ClickEquations Blog
Keyword Zoom Takes You Inside Keyword Performance
Even though we occasionally rail against them, keywords are functionally the center of the paid search universe.
Their selection is the single largest point of control you exercise over your account. They hold the bids the (at least indirectly) impact how much you spend, and probably most importantly (and unfortunately) they’re the level at which clicks and CTR and conversions are reported.
Readers of this blog know we think the action is a level below -- where the specific search queries that have been matched to the keywords live, along with the text ad copy that people who execute those queries view and click through.
The belief is that there aren’t good or bad keywords, just queries that are worth more (when matched to the proper ad copy) and queries that are worth less (no matter what ad copy they’re matched with).
This is the reason we were the first paid search platform to offer detailed search query reporting. And even today our ClickEquations still offers by far the most complete and detailed query reporting in the industry.
But it we wanted to take it even further.
Making Search Queries Actionable
In the July release of ClickEquations queries become actionable. We’ve made it possible look inside the performance of any keyword and directly manipulate the queries that have consumed expense or driven revenue and tune the relationship between those queries and specific ad copy.
This is a huge breakthrough, and we call it Keyword Zoom.
To access Keyword Zoom you just double click on any keyword.
This which allows you to see:
- The search queries that the keyword attracted and how each performed.
- The ad copy that was shown to the people who entered these queries.
- Complete performance statistics and metrics for that keyword.
And enables you -- easily and in one place -- to:
- Turn a search query into a new negative keyword so you never pay for those kind of queries again.
- Turn a search query into a new keyword of any match type to capture more related queries and conversions.
- Edit existing ad copy or create new ads or variations to improve the alignment of queries to text ads.
The Power of Relationships
This is a killer feature because of the way it brings all of these capabilities together into one place and enables a fast and friction-free way to tune the performance of any keyword. You could have theoretically done these things before, but:
- By isolating the search queries from a single keyword, as opposed to presenting the list of all queries in an ad group or even campaign, it’s easier to focus on the implications of those queries to the keyword settings (bid and match type) and to think about how to act upon the query information.
- By making the transformation from search query into either positive or negative keyword a simple two-click operation (assuming you don’t want to customize any options, more of you do but there is power in having that choice) the process we call query-mining stops being a rare effort and becomes a core task in the search management workflow.
- By showing the full query list right next to all the text ads those searchers are seeing, it becomes far easier to reimaging and rewrite ad copy to be vastly more relevant and persuasive. Queries show a diversity and richness that it’s hard to imaging when just looking at or thinking about keywords.
- By showing the ad copy click and conversion performance for each different query you can for the first time see when ads are great for some searchers but poorly targeted at others. Just as keywords usually aren’t really bad or good (because some of the queries they catch are great and other queries matched to that same keyword are wastes) it frequently turns out that ad copy isn’t necessarily all bad or all good either. One text ad may work great for some queries and lousy for others -- now you can know this and act accordingly..
What’s happening here is that we’re for the first time exposing a 360-degree view around the keyword, showing how it relates to queries and ad copy and how those each relate to each other. To get a better sense of it, check out this video:
This ability -- the view and the fluidity with which it makes changes possible -- proves a whole new way to improve your paid search results. We’re very excited to bring you this capability in ClickEquations.
To learn more and get a complete demo of ClickEquations, attend one of our public webinars or contact us to schedule a personal discussion or demonstration.
Best Practices and Text Ad Testing
The Best Practices feature in ClickEquations can help you to find and fix a wide range of common problems in your accounts.
One of my favorites is ‘Text Ad CTR Low’ which identifies text ads running in your ad groups which have a CTR that is some percentage lower (30% by default) than the other text ads in the same ad group. This has the potential to make huge improvements in your quality scores and overall results.
In this post we’ll look at how to setup and best use this best practice.
Setup
To begin you need to configure and start the best practice. In the Best Practices Manager, create a new ‘Text Ad CTR Low’ best practice, modify the options if necessary, and assign it to run on some or all of your campaigns.
The right option settings depend on the behavior and performance of your account. The default CTR Difference of 30% is a good starting point if you have 50 clicks or more per text ad in the defined lookback period. If you don’t have that many clicks in the desired timeframe, raise the CTR Difference to 100% and you can get statistically significant results with only 12-15 clicks.
See ‘Adding and Editing Best Practices’ in the ClickEquations help system for more detailed information and instructions.
