I got an email from my Google rep asking if I wanted to participate in a new beta from Google called, ‘contact form extensions’.

The gist of the beta is if you’re running a PPC ad in Google, and you’re in the top position, you can click on a plus sign next to a call to action (the name you give your contact form) and Google will drop down your contact form to be submitted right there in the Google search results.

According to Google, the rules for the contact form extension are as follows:

1. Only the position #1 will be available for the drop down contact form
2. Leads will be priced with your maximum cost-per-click bid during the beta test.
3. Google will be collecting the phone number and name from your contact form
4. You can provide Google with up to 3 custom questions they’ll include in your contact form in addition to basic information like name, address, phone, etc.
5. Google will show ‘some’ or ‘all’ of your custom questions based on a ‘quality algorithm in which they did not mention the details of.
6. Here’s the kicker, at the current moment, they’ll only take phone leads, so you must provide a contact phone number in your form in order for people to call in and ‘hopefully’ become a lead.  In the future they do plan to provide leads through email or live chat.

How it all works:

When someone does a search in Google, and if your PPC ad is in position #1, the user will have the ability to click on the plus sign icon to drop down your contact form. If the user fills out the form by hitting the ‘please give me a call’ button that lead will be submitted to Google.

Once Google receives your lead, they’ll send you an email with the lead ID and information requested by the user.

However, you can’t contact the user yet, you have to call a special Google phone number and provide it with a lead ID, which will then re-route you to your potential customer.

If you get to sign up for the beta, or when it comes out of beta, Google will provide you with a list of questions you can put in your contact form, and Google essentially builds the contact form for you.

Some participation guidelines are of course recommended:

• You must contact your potential lead within 24 business hours.
• Only US based phones numbers are accepted so your campaigns should only be targeting the United States.
• Submission forms should be submitted by January 18^th, 2010. Late submissions are not guaranteed to be active in the first round of the beta.
• You can opt out at any time.
• There may be hiccups since it is a beta.
• Your account manager will give you reporting on your contact form extensions on a monthly basis.
• Provide Google with feedback!

So there it is, I’m super excited to be a part of the beta for some of my accounts. I really, really hope to see some good results from this. Of course I have to put this all in perspective as your ad has to be in the #1 position in Google in order to even show the contact form extension.

While Google has strong metrics for assessing user intent, it is not always spot-on. The new Comparison Ads tool allows users to clarify exactly what they are looking for, and then view the relevant offers side-by-side. If a searcher is interested in your product or service, they are provided with a phone number (generated by Google) or can provide their contact information through a “Request Quote” link. It is a pay-per-lead model, so the advertiser is only charged if the number is called or if the quote request is completed.

In the example provided by Google, if a user searches for “mortgage”, Google will prompt the searcher to clarify if they are looking to “buy a home” or “refinance”. Once selected, the searcher is directed to a one-page view off all offers relevant to their search query If a search query interests them, then they can call a number provided or request a quote.

The Comparison Ads tool claims to boost the user experience in three ways: speed, transparency and privacy. First, the new tool will decrease user-time spent finding a relevant offer. The tool can serve relevant, specific offers in less than a second. Plus, all ads will be very specific offers, so there cannot be deception in the ad text, including gimmicky rates and savings. Finally, Google will keep the searchers personal information private from the advertiser, unless explicitly provided by the searcher.

If you ask me, this tool can be both good and bad for advertisers. I agree that it will enhance the searcher experience by providing relevant, transparent ads in a side-by-side view. Plus, many competitive industries would greatly benefit from a pay-per-lead system, as it will surely increase conversion rates and improve an advertisers return on investment.

However, there needs to be an opt-in feature for this tool if it were rolled out globally. What happens to pay-per-click advertisers that are purely volume driven? How would this roll out for ecommerce sites where browsing is encouraged? This tool can only benefit advertisers who are lead driven, as click volume will significantly decrease under this pay-per-lead model.

Right now Google has only made the Comparison Ads tool available to limited advertisers in the mortgage and refinance sectors. It will be interesting to see how this tool shifts the current pay-per-click model.

Do you think this new tool will help or harm you current pay-per-click campaign?

The sitelinks also provide advertisers with a good way of promoting seasonal services or products. Unlike organic sitelinks, the advertiser can pick and choose which campaigns get sitelinks and what those sitelinks are and where they link to. So they can be changed out as frequently as you would like.

