Cyber Monday

Everyone knows that the day after Thanksgiving is black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, but what you may not know is that the Monday following Thanksgiving is Cyber Monday, the biggest day of online shopping all year.  A few tips to prepare for Cyber Monday:

1.  Make sure you turn up the limit on your ad campaign

2.  If you are already having problems with your site being slow, you may need to quickly upgrade your server or hosting package to allow for the additional traffic

3.  Do some research on shipping times, and be honest and up-front with your customers about whether it will get there in time for Christmas

4.  Try running a holiday promotion in your search engine ads

Good luck and happy selling!

Google's New Keyword Tool

Google has added a great new keyword search tool that looks at your website, and gives keyword recommendations based on your site content:

New tool in beta form: http://www.google.com/sktool

The great thing about this tool is that it only recommends keywords that you don't already have in your AdWords campaign. This way you can easily add them, and start tracking their effectiveness.

Google's original keyword tool is probably still more valuable, but I recommend trying both out.

Original keyword tool: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Google AdWords Changes to Quality Score

The Google 'Inside AdWords' blog has announced changes to how they calculate quality score and rank ads. The changes will remove the bias of ad position in calculating your quality score and also tweak how ads are promoted to spots above the search results.

Quality Score Update: Google have confirmed that click-through rate (CTR) remains the most significant component of the quality score, because it directly indicates which ads are the most relevant to their users. However, they've now removed the influence of ad position on this calculation.

This is because ads higher on the page are more visible and usually get more clicks over those in lower positions for this reason alone, not necessarily because it's a more relevant ad. In an effort to show the most relevant ads, Google will adjust its calculations to remove the influence ad position has on the CTR.

Ads Above Search Results: Google have also tweaked for formula to determine which ads are displayed in the yellow section above search results. Previously, ads displayed in this area had to meet a certain quality threshold, and if the first listing didn't have a high enough AdRank (quality score x CPC), no ads were displayed in this section.

Now, Google are allowing ads in position 2 and 3 to leapfrog over position 1 and appear in the yellow section if they have a high enough quality score.

Overall, the changes appear to be placing less importance on how much your bidding, but rather what your quality score is.

For those of you who are unsure, quality score is Google's version of PageRank for AdWords. It takes into account a range of factors to rate the quality of each keyword in your ad group/s.

These enhancements will be released shortly by Google, so keep an eye on your ad position, spend and performance over the next few weeks!

Separate metrics for Google and search partners are now available

Google Adwords anounced today that they've changed the way your Campaign Summary and Ad Group Summary pages present statistics in order to give you additional level of detail into your campaign performance. Previously, these pages divided statistics into two categories: search, which included Google and search partners, and the content network.

Now, they show one set of statistics for Google and another set aggregating search partner performance. Search partners include AOL, Ask.com, and many other search sites around the web. You can view ad group or campaign performance at a summary level, or broken down by different combinations of Google, our search partners, and our content network. Additionally, separate Google and aggregate search partner statistics will soon be available in the Report Center.

(Click the image for a full-size version)

For more information, please visit this entry in the AdWords Help Center.