Google has just awarded us early status of the new Google Partner program.
Dear valued partner,
Congratulations on meeting the new Google Partner requirements.
As a part of the wide variety of benefits available to you across Education & Insights, Access & Support, and Recognition & Rewards, you now have access to the new Google Partner badge. The Partner badge shows that you have the latest Google Ads expertise, while helping you stand out to clients and the industry.
If you are one of our client’s you receive a report daily on your account activity from Data Studio. These reports help you as a business owner to understand the conversion activity that Google Ads is driving with your advertising investment.
I have posted several screenshots to help you understand several very important and common scenarios.
Limited by Budget
When I see many spikes in an account during the month, it typically shows that the account is limited by budget. Google is trying to meter out the ad spend to spread it over the month, but has to lower the daily budget between activity as there is simply not enough budget in the account to support the activity that exists.
The image below shows a longer time frame of an account limited by budget. You can see many peaks and valleys as Google overspends on some days and then cuts back on others as it tries to pace the budget to cover demand.
Not enough budget to support activity available.
The image below shows in a smaller time period this same peak and valley. When I go into the account I can see that Google spent more than 20% on one day and then had to cut the budget back for the next several days, causing this jagged appearance.
Showing an account limited by ad spend budget.
Business to Business Activity
Another scenario we see frequently is typically seen in business to business accounts. Here, although ads continue to serve 24/7, we can see that conversion activity is typically happening on weekdays. In this case the valleys in the account match Saturday and start to show strong activity happening consistently on specific days of the week. Notice how the peaks of activity are at nearly the same height throughout the month. This account is not restrained by budget, but rather is reflecting how customers and prospects react with ads.
Business to Business heavy weekday activity.
Google Reacts to Both Scenarios
When using Smart Bidding in your account Google’s machine learning algorithms work hard to deliver conversions and over time understands how your prospects and customers use your ads. For Business to Business clients Google pays less for clicks and even drops ad spend on times it knows your customers are not converting or are not active. In the scenario in the image above, Google does not spend the full daily budget on the weekends, saving more money to spend on active weekdays.
Experience Makes the Difference
As a Google Partner and a Certified Google Ads Professional, McCord Web Services know Google Ads and can leverage this knowledge to provide the lead generation results you seek. Find out more about our programs today.
We encourage you to review our price list to understand that we work hard to make exceptional account management affordable for you and your agency.
Be in the know! This week we have found a few nuggets that you may want to review or do a deeper dive into from our blog post.
Is It Worth Writing Website Meta Descriptions?
“Many SEOs debate the importance of creating unique meta descriptions. It can definitely help with click-through-rate from SERPs, but, for most, it’s often a low priority SEO task. Will the news that Google overwrites our work make us less likely to spend time on it?” Read the full article.
From our point of view, we do still recommend writing these to assist in click through rates from the search results. We have seen Google write there own before and then later roll back their action. It makes sense to write them and if Google does or does not use them is a non-issue at this point.
Google is Tweaking the Layout of Google Local or Google Maps Listings
We are seeing the removal of addresses in Google Maps listing tests by Google. See pic.
Google has announced that it will no longer honor broad match modifier keywords and will instead merge the broad match modifier into phrase match. For now if there are broad match modifier keywords in the account, Google will simply deliver them as phrase match.
How do we feel about this? Well, we expect to spend more time on negative keywords list creation to sculpt ad results. We are not terribly worried about this due to the extensive use of machine learning used in ad delivery. We do expect broad match modifier keywords in the account to start to receive fewer and fewer impressions over time. We will no longer add broad match modifier to ad accounts. Read the full article for more details.
There are just a few new things in the world of Google that we are watching this week.
Rich Snippet Changes
Google has a new validation tool for Rich Snippets you may be using on your website. You’ll want to click in and check your code in the new validation tool as Google is stating that they will drop your snippets indexing in search if you do not make updates to have the code be valid. Read the full detailed article here.
Local Service Ads and the Impact on Standard Google Ads Campaigns
In 2020 Google started testing Local Service Ads for lawyers. A number of firms have done research on how using both Google Ads and Local Service Ads impacts Google Ads performance negatively.
After review of the data, it appears that Local Service Ads will be shown preferentially by Google and are typically clicked on more by users due to the richness of the interface and ad appearance. CTR and CPA are negatively impacted in Google Ads when the client is using both programs.
If you are using Local Service Ads AND Google Ads (standard professional version), you will want to dive in and read the full article.
