Understanding AdWords Statistics and Reports

Chapter Understanding AdWords Statistics and Reports In This Chapter ᮣ Viewing account statistics ᮣ Peering into campaigns and Ad Groups ᮣ Creating AdWords reports T he preceding chapter introduced the parts of the AdWords Control Center you use to create the initial Ad Group required to open an account That chapter offered a glimpse of screens for writing ad copy, assigning keywords and estimating their traffic, determining Campaign settings, establishing costper-click (CPC) bids, and setting a daily budget There’s more to the Control Center than the few screens you see when opening an account It’s not an exaggeration to say that devoted AdWords advertisers and agents spend the bulk of their work day in the Control Center, especially if they don’t use third-party tracking and reporting tools to measure clickthroughs and conversions Google’s Control Center is not perfect (and I pick apart some imperfections in the next chapter), but it is a complex, sophisticated suite of research, creative, and reporting tools You can see in Figure 8-1 that the Control Center presents three organizational tabs Rather than divide its functionality according to those tabs, however, it’s more useful to consider what the Control Center does for you in the course of your day-to-day AdWords-obsessed life Four basic functions come into play: ߜ View your campaigns in progress The Control Center provides a layered view of your entire account: your individual Campaigns, each Ad Group in a campaign, and the performance of every ad and every keyword associated with your ads All this information flows onto your 146 Part II: Creating and Managing an AdWords Campaign Figure 8-1: The AdWords Control Center, where advertisers view campaigns in progress Control Center screens rapidly, but not exactly in real time I’ve seen early statistics of an added marketing element show up within minutes At the most, allow a three-hour delay for impressions and clickthroughs to come into view and jive with each other When campaigns are running continuously, without intermittent pausing and resuming (see Chapter 10), you must cut three hours of slack when you look at them The only way to get a complete, static snapshot of marketing statistics is to pause one or more elements of your account and then allow three hours for the dust to settle ߜ Report your marketing statistics The Control Center’s information screens are flexible and robust in their capacity to offer views of your advertising at work AdWords reports take your marketing metrics to the next level by offering more detailed, customized views and automatic e-mail delivery of the reports ߜ Research keywords This book describes non-Google keyword research tools, but the AdWords Control Center provides everything needed in many cases The Keyword Suggestion Tool and Traffic Estimator give any marketer plenty of ideas for experimentation and refinement ߜ Adjust basic account properties The Control Center keeps track of your billing and payment information, display language, and log-in password Chapter 8: Understanding AdWords Statistics and Reports This chapter is primarily concerned with statistics and reports Chapter is more involved with the creative side of the Control Center — producing new Ad Groups and selecting keywords Viewing Account Statistics The Control Center presents three essential views of your AdWords marketing These views are like boxes within boxes The account holds your Campaigns; your Campaigns hold your Ad Groups; your Ad Groups hold your ads and keywords The Reports section chops up the information into innumerable configurations, like a Japanese chef working on a grill with one of those big knives at one of those cook-at-the-table restaurants (I obviously don’t know what I’m talking about, but the image came to mind.) For each of the three main account views, you can see a table that lists your costs, impressions, clickthroughs, clickthrough rate (CTR), conversion rate, and the average position of your ad(s) on the page In each view, you may determine the timeframe (to the day) for which the numbers are calculated All this takes place in the Campaign Management tab The account overview Clicking the Campaign Management tab leads you directly to an overview of the entire account, as shown in Figure 8-1 The search box to the right is for advertisers running multiple campaigns, Ad Groups, and ads Use that box to search for campaigns, Ad Groups, keywords, and ad text The Campaign Summary page (refer to Figure 8-1) contains several columns of information Together, they convey an essential overview of your campaigns: ߜ Campaign Name Simple enough; this is the name of your campaign ߜ Current Status Campaigns may be active, paused, or deleted Deleted Campaigns are not really deleted, oddly They’re in limbo and may be out of sight, but they’re still available for examination Even