Add +1 to help your ads stand out

People make choices about your website many times each day--whenever your pages appear in Google search results. What if the people who love your site could help their friends and other users find your great content right at the moment of decision?

That’s why we introduced the +1 button on Google search in March. +1 annotations show your customers which pages people they trust have found and enjoyed first, making it easier to find content they’re likely to care about.

Since we announced +1, we’ve gotten requests from Google search users and advertisers alike for +1 buttons in more places than just search results. That’s why today we’re making the +1 button available to sites across the web. Sometimes you want to recommend a web page after you’ve visited it. After all, how do you know you want to suggest that great hotel deal in Madrid if you haven’t checked it out yet?

We’ve partnered with a few sites where you'll see +1 buttons over the coming days:

You'll also start to see +1 buttons on other Google properties such as Android Market, Blogger, Product Search and YouTube.

Adding +1 buttons to your pages is a great way to help your ads stand out on Google. By giving your visitors more chances to +1 your pages, your search ads and organic results might appear with +1 annotations more often. This could lead to more--and better qualified--traffic to your site.

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To get started, visit the +1 button tool on Google Webmaster Central, where you’ll configure small snippets of JavaScript to add to the pages where you want +1 buttons to appear. You can pick from a few different button sizes and styles, so choose the +1 button that best matches your site’s layout.

When a user clicks +1, that +1 applies to the URL of the page they’re on. There are some easy ways to ensure your +1s apply as often as possible to the pages appearing in Google search results.

To stay current on updates to the +1 button large and small, please subscribe to the Google Publisher Button Announce Group. For advanced tips and tricks, check our Google Code site. For information about how the +1 button affects your search ads, check out the AdWords Help Center.

If your site primarily caters to users outside of the US and Canada, you can install the +1 button code now; the +1 button is already supported in 44 languages. However, keep in mind that +1 annotations currently only appear for English search results on Google.com. We’re working on releasing +1 to other domains in the future.

If you have customers who love your content (and we bet you do), encourage them to spread the word! Add the +1 button to help your ads stand out with a personal recommendation right at the moment of decision, on Google search.


Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

Location targeting updates in AdWords

One of the main benefits of online advertising is the ability to target campaigns to specific locations, such as cities, regions, or countries. For example, to reach users looking for rental cars in San Francisco, a car rental company could target a campaign to San Francisco and include only San Francisco-specific discounts in the ads.

In February, we launched city targeting in an additional 17 countries, and our goal is to make location targeting more accurate, easier to use, and more flexible. As part of planning for future improvements, we’re making several changes to our AdWords location targeting capabilities. These changes will start occurring after July 8, 2011, and include:

Changes to existing available locations: Due to changes in real-world geography or the existence of duplicate or overlapping location targets, we’re removing certain location targets in countries such as Japan, Denmark, Spain, and the Netherlands, among others. For example, in 2010, six provinces were abolished in Finland, and while you’ll no longer be able to target these provinces, you can continue targeting cities in Finland. You won’t be able to target these provinces in AdWords, but you’ll be able to continue targeting cities in Finland. After the changes take effect, you won't be able to add the locations that are listed here to new campaigns. If you're currently targeting any of these locations in your existing campaigns, you should migrate them to the recommended targets in the list. Otherwise, we'll migrate them automatically. Please review the list carefully since some of these changes will result in migration to larger locations.

Sunset of custom shapes (multi-point or polygon targets): You’ll no longer be able to add multi-point targets in AdWords. You’ll still be able to view and delete existing shapes in your current campaigns, and we’ll continue to use them until the end of 2011. After that, all polygon targets that are still present in your AdWords campaigns will be migrated to available locations such as a nearby city or a map point with a radius. We encourage you to replace your polygon targets with these alternatives or we’ll migrate them automatically at end of 2011.

Removal of ‘Show address in the ad’ feature: In some countries, you currently have the option to show an address with your ads by checking the “Allow address to show in my ad” option for campaigns that target an area around a map point. This option will no longer be available. If you want to display your business address or phone number, you’ll need to use AdWords location extensions.

If you’re using these features with the AdWords API, check out the AdWords API Blog for more information on the changes being made.

These changes will take place after July 8, 2011. We recommend that you adjust the location targeting settings of your campaigns immediately with the available alternatives.


Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

Comparison Ads now a part of the new Google Advisor

Back in late 2009, we launched our initial test of AdWords Comparison Ads for Mortgages. With Comparison Ads, we provided a way for you, our advertisers, to create more relevant and targeted offers for users searching on Google.com. For example, using Comparison Ads, a lender can enter offers for users with specific credit ratings, loan amounts, ZIP codes, and more.

Since our initial mortgages launch, we’ve expanded into a number of additional financial areas, including credit cards, checking and savings accounts, and certificates of deposit. We’ve also seen some great recognition of the value that Comparison Ads provides. For example, according to a study done by Leads360, an industry leader in lead management software, mortgage leads from AdWords Comparison Ads converted at a higher rate than from any other source.

Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of Google Advisor, our new user-friendly interface for comparison offers, including AdWords Comparison Ads. Google Advisor is a consumer destination site that helps to guide users through various financial decisions by making it even easier to find and compare relevant offers from qualified financial institutions.

Google Advisor contains offers that come from our Comparison Ads advertisers as well as other sources across the web. By aggregating the most relevant offers and making it easy for users to filter and compare them side-by-side, Google Advisor aims to make financial research faster and easier.

To learn more about Google Advisor, you can read the Official Google Blog post or watch the video below.

At this time, AdWords Comparison Ads remains available only to a limited number of advertisers. Over time, we hope to increase the availability of Comparison Ads to additional advertisers. You can find more information about AdWords Comparison Ads in our Help Center.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Introducing new ways to reach your customers on tablets

With more than 165 million tablets expected to ship over the next two years, tablets are becoming a popular device with engaged, tech-savvy consumers. So we’re pleased to announce that we’re developing new targeting options to help you better connect with this audience. To give you greater control over your AdWords ads, we’re changing the way you can target tablet devices.

In the next couple of weeks, the “Networks and Devices” section of your Settings tab within your AdWords account will include a new targeting option titled “Tablets with full browsers.” While you’ve been able to specifically target Apple iPad devices in the past, the new capability will enable you to easily target your ads to the entire tablet device category. In addition, you'll be able to select more precisely the types of devices and operating systems on which your AdWords ads will show. For example, to display your ads on the Apple iPad, you’ll be able to choose “Tablets with full browsers” as your device targeting setting and “iOS” as your operating system setting. Tablet targeting will be available initially for Apple devices only, but we'll expand ad serving to other specific devices in the near future.

Once this capability is available in your account, your ads will automatically start running on tablet devices and no further action will be necessary on your part. If your campaigns were specifically targeting Apple iPad devices, you may notice an increase in impressions and costs as we include more tablets in our ad serving options. If you don't want your ads to appear on tablet devices, you’ll be able to specify this preference in your device targeting settings by following these step-by-step instructions.

For now, only standard text and image ads can be shown on tablet devices. So please make sure your landing page renders properly on tablet devices, as our system will automatically limit your ads from running on tablet devices if we detect that users will be led to a landing page containing a significant amount of Flash or other content that will not render properly. To learn more, please visit this Help Center article.

We’re constantly working to provide our advertisers with new targeting capabilities for their AdWords campaigns. We hope that these targeting options will enable you to successfully connect with your customers across a variety of devices and platforms.



Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

Instant Previews for Ads

In November of last year we took Instant to a new level on Google.com with Instant Previews. Instant Previews provides a graphic overview of a search result and highlights the most relevant sections, making finding the right page as quick and easy as flipping through a magazine.

Now, we’re bringing the same benefit to ads with Instant Previews for Ads. Starting today, the Instant Previews icon will appear next to ads on Google.com allowing users to preview the ad’s landing page. With Instant Previews, your customers are able to quickly preview a page to see if its content matches what they’re searching for.

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By allowing potential customers to preview your site before they arrive, Instant Previews helps you get even more highly-qualified traffic to your site. Even better, Instant Preview clicks are free of charge -- you’re only charged if a user clicks through to your actual landing page.

Instant Previews for Ads is rolling out to US users today and will be rolling out internationally over the coming weeks. To learn more, you can visit our help center.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Introducing free phone support for AdWords advertisers

We’ve worked hard to keep in touch with our AdWords customers and we’re always looking for new ways to support you. Currently we offer email and online support, and today we’re launching free phone support for all of our U.S. and Canada-based AdWords customers. When you have a question about your account or advertising campaigns, you can now call an AdWords specialist if you prefer.

