Introducing the new Opportunities tab: find more ways to improve your AdWords performance

We launched the Opportunities tab in 2009 as your personal AdWords assistant, surfacing insights to help you improve your performance in AdWords. Today we’re announcing the new Opportunities tab. We've added several new opportunity types and made each easier to understand. Now the Opportunities tab is even better at answering the question, “What else can I do to improve my performance in AdWords?”

The new Opportunities tab

New high-impact opportunities

We've added several new opportunity types for more ways to improve your performance.

• Convert more customers in your best locations: If your conversion rate differs across locations, you might see opportunities to increase your location bid adjustment where your conversion rate is high, or decrease your location bid adjustments where your conversion rate is low. 
• Get more out of your existing budget: If you’re maxing out your budget, you might see opportunities to lower your bids to capture more clicks.
• Be there more often than competitors: If your ads are being seen less frequently than other advertisers competing for the same traffic, you might see opportunities to be seen more frequently with bids to show more often than advertisers like you.
• Show ads that are more relevant: If we spot an ad group with keywords related to lots of different themes, it's harder for you to show a highly relevant ad, so you might see opportunities to create new ad groups from existing keywords.
• Reach more customers on closely related searches: If you're missing clicks on searches that are very similar to your existing keywords, you might see opportunities to broaden your keyword match types.
• Be seen on the first page: If your ads are showing below the first page when users search on high-quality keywords, you might see opportunities to raise your bids to show ads on the first page. 

Pick your best opportunities

A totally new design makes it easier to decide which opportunities to implement. For each opportunity, you'll see a short summary under "What you can do” and the possible impact under “What you might get each week.” The opportunities you’ll see are tailored to your account and selected based on their possible impact to your performance.

More opportunities are just around the corner

Check the Opportunities tab often. Whether you optimize your campaign once a day or once a month, it's constantly working in the background to spot opportunities for you to improve. And we’ll be adding even more opportunity types over time.

To learn more about the Opportunities tab, please visit our AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Deepti Bhatnagar, Product Manager, AdWords

Integration of the NON Sales Culture

What You Say

Sales: Educate and advise customers and members on institution product and services to cultivate a win-win relationship … benefiting the consumer and growing the bank or credit union.

What They Hear

Sales: Push products and services on customers that they probably don't need because my boss said to.  I may get a couple extra bucks for my efforts, but ultimately it’s all about growing the institution.

Odds are that if you polled your staff, very few want to be in “sales.”  The term has grown to have a bleak connotation.  Seriously, go to Google Images right now and search “salesperson” … go ahead, I’ll wait …

Do you really want to be most of the bottom-feeders that show up in that search?  Well, neither does your staff.

Yet, so many places focus on and preach about a "Sales Culture."  You hire consultants and trainers and go to seminars and webinars … all in search of the secret weapon that will make your people "sell."

Here’s some free advice … It doesn't exist!

So, while none of your staff want to be greasy haired, panel jacket wearin’, slime balls – they do want to HELP people.

Most financial institutions focus far too much on the wrong things.  Think about the last 12 months.  What percentage of your staff training was on operational issues and transactional business?  Is that where you grow your business?  No, it’s grown by the relationship opportunities.  The face-to-face, meaningful, “they came here to do something important” stuff.  This is NOT the time to "sell," but the time to build rapport and trust.

There are 5 simple steps to the NON Sales Culture:

   1. Get the customer talking

   2. Listen for cues on financial need

   3. Translate those needs into products and services

   4. Describe how your products and services can fulfill the need

   5. Ask if they want to open the helpful account while they are here

Facilitate Meaningful Conversation

The most important step is to get the customer to talk and to learn to REALLY listen.  To get them talking, you simply need to ask the right questions, then shut up and know what to listen for.  Here’s are a few starter ideas using checking as an example:

The Basics:

• Where do you have your checking account today?
• What do you like about it?
• What would you change?
• How do you use your account?
• What other important accounts do you have at other institutions?

The REAL Helpful Stuff:

• Learn about their family.
• Learn about their job.
• What d they do for fun?
• What life milestones are happening in their life?

This is a helpful front line tool that you can implement today
to help your staff ask the right questions EVERY time.