Save your new best practice and it will run that evening. Go get a good night sleep.
Reviewing Best Practice Alerts
The ‘Ad Alerts’ section of the ClickEquations dashboard will now tell you if any your ad groups are in violation of your defined best practices. Click on the red alert counter and you can see how the under-performing ads are spread across the various search engines.

To see the problem ads on Google, click the number next to Google. The ClickEquations Manager will open to the Text Ads tab with all the problem ads displayed. From here you’ll be able to review the details of the situation in each ad group, and take corrective action.
Resolving Low CTR Text Ads
The list of text ads you’ll see only includes the ones that under-performed. If you’re in a hurry you might just pause them all, or edit the ad copy to try and boost the CTR.
But a better approach would be to dive deeper into the specifics for each ad group.
Here’s the steps you might take:
- Click on the ad group name next to the first text ad in the list. This will open tab for that ad group so you filter down to only the ads in that ad group.
- Click back to the Text ad tab to see the under-performing text ad and the ads it is competing against.
- If there are paused or deleted ads on the list, use the Edit Filter.. command to display only items with the status of Enabled, On, or Active.
- TIP: Name as save this filter as ‘Show Only Active/Enabled/On’ for future use.
- Compare the performance of the text ads to see if you really want to pause or rewrite the under-performing ad.
- Use the Verster significance checker to make sure you can be statistically confident in the results. If not, use the calendar to bring in more data from a longer time frame.
- When you have confidence in the data, take action on any under-performing ads – pause or rewrite.
- Check the box next to the under-performing ad (if you didn’t delete it) and clear the alert.
- If there are more under-performing ads, Click on the remaining number next to the Text Ad CTR Low alert in the Alerts palette, and repeat this process for the next under-performing ad.
Economic and QS Benefit
The process of eliminating poorly performing text ads from within your ad groups should have huge benefits to your account. Every under-performing ad that is eliminated will increase your CTR, which should drive up keyword quality score. And as we know, better quality score results in more impressions, higher positions, and lower CTRs.
Wrapping this process around a thoughtful effort to write and test better ad copy, and keep an eye on not only CTR but also conversion rate, can further the positive effects.
When you run lots of text ad tests – as you should – keeping track of them and waiting for sufficient data to hit some level of confidence in the results is a management challenge. Using the ClickEquations best practices to automate the management of under-performers is a dramatic improvement to the process.
Active/Enabled Only in ClickEquations
Paid search accounts are filled with history and failures. Campaigns we’re no longer running, keywords that didn’t work, and text-ads that failed or just wore out.
Many of these aren’t ever deleted, they just kind of linger, cluttering our reports and screens.
The ClickEquations custom filters allow you to remove these items. You can choose the statuses you want to show, and leave off those you want to hide.

To make this even easier, create a named/saved filter. To do this:
- Open the Edit Filter dialog box. (In Manager, under the Filters and Views pop-up)
- Click the black arrow next to Status to open the status choices.
- Choose the Active, Enabled, and On status options.
- Click the check box next to ‘Save As’
- Give your filter a name like ’Active/Enabled/On Only’
- Click OK.
Now you can get remove all paused, inactive, deleted, and off items from any tab by just choosing your new filter from the Apply Saved Filter menu.
Secret Truth Series #18: Effective Text Ad Testing
Text ads are trying to answer questions.
Writing text ads is difficult because you have only 95 characters to stand out from a sea of competing messages and persuade the searcher that you’re the ad to click.
There are many strategies and tactics to accomplish this, and both technical skill and creativity are required. The process takes considerable time and effort.
And there is only one way to measure success. Testing.
But testing requires more than simply running a couple of ads simultaneously. It requires the conditions for a fair test, a clear goal, and valid measurement and analysis. Much of what passes for text-ad testing in paid search lacks one or more of these requirements.
Let’s look a little closer at each to better understand how to properly test text ads.
Conditions For Text Ad Testing
Text ads cannot be effectively tested too early in the process of optimizing your account or ad groups.
If you haven’t yet optimized the keywords, match types, ad group organization, and negatives then the search queries coming into the ad group will be too diverse. If people are asking 25 different questions it’s impossible to compose any single answer that will satisfy all of them. If you try to test text ads too early, you won’t be able to trust the results. Maybe you’ve got a lousy text ad, or maybe the ad is just running against a lot of very untargeted or unqualified search queries.
