Google Keyword Tool Is Officially Dead, Keyword Planner Gets Lukewarm Welcome

Lukewarm may be overstating it. If Twitter sentiment is any gauge, the SEM world has not exactly embraced Google’s new Keyword Planner, which as of yesterday officially replaces the Keyword Tool.  Looking at tweets over the past 7 days, “Keyword Tool” yields a sentiment score of…

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Retailers Promote Over 1 Billion Products With Google PLAs, Holiday Surge Expected [Marin]

Today, Marin Software release a new study that finds Google Product Listing Ads (PLAs) continue to see increased adoption among retailers. According to the study, over one billion products were being promoted through PLAs as of May 2013. PLA impression…

The CPA Trap & How To Avoid It

I guarantee I can reduce your cost-per-acquisition (CPA) on your SEM campaigns. How can I make such a bold claim? Simple: first, I create ad text that says “Get $1,000 free. Apply now!” Next, I create a landing page with a picture of a beautiful woman holding a pile of crisp bills and a…

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Google Launches AdWords Paid & Organic Report: See Organic And Paid Query Data Side-By-Side

Today, Google is rolling out a brand new Paid & Organic report in AdWords that gives advertisers at-a-glance insights into query performance across the Google landscape. This is pretty big news from a reporting viewpoint. In the screenshot below you’ll see query performance when an ad was…

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Average Position: A Distracting Lie

A great many folks spend time thinking about position on pages, both for their ads and for their organic listings. People care about position, but it’s really a proxy for what we should pay attention to: traffic volume and quality. Indeed, position itself as a KPI is pretty meaningless, and…

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Innovating In The B2B Search Space: Testing Geo Bid Multipliers

In a recent article in AdAge, Bert DuMars cites Forrester research which found that “only 11% of marketers set aside a specific budget for marketing innovation efforts, and only 9% make marketing innovation a part of every marketer’s budget.” I won’t go into how to secure…

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What The Heck Is AdWords Quality Score And Why Does It Matter Anyway?

Last month, Google announced some changes in how Quality Score is being reported. While it’s been described as just a reporting change (as opposed to a change in how Quality Score is calculated), some of my respected colleagues have pointed to the news as evidence that Quality Score somehow…

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Google Account Manager Caught Breaking Terms of Service on Voicemail

Google NooseA voice mail recording of what appears to be a Google account manager seems to reveal how Google is willing to ignore its own TOS in favour of profit.

Post from on State of Search
Google Account Manager Caught Breaking Terms of Service on Voicemail

Spotted: Stunning AdWords Policy Violations, That Facebook & Google Shouldn’t Be Happy About

Behold a brilliant display of Google AdWords advertising policy violations: This ad was spotted by Luke Alley from Avalaunch Media. As it turns out, Alley unearthed a deep pit teeming with ad violations. Search for “facebook support” on Google, and you’ll quickly see the ads are…

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Google: Here’s Why AdWords Cost Per Conversion Calculations Don’t Always Add Up

In the past couple of weeks, the question of how Google calculates cost per conversion in AdWords has been percolating in the PPC community. Robert Brady wrote a post illustrating that the cost per conversion reported in AdWords does not always match the manual calculation of dividing reported…

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72 Percent of PPC Marketers Plan To Spend Even More In 2014 [PPCHero Study]

Hanapin Marketing has released its 2013 State of Paid Search report, revealing how PPC marketers are feeling about paid search marketing and where they plan to spend their money in 2014. A large majority, 83 percent of respondents, said they are feeling positive about the state of paid search….

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