You don't need Zig Ziglar to fly in and train your team on this stuff.  By discussing the power of Meaningful Conversation to your entire staff: tellers, new accounts, lending, investments, call center, collections – you’ll have an integrated relationship building machine that will help your customers and grow the business!

We bring these marketing philosophies to credit unions and community banks nationwide, and would love to bring them to your institution too. Contact us to see how.

Nearing 240,000 visits worldwide, we hope that you enjoy this blog.  If you find it helpful, please share it with your colleagues. Also, check out our YouTube Channel for short video blogs about financial marketing.  

MarketMatch is also a nationally and internationally requested speaker. Contact us to bring our marketing ideas to your next conference.

Here are the conferences where you can find MarketMatch.

See our story here. (click)

Chat with me LIVE! (click)

Or email me directly (click)

937-426-9848

Follow me on Twitter @egagliano

Making large-scale changes faster and easier in AdWords

Have you ever needed to adjust your AdWords bids by 5% for several thousand keywords? Or had to find and replace a bit of text in your ad copy across a couple hundred ads? Maybe you’ve changed your web address and need to update all of your visible URLs and destination URLs across your account.

We love making AdWords faster, simpler and more beautiful. So I’m happy to announce our new bulk editing features in the AdWords interface. With these tools, you’ll be able to more quickly and easily make large-scale changes across your entire account.

Initial preview
Initially, we’re releasing these bulk editing features to a limited number of AdWords accounts to collect your feedback and ensure everything works as expected. We hope to expand availability to everyone in the coming weeks.

Update (Dec. 4, 2012): These features are now available in all AdWords accounts globally.

Do more, quickly and easily
Here's a summary of the kinds of changes you'll be able to make.

Keywords	Search and replace text in the keyword or destination URL Append text to the keyword or destination URL Set new bids, including increasing to first page or top of page CPC Increase or decrease bids Change keyword match types Add/remove labels
Ads	Search and replace text in the ad or URL Append text to the ad or URL Change the capitalization of the text Add/remove labels
Ad Groups	Increase or decrease bids Set new bids Add/remove labels
Campaigns	Increase or decrease budgets Set new budgets Add/remove labels

You’ll be able to preview changes before you apply them. If you’re making a lot of changes, they’ll run in the background. That means you can leave the page and do other things in your account (or even log out entirely!) while bulk changes are in progress. A progress bar lets you know how close your changes are to completion. You can review your changes after they’re done.

Below is an example of how easy it is to change “Road bike” to “Commuter bike” in over 25,000 ads with a single click.



Keeping things simple
As these new editing features become available in AdWords, you might also notice a few changes to buttons and menus to reduce redundancy and keep things simple for new users.

The “Edit” button will become an “Edit” drop-down menu. We’ll also be phasing out the “Edit in table” view since its multi-item editing capabilities will be far surpassed. Now when making a change to an individual campaign element, you can just click on it to enter editing mode.

More details and feedback
We’ll be updating articles throughout the AdWords help center, including our AdWords glossary entry on bulk edits, as we roll out these new editing features.

Please share your comments about the new bulk editing features with us if you use them over the next few weeks. Your feedback helps us make AdWords even better.

Posted by Prashant Baheti, AdWords Product Manager

Model bid changes at scale with campaign bid simulator

When we launched bid simulator in 2009, we wanted to make it easy for you to understand the impact of bids on your advertising results. Until now, you’ve been able to access bid simulator at the keyword and ad group level.

To allow you to more easily simulate and apply bid changes at scale, we’re pleased to announce the launch of campaign bid simulator.

To access campaign bid simulator, go to the Opportunities tab and select “campaign bid simulator” from the left navigation tree.

With campaign bid simulator, you can:

• View bid changes in aggregate and model changes even when keywords or ad groups might not have enough data for this on their own. 
• See what might happen if you increased or decreased all your bids by a specific percentage (10%, for example). 
• See whether you may need to increase your campaign budget to ensure it doesn’t become limited by budget at the new bid value. 
• Model what happens if you changed all your bids in the campaign to a single value. 
• Download the bid-simulation data at the account or campaign level. 
• Download an AdWords Editor-compatible file with bid amounts at the simulated level and the ad groups and keywords to which they should be applied. 

