Monitoring a search campaign

Once a campaign is set up, it is a good idea to monitor the incoming search terms. At times, a single keyword can be added to the landing page to make it more relevant (and to help it move up in the natural SERP). At other times, a keyword can be added to the PPC campaign at very low cost to ensure that your landing page "covers the SERP" and increases the chance that a visitor will arrive at your site. This is particularly true of "phrase match" terms, where a phrase can be added to bring in visitors that you might miss otherwise.

This monitoring allows you to fine-tune the landing page to match the search terms that convert.

The goal is to improve your landing page so that when the funds for your PPC campaign are exhausted, you still have a landing page that will continue to bring traffic to your site from the natural SERP for very targeted terms that convert (for a long time afterward).

American Airlines sues Google?

I guess that I should have been a lawyer, because the lawyers are the only ones who will make money off of this lawsuit.

I'm sorry, but the lawyers for AA obviously have never tried to run a PPC campaign, or they would understand things like, "broad match" will return ads for everybody that has, "airlines" set up as a "broad" match.

I suppose that it would be pointless to sue every idiot that mistakenly entered, "airlines" as a broad match keyword in Google (or MSN or Yahoo, etc.) but it is equally as pointless to sue Google.

After all, how is Google supposed to know that American Airlines does not want any other ads to show up? If somebody is searching for "american airlines" does that mean that they are not supposed to return AA as the number 1 SERP? Or, is it only if the Capitalized version (American Airlines) is searched for? And, is the singular, "American Airline" supposed to abide by the same rules? What about, "american airline" as a search term?

The list of possible infractions becomes endless and unenforceable. And, there is nothing to prevent a newcomer to Adwords from mistakenly adding an offending keyword in broad match that would display an ad...

All I can say is, "Good luck, AA, with this lawsuit" and, I hope the judge has enough common sense to throw this one out...

200% CTR???

OK, Google - How does this happen? Only 1 impression, but 2 clicks?

Clicks Impressions CTR%

2 1 200.00%

Hmmm...

Google's "Phrase Match" no longer works...

The problem with "Broad Match" is that Google can change the wording any time it wants to and display your ad, so if you are bidding on "boat shoes" it might display your ad when somebody searches for "sailing sneakers" if you have set up that keyword phrase as a "broad match."

Phrase Match used to display your ad when somebody searched on "boat shoes for sale" if you bid on, "boat shoes" as a phrase match. But now, all the ads (including competitor ads) are turned off when even a single word is added to the phrase...

Hmmm... That's not how it used to work...

"More Sponsored Links" link in Google?

That made it much easier to see what was going on in your AdWords PPC campaign, but it also let you see who else was advertising so there was some way to gauge how much to bid...

The nice thing is that once you got into that page, you could search just the sponsored links, or the entire web. So, from a consumer's viewpoint, it was nice to see all of the paid listings if you were shopping. It was also great if you were an advertiser, since you could see where your ad appeared, etc.

Unfortunately, it's been taken away for some searches, so now the only way to see what's going on is to hit the search button repeatedly and watch the PPC ads cycle through.

This may be an experiment, since the link appears sometimes, but not other times and there is no rhyme or reason that I have detected... yet...