So before even beginning to worry about text ad testing, make sure you’ve read and implemented Secret Truths #1 – #8. When the vast majority of the queries coming into an ad group are similar, you’re read to test text ads.
Of course, you have to write some text ads when you setup an ad group. And you should monitor and review their performance and make changes as necessary. But hard core text-ad testing – statistical comparisons – isn’t reasonable or necessary until the ad group has been properly constructed and intelligently optimized and – in terms of search queries – stabilized.
What You Can and Can’t Control
Another factor to consider in text-ad testing is the reality that paid search is a dynamic environment. Keywords get added, negatives expanded, bids change, competitors impact average positions, and other account modifications take place on a regular basis. There are variations in activity and results based on day of the week, week of the month, month of the year, weather, news events, sales, inventory, competitor promotions, and more.
So in the time it takes your ad group to get a sufficient number of impressions or clicks for a good test, how can you be sure that it is the ad copy that you’re really testing?
The answer is that you really can’t. There are no static environments in PPC. But all the ads in the test are subject to almost all the same environmental conditions, so many would argue these external influences don’t influence relative performance. That may be true, it may not. But you can’t control for many of these variables, so we ultimately have to accept them as a fact of life, a limitation in the system.
Whenever possible however, try to limit those changes you do control during deliberate text-ad tests. Don’t introduce new keywords or negatives or dramatically shift bids. Chance are if you find the need to make radical changes of any of these types you’d be better off making them and then restarting your tests.
Clear Text Ad Testing Goals
The goal of text ad testing is to determine which ad copy delivers the best click-through and/or conversion rates.
- Most ad testing focuses on CTR. That’s clearly the direct goal of the ad, and helps to drive up quality score.
- Conversion rate should be tracked and considered, even if CTR is the primary goal. There are many ways to incite a click, but Google gets paid for clicks while you get paid for conversions.
- The conversion-per-1000-impressions metric (CP1K) is a great way to blend these two goals and find the truly optimal ad copy. (I hope to write more about CP1K in the near future).
Statistically Valid Text Ad Testing Analysis
Assuming you have a clear goal in mind and a stable testing environment, test data becomes the next hurdle. How many impressions and clicks does a set of text ads need for a valid test?
The answer to that relatively straightforward question has eluded most PPC managers for years. I assume this is due to the fact that most of us aren’t trained mathemeticians or statisticians. (I’m certainly not.) And most of the software we use to create and edit text ads does not provided the statistical support we really need.
So we’ve slithered forward based on the conventional wisdom that suggests tracking ‘at least 100 impressions or 10 clicks before there is enough data to declare a winner’. Unfortunately this really isn’t very accruate or useful advice.
Statistically, it turns out that those of us who’ve been reacting to text-ads with anything near 100 impressions or a dozen or so clicks have regularly made essentially random decisions. We’ve paused the better ad many times, letting the loser run. We’ve sabataged our own results. Repeatedly. Over long periods of time. 
Consider the example shown at right: Three text ads running in an ad group. About 500 impressions each.
Is there enough data to make a wise decision?
It seems pretty clear. The first ad at 1.98% CTR appears to be our winner. But the statistics tell us that it isn’t that clearcut.
I looked at the statistical significance and confidence intervals for these ads. We can only be 80% confident that the CTR difference between the first and second ad are actually different. Same for the difference between the second and third ad.
80% confidence is not very high.
It’s not considered high enough to be sure something is true in most activities where statistical confidence is considered. For scientific activities a 95% rate is the desired standard.
To understand the potential error in accepting these numbers, look (below) at the range of possible CTRs for each of these ads that we can be sure of with a 95% confidence.

The first ad may actually be as low as 0.82% CTR, or could be as high as 3.14%. That’s a pretty wide range – we just don’t know yet, with a high level of confidence, what the CTR of this ad is going to be. You can see similarly wide ranges for the other two ads, and in comparison see there is plenty of overlap in the potential which means if we really let this test play out, we may get a very different result.
So how many impressions would it take to get 95% confident in the differences?
If we let these ads run until they had around 1000 impressions each they’d achieve a 90% confidence. It takes nearly 1500 impressions per ad to hit 95% confidence.
The actual number needed for any given set of ads depends a lot on the CTRs and their relative difference. But it’s a rare circumstance when anything like 100 impressions or 10 clicks is adequate.