Note: this is mock data only and should not be seen as a real or accurate simulation

For more information, visit the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Sheridan Kates, Product Manager, AdWords

Diagnose ads faster with new status insights icon

This week we're introducing a status insights icon in the Ads tab that provides visibility into the approval status and potential policy limitations for each individual ad creative. The new icon will be particularly valuable if you’re advertising products or services that are restricted by our advertising policies to show only in specific countries or with certain keywords.

To use the new status icon, simply hover over the speech bubble in the Status column of the Ads tab next to the ad of interest:


We’ll tell you if the individual ad is showing for the default keyword and location displayed in the hover. If you would like to re-diagnose the ad with with a different targeted location or keyword, you can edit the parameters from right within the hover:


This new icon complements the existing ad diagnosis tools, which include the status hover on the Keywords tab, a batch option to diagnose many keywords at once, and the Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool.

Posted by Katie Miller, Inside AdWords crew

Upgrade to AdWords Editor 9.7.1 for more efficient campaign management

AdWords Editor version 9.7.1 is now available for Windows and Mac. This new version includes performance improvements and several new options for editing and targeting your campaigns. A few highlights:

• Faster downloading for large accounts, and faster cut, copy, and paste (including drag-and-drop).
• A new tool for changing the capitalization of selected text in one step.
• More AdWords settings available within AdWords Editor, including advanced location settings, user interest category targeting, and Wifi traffic targeting.

For a complete list of changes and instructions, visit our release notes.

If you're already using AdWords Editor, you'll be prompted to upgrade automatically. If you're not already using AdWords Editor, you can visit our website and click "Download AdWords Editor." To learn more about AdWords Editor, visit our Help Center.

Posted by Katie Miller, Inside AdWords crew

Live online webinar on ‘Advanced Optimisation for the Google Display Network’

On Wednesday, May 11th, we’ll be holding a live and interactive webinar about optimising AdWords for the Google Display Network.

The Google Display Network, which reaches over 70% of unique Internet users around the world, allows you to reach potential clients beyond search. It also has the advantage of reaching potential customers at different points of the buying cycle.

This live webinar will make recommendations for the optimal structure for your Google Display Network campaigns and provide various optimisation tips and tools—such as advanced bidding options, interest category marketing, AdWords Campaign Experiments, and reporting—that will help you in the optimisation process. We’ll also discuss using Google Analytics and Website Optimiser to improve campaign performance.

The webinar will be presented by AdWords Specialists as part of the AdWords Online Classroom (UK) and will take place on Wednesday, May 11th, 2011,from 3 pm to 4 pm BST, so make sure to sign up now!


Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

AdWords Editor Version 9.0 released today

Today we’re releasing AdWords Editor Version 9.0, with a number of new features designed to help you make changes across accounts more efficiently and manage new ad features, such as Ad Sitelinks and high-end mobile targeting, at scale. We’ve highlighted key changes below. More details are available in the AdWords Editor Version 9.0 release notes.

AdWords Editor Version 9.0 highlights:

Scalably manage Ad Sitelinks
Version 9.0 provides full support for Ad Sitelinks, including downloading and uploading to your account, making edits, checking changes, and importing and exporting.

Improved Add/Update Multiple and Import CSV tools
When entering new data using the Add/Update Multiple tool, you can now enter your data with the columns in any order, assign the appropriate headers to each column, select the option to remember the order of your columns for your next import, and approve or cancel the changes in the account in one click. In addition, Import CSV now includes the option to Paste Text as well as to import From File.

Set high-end mobile targeting options
AdWords Editor now supports the ability to set campaigns to target high-end mobile devices (including Android, iPhone, iPad, and Palm) and carriers in Campaign Settings.

Better manage multiple accounts and MCCs
To help you better manage multiple accounts, AdWords Editor now offers sort and search for accounts, select and remove multiple accounts, and a new dropdown menu above the Account tree in AdWords Editor that displays recently accessed accounts, so you can quickly switch to any one of them.

In addition, when adding an MCC account to the Add New AdWords Account dialog, you can search within the list of available child accounts, display extra columns, and move up to a different level in the MCC account hierarchy.