odder, deleted campaigns contribute to total statistics, in a unique row separate from the total statistics of active campaigns (see Figure 8-2) This extra totaling occurs even when the deleted campaign is hidden from view Whenever you want to see your deleted campaigns, use the All Campaigns drop-down menu to select Show all campaigns (That setting also brings paused Campaigns into view.) 147 148 Part II: Creating and Managing an AdWords Campaign Figure 8-2: Deleted Campaigns contribute their obsolete statistics to the bottom line ߜ Current Budget This column displays the daily budget for each campaign and totals them at the bottom ߜ Clicks, Impr., and CTR These columns detail your campaign-wide ad distribution, breaking it down into clicks (clickthroughs of the Campaign’s ads), impressions (ad displays), and CTR (clickthrough rate, calculated by dividing clicks by impressions) The CTR column is vitally important, because Google requires certain CTR levels for campaigns and keywords If the campaign’s CTR sinks below 0.5 percent, Google might step in to remedy the situation Even if the campaign’s CTR remains stoutly above that threshold, individual keywords inside the campaign might get into trouble ߜ Avg CPC This view does not divulge your cost-per-click bid for any Ad Group in the campaign, but it does reveal the average cost you’re paying for all clicks, campaign-wide ߜ Cost This column totals up the cost-to-date for the campaign, by multiplying clicks by costs-per-clicks ߜ Conv Rate and Cost/Conv These columns fill with numbers when the campaign uses Google’s Conversion Tracking, which I describe in Chapter Chapter 8: Understanding AdWords Statistics and Reports Use the drop-down menus above the table to define a date period Click the upper radio button to select from the pull-down menu of time frames Click the lower radio button next to use the month-day-year menus Note the check box to the left of each campaign Click one or more to select campaigns to pause, resume, or delete You may also adjust Campaign settings for multiple campaigns on a single screen I describe the Campaign Settings page in Chapter 7, but I want to revisit that screen here Figure 8-3 shows the Campaign Settings screen when more than one campaign is selected with check boxes As you can see, small arrows (they’re yellow) appear next to settings that you may apply to all checked campaigns (The Campaign name is the only setting that must remain unique.) As you adjust settings for the first campaign, click the yellow arrow whenever you want that new setting to take hold in the others You may scroll down and enter new values, overriding the arrow, at any time Seeing inside the campaign To drill into any campaign and see its Ad Groups, click any campaign link in the Campaign Name column (back in Figure 8-2) Figure 8-4 details the inside of a campaign, showing several Ad Groups Many of the features on this page are the same as those in Figure 8-2, so I won’t repeat them here Note that deleted Ad Groups work just like deleted campaigns in that they remain accessible and their statistics contribute to the bottom line Figure 8-3: Adjust Campaign settings across multiple campaigns 149 150 Part II: Creating and Managing an AdWords Campaign Figure 8-4: Viewing the Ad Groups statistics of a campaign You use the check boxes next to the Ad Groups (just as you use the ones next to campaigns) to pause, resume, and delete multiple Ad Groups simultaneously or affect just a single item You may also select multiple Ad Groups and click the Change Max CPC button As with the Campaign settings across multiple campaigns (see the preceding section), the Change Max CPC feature enables you to enforce the same CPC bid across selected Ad Groups The (yellow) arrow is your friend again in this task, as you can see in Figure 8-5 Seeing inside the Ad Group Click any Ad Group name (see Figure 8-4) to see the keywords and ads in that Ad Group Getting inside the Ad Group is where the rubber meets the road Where the pedal hits the metal Where other half-baked analogies that I can’t think up take place On these screens lurk Google’s evaluations of your keyword performance, in all their mystery, occasional threats, and sometimes encouragement This page is where your click, impression, and CTR statistics are broken down by keyword and by the two parts of Google’s extended network: search partners and content sites In addition to detailed reporting, this page contains your ad(s) associated with this Ad Group’s keywords, with the chance to edit those ads, delete them, or create new ones Chapter 8: Understanding AdWords Statistics and Reports Figure 8-5: Set the maximum CPC bid across multiple Ad Groups The table that you see within an Ad Group (see Figure 8-6) present statistical totals above the reporting details A curious arrangement, and there’s nothing to about it Notice, also, the two Total rows — one for “search” and