by Jim Gilbert

WELL… YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST and WE WARNED YOU!

See our original article at:
googles-automatic-match-more-greedy-than-expanded-broad-match

 
If you need the quick summary and don’t have time to read our original article, here you go:

• If your Adwords keywords (Exact, Phrase and Broad match types — including expanded broad match) don’t make your ads show… Automatic Match Will!

Call me somewhat of a cynic, but I have a very tough time relating this to “producing better relevance”. I have personally seen what broad match (with expanded broad match) can do when it gets out of control and have found ways to prevent the excessive spend from occurring. Thank goodness…

But there is GOOD news — you can OPT out!

For the moment the Beta description is still available (Automatic Match Beta),

 
BUT
 
Try using the AdWords help function (while logged in) searching for “Automatic Match” and you get this:
Your search — “automatic match” — did not match any answers in the AdWords Help Center.

 

Why is it hidden? Go Figure!

by Jim Gilbert

By Scott Morrison, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES reports a top Google executive (Tim Armstrong, Google’s North American president for advertising and commerce.) of saying:

“Speaking at the Bear Stearns Media Conference in Palm Beach, Fla., Armstrong said Google’s advertising platform will evolve over time so that it won’t distinguish between search and display ads.”

Anyone care to comment on what the heck that means?

by Jim Gilbert

WELL… YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST and WE WARNED YOU!
Quote from an Official Google email dated 23May2008:

“The feature will be enabled by default, although it
won’t begin to affect your accounts until June 3, 2008.”

UPDATE! 23May2008 — Automatic Match to be the DEFAULT! see the full update at: Automatic Match to be Default

So far this “Automatic Match” option is only a beta and accessible by invitation only. BUT, If this monster goes live and removes our ability to “opt out” (like in Expanded Broad Match), something very, very ugly may happen:

•   No matter how large your budgets, they WILL be spent — every penny (and dollar)!

I was going to let you read the Beta help file, but it disappeared… IT’S BACK, but you will have to be logged into an AdWords account to get to it: Automatic Match

Summarizing:

Just build your campaigns and they will come. Heck, you no longer even have to offer any keywords — Google will look at your ad and your site and make sure your ads show for any search query that even “smells” relevant.

Did Google’s revenue drop in January scare them that badly?

By Mike Churchill
(Special thanks to my colleagues Jim Gilbert and Liana Evans in researching this article).

There has been a lot of discussion on Google’s recent changes to the way that they handle expanded broad match (at WebMasterWorld , High Rankings Forum and other places).

We have come across a different issue that relates to the investigation of expanded broad match, and has wider-reaching repercussions for your PPC campaigns, as well as understanding oddities in interpreting Analytics. We have been seeing this issue for the last month or so (since Aug-Sep 2007), and according to the Google engineers with which I have discussed this: “the search results […] are the result intended behavior. When determining which ads to show on a Google search result page, the AdWords system evaluates the user’s previous search query as well as the current search query.”

(more…)

by Jim Gilbert

Summary of the Issue:

Around August 20, 2007 many clients’ Google AdWords accounts saw their cost/conversion skyrocket — in one particular case we saw it was over 100% increase. It was caused by a corrupted “Expanded Broad Match” algorithm.

What Caused it?

“Expanded broad match” was expanded by Google way too much. AdWords began showing ads for “expanded broad match” terms that were just not relevant to the broad keyword generating them.

What to do:

1) Stop using “Broad Match”! If you do use it Google kicks in “Expanded Broad Match” and you can not opt out of the expanded part.

2) Insist to your Google contacts that you be allowed to opt out of expanded broad match!
(We have tried for a couple years, but have made no progress.)

UPDATE: 10/16 — see 10/16 note below

The Rant, Some Interesting Thoughts and the Detail — if you like the fun stuff

The Real Title of this Post should be “Expanded Broad Match - Google’s EPS (Earnings Per Share) Equalizer”

Rarely will you find me crawling all over Google’s AdWords PPC offering. Compared to the alternatives (competition in other words), they have done a technically good job, understand usability, continue to grow their footprint and are somewhat responsive to user (and agency) needs.

However, “crawling” is now in order. Since Google announced their “expanded broad match” it has been a sore spot with all those who understand how it works and what it does. For over 2 years we have begged Google to allow AdWords clients to “opt out” of the “expanded broad match” — broad match as it was originally YES, expanded broad match as it is today NO, NO, NO!

Around mid to late August and into September several very valuable AdWords clients cost/conversion numbers went VERY FAR SOUTH (like in bad & the ugly) — in one case over doubling! Careful investigation revealed that the increase in conversion costs were directly related to a VERY FEW broad match terms.

Even further investigation identified “some” of the new “expanded broad match” terms that had kicked in and destroying the conversion costs. Expanded terms that DO NOT RELATE to the broad term in anything resembling an acceptable manner.

Demands to the usual Google contacts requesting an option to “opt out” to “expanded broad match” were (again) unsuccessful. We provided the documentation and our reps agreed that these documented instances were “kind of far out there”. They even offered to help find more negative keywords to prevent it from happening. In one case we let them try to add effective keywords is and existing list of over 1,200 ones — trust me there was little they could do. See, there is no tool for identifying what Google expands broad keywords to. There used to be, but it conveniently disappeared.

We have great Google Reps, but they can only consult with their superiors on making these types of changes — the reps do not have the power to make something like this happen. Nor do they have “thousands of users” complaining — since their are probably not thousands of users who understand or can detect what is really happening.

