only be done within an ad group.

Moving things around

Maintaining a good account structure is one of the keys to successful AdWords campaigns. So, from time to time, you may want to move things around a bit to create more refined, relevant sets of keywords and ads. This is where the copy feature comes in handy. Like spreadsheet editing, you'll also find copy under More actions.You can copy keywords to another ad group or campaign. When copying keywords, you have the option to also copy the bid and destination URL.

We hope these tips help you manage your keywords more effectively and improve your AdWords campaigns.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Inside AdWords crew

New DDD Series: Bottlenecks To Implementation

Last October, Google Analytics introduced a handful of powerful new features that enterprise-class organizations had been asking for. It was a major upgrade that made Google Analytics even more powerful while remaining easy to use and free.

However, no matter what the analytics tool, there are still bottlenecks, often at an organizational level, that can prevent a company from even getting started using any type of web analytics. Nick Mihailovski, our Google Analytics Developer Relations Manager, and Avinash Kaushik, Analytics Evangelist at Google, both expert web analytics practitioners, have worked in the trenches, consulted with and had implementation discussions with scores of companies. Each website has different requirements, and each company has a different culture.

In this 3 part series of "Data Driven Discussion" videos, Nick and Avinash spend a few minutes talking about bottlenecks to implementing analytics. This first video is specifically about the obstacles that they see enterprise-class organizations confronting on the way to creating an analytics-driven online presence.

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

Back to Basics: Tip for exporting rows

As more and more people use Google Analytics to run reports for their advertising campaigns, we've had to come up with faster and easier ways for people to use Analytics for their everyday needs. One request that comes up quite often is to do away with 500 row export limitation for reports. Understandably, it's annoying to repeat your steps when you're exporting a report that has more than 500 rows.

We've found a helpful workaround that lets you export any number of rows in one go. We've listed the steps below so that you can bookmark this page whenever you need to export all the data listed in your reports.

Instructions

In our example Keyword report, you can see that there are over 3,000 keywords to export. This would mean that we'd have to hit 'Export' over six times!

To avoid the manual labor of exporting and then consolidating all your CSV reports into one, follow the steps below:

1. Go the report that contains the data you want to export.

2. Append "&limit=5000" (or however rows you need) to the URL displayed in your browser URL window, and hit enter to reload the report.

For example:

Before: https://www.google.com/analytics/reporting/keywords....2311
After : https://www.google.com/analytics/reporting/keywords?.................2311&limit=5000

3. After you've clicked 'Enter,' visually confirm that the URL displayed in your browser has the "limit" parameter appended to it. While there won't be any visible difference in the user interface, exporting will now yield more rows.

4. Select the Export tab, and click 'CSV' (not the option that says 'CSV for Excel').

5. The exported data should contain all the rows from your Analytics table.

We hope this added some precious time back to your Monday!

Posted by Christina Park, The Google Analytics Team

Getting Started Guides For The Google Analytics API

If you're ready to try your hand and using the Data Export API, we've created some new guides to help you get started quickly and easily.

First, for the JavaScript library, here's our new super-simple getting started guide. It leads you through creating a sample application step-by-step. With this guide, you can have a working HTML page that pulls in your Analytics data in minutes (really)! Once you're done, you'll be familiar with all the key elements you need to create a basic application. The guide also shows you where to go next, since you'll be poised to customize your app.

In addition, we also have a new Authentication Guide. Authentication is one of the more difficult aspects of getting started with Google Data, and for the JavaScript and Java guides, much of the authorization complexity is handled by library methods. For that reason, we've pulled the auth stuff out of all the language guides and put it in one central doc, with relevant samples beneath each authentication methodology. We hope this makes it easier for you to:

A. Get started quickly without being confused by authentication.
B. Have a source of authentication details when you are ready.
C. Understand which authentication method to use and when.

We'd love to hear your feedback on these guides through our Developer Group. Stay tuned for a similar guide for the Java client library.