one for “content targeting.” These cryptic labels need some explaining If you read Chapter 7, you might remember that you have a choice, in Campaign Settings, to run your ads across the Google network of sites (If you’re next to the computer, try going to Campaign Settings to see that choice.) Specifically, you can opt to distribute all the ads of any campaign in one of four distribution patterns: ߜ Just on Google’s search pages These pages include search results pages in Web search, Google Groups, Google Directory, and Froogle Your ads must run on these sites, regardless of how you adjust the other two settings ߜ On Google’s search pages, plus Google’s search partners These other search sites include Web-search portals to which Google provides AdWords advertising As of this writing, these sites include Excite, About.com, Teoma, AskJeeves, Netscape, AOL Search, and Go.com You may opt in or out of this extended network of search sites If you opt in, your keyword statistics corresponding to Google pages plus other search pages are totaled in the Total — search row 151 152 Part II: Creating and Managing an AdWords Campaign Figure 8-6: Looking inside an Ad Group at statistics for each keyword and, in this case, the only ad ߜ On Google’s search pages, plus content sites in Google’s network Content sites are AdSense publishers that run AdWords ads (see Chapters 11, 12, and 13) On these sites, ads are chosen according to relevance to the content of the pages on which they appear, whereas on search pages, ads are matched by relevance to keywords used at those search engines You may opt in or out of the content network If you opt in, your keyword statistics corresponding to the content network are totaled in the Total — content targeting row ߜ Distribute everywhere By opting into both the extended search network and the content network, your ads appear throughout both those systems and on Google’s pages Keyword statistics for the entire arrangement are totaled on the row containing the keyword (see Figure 8-6), below the Total rows These totals combine the broken-out totals (search and content targeting) In reading about how the totals work, you perhaps noticed that you don’t get keyword statistics corresponding to only Google pages You get Google pages plus extended search pages bundled into one line of totals, but no statistics describing how your ads are performing on Google exclusive of the extended networks Chapter 8: Understanding AdWords Statistics and Reports In my opinion, this lack is an outright deficiency, but you’re not totally clueless about how your ads are faring in Google The Control Center issues one of five status levels for each keyword, displayed in the Status column These status levels are ߜ Strong and Moderate (Both in green.) Strong and Moderate keywords are cooking along fine No action is necessary ߜ At risk and Slowed (Both in yellow.) At risk keywords are in imminent danger of being disabled by Google Slowed keywords cause the ad(s) associated with those keywords to suffer infrequent displays until you correct the situation ߜ Disabled (In red.) Disabled keywords take their associated ads out of circulation on search pages and content pages matching those keywords You may resuscitate your disabled keywords, but keeping them alive becomes harder after they have been disabled Note: Chapter explains in detail how to correct keywords that are at risk, slowed, or disabled Figure 8-7 illustrates a keyword statistics screen in an Ad Group, on which three different status levels are exhibited The warning atop the page (whose red background is quite alarming in color) appears when any keyword on the page has been slowed Figure 8-8 illustrates another page with the Disabled status in full display Look at Figures 8-7 and 8-8, particularly at the keywords labeled At risk (developmental disabilities), Strong (charity auction), and Disabled (maroon 5) Look at the CTR column for all three keywords Notice anything peculiar? The Disabled keyword (maroon 5) owns a robust clickthrough rate of 1.7 percent — well above Google’s danger threshold of 0.5 percent The charity auction keyword, labeled with the Strong status, owns a weak CTR of 0.4 percent The keyword immediately above it (developmental disabilities), labeled At risk, has performed better than the Strong keyword! None of this seems to make any sense, but there’s a simple explanation Google computes a separate clickthrough rate based on the performance of ads on Google’s search pages, exclusive of the extended search and content networks Google uses that CTR to evaluate the performance of keywords and their ads Performance on the extended networks doesn’t matter in determining whether a keyword is slowed or disabled However, Google doesn’t provide the result of this Google-only CTR calculation, preferring instead to furnish the status warning system instead Because that crucial CTR number