More easily find and make bulk changes to negative keywords, placements, or audiences
To more easily locate and manage negative keywords, placements, or audiences in your account, we’ve changed the way we display Negatives in AdWords Editor. The Negatives tab has been removed, and you can instead toggle between displaying negative or positive keywords, placements, or audiences by clicking the Positives or Negatives switch on each item’s respective tab.

The Select Duplicates button is now available for negative keywords when in the Duplicate keywords view mode.

The next time you log into your AdWords Editor account, you'll be prompted to upgrade. You may also download Version 9.0 from the AdWords Editor website. After you install the new version of AdWords Editor, your accounts will need to be downloaded again. To preserve your comments and unposted changes, select the Backup then Upgrade option in the automatic upgrade prompt and save the backup file to your computer. Then, re-download your account and import the backup file to AdWords Editor.

For more information, check out the release notes and visit the AdWords Editor Help Center.



Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

2 Word Secret to Front Line Sales … or … 5 Steps to Sales Success

The Moment of Truth

A customer enters your branch … they stop, and scan the lobby, taking note of the décor and atmosphere. They then stride up to an available teller and say…

“I’d like some information on your checking accounts.”

This is the moment of truth!

Nearly every marketing effort ends with your front line staff. Whether it’s a walk-in customer or traffic generated by highly-targeted marketing, your front line staff define the success of your bank or credit union.

At MarketMatch, we’ve shopped, literally, dozens of banks and credit unions from around the country and we’ve seen every possible response to “The Moment of Truth” and I have a theory…

You can study all the psychology, sociology and sales training material available, but front line success comes down to two simple words:

Meaningful Conversation

Your goal, as the marketing professional/trainer/market share acquirer/attrition reducer/cheerleader is to help your front line staff have meaningful conversations and follow 5 simple steps:

1. Ask questions
2. Listen … REALLY listen
3. Hear the hidden financial needs
4. Transition those needs into product recommendations
5. Explain how the product benefits will help the situation

Here are some items to consider:

Tools

Provide your team with easy to complete forms that guide them through meaningful questions about the customer’s family, job, hobbies, other bank accounts, goals for their banking relationship, what do they like/not like about their old accounts, etc. These questions will generate all the meaningful conversation your sales team can handle.

Training

Don’t assume that your team can hear needs and tie them to product. Role-play and provide weekly “Meaningful Conversation” examples. Pick a conversation topic, mach-up some realistic customer quotes, spell out the hidden need and follow-up with products and benefits to address the need.

Programs

Consider programs that will help to focus conversations. I’m a huge fan of a Life Stage approach. Click here for more life stage information.

Experiential Conversation

“I understand that we have an easy to use online banking,” is not as strong as, “I use our online banking and it’s amazing!”

Or what about the power of, “Congratulations on your new baby! When my first child was born…”

There are 3 areas where your staff can share experiential conversations: 1) Personal product use – does your team use your products? 2) Personal experience – what happened in their personal lives that relates to the customer’s story? How did the bank help? 3) Case Histories. Use phrases like, “I once had a customer who went through that, here’s how we helped…” Your team changes lives everyday, share case histories among your staff so each has more stories to tell.

Take care,

Eric

An AdWords take on Search Stories

During last year’s Super Bowl, we did something unprecedented for Google--we aired our first Super Bowl commercial. Our television commercial, Parisian Love, is what we now call a “search story,” since it tells a user’s story through the eyes of the Google.com search box.

Since the first airing of Parisian Love, many new search stories have been created. While each story is unique, they all highlight the ways in which users are searching, whether it’s on Google.com, Google Maps, or mobile--and whether users are clicking on a search result or an ad.

We believe that ads are information and can be a vital part of the search process. As AdWords advertisers, we know you feel that way too, and we wanted to share with you three of our favorite search stories. These stories are all very different, but they all feature ads! As you watch the videos, can you spot them all?

Healthy Habits
A woman takes up healthier habits.
click for full size image

Love at First Bite

A sweet ending to missed connections in the big city.

click for full size image

It's Greek to Me

A hesitant traveler discovers he's born to cruise.

click for full size image

For the full video playlist, watch here.

Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

Contextual targeting just got easier for your display campaigns

This week, we’re launching the Contextual Targeting Tool to help you more easily reach customers as they spend time on millions of sites in the Google Display Network.

As you may already know, contextual targeting helps you reach potential customers as they read webpages related to your products or services. Now, with this tool, you can create contextually-targeted campaigns more easily and quickly, while generating more clicks and conversions for your campaigns.

What does the Contextual Targeting Tool do?
This tool automatically builds keyword lists that can be used to show your ads on relevant webpages in the Google Display Network. Tightly-themed keyword lists are the basis of effective contextual targeting, and with the Contextual Targeting Tool, you no longer have to build them manually. In minutes, you can build dozens, even hundreds, of keyword lists, scaling your campaign performance while ensuring accurate targeting for your ads. This means you can get more clicks and conversions for your campaigns and you can do it more quickly.

How do I use it?
Let’s say you sell soccer equipment and gear. Normally, you'd have to build out separate ad groups for each of your product lines, like soccer gear, soccer balls, soccer cleats, etc. With the Contextual Targeting Tool, simply type each product category into the search box, and the tool will automatically generate tightly-themed keyword lists for you. For example, when you enter soccer gear into the tool, you get more specific ad groups, such as youth soccer gear, discount soccer gear, soccer uniforms, soccer bags, etc.

click for full size image

These new ad groups can help you get additional traffic and sales, as you may not think of creating them when manually building out your campaigns. Along with the new ad groups, the tool provides suggested bids and predicted placements to give you an idea of the types of sites in the Display Network where your ads can appear.

The Contextual Targeting Tool has been available to advertisers using AdWords Editor. This week, all advertisers will be able to access it from the Opportunities tab in their AdWords account. You'll still need AdWords Editor to implement the ad groups in your account for now (download AdWords Editor). However, this requirement will be lifted and you’ll be able to implement new ad groups directly from your AdWords account in the coming months.

You can learn more about using the Contextual Targeting Tool by watching this video. We hope this tool will help you more easily and efficiently reach your goals with your Display Network campaigns.


Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

Significant advances for Display Ad Builder

On the Google Display Network, we've been working hard to make display advertising accessible to everyone, no matter what your size or budget. In 2008, we launched Display Ad Builder to help you design display ads in minutes for free. Now, 100 new advertisers try Display Ad Builder every day.

Today we are announcing a number of improvements to Display Ad Builder to help you achieve all your marketing goals, from driving conversions to building your brand.

Quickly manage hundreds of ads with bulk copying and editing
With the newest version of AdWords Editor, you can now copy your Display Ad Builder ads across campaigns and make basic bulk edits, including ad names, destination and display URLs, and ad statuses. AdWords Editor makes it easier to customize your display creatives. For example, you could create an ad for marathon training tips, make multiple copies of the ad, then go into Display Ad Builder to customize the creative to mention the Chicago marathon for users in Chicago and the Philly marathon for Philadelphia.

Sample Display Ad Builder ad copied using AdWords Editor and then customized based on user location.
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If you're already using AdWords Editor, you'll be prompted to upgrade automatically. Just follow the instructions to keep your unposted changes. If you’re not using AdWords Editor, visit our website to learn more and download it.

Drive engagement with social and expandable templates
Display Ad Builder also can help build your brand and engage users with our new social and expandable templates. We are testing social templates, which include the latest tweets from your Twitter account in the creative. Social templates are really useful if you want to run timely promotions that change daily. You can run a new tweet, instead of creating an entirely new creative. Social templates can also help you build your Twitter follower base.

An ad created using one of Display Ad Builder's social templates.
click for full size image

We've also released expandable templates, which encourage more interaction from interested users by increasing your ad’s real estate on the page. When a user clicks on your expandable ad, it expands to twice its width or height, depending on the format.

Create the perfect ad by customizing your templates
We're also launching template customization to give you greater flexibility to create the ad you want. You can now move text boxes and images where you want within the template. Also, text boxes can be resized, so you can include more content. Combine these new features, with 180 templates, nearly 100 fonts, and unlimited color options to chose from.