We’re adding phone support for a simple reason: you asked for it! You told us that while you appreciate online resources like our AdWords Help Center, you also want the option to get live, expert support when you need it. We heard you, and got to work assembling a team of AdWords experts to answer your calls.

The new phone option is one of many tools that can help you succeed with AdWords—and (most importantly!) find even more customers. You can also email us, or learn from other advertisers in the AdWords Help Forum. Our AdWords Online Classroom offers free online courses on a wide variety of AdWords topics, from the basics to great tips to take your account to the next level.

To speak to one of our specialists, give us a call at 1-866-2-Google between Monday-Friday, 9am-8pm Eastern Time. This number is for current AdWords advertisers only, so please make sure you have your customer ID ready. We look forward to speaking to you and learning more about your business.

We will roll phone support out to international advertisers in the coming months.


Posted by Francoise Brougher, VP, Global Advertising and Product Operations

Media Ads Joins the New Ad Formats Family

Over a year ago we introduced the AdWords New Ad Formats Initiative to bring more relevant ads to Google.com. Since then, we’ve launched over a dozen new ad formats, and tested many more. Our new ad formats are designed to make sure that you’re able to reach potential customers with the right information, in the format they want. That’s why we’re proud to introduce our latest format, Media Ads.

Media Ads is a new ad model that introduces new ways to target, pay for, and experience video ads on Google.com. Unlike Video Extensions, which simply attaches a video player to your existing AdWords ads, Media Ads is an entirely standalone format designed to put your videos front and center.

To start, Media Ads isn’t targeted like typical AdWords ads on Google.com. With Media Ads, you don’t pick any keywords -- the targeting is completely automated. When someone enters a search on Google.com that our algorithms determine is directly related to your movie title (most commonly the title and variations on it), we automatically display your Media Ad at the top of the search results page. Our research shows that when someone searches for a movie title on Google.com, they’re most commonly looking for a trailer. With Media Ads, we’re able to help you ensure that those users find exactly what they’re looking for.

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The second thing that’s unique about Media Ads is the way you pay. Unlike typical AdWords ads on Google.com, you don’t enter any bids for Media Ads. Instead, clicks on Media Ads are charged at a flat rate. This simplified pricing model makes it easier to budget for your Media Ads campaign and to know exactly how much an interaction is going to cost.

Lastly, and most exciting, Media Ads changes the way that you experience video on Google.com. Unlike Video Extensions, which uses an in-line video player to show videos on Google.com, Media Ads introduces a new Lightbox media player. When someone plays your video either by clicking the thumbnail or the “watch” link, the Lightbox player expands to the center of the screen and dims the rest of the page around it. The experience is meant to put the viewer’s full attention on the video and to create a much more theater-like experience.

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Media Ads is still in limited release to major motion picture studios promoting new release features. Over time, we plan to offer Media Ads to more advertisers in more industries to help them promote their videos on Google.com.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords Crew

Dig deeper into call metrics with new detailed call reports

Back in November, we announced call metrics, a new AdWords feature that lets you generate and measure phone calls directly from your ads.

Since then, we've heard from many of you that while it's useful to see the number of calls generated by each campaign, you'd also like to view details about individual calls.

Today we’re happy to announce new detailed call reports that show you specific metrics about each individual call that your campaign has received since call metrics was enabled, including:

• Call start time
• Call end time
• Call duration
• Call status (missed or received)
• Caller area code

To view detailed reports about each call, you’ll need to first enable the Dimensions tab in your account. Click here for instructions. Once you’ve enabled the Dimensions tab, click View and select Call metrics calls to open the detailed call report.

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While detailed call reports let you dive deeper into the individual calls you’ve received, you’ll still be able to view aggregated call reports for each campaign on the Campaigns tab. These metrics include total number of calls, received calls, missed calls, total call duration, and average call duration.

Note that call metrics is only available to a limited number of US advertisers. To learn more about call metrics or request the feature in your account, visit Google Ad Innovations.

Posted by Lisa Shieh, Inside AdWords crew

Ad Preview and Diagnosis: Together at Last

We recently introduced a new version of the Ad Preview Tool that integrates ad diagnosis: instead of simply showing you a preview of the search results for a given keyword, the tool now also tells you if your ad is showing for that search. If not, you can see the reason why.

