As it was Halloween yesterday, I thought I’d share my favourite PPC horror story. I call it… “The Broadest of all Broad Keywords” Here’s what happened… I once had a client who helped people get UK visas. And, for some clients, he was even able to offer a service where Read more…
Last week, I got re-certified by Google Ads. In past years, this has been a painless process. It was two multiple choice exams – with a time limit of two hours each, and an 80% pass mark. I’d batter through each one in around 40 minutes – and score in Read more…
I find this disgusting, but it takes two to tango. What am I talking about? I’m talking about the biggest conflict of interest in the PPC world right now… one that very few Google advertisers know about. Let me explain… Google has a program where agencies are allowed to call Read more…
This week, Google pubished an Adwords “best practices white paper” called “Keywords to the Wise”. You can get it here: http://adwords.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/weve-got-you-covered-with-our-new-guide.html However, true to form, it’s full of lousy advice that’s far more likely to cost you money than increase your profits. There are 10 “best practices” listed on page Read more…
As I mentioned yesterday, on 22nd April 2014, Google is going to make a big announcement about “improvements” to Adwords. I took a stab at guessing what those changes will be. Today, as a bit of fun, I’m going to tell you what I’d like the changes to be: Dream Read more…
On 22th April, Google is going to make a big announcement about changes to Adwords. You can read their post about it here: http://adwords.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/next-tuesday-is-your-chance-to-step.html In the post, they offer 3 teasers… 1: It’s no longer about devices. 2: Context matters more than ever. 3: Connecting people to content. Which suggests Read more…
Catalyst has just published a report documenting the average click rate for each organic position in Google. The ctrs range from 17.16% if you’re the #1 ranking site, down to 0.51% if your ranked 10th. They’ve even broken down the stats for branded v unbranded keywords, query length etc. You Read more…
Recently, there’s been a debate going on in the PPC world over whether you should pay attention to quality score. I suspect this has, in part, been triggered by Google making a mess of quality score reporting. Now we don’t really know what our Quality Scores are, it encourages people Read more…
Over the last week, I’ve been thinking about how Google has changed fundamentally. If you go back a few years, the focus seemed to be to create great products with little downside for the user. Famously, they had “20% time” – where developers could spend one day a week on Read more…