Posted by Patricia Boswell, Google Analytics Team

GAAC Program Goes Even More Global

It’s been a while since we’ve updated you on the phenomenal growth of our Google Analytics Authorized Consultant (GAAC) network. Over the last year, we are delighted to have added the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Romania, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, Poland, India and Russia to the countries serviced "in-house" (by local companies) via the GAAC network. Their local business experience and of course their ability to speak the language are hugely important to helping their customers successfully deploy Google's analytics-related products.

Working with Google's worldwide network of Authorized Consultants is one of the most cost-effective investments you can make as an online business. Our "AC" partners are carefully vetted by our partner team and meet rigorous qualification standards, whether you need assistance with Google Analytics, Website Optimizer, or Urchin Software. Each offers a range of services including most or all of the following:

• Technical implementation
• Configuration/customization
• Consultation/optimization
• Training & seminars
• Paid support with SLAs

Our global network now offers Authorized Consultants in these regions:

• North America: USA, Canada, Mexico
• South America: Argentina, Brazil
• Europe: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, UK
• Middle East & Africa: Israel, South Africa
• Asia Pacific: Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, Sri Lanka

Contact one of our partners at http://www.google.com/analytics/authorized_consultants.html

Posted by Alan Wrafter, Google Analytics and Conversion Programme Manager, Europe

New Interface Thursdays: Your top questions from the webinar series

Today we held the last in the series of new interface webinars. Each week we get lots of great questions from attendees about the new interface. Today on New Interface Thursdays we're going to highlight some of the top questions and answer them.

How do I delete keywords?
To delete a keyword, select the checkbox next to it and then click on the Change status menu at the top of the table. There, you'll find the option to delete.

My ad is pending review. What does that mean?
An ad with a pending review status can run on Google search pages, but it won't run on our search partners or on content network placements until we review and approve it. Every time you submit new ads or make changes to existing ads, they are automatically submitted for review. (We review ads in the order they're submitted).

In the previous interface, ads were reviewed and approved in the same way, but this information wasn't visible. With the new interface, we chose to start showing more detailed approval status information to give you a better of idea of where your ads are eligible to show.

Where do I find spreadsheet editing?
Spreadsheet editing is only available at the ad group level. To enter spreadsheet mode, navigate to the Keywords tab of any ad group, then select Spreadsheet edit under the More actions menu.

What is the difference between 1 per click and many per click conversions?
The metric formerly called conversions in the previous AdWords interface is now relabeled 1-per-click conversions in the new interface. This metric measures the number of unique clicks on your ads that lead to conversion events. For example, if you're measuring sales and one ad click leads to three different transactions, only one 1-per-click conversion is counted.

In contrast, many-per-click conversions count each conversion that occurs after a click on your ad. So in the example above, since three different transactions occurred after the initial click on your ad, three many-per-click conversions are counted.

You can learn more about the difference between 1-per-click and many-per-click conversions here.

How do I view Destination URLs for keywords?
You can easily view the destination URLs for your keywords by customizing your columns. From the Keywords tab, click Filters and views and select Customize columns. From there you can turn on the column for Destination URL as well as other metrics for your keywords.

(click for larger image)

Where are settings for ad scheduling, frequency capping, ad rotations, etc?
On the Campaign Settings tab, there are a few sections labeled Advanced. For example, below your selected bid type and budget, you'll find an advanced section for position preferences and delivery method. At the very bottom of the page, you'll find some additional advanced settings like ad scheduling, ad rotation settings, and frequency capping. We organized the settings page in this way to make sure it was easy for you to scan through the fundamentals of your campaign while still giving you the option to explore more advanced configurations.

Thanks for all the great questions.

Posted by Amanda Kelly, Inside AdWords crew

Does Google Website Optimizer Work On Large Sites?

You bet it does! With a resounding yes, we're proud to give a shout out to our sibling product, Google Website Optimizer, which was used successfully to run a huge, and we mean huuuuuuge, multivariate test on the YouTube homepage. Take a look at what happened on the YouTube blog. Over 1000 different recipes were tested on all US homepage visits, with great results - the new page performed 15% better than the original page.

The YouTube blog post is fascinating reading, showing screenshots of the different variables on the homepage that were tested. And for those of you working on high traffic, enterprise-level sites, you know that making small, proven improvements - thereby moving the needle by small percentages - can mean huge wins for your bottom line. It's a must-read showing the practicality of multivariate testing.

