In the past 6 months, my relationship status with adCenter and the desktop editor has changed from “It’s Complicated” to “Engaged.”  I have become proficient with these PPC tools and if I don’t know where something is, I poke around until I find it.  But this stumped me for sure: How in the world can I save time and upload a bulk list of negatives?  I don’t have to insert each keyword into their ad groups individually, do I?  If that is the case, this relationship is over.  Don’t get me wrong, I am all for working on solving a problem, but I would never get to anything else in my accounts!  So, I asked for help.  Yup, the adCenter editor and I went to counseling and here is what I learned.

Step One:  Gathering Your Information

In order to create a negatives keyword list, you need to perform a Search Query Performance report.  If you have not pulled this report in a while, I suggest taking a 3-month snapshot.  This will be a lot of data to sort through, but it’s all valuable information!  Sort your excel spreadsheet in ascending order by the search term and start scrolling.  The first move is to find search inquiries that are completely bizarre and have nothing to do with your account and mark those as negatives.  It could be a word, a phrase, or you may want to eliminate the entire search as an exact match.  Next, sort by conversions.  This is a great way to actually expand your account by adding in these higher converting words or phrases.  On the flip side, you can exclude things that have not converted or have a very low click-through rate.  Once your exclusions are made, create your new upload sheet.

Step Two: Prepping Your Information

Creating your bulk upload sheet is simple.  Create your columns and fill in your information.  The following columns are required for upload:

• Type:
  • The column will be filled with either “Campaign Negative Keyword” or “Ad Group Negative Keyword.”  This will depend on where you want your negative to be placed.
  • Will it be on the Campaign or Ad Group level?  Remember, Ad Group level negatives will trump Campaign level negatives.
• Campaign:
  • The column will be filled with the different Campaign names and is needed for Campaign AND Ad Group level negatives.
• Ad Group:
  • This column will only be needed if “Ad Group Negative Keyword” is the Type.
• Status:
  • This column should say “Active.”
  • Negative:
    • This column will be filled with the negative keyword you want to upload.
    • Remember that adCenter will not recognize a match type column for negative keywords.  So where you would actually delete out the match type signifier out of your Google keyword column, for adCenter, you will need to add them in!
      • Phrase Negatives should be signified with “quotes”
      • Exact Negatives should be signified with [brackets].
      • Broad Negatives – tricked you!  There is no such thing in adCenter… don’t forget that!

Step Three: Uploading Your Information

In the editor, you can upload in a couple different ways.  You can choose to cut and paste your information and hope that you have all of your columns set up correctly, or you can import from an Excel spreadsheet.  We are going to go with the latter because it puts up less of a fight!

Log into your account, synch the account to make sure the editor and the User Interface are on the same page and click the “Import” icon in the Home Tab in the Data box.

Once you have the Import Wizard screen open, you will pick the last option, “Import from a modified Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheet.”

One thing to note when using this function, is that you must uploaded your data from a single tab excel workbook and save it to the desktop.  If you have multiple tabs in your document, the editor will become confused and not know what information to pick… (Ladies, does this sound like any ex-boyfriends you know!?  Just playing guys!)  So, keep it simple – one tab!

The editor will ask for a file name and then it will actually give you the option to view your import (al la Google!).  This is the best feature of the Import Wizard, which is why I prefer using it instead of the cut and paste method.

Once you hit “Next”, you are on your way to upload!  The rest of the process is the same as uploading your keywords or your bid changes.  Don’t forget to synch your account back up with the User Interface when you are done with all of your edits!

This uploading technique is quick and simple and should save you a whole heck of a lot of heartache with adCenter.  See, you don’t have to break up and throw all of your campaigns out on the street after all.  Just by giving your account tools a little love, you too can have a strong, healthy relationship with adCenter.

Please let us know what tools make your life as a PPC Manager a little bit easier!  Be sure to check out Sarah’s post tomorrow about the love between AdWords and Analytics reporting.  Thanks, as always, for reading PPC Hero!

• Impression share
• Impression share lost to budget
• Impression share lost to rank
• Impression share lost to relevance
• Impression share lost to other

There are a few things to keep in mind about the new and improved reporting features.  First, the impression share report only works for the Day view, so when you’re fumbling through adCenter’s many, many dropdown menus in their reporting tab, make sure that you select the Day view.  Additionally, the impression share reporting is only available for Account, Campaign or Ad Group Performance.

And because everyone just loves adding in conversion and CPA columns every single time a report is run in adCenter, Microsoft was thoughtful enough to make sure that these new metrics need to be added in the Advanced Settings (under change columns and layout) every single time as well.  They really make you earn those metrics, baby.