Now you can move around text boxes and pictures and re-size text boxes to customize templates to fit your needs.
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Never tried Display Ad Builder? Try our free demo to see how it works. To start creating your ads, go to your ‘Ads’ tab in a new or existing campaign in your AdWords account. Then, click ‘New Ad’ and select ‘Display Ad Builder.’


Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

The Keyword Tool - when you talk, we listen

We want to thank you for all the feedback you’ve given us on the Keyword Tool. The first thing you told us is that you want more keywords that are better targeted to your account and searches, and we’ve made improvements in this area. We’ve also added features such as better filters, the ability to star keywords, and copy them as text. And we’re not done yet! You can help us understand what’s important to you by continuing to provide us with feedback. Below is a more detailed look at some of our new features.

There are three new ways to filter and refine your keyword list. With our new updates, you can:

1. Choose specific terms to include or exclude from your keyword list.
2. Use the ‘More like these’ button to search for terms that are similar to the specific keyword ideas you've selected from the table.
3. Get only results that include the exact words or phrases (and their close synonyms) you’ve typed in the search box.

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Adding stars to keywords
Add stars to keywords that you'd like to save while you're still searching for new keyword ideas. You can review your starred keywords in the "Stars" panel on the left side of the tool.

‘View as text’ button
View your selected keywords in text form, so that you can easily edit them and paste them in a spreadsheet or AdWords Editor.

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Your continued feedback is important, so please keep sending us your comments and we'll post about more improvements here.

Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

Reaching for the top spot? "Estimated Top Impressions" now available in the Bid Simulator

A year ago, we launched the Bid Simulator, a feature that allows you to see how different keyword-level bids may have impacted your advertising results. Using data from the past seven days, the bid simulator re-calculates the number of clicks and impressions your ad could have received with different maximum CPC bids.

Today we’re announcing a new metric in Bid Simulator, “Estimated Top Impressions,” which shows you how many times your ad appeared above the search results in the past seven days and how this metric could have changed had you used different keyword level maximum CPC bids.

Access the Bid Simulator by clicking the icon next to your maximum CPC bid.

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Whether you carefully manage a handful of valuable keywords or simply want users to see your ad as often as possible, Estimated Top Impressions can be a useful metric. Ads that appear above the search results are more visible to users and tend to receive more clicks than ads that appear along the right side of the search results page.

Let's look at an example of how to use the Estimated Top Impressions column:

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In this table, the current maximum CPC bid of $1.07 captures most of the impressions that a higher bid of $1.93 could have captured (7,520 vs. 7,930). However, when we look at the ‘Estimated Top Impressions’ column, we see that the current bid of $1.07 only captures a fraction of the top impressions (4,780 vs. 6,380). Increasing the bid to $1.93 would have placed the ad at the top of the search results page for many more queries, resulting in more users seeing the ad and clicking through to the site (591 vs 662).

If one of your goals is to appear in the top position and you’ve been focusing on the ‘average position’ of your ad to gauge how prominently it’s displayed to users, Estimated Top Impressions may be a better metric for you to focus on. While average position indicates where your ad is appearing in relation to other ads on the page, it doesn’t indicate whether your ad is appearing above the search results or on the right side of the page.

Note that past performance does not guarantee future results, and simulations will only be provided if there is enough traffic on a given keyword to conduct a meaningful analysis. Additionally, top of page impressions are counted only for impressions on Google, since other sites within the Search Network may display ads differently. Estimated Top Impressions data is currently only available in the Bid Simulator, and we’re working to incorporate this metric into more AdWords reports.

For an in-depth look at bidding, check out this tutorial from Hal Varian, the Google Chief Economist: Bidding Strategy Overview.

Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

Updated Keyword Tool: Out of Beta

In early August, we announced that the updated Keyword Tool was nearing the end of its beta phase. Today, we wanted to let you know that we’ve fully launched the updated Keyword Tool.

What does that mean for you? It means we’ve combined the best features from two previous keyword tools into one. The previous Keyword Tool and Search-based Keyword Tool are no longer available in AdWords. The updated Keyword Tool is now the only Keyword Tool available in AdWords, so you can now simply call it “The Keyword Tool.”