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

Shooting Fish in a Barrel

I was reading a triathlon magazine the other day and learned that nationally, the average annual income of a triathlete is $126,000 (significantly more than the total national average of around $50K).  This year, they will spend an average of $2,274 on their bike alone!

Now, this may not mean much to you, but in Dayton, Ohio, we have a pretty well organized triathlon club.  Wouldn't their members make great new business targets?

The point is, "fish where the fish are."  Segmentation is one of the best ways to maximize your marketing budget ... and one sure way to segment is to market where your target audience lives.  What clubs or organizations in your area cater to a desirable target audience for your institution?

Take care,

Eric

Conversion Rates Don't Vary Much with Ad Position

For today's Inside AdWords post we have a note from our Chief Economist at Google, Hal Varian. Hal and his team spend most of their time studying the AdWords auction and finding ways to make it more efficient. Today he'd like to share some research that he and his team have done on conversion rates by ad position:

Advertisers often ask us how conversion rates vary with position. Everyone is aware that higher positions tend to get more clicks and therefore more conversions in total. The question of interest is how does the conversion rate (conversions/clicks) vary with position?

This is a tricky question for several reasons. Since Google ranks ads by bid times ad quality, ads in higher positions tend to have higher quality and higher quality ads tend to have higher conversion rates. Thus you may see a correlation between auction position and conversion rates just due to this ad quality effect. However, the real question is how the conversion rate for the same ad would change if it were displayed in a different position.

Another difficulty is that the average position number reported by Google is that it is an average over all auctions in which you participate. If you increase your bid, it is quite possible to see your average position move lower on the page! The reason is that when you increase your bid, your ad will appear in new auctions, and it will tend to come in at the bottom of those new auctions. This effect can be large enough to push your overall average position down. See this FAQ for more on this issue.

We have used a statistical model to account for these effects and found that, on average, there is very little variation in conversion rates by position for the same ad. For example, for pages where 11 ads are shown the conversion rate varies by less than 5% across positions. In other words, an ad that had a 1.0% conversion rate in the best position, would have about a 0.95% conversion rate in the worst position, on average. Ads above the search results have a conversion rate within ±2% of right-hand side positions.

The bottom line: conversion rates don't vary much by position.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Back to Basics: Troubleshooting goals

One of the easiest ways to make sense of your data and measure business objectives for your website (and even assign a monetary value to them) is to create goals. However, once you've correctly implemented your tracking code and identified the pages you want to create goals for, you may run into some common goal set-up problems. Below are some tips to help you solve some common issues first-time Analytics users run into so that you can get going on the road to taking useful action with your Analytics goals.

Incorrect goal URL

One of the most common goal set-up errors is to enter the incorrect URL. To confirm that you're entering the URL correctly, try reaching the goal page on your own site and copying and pasting the URL into the 'Goal URL' field.

You can remove the domain name entirely from the field and Google Analytics will still track the page as a goal. For example, if your goal is http://www.mysite.com/1/thanks.html, you can safely use '/1/thanks.html' as your Goal URL.

Duplicate final goal step

When you have steps leading up to your goal, the last step you specify in the Goal Funnel Settings should be the final step prior to reaching your goal. The goal itself should be placed in the 'Goal URL' field and does not need to also be included as a last step.

Goal value error

It is possible that the Goal value entered includes non-numerical characters. If the goal value is set to $2,560, the error message is displayed because the value contains the characters "$" and ",". In this case, only the value 2560 will suffice.

Historical data not relevant

If you've recently applied a new goal, it will only apply to data processed after the goal was implemented, and not to historical data in your account. This is why you might not see data for your website if you haven't had anyone convert on a goal after you created one.

To read the full list of reasons why your goal creation failed, read this Google Analytics Help Article. For an in-depth explanation about goals and how to set them up, please read this previous post.

Posted by Christina Park, Google Analytics Team

New Search Ads Quality Guide Available

You're probably already familiar with the concept of Quality Score and know that it plays a major role in the way that Google decides when to show your ads and how to rank them. But, even seasoned AdWords veterans still have questions about ads quality, which is why we've put together the Search Ads Quality Getting Started Guide.

