• An article on adwords unexpected match types talks about how your ads could be coming up for completely irrelevant search terms. The cause of this is Google Adwords broad match, which is now being called by some, Google expanded broad match. They’re basically stating that Googles search is too broad, even broader than we originally though. This article helps remind me that I need to add more negative keywords into my campaigns if I see that my ads are coming up for terms they shouldn’t.
  • In the blog post “The AdWords Ad Optimization Process – Little Changes Have a Big Effect” on SEOmoz, they describe how making small tweaks and rewording the text in your ad campaigns can have a positive impact on your CTR. This is a practice that will only take a couple of minutes every few weeks but could have a huge impact
  • In this ad optimization process “tell-all,” Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz.org detailed the steps he took to find the most effective PPC ads for his premium membership campaign. As usual, the comments were the highlight of this post; almost to the point of stealing the show! Rand’s ability to be humble about his “rusty” PPC skills left the comments open to highly constructive criticism. One of the main points I came back to was that he ran his test with Google’s Ad Optimization turned on. Tisk, tisk!
  • We posted about RedFly’s FireFox Google Global plugin last week. After I was done playing with the tool I thought of another great plugin: a tool that would allow you more visibility into geographically targeted campaigns. For example, I live in Bloomington, IN and if I run a campaign in Boise, ID it is impossible to gauge the competitive landscape because I don’t live there and I can’t see all of the ads running in that area. My idea was to create a tool where you could type your keyword into one field, and then a location in another field and you would receive search results for that keyword in that location. Well, the helpful folks at Google read my mind and developed this tool – almost exactly as I imagined (weird!). Anyway, here is the link to Inside AdWords that tells you all about their new Ad Preview Page.
  • Google has expanded their new pay per action referrals program, and now it is becoming more popular among advertisers. The features aren’t without some problems, however, and threads exist to help advertisers get started. Tips on what to do to maximize benefits are the major topic of discussion as the program gains momentum, and people try to get as much out of their referrals as possible. The program may not be without flaws now, but potential does exist, so check out this advice.