ClickEquations Blog

Sunday morning seems a good time to practice what we preach.

Earlier today I was poking around in our own AdWords account, doing a little prep work for my Tuesday presentation on Quality Score. I created some new ClickEquations Analyst templates that analyze the CTR components of Quality Score – we’ll talk about these sometime in the future.

One of the elements I was looking at was the CTR of search campaigns. In particular, the idea struck me to compare the impression volume with the CTR to try and identify the weighted impact on Quality Score of letting low performing CTR keywords run.

In the course of my examination, it became clear that two of our own campaigns have the devilish combination of low Quality Score, low CTR, and high impression counts. Time for a little further investigation.

One of the things I found was that an experimental ad group built to play around with keywords concerning Match Type was doing particularly poorly. More specifically the broad match keyword ‘match type’ had huge impression count and a horrible click-through-rate.

That’s when I found it.

Look at this search query report for the keyword ‘match type’.

Google is doing a pretty poor job of matching the keyword ‘match type’. And we’ve been paying for it, click by click.

The assumption that people typing ‘math’ actually meant ‘match’ is particularly strange. Or do they think I meant to buy the word ‘Math Type’ and they’re correcting my typo? And why are the people who are doing those searches clicking on this text ad anyway? –>

In any case, the only search query worth having from the whole list is ‘match type’ itself.

Normally that would have been caught in the exact match version, but since this was an experiment I had been running the broad match all alone. Clearly that was a mistake. Given these results, I added the exact match version, and paused the broad match.

Looks like both query mining and building match type keyword traps really are good ideas.

And the word ‘match type’ is not a great example of the effective execution or use of broad match in AdWords.

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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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It’s time for a new Match Type.

Our friends Broad and Phrase and Exact just aren’t getting the job done anymore.

It’s not really their fault – the way people search has changed and they just can’t keep up. Or more accurately, we can’t keep up.

Here’s the problem. People are using more and more words in search queries. This has been the trend for a long time, and new data from Hitwise shows the greatest growth in search queries with SEVEN OR MORE words!

Changing number of keywords per search query

The growth and diversification of search queries do not work to search advertisers benefit. As queries get longer it becomes much harder to capture them via exact or even phrase match keywords, leaving only for possible acquisition by broad match.

And we don’t like broad match very much.

1. Broad match is imprecise. It attracts both highly relevant and highly irrelevant search queries.
2. Broad match wastes money. We pay for all the clicks that come from those irrelevant search queries.
3. Broad match lowers quality score. We get lower click through rates when our keywords are matched to irrelevant queries – many of which see that our ad isn’t for them and do not click.
4. Broad match lowers ad position. Google has clearly stated that exacts match before phrase which match before broads. Your broad match ad will only rank highly if few people bid on that query in phrase or exact form.

The Include Match Type
I’m sure there are a number of ways to solve this problem.

My suggestion would be the ‘Include’ Match Type. It would enable advertisers to specify a group of words, and then match to any search query which included those words, in any order. This attempts to correct a weakness of the current Phrase Match Type.

If I want to bid on lots of any search queries about dog food, and specifically target ‘dog food discounts’, today I might have to buy the following on phrase match:

• dog food discounts
• discount dog food

And of course I’d but ‘dog food discount’ on phrase and exact match too. (see Match Type Keyword Trap for the rational behind that.).

But a search query report (such as the excellent one provided by ClickEquations) would show me many long queries out there that this phrase match won’t cover, including:

• get dog food at discount
• discounts on dog food for puppies
• dog food los angeles discounts
• discount on purina brand dog food

A ClickEquations Search Query Report showing how queries are matched to keywords

You get the idea. What I really want to do is buy ‘dog food discount’ in the new ‘Include’ match type, so all of the above can be purchased and matched without having to fall to broad match.

And of course I’d add a lot of appropriate negatives to that ad group, tuning it over time by keeping a close eye on the search queries that are matched.

Times are changing Google. We’re spending money every day. Please give us better targeting tools!

What do you think? Any other good ideas for new Match Types you’d like to see?

A recent interview I did with Chris Crum of WebProNews is now live. It’s all about Match Types, give it a look.

For more on how Match Types work and the best way to take advantage of them (including our nearly-famous ‘Match Type Keyword Trap’), download out our Match Type White Paper from the new ClickEquations Learning Center.

When you finally get a paid search tool (like ClickEquations) that allows you to see each search query that people typed matched directly to the keyword you bid on and the match type you set, you’ll soon notice that all of your Exact match keywords aren’t entirely exact.

Doing a little research and experimentation while preparing for SMX, I just came across a great example of one reason why this is true.

Look at the ads to the right. Which one is not like the others?

One of our clients sells products to help Fido keep himself together, and I did some searches on that topic. Then a search for ‘Premium dog collars’. That’s the search which delivered the ads you see.

Google however remembered that not long ago I was concerned with the other end of the animal, and slipped the Poop ad into the mix.

Had I clicked it, my search query of ‘Premium dog collars’ would show up, correctly, for the exact match keyword/phrase ‘dogs eating poop’.

Just so you know.

Heading to SMX in San Jose? Come see the new version of ClickEquations at our booth, or catch me in the Quality Score or Text-Ad Testing workshops.

If you’re going to buy the same keyword multiple times with different match types assigned, how should you organize them?

Buying the same keyword more than once, with different match type settings, is an idea we like, as explained in our Match Type Keyword Trap series.

But this practice begs the question – should the same keyword appear more than once in the same ad group, or should you split them into different ad groups?
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Separate But Equal
In terms of the effectiveness of the keywords at their match types it doesn’t matter. Google will match them appropriately no matter where you put them.

But I favor splitting them into separate ad groups for five reasons.