Since introducing the concept back in July 2005, we've done a lot of work to make Quality Scores more detailed, accurate, and transparent. These improvements have included adding landing page load time, offering score diagnosis on the Keyword Analysis page, and displaying first page bid estimates.

The new Search Ads Quality Getting Started Guide is a resource for how you can get the most out of your search advertising on Google. While we're not making any changes to the way Quality Score works, the guide is organized to help you understand some of the most important concepts around quality, such as: how quality score affects your ranking and how quality score affects how much you pay.

The new guide also offers useful tips on how to improve your ad quality and addresses some of your most common questions.

Whether you've been advertising with AdWords for years, or you just created your first campaign, we believe that the Getting Started Guide will be a useful resource for you to learn more about a topic that is at the core of advertising on AdWords.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

New Interface Thursdays: Best practices for location extensions

A few weeks ago, we introduced location extensions - the new way to run local ads in AdWords. Today, we wanted to tell you a bit more about location extensions and give you some best practices for setting them up in your account.

First, it's important to know that there are two ways to set up extensions. You can set up extensions at the campaign level or at the ad level.

Setting up campaign level extensions means that Google will dynamically match a campaign's text ads with the most relevant address in your account based on information like a user's location or a user's search terms. Keep in mind that the address will only be shown when it's relevant to the user's location or search terms. We'll use a fictional chain of coffee shops, Bob's Coffee, to illustrate when you'd want to add campaign level extensions:

Add campaign level extensions when you want to...

• Use the same ad text across a number of business locations. For example, Bob has a "buy one cup, get the second free" discount at all his coffee shops. Bob can create one ad and run campaign level extensions because his ad text for this discount is applicable to all his locations.
  
  
• Direct ads for all of your locations to the same landing page. For example, all of Bob's stores feature the same drinks and prices, so he has a single webpage to greet online users regardless of their location.
  
  
• Create and edit a lot of ads quickly. For example, Bob's Coffee is introducing a "$1 latte Tuesdays" promotion at all its stores. If Bob creates a new campaign for this promotion and sets up campaign extensions, he only has to create one ad, and that ad will be able to show with any of the addresses associated with that campaign.

If you think these settings are right for your campaigns, you can learn more about how to set up campaign level extensions.

Ad level extensions allow you to override a campaign's location extension settings. When you use ad level extensions, you are selecting one address to show with a specific ad.

Create ad level extensions when you want to...

• Associate a single address with a specific marketing message. For example, Bob wants to test out a promotion at just one location before implementing it for all stores. He is going to offer a "Case of the Mondays" special, a free upgrade to a large coffee when you a buy medium coffee on Monday. Bob has created an ad to go with this promotion and only wants this ad to show for the one location where he's running the promotion. He doesn't want AdWords to match the ad to any of his other addresses, so he overrides the campaign setting with an ad level extension.
  
  
• Direct each ad to a specific landing page. Bob has also created a separate landing page within his website to promote the "Case of the Mondays" promotion. He wants to direct most of his users to the main webpage via his regular campaigns, but wants to direct viewers of the "Case of the Mondays" ad to a page specifically for the promotion.

If ad level extensions better meet your needs, read more about how to start using them. Remember, you can use a mix of campaign and ad level extensions in your account.

Adding addresses to AdWords

When you're setting up your extensions, you should also know that there are two ways to give your addresses to Google: use the Local Business Center or enter addresses manually into AdWords.

If you're a primary business owner, you should use Local Business Center to give your addresses to Google. The Local Business Center is a free tool that allows you to manage your business listings. Addresses you enter manually or through bulk upload here will affect how your free business listings and ads appear on Google.com and Google Maps. If you plan to use Local Business Center, you can learn more about how it works with extensions.

If you're not the primary business owner of the locations in your ads, you can manually enter addresses into AdWords. An example of a non-business owner might be a wireless hotspot company that provides Internet access at Bob's Coffee. The company doesn't own any of the Bob's Coffee locations, but might want to advertise that their Wi-Fi services are available at a Bob's Coffee location.