Why does Google refuse to allow opt out for “expanded broad match”? The original explanation I received for implementation of “expanded broad match” was to enhance the AdWords user’s experience and provide them a better variety of related ads. Started out innocent enough, but as Google went public and had to answer to the ridiculous quarterly financial demands put on public companies by “Wallstreet” they probably realized that killing “expanded broad match” would have a severely negative impact on AdWords revenue. Furthermore, with continued “Wallstreet” pressure following Google’s first time “missed quarter” Google probably sees this:

My Opinion Only and I will remove it if Google will allow us to opt out of “expanded broad match”.

Not only can they NOT AFFORD to allow opting out of “expanded broad match” — by just loosening the knob they can instantly and dramatically pump revenue up in seconds.

Now it’s time to monitor the “expanded broad match knob”. We have put things in place to detect this “knob turning”. Like last time, wouldn’t it look funny if the knob was loosened only during the mid to late quarter periods?

This is only the beginning — those smart enough to monitor and detect wasted click spend due to unsupportable expansion of terms will at some point do more than just beg or throw fits.

P.S. Relax… I am not a cynic or pessimist — The facts of the analysis support these conclusions (except maybe my final opinions).

UPDATE: 10/16:
Appears the Expanded Broad Match Knob was screwed back in in a good bit. I screamed and hollered and Google backed off — doubtful. What is more likely is that they had pumped revenue all they could for the quarter ending Sep (3Q) and backed off during early 4Q (and Hoping they don’t have to do that ever again?).

by Jim Gilbert

Rumor has it that new Yahoo executives are running around the trough asking other Yahooers about the direction of the company and what needs to be done. Ain’t that a laugh!

From my experience with the Yahooers I’m allowed to interact with they are part of the problem — not part of the solution.

Many recommendations have been forwared to Yahoo (from little ole me) regarding their PPC systems and to date NOT ONE has ever been implemented. But then, what do I know since I’ve only used PPC systems for years to manage many, many client accounts? A couple of these recommendations were almost guaranteed to put lots of $$$$ in Yahoo’s pockets.

So Yahoo… this is an open challenge to see if your new executives are serious about making improvements and money! Talk to the “right” people — yes, I’m one of them and not that hard to find.

You might even want to keep in mind that at least one high level executive on “Wall Street” values my opinon. That’s kind of funny… Wall Street wants my opinons on Yahoo, but Yahoo doesn’t.

Spotted at Search Engine Roundtable and worth the read if you manage Google PPC accounts.

Heck, we are already blocking some of those babies as this is being written.

Google just released a new feature for AdWords advertisers. Advertisers can now specify if they do not want their ads to show up for specific IP addresses.

Visit the Search Engine Roundtable post or Google IP Blocking Help for more…

By Jim Gilbert

Please tell us there will be more specific information on this odd announcement! Calls to the support center don’t appear to help, since the agents don’t seen to know much about it.

The email from Microsoft:
We’re writing to notify you that your Microsoft adCenter Terms and Conditions are updated. The changes take effect on April 30, 2007.

Some of the key adjustments to your Terms and Conditions include:
— “Microsoft may use matching criteria other than keyword searches to display your
advertisements.”
(Huh?)

— “Microsoft may display your advertisements on its network of advertising channels operated
by the Microsoft network of participating websites and other distribution outlets.”
(Huh?)

And you have to love their closing:
“If you do not consent to these revised Terms and Conditions, you may cancel your adCenter program relationship with Microsoft at any time… blah, blah…, blah…”

by Jim Gilbert

Remember to check the and then part…

On the morning of February 16th (Friday) many adwords advertisers woke up to find a shocker with their Google AdWords accounts.

Improve your Quality Score or Raise your bid to $1.00, $5.00 or $10.00!

Weve seen this before, but not on so many legitimate sites and quality landing pages all at one time before. Google has assured us that this appears to be a technical glitch and one they are working hard to resolve. “Good grief we hope this is an issue”.

However, even after this is fixed, we still expect some fallout even on the most legitimate of sites — the quality knob may have gotten turned just a bit too high!

AND THEN….
By the end of the day we noticed some very interesting changes in AdWords… Look at the graphic below: Pause / Unpause Keywords (long time in coming, but well worth waiting for AND Add a “Quality Score” column (too bad it’s just great, ok and poor — if you are being asked to bid $10 YOU KNOW IT’S POOR)

Other sites also reported to original issue… SEO Roundtable, Webmasterworld and DigitalPoint.

By Jeff Martin

I remember in the 90s when web directories and web rings played a vital role in moving traffic along the web. Web directories often gave you enhancing options to your text listing such as bolding your title, changing your text color and placing my all-time favorite - the flaming HOT icon next to your listing . Anything that set your listing apart from the others could really pay off. Google is allowing for this type of distinction by allowing Google Adwords advertisers who offer Google Checkout on their site a colorful icon that displays at the bottom of their ads in the Google search results pages:

The Google Checkout icons may significantly help draw attention to Adwords ads that have the icon while at the same time become a problem for other ads. It could be argued that the icons offer an unfair advantage to ads with icons as:

• The icon takes up a line of text so that the more ads with icons there are on the right the less ad space there is for other ads. It’s possible that an ad that would normally show just above the fold on the right side may not show up without scrolling depending on the number of these icons.
• They may have a better chance of drawing the eye of users and the click away from advertisers paying more and/or with better quality scores.

This is especially true in Google search results page real estate where it’s cheaper to place ads on the right and more towards the bottom of the fold of the page as these ads get less attention typically. Ads in this area with the icons may have more success now. The image below from an eye tracking study by Enquiro illustrates this as the “hotter” the color the more visual attention the real estate receives (the thick red bar towards the bottom represents the typical fold of the page):

As more data is collected we should know more about the ramifications of the Google Checkout icon for those who have it as well as for those who don’t.