Of course this new feature isn’t available to all Adwords advertisers. Google is being fairly vague when they say their new ad sitelinks are “available to ads that meet our quality requirements”, but do not go into any further detail than that.

To find out if your PPC account qualifies for the new sitelinks, simple go into your Adwords account, click on a campaign, click the settings tab, and scroll down to the ‘networks, devices and extensions section.  If the sitelinks are available to you, there will be an additional ‘ad extensions’ option under this category. Simply click the edit button to add your sitelinks.

I think having the sitelinks is a great way to take users directly to a contact page or form page if that is your lead type. A few of my clients do qualify for the sitelinks and I’ll be adding them into today. My advice is if you do qualify, be sure to add tracking to the additional links so you can track data separately for the sitelinks to see if they’re actually helping.

If you’re thinking about doing any kind of ad scheduling or day parting, there are a few tips you should follow before deciding to turn off your ads or even simply adjust your bids on a particular day of the week or time of day.

1. Run the right reports: Running the right reports is essential before you make any decisions on ad scheduling. If you’re running a lead-based account only, you should be looking at the amount of PPC spend versus the number of leads you’re generating for a particular day or hour.

However, If you’re managing an ecommerce client you’ll want to track the amount of PPC spend versus the amount of revenue you’re generating for a particular day/hour.

For either type of client, it may also be a good idea to determine which day or hour you’re generating a higher cost-per-lead.  If there are a few hours in the middle of the night where you’re finding your CPL to be too high, you can adjust your bids automatically to decrease during those hours, and increase back up to normal all other hours. But we’ll talk about that strategy in a few minutes.

2. Large sample size:  Another tip is to be sure when you’re running reports that you’re pulling enough data over a long period of time to get a large enough sample size. Pulling data for the past few months may be okay for some accounts that spend a lot of money and generate a lot of leads during that time. But for other accounts, you may have to go back much further than that. Even for clients that do generate a lot of revenue/leads and spend a lot, I go back as far as I can.

3. Look at multiple metrics: When it comes to a lead based account, your main focus may be on amount of spend versus actual lead generation and that’s okay. But perhaps look at some of your other metrics too like cost-per-lead, and click-through rate. We know that low click-through rates can drag down your overall account Quality Score. You may be surprised to see that during a few hours in the early morning your PPC ads are spending, not converting, but are also generating a very high click-through rate. If that is the case you may not want to pause those ads during those hours or you may see a drop in Quality Score. Instead of pausing ads entirely during those hours use the bid adjustment setting so your max CPC bid is set to only 50% of what it would normally show at, meaning your position would drop and you would receive much less traffic and generate less spend, but you’re ads would still be showing and your click-through rate may or may not drop any further.

4. Adjust bids by the hour: When thinking about ad scheduling, I would stick with adjusting your PPC keyword bids by the hour before making adjustments by the day. Lowering your keyword bids by the hour is going to make less of an impact than lowering your keyword bids on a particular day, for an entire day. So start off small, then work you way up to larger changes that could make more of an impact on your accounts performance.

5. Auto increase bids: By dropping your bids automatically during less profitable hours of the day, you can also increase your bids automatically in the same fashion. During peak times of the day where traffic is high and leads and/or revenue is good you can set your bids to increase during those times only to maximize your PPC revenue.

To get ad scheduling going, begin running your reports. For a lead generation report by hour you’re going to have to use Google Analytics.  If you’re tracking revenue, you can go into your Analytics account and select the revenue section, then total revenue. Above the graph and below the date range there are small icons you can click on that will give you revenue data by the hour, day, week and month. Click on the first icon to view revenue by the hour.

To set up ad scheduling after you’ve run your reports, simply click on the campaign, click settings and under ‘advanced settings:  schedule, start date, end date, ad scheduling’ click on edit.

You can then switch back and forth from basic mode, which is pausing your ads during either full days or certain times during the day, or you can select bid adjustment mode which allows you to either increase or decrease your bids during certain days or hours of the day.

I think ad scheduling and day parting, when done correctly can truly help increase an account’s performance.  Not only can it help minimize spend during non profitable hours of the day, but it can help increase profitability when search and conversion times are peaking throughout the day.

With that said, the new view through conversion data shows how many conversions were made within 30 days after a user viewed, but did not click on one of your display ads via the content network.