is not broken out from the total CTR figures that include the extended networks, the status warning (and status praise) sometimes seems out of touch with reality as expressed in the CTR numbers This strange reality warp occurs when an ad performs much better or much worse in the extended networks than it does on Google’s pages (The disparity isn’t too uncommon.) File this odd fact away for now; I come back to it with a vengeance in Chapter 10 153 154 Part II: Creating and Managing an AdWords Campaign Figure 8-7: Google warns of underperforming keywords, and praises those performing well, in the Status column Figure 8-8: Google disables keywords after placing them at risk in the Status column Chapter 8: Understanding AdWords Statistics and Reports One final note about this page: You can see how your ads are positioned on Google pages by looking at the Avg Pos column, which shows you the ad’s average position in the AdWords column No more than ten AdWords ads appear on any Google search page You can achieve a higher position through a combination of a higher cost-per-click and a better clickthrough rate Creating AdWords Reports The Control Center’s most potent statistical features are located in the Reports tab Click that tab to see something resembling Figure 8-9 This screen shot illustrates the Reports main page after several reports have been run The right-hand column offers quick links to recent and saved reports You may also have created reports updated periodically and sent to you automatically through e-mail The six preset report modules in the Report Center spit out usefully assembled information, without any adjusting of their settings However, you may adjust the presets Figure 8-10 shows the Keyword Report form ready to deliver a report of one campaign (adjusted from the default, which is all campaigns), showing information about all disabled keywords (adjusted from the default, which is Any status) Figure 8-9: Click the Reports tab to see a selection of report modules, links to recently created reports, and saved reports 155 156 Part II: Creating and Managing an AdWords Campaign Figure 8-10: The Keyword Report form, ready to run a search for disabled keywords in one campaign This Keyword Report in Figure 8-10 is one I use all the time — a few times each day, believe it or not If you have a dozen or more Ad Groups, it becomes too difficult to repeatedly look into each one to see whether Google has put at risk, slowed, or disabled any keywords Running a quick report reveals the presence of badly performing keywords and their performance statistics (Although, as mentioned, you don’t get the statistics that really count — those describing the keyword’s performance on Google pages exclusively.) I typically run that report for all campaigns simultaneously; when I’m checking for disabled keywords the result looks like Figure 8-11 (Note that in this example, the CTRs of the five disabled keywords are above the 0.5-percent threshold, and four of those keywords are much higher This weirdness illustrates why it’s a good idea to run this report; the overall CTR, as reported on the Campaign Management screens, gives no cause for worry In that situation, disabled keywords can go unnoticed for a long time.) Make sure you become familiar with the Custom Report Figures 8-12 and 8-13 illustrate just a few of the detailed controls at your disposal The Custom Report blends the features of all the preset report modules and adds more power, such as the ability to enter specific keywords (Figure 8-12) and specify many settings with check boxes (Figure 8-13) One of the beauties of the Custom Report is that you can build columns based on individual lines of ad copy Chapter 8: Understanding AdWords Statistics and Reports Figure 8-11: A keyword report showing statistics of disabled keywords across several campaigns Figure 8-12: Part of the Custom Report form, where you may specify keywords 157 158 Part II: Creating and Managing an AdWords Campaign Figure 8-13: Another portion of the extensive Custom Report form In addition to arranging for reports to be e-mailed on a preset schedule (bottom of Figure 8-13), you may save the report as a CSV database file A CSV (comma-separated value) file can be imported to spreadsheet programs and then displayed in various ways for statistical analysis  ... billing and payment information, display language, and log-in password Chapter 8: Understanding AdWords Statistics and Reports This chapter is primarily concerned with statistics and reports. .. Conv Rate and Cost/Conv These columns fill with numbers when the campaign uses Google’s Conversion Tracking, which I describe in Chapter Chapter 8: Understanding AdWords Statistics and Reports. .. line of totals, but no statistics describing how your ads are performing on Google exclusive of the extended networks Chapter 8: Understanding AdWords Statistics and Reports In my opinion, this