Author: Nancy McCord

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CPC Rising on Google AdWords

After three months of decreasing cost per click prices on Google AdWords, the CPC is on the move up for the majority of the accounts we are managing.

I manage numerous Google AdWords accounts and am seeing this as a strong trend starting in mid March and continuing into April. The cost per click is increasing in nearly all accounts. However, impression activity is still low or the same on many accounts. So although advertisers are feeling bullish about AdWords and moving  back into the platform, searchers and buyers have still not returned to previous levels.

For advertisers who have a click budget under $500 a month for clicks, it will be a struggle to get Google to serve their ads due to increasing competition for the available clicks with the decreased search traffic. Advertisers with larger budgets will simply, by default, hog the available traffic as Google tries to help them spend their budget during the day. With their budget lasting longer into the day it will be hard for those with smaller budgets to get a piece of the available action.

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Coming Soon New Trademark Rules to Google AdWords

With Google fighting a lawsuit on the use of trademarked keywords, it is simply a matter of time before G0ogle AdWords will not allow trademarked keywords in your AdWords trigger list.

Read the full article at the Wall Street Journal here to come up to speed on the lawsuit.

For all AdWords accounts showing ads overseas in Europe it has long been the policy that not only can you not show trademarked terms in your ad text but you cannot even include them in your keyword list. Not so in Canada and the US. You may run into a problem using a trademarked term in ad text, but you can have the keywords in your trigger list.

With this lawsuit brought by Rescuecom Corp. I believe that Google keyword policy may be changing in the near future. Already over the years Google has really beefed up it use of trademarks in ad text. If you’ve ever run into the issue, you know what I mean. You can get your ad text approved, but only with the trademark owner verifying that you and your account number are authorized to use their trademark. This can all be done via fax, but must be on a corporate letterhead and signed by a titled executive.

With this lawsuit, I believe it will be just a matter of time before we see the European standards rolled out in the US and Canadian markets.

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Trends We’re Seeing On Google AdWords

My firm manages many Google AdWords accounts over a very broad range of business sectors. There are a few trends that we have seen lately that we thought we’d share with you.

In December through early March we saw a distinct drop in the cost per click and opportunities to move down the maximum cost per click setting for many accounts. For some we were able to bring them back to a pre-September figure when Google grabbed for cash in a big way with their September “Quality Score Update”.

Starting in mid March we’ve started to see a rise in the cost per click. Impressions are still low for some market sectors and so this is most likely not market pressure, but rather Google making adjustments to account for a loss of income by working to raise the minimum bid on their end to be in the auction. With impressions being for some accounts one third less than pre-February figures, this sudden increase in CPC plus continued low impressions is disconcerting to say the least.

Conversions for many accounts are still strong, but we are seeing in several industries an anomaly where Yahoo is actually now generating more conversions than Google and in some cases at almost half the cost per click.

My recommendation to clients is that now is the time to very carefully review the cost per conversion over a three month period, calculate in phone calls and individual sales history, and consider altering your pay per click budget to make sure that your advertising dollars are an investment and not an expense.

For one client after such a review we dropped the AdWords budget by one third and increased the Yahoo and MSN budget and are closely monitoring organic placement and click activity.

For some clients we are recommending that the extra money that may be found from these efforts be used to fund a local Yellow Page ad to try to expand their reach more deeply into local markets, especially if they sell to a local region and currently have no Yellow Page placement.

I’m sure Yellow Page reps love this recommendation (no they are not paying me), but as Local Search still has challenges, for some businesses the Yellow Pages will still generate nice returns when used in conjunction with a smartly managed  AdWords program.

What trends have you seen on your AdWords account, click comments below and let us know what you’ve seen.

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AdWords New Interface – Do You Like It?

In many AdWords accounts this last week we started to see a link at the top to try out the beta version AdWords control panel. I am still testing it, but so far there are things I like and things I don’t.

I do like the ability to make many changes on one screen such as change position, CPC, and status on the ad group detail page without having to click into the edit keyword page.

But I hate the simplistic look and feel of the introduction of the graphs on just about every page. I have 7 computers and on the weekend I check accounts on a smaller screen monitor and the new interface is totally screwed up on this screen. I have to scroll to the side to see what I want which is highly annoying.

I’m still checking it out, so if you’ve kicked its tires a few times leave me a comment about what you like and what you don’t like. If you haven’t looked at the beta yet, check out your AdWords account near the top right for a link to checkout the beta version.