It’s very important to note, that if there was a click at any point from that user within 30 days of their initial ‘view’, then that conversion will be counted as a click conversion, not a view through conversion. View through conversions are tracked by the AdSense cookie on the content network. Meaning if your ad shows up on the content network, AdSense will track that users cookie, if that user did not click on that display ad, but came back to the website in some other fashion, then that one conversion will be counted as a view through conversion.

This is really great for people who have ads running and do a really great job branding for their clients, but then the user just ends up going back to the website through typing in the company domain name and the PPC display ad never gets the credit. I wish Google could somehow do this for all PPC ads, on the search and content network, but maybe that’s in the works!

The view through data is available in all Adwords accounts as a new column on the far right hand side of the page.  Again, you will only see the data if you’re running a display ad on the content network.

The good things about seeing this data is to know which ad and on which website is truly generating the most conversions.  If you can increase your bids on a particular placement on the content network or copy that display ad and add it throughout other CN campaigns you’re  likely to see the same positive results.

From user intent, to management strategy, there are numerous differences between the Search and Content networks within Google. The Search Network generates awesome results because you can display your ads at the moment a user is searching for your product/service.

With the Content Network, there is no actual search query involved because your ads are displayed on sites that contain content that is relevant to your keywords and ad copy. So, the intent between a Search user and Content user is vast. One user is directly looking for your product/service (Search Network) and one is viewing content relevant to your products but they aren’t specifically looking for you yet.

However, within the Content Network, just because a user isn’t specifically searching for your products doesn’t mean they’re not interested. It all comes to the moment of relevance.

Users are inundated with information every day, however, displaying your ads next content that a user chooses to spend a few minutes reading, can be very powerful. And that is the moment of relevance on the Content Network.

For example, if you sell gardening supplies, you should specifically target websites within the Content Network that fit into a “Gardening/Home Improvement” category. Sure, when the user is reading an article on a certain gardening site, they aren’t specifically searching for your products. However, they are in the mind frame of gardening/home improvement. And, if managed properly, your ad should can be displayed next to this article.

The moment of relevancy differs between Search and Content, but they be equally powerful.

The reasons listed above are how and why the Content Network can generate targeted traffic and increase leads with a positive ROI. However, and I’m not going to lie, successfully managing a Content Network campaign requires diligence, analysis, and hard work.

So, why go through all this trouble and fuss with the Content Network? Google recently released a white paper on the CPA Performance Trends on the Google Content Network (PDF) and Josh Dreller at Search Engline Land pulled some great factoids from this report:

• The Google Content Network is the world’s number one ad network, reaching more than 80% of global internet users.
• It servers more than 6 billion ad impressions each day across hundreds of thousands of websites.
• In total, 51.6% of advertisers analyzed had an average Content Network CPA equal to or better than their Search Network CPA.
• [A Specific Media] study suggests that Content Network advertisers benefit not only from the click-through conversions driven by their ads, but also from the increased awareness generated by exposure to a targeted message.

There are still PPC managers who avoid the Content Network but I think this because they haven’t realized how to fine-tune this distribution method in order to increase their relevancy. Like I said earlier, you need be vigilant when optimizing your performance on the Content Network.

Now, we know it’s paid search success revolves around displaying your ad at the moment of relevance (on Search and Content), and we know that the Content Network has a wide reach and shouldn’t be ignored. So, what can you do make sure your ads are showing on the right websites within the Content Network? I’ll leave you with a few tactics:

Specific Content Campaigns: Since the user intent between the two distribution channels on Google are quite different, they need to be managed differently as well. You should create separate campaigns for your Content Network efforts.

Placement Performance Report: If you are running ads with general Content distribution (automatic placements), the AdWords placement performance report can be the key to your success. By running the placement performance report you can find and exclude websites that are not generating positive results.

Google Ad Planner: If you want to take the bull by the horns and create your own media plan, you can do so using the Google Ad Planner. You have the option to not opt into general Content Network Distribution, and you can pick and choose upon which sites you’d like to run ads.

Site and Category Exclusion: With this tool you can prevent your ads from running on specific websites. You can exclude at the “topics” level. And you can prevent your ads from displaying on certain “page types” as well.

Negative Keywords: Don’t forget that just like the Search Network, you can utilize negative keywords to better target your distribution.

A well-structured content campaign that utilizes these tools and tactics has a much better chance of displaying their ads on the right websites at the highest moment of relevance.