You can check the numbers on your own ads using two great tools:
- Vertster.com offers a simple, free, online utility that lets you enter CTRs for two ads and check the confidence level.
- Teascalc is an Excel sheet that costs $49 but offers a both confidence and interval data.
Making The Grade
Everything we do to create and optimize paid search accounts is done in hopes of showing the right people the right ad at the right price.
Their reaction to our ads is feedback on how well we’ve done at targeting them and organizing our accounts as well as on how aligned our answers are to their questions.
Fortunately for us if we do things right – in setting goals, creating testable conditions, and accurately measuring and analyzing we can get this feedback in clear, powerful, and actionable form.
Text ad testing isn’t just another wise and important step in paid search management. It’s the crucial step that pays off all the others.
This blog post is part of a series extending and amplifying the ideas in our free ebook ’21 Secret Truths of High-Resolution PPC’.
What they’re saying: “Everything you know about AdWords is the basics Google wanted you to know. Just enough to get you hooked. But what if there was fundamental secrets that they neglected to share? Would you want to know them? Now you can! 21 Secrets Truths is what you must read, no, act on, before your competitors do.”
- Bryan Eisenberg Conversion Expert and New York Times Best-Selling Author ’.
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Introducing One-Click Segmentation in ClickEquations
Managing paid search accounts is in many ways an exercise in prioritization. There are endless opportunities to expand and refine your account, run reports and analyze data, or make changes and conduct tests.
The only limits are hours in the day, and days in the week.
But not everything you might spend time on is equally valuable, or even has equal potential. So we thought ClickEquations should make it easy to find and focus on critical aspects of your PPC accounts.
That’s why we’ve added four new ‘One-Click Segmentation’ features to ClickEquations V2 which went live last week:
- One-Click Brand Keyword Segmentation
- One-Click Head Keyword Segmentation
- One-Click Content Network Segmentation
- One-Click Custom-User-Defined Segmentation
Each of these enables you to quickly isolate the performance history and then take action on important subsets of your account.
Brand Keywords Are Special
As discussed in our ‘Success Through Negative Brand Keywords‘ post last week, keywords that contain your brand terms and phrases are distinct from your non-brand keywords, and in many ways they should be managed differently.
But many accounts still have brand keywords scattered across many ad groups and campaigns. Wouldn’t it be great to see them all (and nothing else) with just a click?
Now you can. Just choose ‘Brand Keywords Only’ from the Filters and Views menu.
You’ll near-instantly be presented with a list of all the brand keywords in your account. You can review their performance and make any necessary changes. You can even create and apply additional custom filters to run on your brand-only keywords.
Head Keywords Are Special Too
The concept of ‘head’ and ‘tail’ has got a lot of press in the last year. And we all know that a relatively small percentage of our keywords earn the lion’s share of our revenue and consume the lions share of our cost.
This has lots of implications for paid search, but most important is the fact that most of us don’t allocate our relatively precious resource, time, in proportion to the results various keywords produce. In other words, we don’t spend enough time fishing where the fish are.
Wouldn’t it be great to click that mouse of yours and see only that small segment of keywords that are driving the vast majority of your revenue? Or clicks? Or costs?
Now you can. Just choose ‘Head Keywords Only’ from the Filters and Views menu.
You even get to control the definition of ‘Head Keyword’ that you wish to use. You set the target percentage, the key metric, and the lookback period.
The results are amazing. For the account we use for demonstrations – which is a real working paid search account with about 170K keywords in AdWords, just 281 drive 80% of the revenue. Those are an important 281 keywords to focus on, which is the point of this feature.
Content is not Search
We’ve also recently discussed on this blog the distinctions between search advertising and content network advertising. Given those thoughts, it makes sense that we’d support easy segmentation of search and content within ClickEquations.
So now we do. Just choose Search Network or Content Network from the Filters and Views menu.
Any campaigns that aren’t in the group you’ve chosen, will disappear. You can review results, navigate freely, and make any additions or changes.
Most importantly, you can focus. You can think about the campaigns in terms of the distribution network. And not get confused or distracted by the entirely different numbers that come from other network type.
Custom Saved Filters
The one-click access to brand keywords, head keywords, and search or content campaigns is a great start towards making it easier to focus on what’s important within your paid search accounts.