The Keyword Tool’s benefits include:

• Flexible search options: Search by any combination of keyword, website/URL, and category (where available) and receive a single set of results.
• Easy Keyword Refinement: Filter results by word or keyword match type.
• Negative keywords: Easily add keyword ideas as negatives right from your keyword list. Just click on a keyword and use the drop-down menu to select and save your negative keyword.
• Advanced options: View statistics for mobile search and use data filters based on local searches, search and ad share, and more.

In addition to these improvements, we’ve also changed how we calculate Global Monthly Searches and Local Monthly Searches. Statistics in these columns are now based on Google.com search traffic only. Previously, they also included traffic from search partners. We've updated these statistics based on advertiser feedback, and hope you find them more helpful for keyword selection.

While we recommend using the Keyword Tool while signed in to AdWords, you can also access the tool without signing in. We hope you like the new streamlined version of the tool and we look forward to bringing you more features soon.

Posted by Jason Shafton, Inside AdWords crew

Improved keyword diagnosis -- no appointments necessary

"Are my ads showing? If they aren't, why not?"

Whether you have ten keywords or ten thousand, making sure your ads are showing is a top priority. Now you can get detailed diagnostic information for multiple keywords at once by using a new keyword diagnosis option on the Keywords tab.

To get started, open the "More actions" menu on your Keywords tab (at the account, campaign, or ad group level) and select "Diagnose keywords."

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On the keyword diagnosis menu, you have all the options available in the standalone Ads Diagnostic Tool. For example, if you're interested in seeing whether or not your ad is showing in a particular location, you can use the Location drop-down to narrow the scope of your diagnosis.

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After clicking "Run test," you'll see the real-time results appear in the Status column next to each keyword. If all is well, you see "Ad showing." If not, you'll see a brief summary of the problem (for example, "Low bid or quality score"):

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To get more details on a keyword's status, hover over any speech bubble icon. In the above example, viewing details for the keyword "meeting icebreakers" displays more information on the Quality Score issues that are preventing the ad from showing. To focus on one issue at a time, try creating filters for Keyword Status.

The next time your keywords need a check-up, try using keyword diagnosis -- it even makes house calls!

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew

Get a crash course on AdWords reporting tools

It’s hard to fix a problem when you don’t know it exists. That’s why the reporting tools available in AdWords are so important. Features like segmentation, filters, and custom alerts let you move through your campaigns like a shadow in the night, spotting potential issues and taking action quickly.

We’ve just released Find new insights in AdWords data, an AdWords Online Classroom course that will help you make the most of AdWords reporting tools.

In a little over 20 minutes, you’ll learn how to focus on the right statistics, find and take action on your key performance drivers, and monitor your campaigns regularly to ensure that no change in an important metric goes unnoticed. Before viewing the course, you'll need to complete a free registration.

So watch this short lesson and learn some advanced strategies for evaluating your account. Your campaigns will thank you!

Posted by Katrina Kurnit, Inside AdWords crew

New tool for brand advertisers on the Google Content Network

Over the past year, we've focused on building new solutions on the Google Content Network for campaigns focused on branding. Last year we introduced frequency capping to help you manage how often your Content Network campaigns reach the right people. We then launched an “above the fold” filter to allow you to show ads only in places that appear on potential customers’ screens when the page loads. We also developed innovative tools to measure the impact of brand campaigns.

Today, in response to feedback from many of you who run branding campaigns, we're announcing a new filter that allows you to show your ads only on AdSense sites among the 1000 largest on the web, as defined by DoubleClick Ad Planner. This new feature will ensure that your ads reach a large number of users, but only on well-known sites best suited for branding goals.

To activate the new filter, select ‘non Ad Planner 1000’ within the ‘category filters’ section of your AdWords account. Keep in mind that not all sites in the Ad Planner 1000 are in the Google Content Network and that your ads will only show on those sites that are.

It's important to note that the Ad Planner 1000 does not take performance statistics into account, and that by enabling this filter, you may be excluding many sites that are relevant to your advertised products. Additionally, with this or any of our other brand filters enabled, your campaign will run on fewer sites, so you may need to raise your bids if you’d like to maintain your impression levels. We recommend experimenting to determine which feature or combination of features best meets your goals.