To access the ‘Opportunities Tab’, login to your AdWords account. It is now located in the main navigation in your account.

The tab has replaced the ‘Tools’ section within the interface, and will act as a stepping stone for further optimization tool expansions in the near future. However, it did not replace any existing Google AdWords tools. You can still find all the other keyword and ad tools in the left-hand navigation within the ‘Opportunities Tab’.

The ‘Opportunities Tab’ acts as an ad group level version of the keyword tool. It provides keyword suggestions at the ad group level, including estimated monthly search volumes and advertiser competition. Similar to the Google Bid Simulator, you can also select to view the proposed cost-per-click for each keyword.

Google also allows you to filter keywords by relevancy. If a keyword is not relevant to your ad group or account, you can ‘rate’ that keyword and eliminate it from the suggestion tool in the future.

With this tool, Google makes it very easy for advertisers to expand keyword targeting in pay-per-click accounts. Last week I used this tool for many clients, and found it to be useful. The keyword suggestions identified many holes in my accounts. It also helped me identify new targeting opportunities. Plus, Google makes keyword expansion easy, if the keyword is relevant to your ad group, you simply check the box and save the changes.

Now some words of caution. Keep your account structure and quality score in mind when adding new keywords. The keyword tool does not always take into account your ad group structure. In many cases, this new tool suggested was not always the best fit for the recommended ad group. For example, for an ad group that just focuses on ’shoes’, Google suggested I add the keyword ‘buy red shoes’. While this keyword would be good to add if I sell red shoes on my website, it should live in its own ad group for the sake of quality score.

Google makes it very easy to find and add new keywords with the new ‘Opportunities’ tool. But you need to be careful. Make sure the keyword suggestion makes most sense in that ad group. If it doesn’t, start a list of new keyword opportunities and add them to existing relevant ad groups, or launch a new ad group and expand on the keywords. Don’t let this quick-add keyword tool affect your account organization and quality score.

The Google Adwords Qualified Professional status can be obtained at either the individual level or the company level. In order to receive the company level status at least 2 employees have to pass the exam.  Unfortunately, your status expires after 2 years, so you may have to take it multiple times in order to keep your individual or company status. The exam costs $50, and yes, you have to pay that each time you take the exam for each person.

Here are just a few tips on how to successfully pass the exam with flying colors – without giving away any answers.

1. Utilize the learning center – You do have an hour to take the exam, and I believe there are 75 – 100 questions in the exam.  With that said, you can use your notes, use Adwords, or look up answers online. However, most of the questions, if not all of them, are taken from the Adwords learning center itself.  So take the time and go through the learning center tutorials and reading material.  It will make a serious difference.
2. Know Google Adwords ad text policies – t\The one thing I remember most is they ask you a ton of ad text guidelines and policies questions.  What can you say in your ads, what can’t you say, how many characters are in the title, description, destination URL, etc. Know your ad rules!!!
3. Put yourself in scenarios – Especially for the ad text, when studying for the exam, test yourself by using scenarios.  Example, Here is an ad text – tell me all the items that violate the GA ad text guidelines. Then you have to choose between a. b. c. or d. Also, there are scenario questions about ROI and CTR and how to know when you need to pause an ad or keyword and when you should increase or decrease their bids.
4. Know how to calculate ROI – If you only work on lead based PPC accounts or click only accounts, you better learn how to calculate ROI.  There are questions that put you in a scenario where they show ads or keywords with a certain ROI, and you have to know which ad or keyword to pause. So, if you don’t understand ROI, learn it now.
5. Know where things are – You will be asked questions on which reports you can run for certain information and where you access conversion tracking codes, etc.

Although there is a separate Google Analytics exam, you should know the essentials of Google analytics reporting, goals, funnels, etc.

Taking and passing the Google Adwords Qualified Professional exam is great to have on your website and resume and can be a great selling tool. As we talk about trust symbols and certifications to put on your landing pages to increase conversions, this is one of them!  Just be sure you adhere to the Google certification logo guidelines before posting it everywhere.

If you think you need more explanation or teaching other than the tutorials you can watch these great videos on YouTube called the Google Business Channel. They give you videos obviously and offer more of a visual representation of the learning material. If you have more questions about the Google Adwords Qualified Professional exam and their qualifications you can check out their FAQ.

Good luck!

