Quality In Search by Matt LeVeque is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.semoe.com.
Aug
23
Insider Tips on Google AdWords Impression Share
August 23, 2008 |
AT THIS POINT Google AdWords Impression Share metric is about 10 months old or more but it is still a metric that confuses a lot of PPC’ers and search marketers in general. Impression Share is a fairly easy concept to understand but basically means “the percentage of times your ads were shown out of the total number of page impressions in the market you are targeting “. If you have a low Impression Share it could mean that the market you are targeting is highly competitive and your Max CPC bids are to low. Your brand name related keywords should never have a low Impression Share (and by low I mean if your brand Impression Share is under ~85% you have a problem). More details about Impression Share and the types of Impression Share reports can be found at the Google AdWords Help Center.
How To Improve Impression Share
Impression Share is not a top KPI metric to get caught up on but it can be helpful to use it as a measure when optimizing campaigns. Yesterday I received an email from our Google reps who took an unsolicited look at the Impression Share for a few of our client accounts. The reports themselves are insightful and the fact that we did not even ask for them was a nice customer service out-reach offering. I can’t think of time when the folks at Y!SM or MSN adCenter offered unsolicited support…
Now of course I could be critical and say that the only reason this was provided to us is because one of the ways to improve Impression Share is to increase spend. And I would be be critical if that were the only way to improve Impression Share but it is not. Below is a detailed description from Google rep Dev on ways to look at the Impression Share reports and a few remedies to improve Impression Share.
OPTIMIZING FOR ROIWhen optimizing for ROI, it’s important to have clear and established benchmarks that you can measure against in your account. Equally important is having a time frame that’s suitable for measurement (typically representing at least one or multiple buying cycles).
Granularity in your account always helps optimizing for ROI. The more specific you can be with your keyword list and the ad groups that house them, the more flexibility you’ll have writing tailored ad text, which in turn can help boost CTR and drive a lower cost per conversion.
It’s also important to identify both high and low-performing keywords. At times advertisers can narrow their focus only on the keywords which seem to be the most popular or highly relevant to their business/service. However, those very same keywords may be a) the most competitive b) driving the highest costs c) driving the highest cost/conversion.
Capitalizing on keywords that are both cost-effective and driving conversions can benefit overall ROI. Maximizing exposure on those terms with raised bids and high positions can be as or even more rewarding as showing on a popular industry term that may or may not be in a completely saturated market.
Be sure to add variations of converting keywords (i.e. software/solution), plurals, and misspellings, along with running the Search Query Performance (SQP) report diligently to add variations that are both relevant to your business and converting for you. These words, in tightly themed ad groups, can be effective drivers of conversions.For ‘low-performing’ keywords, considering lowering bids is an option, but it’s also suggested that you separate these keywords out into their own ad groups and focus on ‘corrective actions’ such as highly specific ad text containing conversion-focused terms and setting user expectations to really qualify the user that ends up on your site.
For keywords that are simply accruing many impressions but little or no clicks, cleaning up/removing these keywords can help improve account quality score which may benefit ROI.
KEYWORD EXPANSION
Again, it’s important to include any and all relevant variations to maximize exposure, and ensure that daily budget isn’t a constraint for ad serving. Running the SQP report will help with building a list of variations that make sense to advertise on. Misspellings, variations, plurals, all are key tactics to building a keyword list that drives traffic.
Your dedicated management team has access to long-tail keyword suggestions that focus on ‘missed opportunity’ in your account. The tool reviews the content of your site and generates a list of relevant historical Google.com search queries for which the site has no ad presence. For each query, the tool shows traffic and competition stats and even suggests a landing page and estimated competitive bid. Please contact us for more details about this tool.It’s worth reviewing your keyword match type to determine if there’s an opportunity to use broad match. Broad match keywords coupled with a thorough list of negatives (to filter out irrelevant searches) can provide a great source of additional impressions and clicks.
Keyword expansion can be fueled by a close examination of your client’s website. Are there areas of the site that aren’t currently being advertised? Products that aren’t being promoted? If your client’s goal is to drive users to their site, advertising on all products and then using Analytics to determine user behavior on the site can tell you if they are finding their way to pages you possibly deem more worthy.
Pretty sound advice if you ask me. Not only is this advice helpful for improving Impression Share, it also hints at the importance of campaign structure and the relevancy between ad groups > keywords > ad creatives > landing pages, etc. There is also suggestion about mining for Search Queries to help improve Impression Share. Google AdWords provides this report internally and there are some Google Analytics hacks you can set up to also gain Search Query insight. Or you could use a software application like ClickEquations that not only captures Search Queries from all engines but also pairs those queries to the keyword that triggered it.
Related Articles:
Insider Tips on Google AdWords Quality Score
Principles of Analytical Thinking | Paid Search Campaign Organization
The Google AdWords Impression Share Metric a Data Goldmine or Just a Nugget?
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Comments
1 Comment so far
I may have missed it in your post, but I’m having a hard time understanding which reasons could cause the impression share to drop below 100%. So far I’ve come up with the following:
- Budget cap
- Bid too low to show for some queries (though wouldn’t that either make the keyword inactive or just push the average position down?)
- Negative keywords preventing ads to show for certain queries (i.e. bidding on “red flowers” and having “red” as a negative phrase by mistake)
- Another ad in a different account with the same display URL being triggered for the same query / keyword (I’ve had this happen when transitioning from one Google account to another for instance)
Any thoughts on what else could be causing this?
At any rate, great post — I wasn’t aware of this feature.
Thanks!