Now that you can preview and diagnose your ads in a single location, we’re retiring the separate Ads Diagnostic Tool and directing you to the Preview Tool instead. We’ll consolidate names too; you’ll see a single Ad Preview & Diagnosis tool under your account’s Reporting and Tools tab in the future.

Over the last several months, we’ve also worked to integrate diagnosis options directly into your Campaigns tab. If you’ve been using the Ads Diagnostic Tool option to diagnose many keywords at once, don’t worry -- you can find it without leaving your Keywords tab! Just click “Diagnose keywords...” under the “More actions” menu to get integrated diagnosis results directly on the page:

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To interpret the distribution of results more quickly, click the “Filter results” link, then “Show diagnostic status” in the filter panel that opens. This will open additional filter options that are specific to the results returned by a diagnosis. Here, we’ve used filters to focus only on keywords that aren’t triggering ads due to budget, bid, or Quality Score issues:

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With filters, it’s easy to focus on a specific set of issues and then make the necessary changes to get ads back up and running!

You can find more information on the integrated keyword diagnosis feature in our announcement from last summer, or visit our Help Center for additional details.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Show ads that are most likely to receive conversions more often

Today we're announcing the launch of a new ad rotation setting in AdWords that allows you to optimize for conversions. Previously, you had two options:

• Optimize for clicks: Ads that are expected to provide more clicks are shown more often
• Rotate: Ads are shown more evenly

Now, with a third option, you can choose to show ads that are expected to provide more conversions more often. We'll look at a combination of clickthrough rate and conversion rate to determine which ads to show.

We’ve always encouraged you to test multiple ads in each ad group, and we’ve offered our help by showing ads with the highest clickthrough rates more often. However, some of you have told us that the ad with the highest clickthrough rate isn’t always the ad with the highest conversion rate and that you’d like to be able to optimize for conversions rather than clicks. Starting today, we’re allowing you to do just that.

To use the new setting, you’ll need to have Conversion Tracking in your account, as we use the data from that tool to determine which ad is the most likely to receive conversions. When we don’t have enough data to make a decision, we’ll show the ad that is the most likely to receive clicks. If you have Conversion Tracking, the Optimize for conversions option will be available in the Ad delivery: Ad rotation, frequency capping section under Advanced settings on the Settings tab of any campaign. Once enabled, it will apply to all ads that appear on Google and our search and display partners’ sites.

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By providing another way to define the “best-performing” ad, we hope to make it easier for you to experiment with your ads and learn which ones are the most successful in helping you reach your advertising goals. For more information on ad rotation settings, please visit our Help Center.

Posted by Lisa Shieh, Inside AdWords crew

More control and flexibility with the new Billing tab (UK only)

We're announcing the launch of our new Billing tab in the UK. Based on your feedback, we upgraded the tab to give you more control over when and how much you're charged with the new 'Make a payment' functionality. Those of you on automatic payments get charged whenever you reach your billing threshold on or after 30 days, but in addition to that, you can now make manual payments to delay the automatic charge. Although some of you already have the new Billing tab in your accounts, we'll be rolling it out to all advertisers in the coming months. The upgrade doesn't require any action from you - your billing method and form of payment will stay the same.

Now, on to the improvements. What can you expect from your updated Billing tab?

• Get more control. Choose to initiate a payment to your account at any time and use any form of payment available with your country and currency settings.

• Make payments directly from your billing summary page. You can do this by clicking the "Make a payment" button.

• Switch between automatic and manual payments. You now have the option to use either one.

• Add multiple forms of payments and switch between them. Add as many forms of payment as you want to your account and switch between using them at any time.

• Use different business and billing addresses. Your business address doesn't have to match your billing address. Plus, each form of payment can have a different billing address.

• Access improved help content. There will be improved help content in the new Billing tab and Help Centre.

In addition, the below changes in terminology will be reflected in your upgraded Billing tab. But keep in mind that despite the name changes, these billing methods will function the same as they did previously.

• Postpay is now called "automatic payments." We'll automatically charge you only after your ads accrue costs.

• Prepay is now called "manual payments." You can make payments to your account whenever and in whatever amount you like. Your ad costs draw from those funds.

• Direct debit is now called "bank account." Your funds will be debited from your bank account.

• Bank transfer is now called "funds transfer." You can make payments by transferring funds to Google's bank account.

For more information on the new Billing tab, please visit the FAQ in the AdWords Help Centre.


Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

Location extensions: putting your business on the map

When location extensions launched in AdWords in 2009, they allowed you to dynamically attach relevant business addresses to your ads. We’ve since experimented with different ways to integrate this information with a map.

Today, we’re introducing a way for your location extension-enabled ads to show directly on the map. We’ll be integrating information from ads with location extensions into the Place Search map on Google.com. On the map, your location will be marked with a distinctive blue pin.

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With the new format, we expect potential customers to be able to find local businesses more easily. Rather than seeing multiple addresses and maps on the page, your customers can see all relevant, nearby locations in one place with quick links to get directions on Google Maps.

Your promoted business will appear in this new integrated format whenever we infer that a potential customer is looking for local information and your ad qualifies to appear above the search results.

For more information about location extensions, please visit the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

New features to help you manage your Google AdWords Certification Program account

In 2010, we introduced a new Google AdWords Certification Program to equip you and your companies with more up-to-date, comprehensive, strategy-focused training and certification on the latest tools and best practices for managing AdWords accounts. Along with the revised certification program, we launched Google Partner Search, an opt-in, online, searchable directory that helps advertisers identify Certified Partners to help them manage their AdWords accounts.

Over the last few months, you’ve shared feedback with us that you’d like features that make it easier to associate your individual certification with a company and more intuitive to add users to your company profile. We’re pleased to share that we’ve now released features to address each of these points of feedback.

Request to link your individual qualification to a company
Historically, to join a company in the Google Certification Program, you would need to be invited by an Administrator on your company’s account, making it difficult to join if you didn't know the Administrator. To fix this challenge, we now offer a feature enabling you to search for your company and request to join yourself. If you would like to contribute your individual qualification to a company account, you may now do so by clicking on the “My Company” link and searching for the company you wish to join. Be sure to type in at least one complete word that matches the company’s name.

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Companies -- easily manage Professionals and Administrators
We’ve made it more intuitive for your company to manage the Professionals and Administrators within the Company account, as well as to review requests from users requesting to join the company, with the updated Account Access page.

On the “Users” tab, account administrators can change a user’s status to either Administrator or Professional, as well as revoke access:

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The “Incoming requests” tab allows account administrators to see all requests to join from individuals and either accept or reject them. Finally, the “Invitations sent” tab can be used to directly send invitations to qualified individuals.

Add or update Google Accounts associated with your profile
We know that qualified individuals may change companies or use multiple email addresses throughout the day. We’ve therefore made it possible for you to add multiple Google Accounts to your account, as well as to change the primary email address at which you receive communication for the Google Certification Program.

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For more information on the new Google Certification Program feature changes, visit the Help Center.


Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

Contextual targeting just got easier for your display campaigns

This week, we’re launching the Contextual Targeting Tool to help you more easily reach customers as they spend time on millions of sites in the Google Display Network.

As you may already know, contextual targeting helps you reach potential customers as they read webpages related to your products or services. Now, with this tool, you can create contextually-targeted campaigns more easily and quickly, while generating more clicks and conversions for your campaigns.

What does the Contextual Targeting Tool do?
This tool automatically builds keyword lists that can be used to show your ads on relevant webpages in the Google Display Network. Tightly-themed keyword lists are the basis of effective contextual targeting, and with the Contextual Targeting Tool, you no longer have to build them manually. In minutes, you can build dozens, even hundreds, of keyword lists, scaling your campaign performance while ensuring accurate targeting for your ads. This means you can get more clicks and conversions for your campaigns and you can do it more quickly.

How do I use it?
Let’s say you sell soccer equipment and gear. Normally, you'd have to build out separate ad groups for each of your product lines, like soccer gear, soccer balls, soccer cleats, etc. With the Contextual Targeting Tool, simply type each product category into the search box, and the tool will automatically generate tightly-themed keyword lists for you. For example, when you enter soccer gear into the tool, you get more specific ad groups, such as youth soccer gear, discount soccer gear, soccer uniforms, soccer bags, etc.

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These new ad groups can help you get additional traffic and sales, as you may not think of creating them when manually building out your campaigns. Along with the new ad groups, the tool provides suggested bids and predicted placements to give you an idea of the types of sites in the Display Network where your ads can appear.