But in the complication of paid search, there are many other segments you may also want to access quickly.
So we’ve also added very powerful named and saved filters. You can define nearly any combination of account structural elements (like ad group or keyword attributes) plus performance results (such as click-through rates or quality scores) and status flags (including paused or disapproved) and even timeframes within which elements were modified. Then just enter a name and save it for easy future application.
These filters can be used anywhere in the account – they’re smart enough to ignore irrelivant settings – so if you define CPC as one of the factors and you’re viewing ad groups, the ‘CPC’ will be ignored but the other aspects will still apply.
We all have many ways we like to slice and dice our campaigns or keywords – and now you can do so quickly and easily.
Intelligent Paid Search Management
We think there are many ways that paid search management software can transform the process of managing ppc accounts. The tools have to evolve beyond simply offering option-after-option and begin shaping the way the work is done.
We think both our best practices and the one-click segmentation features of ClickEquations V2 are great steps in that direction. Both start the shift towards ‘what you should do’ and ‘how you could do it’. For practitioners who take advantage of them, we believe they’re both time savers and clear ways to improve results.
Avinash has said that “Segmenting your data is the fastest way to finding actionable insights from your web analytics data.” You can read some of his thoughts on it here and here. We think segmenting your data is one of the best ways to prioritize too.
Spend some time in ClickEquations V2, and we think you’ll agree.
Introducing Best Practices in ClickEquations
Anyone who has managed a serious paid search campaign knows the work isn’t easy.
Eighteen months ago in a series of posts on this blog, I discussed some of the reasons why that’s true, namely a lack of clarity surrounding the data, difficulty in prioritizing opportunities and risks, and generally inefficient tools.
Not surprisingly, these issues have greatly influenced the capabilities we’ve been adding to the ClickEquations paid search platform.
This week we’re releasing a ClickEquations V2 which takes a giant step towards addressing the issue of prioritization.
What Should You Do Today?
Paid search provides, as our friend Avinash has called it, “more data than God intended us to have.” We manage huge campaigns in changing business and competitive environments, and generate hundreds of thousands or millions of pieces of data every day. And there are dozens of variables that control the thousands upon thousands of keywords in our accounts.
So every day when you log into your accounts, your have to play detective. You have to sort through all the new data, to discover what is going on, and try to determine why. Of course, you’re not looking for just one thing, but have to keep in mind dozens or even hundreds of issues that could be ‘wrong’ in your account at that particular moment.
The reports aren’t going to tell you that anything is wrong. It’s up to you to notice that something is wrong, or could be improved.
Then you have to turn into a Doctor. You have to diagnose the problem and choose the correct remedy. The symptoms may not be clear and some of the alternatives may be risky.
And finally you must become the technician, implementating the prescribed solution – which could be as easy as a button click or a complex procedure with many steps and perhaps a lot of repetition.
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Sounds Like A Job For Software
Until now, paid search software really didn’t help with this problem. It collected data, presented it to you, and enabled you to make changes.
Everything in the middle – identifying, diagnosing, prescribing – was left up to you.
This has been a huge challenge. It’s hard to spot every problem ever time it appears. It’s hard to always know what to do. And sometimes when you know what to do it’s hard to implement it.
Shouldn’t your software help?
Best Practices in ClickEquations
The new automated best practices in ClickEquations tackle this problem. Now instead of conducting daily searches for every possible issue you might to prevent, or each opportunity you may wish to exploit, the software will do it for you.
You specify the conditions you want to watch out for – choosing from a list of ready-to-use best practices. ClickEquations will then monitor your account and point out, for every campaign, ad group, keyword, and text ad, every best practice violation as soon as it occurs.
You can then drill down on just the elements that need your attention with just a click. To help you understand just what the risk or opportunity is, and the types of solutions that are most likely to be appropriate, another click provides detailed descriptions and a list of recommended potential solutions or actions.
And finally (although this really isn’t a part of the best practices feature) we’ve made it much easier and more efficient to execute the kind of changes that correct at least some of these issues.
A New Relationship With Your Paid Search Software
The overall effect of our best practices feature is amazing. Now as you browse your account, you get pro-active suggestions for ways to improve your results.
When you log in each day, there is a suggested work list waiting for you. And when you polish those off you feel confident that your account is on the right track at least in terms of a pretty wide set of important issues.