Whichever method you choose, you can add addresses from the same place in AdWords, in the Audience section of the Settings tab.

To learn more about location extensions, check out the location extensions overview section in the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Inside AdWords crew

Create New High Quality Display Ads with Display Ad Builder

Creating display ads that look truly professional is hard work. Last year, we launched Display Ad Builder to help you easily design display ad campaigns. Since then, we've provided advertisers in over 40 countries with more than 90 templates to streamline the design process.

Today, we have introduced a new set of "Elegant" ad templates in the "General" category of Display Ad Builder that make it even easier to create high quality display ads. These templates have ready-made buttons and backgrounds that give each ad a cohesive look and feel. More specifically, the backgrounds use subtle gradients and the new buttons have unique shapes, icons and color treatments. The goal of these ads is to make it as easy as possible to create high-quality ads in a matter of seconds without having to use complex graphics software. Here are a few examples:

(Click to see full size image)

With some of these new templates, all you have to do is upload your product image and write some text to get a professional looking display ad out in no time.

To start creating your ads, click Display Ad Builder on the Create an ad page within a new or existing campaign in your AdWords account. If you want to learn more about creating and running display ads, visit the Display Ads 101 tutorial.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Analytics Data In Excel Through Our API

Many of our clients use Excel to manage their ad campaigns, visualize marketing performance, and perform complex data analysis. Most analysts use the Google Analytics Export feature to manually export their report data to CSV files. Then they import the CSV file into Excel. No longer! Now, with the Google Analytics API you can bypass this manual step and export Google Analytics data directly from within Excel! Once you've set it up, there's no need to visit the Analytics reports to view data in Excel.

Thanks to a variety of developers, here are four solutions that can transform you from a reporting monkey to an analysis ninja (as Avinash would say).

• VBA Macros - The simplest solution of them all. Mikael Thuneberg's page explains how to make API requests directly from Excel using VBA Scripts and includes a pre-built Excel worksheet to get you started.
  
  
• The Tatvic Excel Plugin - Another easy-to-use plugin for Windows users that supports both Excel 2003 and Excel 2007. To get started you download the plugin then register to use the tool. Its simple UI helps you build complex queries and get data from Analytics right into your Excel worksheet.
  
  
  Tatvic's Plugin Query Builder
  
  
• Excellent Analytics - Is an open-source initiative by Mark Red and Dropit. This Excel 2007 plugin works on Vista/XP and comes with a query builder to help you create Google Analytics queries and pull data right into Excel. Webanalytics.info put together a great step by step tutorial to get started using this plugin.
  
  
  Excellent Analytic's Query Builder Interface
  
  
• ShufflePoint - Works somewhat differently than the solutions above. ShufflePoint has developed a query language that works with the Google Analytics API to achieve common tasks, such as defining the last 30 days as a date range. One then uses this language to construct an Analytics Data Export API query either by navigating to a URL within Excel, or by using their web-based query builder, then importing this data into Excel. This process allows the ShufflePoint solution to work across most versions of Excel, as well as Powerpoint, and iGoogle gadgets.
  
  
  Shufflepoint's Web Based Query Builder
  

We continue to be impressed by the new solutions developers are bringing to market by leveraging the Google Analytics Platform. If you have developed a useful new tool or integration on top of Google Analytics, drop us an email at analytics-api@google.com. If it's innovative and useful we'll highlight it to our readers on this blog.


Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics API Team

Back to Basics: Direct, referral or organic - definitions straight from the source

In your Analytics reports, you'll see some of the same entries come up again and again in your data tables. In the last Back to Basics post, we learned about 'not set' entries -- this week we'll learn what it means when you see 'direct,' 'referral' and 'organic' under the Sources column in your reports.

• (direct)[(none)] - Visitors who visited the site by typing the URL directly into their browser. 'Direct' can also refer to the visitors who clicked on the links from their bookmarks/favorites, untagged links within emails, or links from documents that don't include tracking variables (such as PDFs or Word documents).
  
  
• [referral] - Visitors referred by links on other websites. (Links that have been tagged with campaign variables won't show up as [referral] unless they happen to have been tagged with utm_medium=referral. )
  
  
• [organic] - Visitors referred by an unpaid search engine listing, e.g. a Google.com search.