The Contextual Targeting Tool has been available to advertisers using AdWords Editor. This week, all advertisers will be able to access it from the Opportunities tab in their AdWords account. You'll still need AdWords Editor to implement the ad groups in your account for now (download AdWords Editor). However, this requirement will be lifted and you’ll be able to implement new ad groups directly from your AdWords account in the coming months.

You can learn more about using the Contextual Targeting Tool by watching this video. We hope this tool will help you more easily and efficiently reach your goals with your Display Network campaigns.


Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

Significant advances for Display Ad Builder

On the Google Display Network, we've been working hard to make display advertising accessible to everyone, no matter what your size or budget. In 2008, we launched Display Ad Builder to help you design display ads in minutes for free. Now, 100 new advertisers try Display Ad Builder every day.

Today we are announcing a number of improvements to Display Ad Builder to help you achieve all your marketing goals, from driving conversions to building your brand.

Quickly manage hundreds of ads with bulk copying and editing
With the newest version of AdWords Editor, you can now copy your Display Ad Builder ads across campaigns and make basic bulk edits, including ad names, destination and display URLs, and ad statuses. AdWords Editor makes it easier to customize your display creatives. For example, you could create an ad for marathon training tips, make multiple copies of the ad, then go into Display Ad Builder to customize the creative to mention the Chicago marathon for users in Chicago and the Philly marathon for Philadelphia.

Sample Display Ad Builder ad copied using AdWords Editor and then customized based on user location.
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If you're already using AdWords Editor, you'll be prompted to upgrade automatically. Just follow the instructions to keep your unposted changes. If you’re not using AdWords Editor, visit our website to learn more and download it.

Drive engagement with social and expandable templates
Display Ad Builder also can help build your brand and engage users with our new social and expandable templates. We are testing social templates, which include the latest tweets from your Twitter account in the creative. Social templates are really useful if you want to run timely promotions that change daily. You can run a new tweet, instead of creating an entirely new creative. Social templates can also help you build your Twitter follower base.

An ad created using one of Display Ad Builder's social templates.
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We've also released expandable templates, which encourage more interaction from interested users by increasing your ad’s real estate on the page. When a user clicks on your expandable ad, it expands to twice its width or height, depending on the format.

Create the perfect ad by customizing your templates
We're also launching template customization to give you greater flexibility to create the ad you want. You can now move text boxes and images where you want within the template. Also, text boxes can be resized, so you can include more content. Combine these new features, with 180 templates, nearly 100 fonts, and unlimited color options to chose from.

Now you can move around text boxes and pictures and re-size text boxes to customize templates to fit your needs.
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Never tried Display Ad Builder? Try our free demo to see how it works. To start creating your ads, go to your ‘Ads’ tab in a new or existing campaign in your AdWords account. Then, click ‘New Ad’ and select ‘Display Ad Builder.’


Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

The Keyword Tool - when you talk, we listen

We want to thank you for all the feedback you’ve given us on the Keyword Tool. The first thing you told us is that you want more keywords that are better targeted to your account and searches, and we’ve made improvements in this area. We’ve also added features such as better filters, the ability to star keywords, and copy them as text. And we’re not done yet! You can help us understand what’s important to you by continuing to provide us with feedback. Below is a more detailed look at some of our new features.

There are three new ways to filter and refine your keyword list. With our new updates, you can:

1. Choose specific terms to include or exclude from your keyword list.
2. Use the ‘More like these’ button to search for terms that are similar to the specific keyword ideas you've selected from the table.
3. Get only results that include the exact words or phrases (and their close synonyms) you’ve typed in the search box.

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Adding stars to keywords
Add stars to keywords that you'd like to save while you're still searching for new keyword ideas. You can review your starred keywords in the "Stars" panel on the left side of the tool.

‘View as text’ button
View your selected keywords in text form, so that you can easily edit them and paste them in a spreadsheet or AdWords Editor.

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Your continued feedback is important, so please keep sending us your comments and we'll post about more improvements here.

Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

‘Tis the season for Product Ads

Earlier this month we announced the U.S. launch of Product Listing Ads, which lets you easily promote products from your Merchant Center account on Google.com. In the past few weeks we’ve seen advertisers promote over 150 million unique products using Product Listing Ads.

Given all that inventory, we were curious to see what people were clicking on during one of the busiest online shopping weekends of the year.