Buried beneath the wonderful news, joyous mood and Jeff-Allenian hats in this new press release is the “Impression Share Lost to Other” column, which is defined by Microsoft in the blog post as “the percentage of impressions your ad missed due to other reasons.”  Which is so gloriously vague and non-meaningful that it takes the Internet’s collective breath away.  Thanks, Microsoft!

This woman was so frustrated with her duplicate keywords, she decided to eat her laptop.

I had over 3,000 duplicate keywords in my account. Yes. You read that correctly. I was going to upload my first bid change, and I found I had 1,794 duplicate keyword errors of the keywords I was changing bids on. After trying to troubleshoot the issue myself, I was stumped, and emailed my helpful adCenter rep for any help I could get. He ran a report and told me that I have over 3,000 duplicate keywords in my account due to this keyword normalization. I, flabbergasted, asked: “Well, how on earth do I change their bids?” and he responded with, “Well, you’d have to do them manually, one by one, in the interface.” I almost threw the phone. Instead, I decided to stay Above The Line and ask what a better solution could be. He told me to pick the best performing normalized keyword and delete the rest. So, that’s what me (and a couple of helpful co-workers) did. We scoured over 6,000 keywords and hand-picked out the best performers of the duplicates.

There’s no way to tell, when you download keyword performance reports, which keywords have been deleted. If you download the report for any time period the deleted keyword even got an impression, you’ll end up uploading the duplicate back into the account (yes, I did). So, you’ve got to download your data for only the time that’s passed since you deleted your keywords and make changes based on average position or otherwise take the time to filter out all the deleted keywords manually.

So, seeing as how this account was originally imported from AdWords, let this be a cautionary tale. Be very careful when importing from your AdWords account into adCenter. You may just be importing over 3,000 duplicate keywords that will take way more time and frustration to deal with later than it will to do it to start with.

Have any of you had similar frustrations with adCenter’s duplicate normalized keywords?

First, let’s cover the data that you can keep uniform between AdWords and AdCenter:

• Campaign Structure
• General Campaign Settings (geo-targeting, negative keywords, etc.)
• Ad Text
• Keyword Lists

Campaign data can easily be imported into AdCenter from AdWords through the AdCenter user interface. In AdCenter, go to the Tools menu in the top nav, and then click on the link to import your campaign:

From there, you can download an import template to copy and paste your Google campaign data. This tool can only be used initially; once your account is setup in AdCenter you can’t use it to upload changes without overwriting your account, which would erase all historical data. To upload changes to your existing account, you’ll need to use AdCenter’s desktop editor, though this is currently not available for Mac users.

If you are able to access AdCenter Desktop editor, you can simply mirror changes to ad text and keyword lists (additions, status) by uploading the same reports into AdWords and AdCenter. Just be aware that AdCenter uses slightly different column headings for this data, so be sure to edit your column titles before uploading into AdCenter. If you upload data into AdCenter with an incorrect title AdCenter will show you an error, but doesn’t always specify that your data had a wrong identifier. I have spent hours trying to debug upload issues, only to realize my campaigns were labeled “campaign name” instead of just “campaign.” So, double check these initially and you’ll save yourself a lot of time troubleshooting.

Negative keyword lists can easily be copied from Google to MSN. If you have the desktop editor, you can upload them this way, but if not, I haven’t found it too cumbersome to copy and paste my negative lists into the AdCenter UI since you can do so on the campaign level.

As for more granular account changes, like bid changes, I honestly can’t recommend a work-around for doing them on a per-platform basis. Your keywords/products will inevitably perform differently in each search engine, so you’ll need to monitor and change these separately in Google and Bing. And the same is true for your ad performance. If you’re adding new ad text it’s fine to upload the same new ads to both platforms, but in terms of monitoring performance you’ll have to do this per search engine. Like keywords, your ads will perform differently in each search engine.

Some other things to consider are keyword match type. Keep in mind that when you’re implementing your Google keyword lists in Bing that Bing won’t let you manage your keyword match types individually, i.e. you can’t pause only the broad match type of a keyword, Bing will force you to pause broad, phrase and exact for that keyword. If you’re finding that one match type does much better or worse in Bing, then you’ll want to rethink your campaign structure to segment keywords by match type in separate campaigns.

I hope these tips help you streamline managing both an AdWords and AdCenter account simultaneously. Feel free to share any tips of your own in the comments section below!

1. The phone number was accurate, but no one by the name on the form lived there.
2. The name and number were accurate, but that person had never submitted their information to the site.