There will still be much work left to do, but now you can spend your time and brain power on more advanced issues, creative solutions, and issues truly unique and strategic to your individual account.
A Journey Of A Thousand Paces
The best practices features in the ClickEquations V2 release define the direction for the next generation of paid search software. It’s time for software to not just enable paid search management, but actually add value and help us to intelligently and efficiently deliver great results.
The capabilities we’ve delivered are just the start of our vision for this type of paid search software. We’re calling it ClickEquations Adviser, and the capabilities we’ve just released will continue to expand and evolve.
Looking at the three issues described in those old blog posts, we think we’ve made some good progress:
- Clarity – The first releases of ClickEquations focused on delivering best-in-class data and reporting, and we believe that the issues of clarity are largely resolved.
- Priority – The new best practices features and new one-click segmentation capabilities (also included in this release) is a huge step towards making prioritization far easier than ever before.
- Efficiency – We’ve put in some great efficiency features – bulk and mass editing for example, but still think that a lot more can be in this area. Watch for some innovations in this area in future releases.
There is undoubtedly a lot more work to do. But paid search management is easier and more effective than it was just a year ago. The new release of ClickEquations is another important improvement. We think you’ll agree.
See For Yourself
We’ll be showing off our new features at SMX in Santa Clara this week, at OMMA in San Francisco in two weeks, and in New York at SES at the end of the month. Please join us if you can at one of these venues, or sign up for one of our weekly webinars to get a complete demonstration of ClickEquations.
A Big Week: OMMA, Shop.org, PPC Summit
Starting Monday it’ll be a busy week for ClickEquations.
First, we’ll be at OMMA in New York City, with a booth at the OMMA Global Show. Stop by to say hello or catch a demo of ClickEquations.
Mid-week, ClickEquations CEO Lucinda Holt will be in Las Vegas at Shop.org. No booth for us this year, but if you’ll be there and would like to talk, contact us at info@clickequations.com and we’ll set something up.
On Weds and Thursday I’ll be in Los Angeles at the PPC-Summit. I’m speaking on Weds afternoon about Strategies and Tactics for AdWords.
If you want to get some advanced PPC training I think the two day event will be great. To arrange a discussion or meeting while I’m on the west coast – shoot us an email (info@clickequations.com) and we’ll set something up.
Of none of these shows match your travel plans, SMX-East is just a few weeks away…
ClickEquations Interview on Web Analytics World
Manoj Jasra of the blog Web Analytics World talked with Alex Cohen about ClickEquations. This in-depth interview was just published, and worth checking out.
Some highlights:
[Manoj]: Give us a brief description of what ClickEquations does and some of its greatest benefits
[Alex Cohen]: ClickEquations is the tool we dreamed of having years ago when we managed paid search accounts directly using other tools or working directly in the engine interfaces….We know the frustration of not being able to get the data you need, of slow reporting interfaces, and of the frustrating multi-step (and often multi-tool) repetitive processes that fill the days of many PPC professionals. Our old pet peeves are directly responsible for the best features in ClickEquations. (Read The Complete Answer.)
[Manoj]: ClickEquations is known for its slick interface, so what makes your interface so good
[Alex Cohen]: The most frequent comment we get from people who see us at trade shows or on our weekly webinars is “it’s so clear you guys really understand ppc”. There are all kinds of large and small aspects of our interface and product that come from our deep practical experience in the space…. The other thing about our interface is that we realize the importance of context. Most tools seem to developed with the goal of replicating the AdWords or AdWords Editor interface, supporting three engines, and then adding a few bells and whistles. We think this is a fundamentally flawed approach. (Read The Complete Answer.)
[Manoj]: How does attribution fit into your solution?
[Alex Cohen]: This is a great example of where a lack of the right data and clear access to it can really make it hard to make smart paid search decisions…Yet the conversion tracking features from the search engines and most analytics and even paid search tools, give 100% revenue credit to the last keyword… ClickEquations supports four attribution models so our users can both choose how they want to distribute revenue among keywords and more importantly see and make choices based on the differences. (Read The Complete Answer.)
[Manoj]: Tell us a little bit about some of your product specific metrics such as ClickShare and ClickVariance
[Alex Cohen]: Part of our quest for clear detailed data produced the not-so-surprising realization that the search engines aren’t telling us everything we’d like to know. A lot of what they keep private is data that only they have, but some of it is buried in all the data they do provide… We have developed a series of proprietary metrics that offer additional information and insights to our clients. ClickShare and ClickVariance are two of them. (Read The Complete Answer.)