Once you learn where the traffic to your site is coming from, you can start analyzing the information to make intelligent decisions for your website. For example, the Referring Sites report shows you which websites have been most effective at driving people to your site -- and which ones haven't been effective. Furthermore, if you have defined as goals the key pages you want visitors to see, you can see the percentage of visits from each referral during which the visitor saw these pages. (Just click Goals tab to see your conversion rates for each goal.)

To learn more about how to spot quality traffic from your Goals tab, please refer to this earlier Back to Basics post.

Posted by Christina Park, Google Analytics Team

Join us at SES San Jose next week

Next week is the Search Engine Strategies San Jose conference, and Google will be there. If you're coming to the conference, we'd love to meet you. Googlers will be speaking in a number of sessions on topics ranging from website architecture to quality score. Also, Nick Fox, Business Product Management Director for Google AdWords, will be giving Wednesday's keynote.

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

• Duplicate Content - Greg Grothaus - 9am-10:15am
• The Next Wave for Online Video - Erin Bouchier - 11:45am-12:45pm
• Successful Site Architecture - Johannes Henkel - 11:45am-12:45pm
• How to Turn Your Web Analytics into a Money Making Machine - Avinash Kaushik- 1:45pm - 2:45pm
• Keeping it Local - Josh Siegel - 4:30pm-5:30pm

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

• Convert Your Visitors to Customers - Nitin Mangtani - 10:45am - 12:00pm
• Conference Keynote - Nick Fox - 1:00pm - 2:00pm
• Google AdWords, Analytics & Website Optimizer Secrets Revealed + Google Science Fair - 2:30pm - 3:45pm
• Real World Multivariate Testing - Trevor Claiborne - 4:00pm - 5:15pm

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

• Extreme Site Makeover - Tiffany Lane - 10:30am - 11:45am
• Quality Score - Jonathan Alferness - 10:30am - 11:45am
• Images & Search Engines - RJ Pittman - 2:15pm - 3:30pm
• Search Becomes the Display OS - Rajas Moonka - 3:45pm - 5:00pm
  

We're looking forward to meeting you next week.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

SES San Jose Next Week!

The Search Engine Strategies San Jose conference is next week! This conference has become probably the most well-attended conference for anything related to doing business on the web. You'll see everything - booths representing cutting edge, fledgling technologies as well as the traditional online companies - and everyone, from experts in almost every facet of the web, to analysts, media and bloggers, to ad execs.

There's a ton of great sessions to attend and networking to be done, and a bunch of Googlers will be there including many of us on the Google Analytics team. We'll also have a booth where we will be demoing and answering your questions, along with Google Website Optimizer, AdWords, AdSense, Webmaster Tools, YouTube, and Doubleclick. You can register now and save 20% with the code SJ20SES.

Here are some sessions that might be of interest for you, oh ye of the analytical leanings:

Monday, August 10th, 2009
All day Web Analytics Association Base Camp - training on ways to optimize your website and what tools to use.

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009
10:00-11:30 - Always Be Testing - Bryan Eisenberg
11:45-12:45 - Creating a Web Analytics Culture - Feras Alhlou
1:45-2:45 - How to Turn Your Web Analytics into a Money Making Machine - Avinash Kaushik, Bryan Eisenberg, Jim Sterne

3:00 - 4:00 - Meaningful SEO Metrics: Going Beyond the Numbers
4:30-5:30 - Extreme Makeover: Conversion Edition - Bryan Eisenberg

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009
10:45am - 12:00pm - Convert Your Visitors to Customers (Google Site Search) - Nitin Mangtani
10:45-12:00 - Landing Page Testing & Tuning - Tim Ash
1:00pm - 2:00pm - Conference Keynote - Nick Fox, Google
2:30pm - 3:45pm - Google AdWords, Analytics & Website Optimizer Secrets Revealed + Google Science Fair
4:00pm - 5:15pm - Real World Multivariate Testing - Trevor Claiborne from Google Website Optimizer, Jim McDonald, Ayat Shukairy, David Sprinkle

Thursday, August 13

10:30-11:45 - Advanced Paid Search Techniques
2:15-3:30 - Extreme Makeover: Live Landing Page Clinic - Tim Ash

We hope to see you there!