1. It’s easier to match search queries to text ads. This is the name of the game, and each keyword will attract different queries based on the different match types. So can you write better ads knowing that some of these queries will be exact, some will use the phrase, and some will be all over the broad-match-place? Probably.
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2. Reporting is easier to digest (pt 1). If you’re a search query freak like me, and have a great tool like ClickEquations that shows you nearly every search query, it’s easier to scan the queries in an ad group to see if they’re all appropriate and uniform in content and nearly so in performance if they’re segregated by match type.
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3. Reporting is easier to digest (pt 2). The roll-up data and averages of any ad group are only as worthwhile as the consistency of the performance of the keywords that make it up. Diverse keyword groups produce statisics-of-questionable-value (SOQV as it’s known in the trade). Broad match keywords perform very differently than exact match keywords and I don’t find it useful to see the average CTRs or CPCs or CPAs of them rolled-up together.
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4. Quality Score should be better. By the letter of the law on QS, we want high-as-possible CTRs and tight query-keyword-adgroup-landing page relevance. Both should be slightly better with segregated ad groups – although as with all quality score details, there is no way to prove this!
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5. Reporting is easier to produce. Google does not provide a macro to automatically tell you the match type of a keyword as part of the destination URL. This is one of the few areas where Yahoo and MSN have something Adwords does not (intentionally on the part of Google we can be sure). Therefore if you want to track, measure, report on the performance differeces of your various match types, it’s a lot easier if they’re in separate ad groups. There are other solutions, but this one is the simplest and most robust.

This is not a big deal. For many people, or even in certain situations within a campaign, repeating the keyword in a single ad group makes sense. But if and when possible, I split them out.

Note: This post was inspired by comments made on a recent PPC Rockstars with David @Szetela Podcast. These shows have become a regular part of my commute, and I recommend them highly! (Even the occasional ones when I’m an guest.)

After yesterday’s Quality Score analysis template and post, I got to thinking about match type.

So in 15 minutes while sitting in a meeting I built this ClickEquations Analyst template which analyzes a full paid search campaign in terms of how much cost and revenue is occurring at each of the Google Match Types:

Click Image To Enlarge

It’s interesting and may need some more tweaks and consideration to make it truly useful, but I do think these taken together help get a 360-degree view of campaign performance and structure.

Template available to ClickEquations clients and trial users. Gee ClickEquations Analyst is cool.

Came across a great post from Chris Zaharias at Omniture today, bemoaning Google’s Automatic Matching option, which I lampooned in an earlier post.

Chris makes two very interesting additional points (Beyond the great name “laziness tax”.)

Advertisers typically set higher daily or monthly AdWords budgets than they want or expect to spend, simply because setting a budget equal to what they actually *expect* to spend would result in Google throttling back on delivery of their ad as the advertiser approaches the budget limit. So what you have is a scenario where a strong double-digit percentage of Google’s customers currently have higher budgets set than what they expect to spend, and an automatic matching beta that wrong assumes the advertisers actually *want* to spend all that budget.

And

Keep in mind that even should you opt out of “automatic match”, you will likely still feel its effects. If the history of AdWords new feature rollouts is any indication, 30-40% of advertisers go with whatever new features Google suggests. Were 30-40% of Google’s advertisers to use “automatic match”, I’d expect the increase in coverage and competition in Google’s ad space to result in keyword inflation as bad as the rising gasoline and food costs we are now experiencing.

Two great points. The Automatic Matching Option helps Google and nobody else.

Turn it off. And complain to your Google Rep.

NOTE: This is part of a post series. It’s available as a single post for easier reading: The Match Type Series.
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In several earlier posts in this series I’ve discussed the how’s and why’s of buying the same or similar terms at the same time with different Match Type settings.

I outlined in one post the details of creating a Match Type Keyword Trap to filter certain search queries into specific match types. Buying multiple terms and multiple levels – when done correctly – has the ability to give you control over which queries are caught at which price.

Exact-Phrase-Broad

One reason this works is because the engines (generally) execute the match types sequentially.

In other words, if you are bidding on the same keyword, or two keywords that would both match for one particular query, an Exact Match should take precedence over a Phrase Match which should take precedence over a Broad Match.

So even though a particular query is technical a match for both one Broad Match keyword and another Phrase Match keyword, the Phrase Match should always ‘win’ and catch that query.

I should hasten to point out, this will not always be true. If you carefully watch query reports for your keywords you will see queries that were exact matches against a keyword you had set to Exact Match, yet the query lands in a Broad Match group. But in our experience these are rare in the sub 1% range of all queries.

Emphasis the Match Type Setting with Higher Bids

You can and should add punch to this precedence by ALWAYS placing rather substantially higher bids on your Exact Match vs Phrase Match, and Phrase Match vs Broad Match when they’re stacked in targeting the same terms.

And make the differences between the bids significant – it generally won’t help to bid $0.05 more for Exact Match than Broad Match. When bidding it’s easy to look at your Max CPCs (since that’s the option used to set the bid) but since your actual and average CPC is usually just a fraction of the Max you really can’t base your decision on those. Look instead at average CPC’s being reported and then set the Max’s at large enough intervals to create real steps between the different keyword/match type combinations.

By placing a substantially higher bid on the match type differentiated keywords, you’re providing another algorithmic reason for the engine to match exact match queries to your Exact Match keywords. Of course, it should also be true that you want generally higher position and higher impression share for the keywords you’re bidding on Exact Match.

A Simple Match

At the start of this series I mentioned that Match Type was a powerful and often under-utilized option. I hope these five posts so far have covered some of the ways you can get more out of these options. Time for a break from Match Type, however. Watch for a new series starting soon.