ExpertAdWords

LemmeFind

I found this really cool tool to compare all the major search engines, Google, Yahoo, and MSN, and gathers the results. The site actually shows the SERP so you can see exactly where your ads are showing up on each page.

I noticed a couple of problem when using text ads for Google Site Targeting. I’m not going to get into exactly what Google Site Targeting is assuming everyone is familiar with the concept. Usually the advertiser chooses to use an image, video, or Flash file but you can choose to use text ads and Google enlarges the font to fill the space that would usually be occupied by several ads.

However, if you look at the example ad, let me point out a problem I noticed. The Display URL in the example is cutoff before the message/text is completely displayed. For most organizations this won’t be a problem but the advertiser in the example is trying to display their phone number and for this ad type, that strategy won’t work.

Additionally, and I couldn’t find an example of this, but I’ve seen this problem in other ads, if the Headline is a long word or phrase, the ad may truncate the Headline and continue the text on the next row. I noticed it in an ad for the company SecureHorizons® that used their name in the headline. The ad copy for the Headline was actually displayed like this:

SecureHorizo
ns®

I think that this may also happen is a long single word is used in the Description ad copy and I’m not sure if the Description Line 1 and 2 are separated with a line break.

Weird Words
FLOCCINAUCINIHILIPIL
IFICATION
Something As
Worthless.
WeirdWords.com

I’ve been using a tool called PPseer to manage our content network and ads. By inserting some code on your landing pages and your conversion page, PPseer tracks and analyzes your incoming traffic and you can set minimum standards by which to exclude sites.

To start off, set a minimum amount of clicks to filter the incoming traffic. I’m using 750 clicks before a site will come to my attention. Additionally, I look at the conversion amounts in relation to that site. Any site that converts at less than .5% is added to my Google campaign site exclusion for the content network.

PPseer is sort of expensive but the ROI from the wasted clicks makes it well worth it. The system works independently from Keyword bidding software and monitors the source and not the search. For example, the site could be sending you traffic from 1 keyword or 1000 keywords and while a bidding package may lower the keyword bid, PPseer will actually eliminate the site.

We had one site that had 7400 clicks and about 23 conversions. We estimated the Average Order Value (AOV) to be a generous $120 and our average Cost Per Click to be around $0.50. We plugged these results into the formula below and came up with the following results.

(Conversions * AOV) – (Clicks * CPC) = Profit (or lack of)

(23 * $120) – (7400 * $0.05) = -940

We aren’t exactly saving any money but we aren’t losing any money either now. More than likely, you will have a few sites like this that are draining your budget.

Additional, if a website is doing really well and you are receiving a lot of conversions from it, the advertiser will be able to see this using PPseer and then can use Google’s Site Targeting tools to send additional traffic to that website.

Lastly, PPseer was relatively easy to setup and my team had all the code installed in about an hour.