Our thanks to Manoj for covering ClickEquations on his popular blog. If anyone has follow-up questions, post them in the comments here or at Web Analytics World and we’ll chime in with answers.
Our New Facebook Page is looking for fans! If you’re a serious paid search marketer and enjoy this blog or like ClickEquations, please ‘fan up’ by clicking the button in the Facebook widget in the far right column.
Avinash Revisited – Part V – Query Reports
The fifth ClickEquations report featured in Avinash Kaushik’s recent blog post concerned the ability of ClickEquations to show actual search queries matched to each keyword.
This is a feature of the core ClickEquations reporting screen, and shows all queries from all search engines by keyword and match type.
There is a related ClickEquations Analyst Report that makes use of this data in a very powerful way.
It’s called the ‘Unique Queries Per Keyword’ report. It counts the number of different queries that the search engines are matching to each of your keywords, and presents them sorted by the number of queries.
On the list above for example, the keyword ‘dog remedy’ in Broad Match was matched by Google to 528 different search queries. Yowsa!
If a keyword is being matched to over 500 different search queries, two things are almost certainly true:
- There are some pretty unrelated search queries in there that have to be avoided with negatives
- There are dozens of new phrase and exact match keywords that need to be added to better attack these queries.
This of course is how we generally use the search query report, but with this prioritized view we can quickly find the keywords where keyword negatives and expansion is critically needed. Every negative we add saves us money. Every keyword we add in this way has multiple benefit, especially those using phrase and exact match types. Each can be expected to:
- Increase our Impression Share by expand the pool of queries to which we’ll be matched
- Improve Quality Score by by increasing relevance and increasing number of times query exactly matches keyword
- Enables us to bid to the value of each keyword rather than once for whole broad group
- If we do get increased Quality Score on specific Keywords, our CPC could/should be lower on those queries.
In summary, there are lots of advantages to a more detailed keyword build-out when it’s driven by actual queries not random speculation.
Finding Keyword Expansion Ideas
To find out which keywords we need to add to both our keyword and negative lists, we can jump back into the ClickEquations application and find all the queries that Google matched to ‘dog remedy’.
Likely negatives would be words for illnesses that we don’t sell product for – dysplasia, pancreatitis, rabies, etc. Areas for expansion are those which come up a lot – mange, itching, and vomiting seam like winners in this area – to name a few.
Highly specific words clarify intent – which gets a lot of press in the ‘long tail’ discussion of keyword expansion. The same is true on the negative side: highly specific words can verify incompatible intent.
Bulk Importing Keywords and Negatives
Since it looks like we may want to add a lot of new keywords and negatives, we can jump back into ClickEquations Analyst and pull the full query list into Excel, make a few edits, and then bulk import that edited list back into ClickEquations.

Squash The Broad Match
Our Match Type Keyword Trap white paper discusses how you should use match types to take control of your search queries back from the search engines.
Using the capabilities described above to quickly find the keywords where broad match (and to a lessor degree phrase match) is running out-of-control is a great first step towards taking back control, saving yourself some money, and expanding the reach of your account.
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ClickEquations Feature Spotlight: Export
When we added the bulk editing features to ClickEquations earlier this year, we included a simple ‘export’ button at the ad group level. With it you could export all the keywords in a single ad group as a .CSV file which you could then open and edit in Excel. This made it easy to change a bunch of bids, assign mass bid-rules, or add new keywords, etc.
We soon heard from customers that you wanted to do more – export all keywords in a campaign or even from all campaigns in a single search engine account.
In our July release we added this capability – now which you choose the ‘export’ button you’ll get a dialog box asking if you want just the keywords from the current ad group, or all the keywords from the current campaign or search engine account.
For now, you have to dive into one ad group to find the ‘export’ button. Next release we’ll move the button up to appear at the campaign and engine levels too.
After you’ve done your bulk editing in excel, save the file back out as .CSV or Excel 2003 format, and then you can import it back into ClickEquations. The bulk import dialog box accepts keywords from any number of campaigns and ad groups within a single file.



This blog post is part of a series extending and amplifying the ideas in our free ebook ’21 Secret Truths of High-Resolution PPC’.






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