Some “bad” leads are expected, with people submitting false information, but this was more than a rare occurrence. About 10 of these types of leads were coming in each day. Luckily, the client was able to track these leads back to the source: Bing Search Partners.

I’d never really given much thought to Bing’s Search Partners before, but I quickly reached out to our rep to see what was going on. They mentioned they’d been having some issues with click fraud but that was in the education industry. But this was more than click fraud, this was lead fraud!

I decided to dig deeper into the issue myself and ran a publisher performance report for October and November. What I saw was very disheartening:

Not only had the number of leads from search partners more than doubled from October to November, but they were making up the bulk of total leads, up to 90%! They were also incredibly cheap, so the main reason our cost per lead was looking so great in November.

So what did we do to correct this problem? Initially I would have the client send me a list of all of the referral sites for the bad leads. I would pass these along to our rep who would block our ads from showing on these sites. After 2 weeks though, there were so many bad referral sites coming through that we turned off search partners completely.

I reached out the Bing rep for more information about search partners and this was what I was told:

Our partner networks are very dynamic.  Daily we add and remove partners and those partners are adding and removing sites from their networks daily as well.  As a result, the sites your ads serve on across the networks do change over time.

 

That being said, in your case, there is probably something deeper going on with a partner other than that it is new (ie they added a site that is not providing quality traffic).

 

Our traffic quality teams have been notified of the issues… and are reviewing the partner traffic into the accounts.  Any traffic they identify as poor quality or potentially fraudulent will be refunded to you. Beyond that, while we will not be told of any additional action, they usually review larger traffic metrics from the “problem” sites identified and may take action to remove that partner or site from the network.

So while it’s good we will be refunded the money for what is deemed “fraudulent” clicks, I don’t think we’ll be getting back the full amount we spent on these sites. I highly recommend everyone check the quality of the Search Parnters sites you are appearing on in Bing.

How To Check Bing Search Partner Quality

• Log into your account and go to the reports tab.
• Click create a new report and select Publisher Performance from the Report drop down.

• Select the date range you want to look at. I suggest running three reports for the last three months so you can see how traffic from these sites have changed.
• Select what data you want to include in the report. Remember, if you want to see conversion data you need to select it manually.
• Once you’ve downloaded your report, the column you want to focus on is “Website URL”. Ignore anything that says Bing and Yahoo! Search Properties Only. The rest of the websites are your search partners. Below is a screen shot of the first ones on my list:

Some sites look legit, like abcnews.go.com, but most well… don’t. Test your Search Partners by visting the URL. If you find many sites that look lower quality you can either exclude them or opt out of Search Partners all together. Search Partner options are set at the ad group level so it can be a pain to remove them manually. If you work with a Bing rep, reach out to them to exclude your whole account or do a bulk exclusion in the editor.

I wish I had noticed this issue with Bing Search Partners awhile ago so I wasn’t wasting money on bad clicks and leads. Hopefully this post has helped make you aware of this problem and save some of your ad spend!

Remember to check out our other video blogs, too for more helpful tutorials and PPC related fun!

So exactly (wait for it…) which changes were made and how do they affect your management? Let’s take a look!

• Exact Match Negatives: adCenter has finally started accepting exact match negative keywords for greater precision and control over negative traffic. To implement exact match keywords in your account, drill down to the account level you wish to add negatives to, select the negative keywords column all the way to the right hand-side of the interface, scroll to the bottom where you’ll see Advanced Settings options. Expand the negative keywords section and from here you can add phrase or exact match negative keywords. Here’s what that view will look like:

• Negatives No Longer Applicable on Keyword Level: As adCenter is now offering more control with negatives by way of enabling exact match availability, the level to which you can apply negatives has shifted a little. Previously you could attribute phrase match negatives on the keyword level to limit traffic to an individual keyword only. With the update, you’ll have to migrate your negatives up at least one level, from the keyword level to ad group level. This is a simple move and can be completed using the Negative Keyword Migration Wizard in the Desktop editor or via a copy/paste of the negative keyword list from the keyword level to an Excel spreadsheet, which you can then re-upload on the ad group or campaign level.

Tell us what you think! Have you started using the exact match negatives in your accounts already? Seeing any change in traffic or metrics? What about migrating your negatives from the keyword level? Anyone having trouble or great success they want to share? Post your thoughts, ideas and experiences in the comments section below!

For further information about this topic, check out the following links:

• Negative Keyword Updates Now Live in Microsoft Advertising adCenter –Microsoft Advertising adCenter Blog
• Negative Keyword Migration Help – Microsoft Advertising adCenter Help

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more news updates from PPC Hero!