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

Making Sense of it all...

Not sure if you have heard of Andrew J. Hall...but he has become a symbol for all bankers. He is the head of a company called Phibro, a small commodities trading firm in Westport, Connecticut.

The deal is that Phibro is a subsidiary of Citigroup. They trade energy commodities and have made a ton of money....almost $2 BILLION in net revenue in the past 5 years. That equates to about 20% of Citigroup's net revenue...think about that. One guy and his team of 54 employees have made 20% or more of Citigroups operating profit!!

Impressive....

Perhaps more impressive, or scary, depending on your viewpoint, is the $100 million bonus he is about to receive....the 2nd $100+ million bonus he has received in the past 3 years.

Earned? No doubt. Citgroup obligated to pay? Yes, it is in his contract. Out of sight bonus? You bet! I will offer no other commentary...other than to say you know what I could do with $100 million???? (maybe buy a German castle with 150 rooms like Andrew Hall did!)

This gives us all cause to pause....certainly our community banks and CUs are not paying such bonuses to the degree of Citi, but we will all be, again, grouped into one pot. All taking a hit on our reputation and trust factors.

Today, we are hosting a Reputation Management eCollege session....this is EXACTLY why you have to proactively manage your own reputation. Because if you do not, someone else will!

I encourage you to proactively think about your brand and your reputation...there has never been a more important time!

With the strategic planning "season" coming upon us...you need to add this to your agenda!

Cheers...

Bruce Clapp

PS: Remember, we can help make 2010 the "Best Year Yet" with our proven strategic planning process!! Give us a call or email...

Here is the article on Andrew Hall

New Interface Thursdays: Keep tabs on your account with custom alerts

The new interface helps you focus on the data you care about with tools like filters and customizable columns. But wouldn't it be great if, instead of having to search for important changes in your metrics, you could be notified when a change you care about occurs?

That's why we've released a new feature called custom alerts. Custom alerts help you stay on top of your account's performance by notifying you whenever important changes occur in your account.

For example, what if you wanted to know when there was a spike in impressions for any of your branded keywords? Simply navigate to your branded keywords ad group, and in the Keywords tab, click More actions, then Create a custom alert.

Here, we've defined an alert to notify us when impressions for the brand terms ad group have increased more than 20% over the previous day:

As another example, you might want to be notified when a campaign is coming close to hitting its budget. To set up this alert, you'll first navigate to All online campaigns. Under More actions, select Create a custom alert. You can set up a ">90% of daily budget spent" alert for a selected campaign, or for every campaign in your account.

Getting alerts

Once you've set up an alert, AdWords will be on the lookout for changes. After an alert is triggered, you'll see it in the Messages section at the top of your account.

If you set up email notification, you don't even need to log in, you'll be emailed when the important change occurs.

Clicking the plus-box shows the full alert:

You can then dismiss the alert from your messages, or click View to see the parts of your account that triggered the notification.

Managing your custom alerts

To look at the alerts you've already set up, select Manage custom alerts under the More actions menu. You can see all the alerts you've set up for your account by first navigating to the Campaigns tab in All online campaigns.

When managing your alerts you can make a number of changes, like pausing or deleting an alert. You can also modify an alert's settings using in-line editing. Lastly, you can turn email notification on or off for a particular alert.

Custom alerts are one of our favorite features in the new AdWords interface, and we're excited about all the different ways you can use them. So the next time you want to keep a close eye on your account, remember that AdWords can stay alert for you.

Meet the new AdWords interface team

There are two upcoming chances to meet the new interface team. Next week, we'll be at the Search Engine Strategies San Jose conference. Join us for our session Google AdWords, Analytics & Website Optimizer: Secrets Revealed! on August 12th at 2:30 PM. After the session, we'll be holding a "science fair" where you can meet many of the AdWords engineers.

We also have one more webinar on August 20th at 9:30 AM PDT. You can register for the free webinar on the new interface webinars site.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Inside AdWords crew