We thought that this was a fairly interesting sneak peak into what you might expect to see under the tree this season. So, with that, here are the most clicked searches for Product Listing Ads over the holiday weekend:

• Xbox 360
• Dance Star Mickey
• Barbie Dream Townhouse
• Monster Beats
• Nintendo DSi
• Monster High Fashion Dolls
• Samsung Galaxy Tablet
• Xbox 360 Kinect Bundle
• Nintendo Wii
• Canon EOS Rebel T2i

To learn more about Product Ads, check out the video below or visit the AdWords help center.



Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Measure how customers interact with your ads

New AdWords features such as Product ads, Sitelinks and Click-to-call allow you to create more interactive ads. Product ads and Sitelinks help customers find the most relevant pages on your website and Click-to-call allows customers to call your business directly from the search results.

As ads become more interactive, you might want to know how they'll impact your business's key metrics like clicks, click-through-rates and, most importantly, conversions.

To help answer this question, we’ve added a new report to your AdWords account that allows you to measure the performance of each click type you’re using. You can think of a click type as how your customers interact with your ads. Did they click on the headline, a sitelink, or some other aspect of your ad?

You can access the new click type report in the Campaign, Ad groups or Keywords tabs. Select “Segment” then “Click type.”

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With this added data, you’ll now have the ability to compare performance of each click type side by side. If certain click types perform well for your business, you may want to consider expanding them to other campaigns. Comparing click types by campaign, ad group or keyword will also highlight areas that need work.

Given the success we’ve seen searchers and businesses have with more interactive features in ads, you can expect to see more of these types of features in the future. With the new click type report in AdWords you can measure the impact of these new features and continue to get the most out of your ads.

Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

Measure the phone calls you get from AdWords

What if you found out that your AdWords campaigns were bringing you more customers than you realized?

Zac Stafford, Senior Search Strategist at Nina Hale Search Marketing in Minneapolis, MN, recently discovered that this was true for his client, modern furniture retailer Room & Board. Stafford saw some encouraging results as an early beta tester of AdWords call metrics, a new feature that automatically includes a unique phone number in your ads to measure the calls that you receive from AdWords.

“By cross-checking our call metrics reports with our sales records, we saw that half the people who called the toll free number in our ad purchased online but the other half purchased in a store. Before using call metrics, we determined our ROI just by looking at the online sales numbers. Now we have proof that online search ad campaigns drive in-store purchases.”

Today we're announcing that AdWords call metrics is available for more advertisers, making it easier than ever to measure the phone calls that AdWords generates for your business. Using the technology behind Google Voice, call metrics assigns your campaign a unique phone number which is automatically inserted into your ad on both desktop and high-end mobile devices, where the number is clickable.

Call metrics ad at the top of the search results:

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Call metrics at the right of the search results:

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When a user calls the number in your ad, the call is automatically routed to your business, and AdWords notes that this call took place. Then, when you look at your AdWords reports, you’ll see the number of calls generated by each campaign, call duration, and in the near future, caller area code. You'll still only pay for clicks on your ads, but we intend to charge for call metrics in the future.

Once you know where your calls are coming from, you can refine your marketing strategy to make sure you’re getting the most out of your ads. For example, you could test different ad text variations to see which results in the most calls or reallocate budget to campaigns that truly bring you the highest ROI.

Currently, call metrics is only available to a limited number of US advertisers. We plan to make the feature available to more advertisers in the coming months. To find out if call metrics is available in your account and to learn more about the feature, visit Google Ad Innovations.

Additionally, if you want to see call metrics in action, watch the video above.


Posted by Surojit Chatterjee, Senior Product Manager, AdWords

Query Paths in Search Funnels

Hot on the heels of the new Search Funnels features that were recently launched, here’s another new feature: The Top Paths (Query Paths) report.

Broad match keywords in your AdWords account may be matched to a variety of keywords your users are searching for. You bid on certain keywords, but what about the actual queries that these keywords were matched to? You can see Keyword Paths within Search Funnels - and now, you can see Query Paths as well.

Within the existing Top Paths reports:

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Select the Top Paths (Query Paths) option in the Dimension drop down menu to show you the actual queries that were matched to your ads and clicked prior to a conversion.

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Note: this option will only show queries for search ads that were clicked, and not for impressions.

This data gives even more insight into the searches users make before finding and then purchasing on your site. With this information, you should be able to better target these users by seeing how they find you, and gain confidence in bidding on keywords that convert or assist in the conversion path.

Posted by Gordon Zhu, Inside AdWords crew