Today, I have some even more exciting news to share with you. On behalf of the Yahoo! Search and Bing, I’m pleased to announce that the new adCenter User Interface (UI) is now available to advertisers worldwide! After having the opportunity to test-drive this baby through one of our client accounts here at Hanapin Marketing, they’ve included many greatly anticipated additions this round that will truly help adCenter advertisers streamline their account management process moving forward. That being said, let’s go into more detail about these exciting new additions:

Access All Entities From A Single View

This feature is, by far, my favorite change from this round of improvements, and I’m confident that you’ll agree! You can now view all entities from the Account and Campaign Summary pages via sub-tabs. What this means for us is that you no longer need to drill into each campaign to find keywords and ad groups. Instead, all of your ad groups, ads and/or keywords can now be accessed with a single click on their respective tabs. This is something we’ve had access to in Google AdWords for a while, but is now available in Microsoft adCenter as well.

Ad Delivery Status Indicator

Microsoft adCenter now provides a new ad delivery status column, which is the second of their recent additions to the new UI. Essentially, this new column helps advertisers identify ad delivery issues within a particular list of keywords, which indicates pre and post-auction delivery status. This can be a helpful resource for diagnosing individual keywords that are causing ad delivery issues within your accounts.

Advanced Filters

Another feature adCenter included with their new UI allows you to create, save, and apply advanced filtering to the data summary grids. As we’ve already seen in Google AdWords, these filters are a quick and easy way to streamline your daily PPC management and access custom account views instantly. As of now, you can save up to 5 custom filters for each sub-tab.

Inline Editing

This feature provides you the ability to perform inline editing from the campaign, ad group, ad, and keyword list tabs. In other words, this significantly reduces the number of clicks required for updating campaigns and further streamlining your daily PPC account management.

Enhanced Bulk Editing

Next up in Microsoft adCenter’s new line of features is the enhanced bulk editing capability now available within the campaign, ad group, and keyword list tabs. This becomes yet another way in which it is now faster and easier to make multiple changes from a single view, rather than having to drill down individually to make a change.

Simplified Campaign Creation/Editing

This launch will also include a simplified process for creating new campaigns and ad groups. Once again, this is yet another way in which we can now streamline our account creation process with fewer clicks on our end.

Adding keywords

Coupled with the new campaign creation workflow, the adCenter engineers have also simplified their keyword addition and bid selection processes. With the new UI, we can now use the drop-down menus to determine which campaign and ad group you want to add your keywords to.  Essentially, this allows us to cut back on wasted time having to drill down into specific ad groups in order to enter keywords into it.

Visualization Of Account Performance/Trends

Lastly, a new multi-metric trend graph has also been added to the Campaigns tab that displays trends of multiple metrics at the same time. Unfortunately, this wasn’t available during my adCenter UI test-drive, but this feature enables a visual comparison of what’s going on in our accounts and the ability to make changes on the fly. This is another feature we’ve had access to in AdWords that is now offered in adCenter as well.

As you can see, we now have access to a number of awesome new features in the adCenter UI that can help us streamline many of our account management/creation processes on a day-to-day basis. So what are your thoughts on these changes? Which are your favorites? Are there any other features you would have liked to see included? Feel free to drop any comments, questions or concerns you have below!

All of us here at Hanapin Marketing would like to thank Michelle Campbell and the rest of the Yahoo! Search and Bing teams for giving us the opportunity to explore the new interface and provide such coverage of the release!

The Import Campaigns feature allows you to port your data from AdWords directly into adCenter through their desktop editor. They even made you a step-by-step guide on exactly how to do this, but basically you’ll need all your AdWords information like username, password, and customer ID number. Then, you just pick what account, and what within that account you want to port.

Here’s the cool stuff: you can tell it to only import new items or only import changes to existing items. Of course, you could do both. If you only want to import changes to existing items—you can pick which ones! Only want to import changes to exiting ad and keyword destination URLs? Done! You can also delete any adCenter campaigns or ad groups that have been deleted from AdWords.

Obviously adCenter and AdWords work differently, so you can’t just keep syncing the two and only optimize in AdWords, but there are a lot of really cool features here that will be useful to anyone running on both platforms. For example, this new feature provides a find and replace function so you can replace AdWords specific stuff in your tracking codes to adCenter specific stuff.

So, what do you guys think? If you run in both platforms, is this going to be really useful to you? Or, do you think the two platforms differ so much that this will spell adCenter disaster to anyone using it too much? We’d love to hear your opinions!

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more news updates from PPC Hero!

Make sure to check out all our other video blogs, and thanks for watching!