We hope this new feature gives you greater control and assurance over where your ads appear and makes the Google Content Network an even more powerful environment for effective branding campaigns.

Posted by Katrina Kurnit, Inside AdWords crew

Target CPA Bidding: A new way to meet your ROI goals with Conversion Optimizer

Today we’re announcing a new enhancement to Conversion Optimizer: Target CPA Bidding. With Target CPA Bidding, you can set a bid that reflects the average amount you’d like to pay for a conversion rather than the maximum you’re willing to pay for it.

We launched Conversion Optimizer in 2007 as a tool to improve your campaign ROI. Conversion Optimizer analyzes your conversion tracking data and automatically adjusts your bids for each auction. Over the past few years, we’ve been pleased to hear from a number of you that you've seen significant ROI improvements after implementing Conversion Optimizer. In fact, analysis indicates that, on average, those of you who use the tool experience a 21% increase in conversions along with a 14% decrease in CPA.*

This latest update to Conversion Optimizer was made in response to your feedback. We’ve heard from many of you that you’re more accustomed to thinking in terms of a target or average CPA when it comes to managing your online advertising (as opposed to the Max CPA bids which the tool has historically required). We hope that having the additional Target CPA bidding option will make it even easier for you to boost your AdWords ROI. Of course, if you’re happy using Max CPA bids with your Conversion Optimizer campaigns, then there’s no need to make any changes to your campaigns.

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To enable Target CPA bidding, visit the Settings tab in your account, select ‘Focus on Conversions,’ and click ‘Advanced Options.’ Note that Conversion Optimizer is only available for campaigns that have implemented conversion tracking and have received at least 15 conversions in the last 30 days.

Posted by Emily Williams, Inside AdWords crew

*This analysis compares the performance of Conversion Optimizer campaigns over the course of a year with a control set of campaigns and represents the average impact of Conversion Optimizer. The actual impact will vary from campaign to campaign.

More relevant traffic estimates now in the updated Keyword Tool

In late September, we launched a beta version of the updated Keyword Tool. This tool is a new, streamlined way for you to identify additional keywords and add them to your account. Previously, we offered two distinct tools to expand your keyword list. The Keyword Tool generated keywords based on the content of the URL, words or phrases you entered into the tool. The Search-based Keyword Tool gave you insight into keywords that you may have been missing out on by identifying actual Google searches that were relevant to your site’s landing pages. Now, with the updated Keyword Tool, you can search by words or phrases, websites, and even categories (where available) to receive the results of both the Keyword Tool and the Search-based Keyword Tool in one central location.

Our beta launch began what will eventually be a permanent transition from the previous Keyword Tool to the updated version. Over the next few months, you'll be able to switch back and forth between the two tools as needed. We'll post again on this blog when the transition period is over. At that point, the updated Keyword Tool will be the only version available in your account.

In the meantime, as you get accustomed to the updated version, we'll continually improve it and add functionality that we hope you'll find useful. Over the next few days, we're adding a new feature to the tool that will help you get more relevant search traffic estimates for your keywords.

To do this, you'll select specific keywords from the list of suggestions and click on the 'Estimate Search Traffic' button.

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From there, you can choose the ad group to which you'd like to add those keywords and see the average estimated CPC, total estimated clicks, and total estimated cost for the keywords you selected on the previous screen.

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This enhancement enables you to see how your keywords might perform in a specific ad group. Keyword traffic estimates in the context of an ad group can look at the interactions between keywords, and can give you a more accurate prediction of performance than you'd see from a full list of keywords.

It's important to note that due to these changes, we're removing some columns that you had previously been able to add to your Keyword Tool results: Estimated Avg. CPC, Estimated CTR, Estimated Ad Position, Estimated Impressions, Estimated Clicks, and Estimated Cost. While you won't be able to access these columns in the updated version, you'll still be able to see much of this information in the context of an ad group. If you're interested in seeing keyword-level search traffic estimates, you can do so through the standalone Traffic Estimator tool, which also has a new, more intuitive interface. To access the Traffic Estimator tool, click on the 'More Tools' link under the 'Tools' section of your Opportunities Tab.

Posted by Katrina Kurnit, Inside AdWords crew