The PPC Hero team frequently receives questions from readers regarding ad serving issues in Google. So, I have compiled a handy top 10 list of reasons why your ads may not be showing in Google. Start from the top and work your way down. By the end, you should (hopefully) see activity in your AdWords account.

1. Campaign/Ad Group Paused. A fundamental element for any campaign, Active vs. Paused. It may seem intuitive, but just make sure your account, campaign, and ad group settings are set to the Active setting.
2. Billing Information Issue. Review your account billing information to confirm it is correct (credit card number, expiration, address, etc.). If Google has any issue with billing, it will not serve your ads.
3. Daily Budget Not Set. Check your campaign daily budgets to make sure it is set above $0. Your ads will not run if you have no dedicated daily budgets within each campaign.
4. Keyword Bids Exceed Daily Budget. Your keyword bids may be too high for your daily budget. For example, if your keyword max cost-per-click is $4.00 and your campaign daily budget is only $10, then Google will not show your ads. If this is the case, just lower bids and/or increase your daily budget.
5. Low Search Volume. If you are not getting any impressions on your ads, it could be due to low search volume for your targeted keywords. Google will note low volume keywords within the “Keywords” tab in the interface. If your find that your keywords have a low search volume, use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool to find related keywords with higher search volume.
   
6. Disapproved Ads. If your ad text does not adhere to Google’s ad text policy, then your ads will be disapproved. When you sign up for email alerts, Google will send you an email if any ad text is disapproved. If you disabled email account alerts, then you can manually check your ad approvals in the interface. To find if your ads have been disapproved, login to your Adwords account and click on the Campaign Management tab. Then click on Disapproved Ads under the Analyze Your Ad Performance section. This useful Disapproved Ads Tool will tell you the when, what, where, and why’s for disapproved ad text. It will also provide suggestions for improving your ad text.
7. Disapproved Keywords. AdWords also reviews and approves your campaign keywords.  If the keywords fall under AdWords prohibited content. Google AdWords does not permit advertising products and websites related to firearms, drugs, cigarettes, pornography, hard alcohol, fireworks, and more.
8. Negative Keywords. Adding negative keywords to your campaigns is a good idea, but you have to be careful, especially when using broad match. Review your negative keyword list. Make sure that you have not added negative keywords at the campaign or ad group level that nullify your keywords within any given ad group.
9. Position Preference Is Preventing Ad Serving. In theory, position preference is a great tool when you want to control where your ads appear in Sponsored Search rankings. But if your keyword bids are not set correctly, the position preference tool can stop serving your ads. According to our Google rep:

   “Position preference instructs the AdWords system to try showing your ad whenever it’s ranked in your preferred position and avoid showing it when it is not. It does not mean that your ad will appear in the position you specify for every single search on your keyword. If you broaden your position preference, you’ll see that the keyword will trigger the ad.”

   So, if your bids are too high or too low for the selected position, your ads will not be served. The Google position preference tool will only show your ad when you qualify for the designated position. To fix this, either turn position preference off, or expand your preference to include more positions.

10. Patience. If all else fails, sometimes it is best to wait. Google ad text and keyword approvals can take up to five days. When you submit your ad text and keywords, you are entered into the Google review and approvals queue. If it has been more than five days, contact a Google rep to see if your keywords and ads have been approved. Here is a related post about reasons why your ads aren’t showing in Google.

If you have worked through this entire list and still don’t see results, then it is time to contact your Google rep. Your account may have bigger problems than bids, budgets and ad text approvals.

Have you encountered any other issues with ad serving in Google? Please leave a comment and share them with us!

As you know, any additional level of granularity in regards to performance visibility is a welcome change! This means Gmail will appear as mail.google.com, Google Books will appear as books.google.com, Google Finance will appear as finance.google.com (the list goes on and on) and if your ads appear within any of these subdomains, they’ll be listed in your placement performance report. You’ll be able to manage your individual site bids for these Google properties. Therefore, enhancing your overall performance on the Content Network.

If you want to know what Google properties are out there, check out a list of popular Google sub domains.

The Google Content Network can be a beast to conquer but we’ll master this unruly monster together. Here is a quick list of what we’ve been discussing recently to help you optimize your Content Network performance:

Utilizing category exclusions to enhance your peformance

Restructuring your content campaigns can increase your exposure

How placement performance reports can help you create targeted campaigns

Now, get out there and start optimizing!