- Optimize for Clicks

- Optimize for Conversions

- Rotate evenly

The most recent changes have been made to the Rotate evenly setting. Now, if none of your ads in an ad group have been updated in more than 30 days, Google will automatically start optimizing for clicks.

I could go into a nice long rant about how terrible I believe these changes are, but that’s for another day. If you dislike this change as much as I do, please sign the petition to get it changed. 

Anyway, on to the Q&A. This is a summary of a instant message conversation between my Google rep and I. In it, I’m the one asking the questions, and he’s the one giving answers.

1.) What day will this change take effect?

- I’m not sure. They don’t tell us that information. We find out when everyone else does.

Answer: May 11th. This setting is already live in your accounts.

2.) Is there an opt-out option?

- No, there is no opt out. Everyone’s accounts will have this. 

3.) How quickly do the changes take effect?

- If on launch date, your ads haven’t been updated in 30 days, the algo will immediately begin serving your ads on an optimize for clicks basis. If there isn’t enough data to optimize for clicks, it will continue to rotate until there is.

4.) Will there be an alert or a notification to tell me when an ad group is switching to or is in optimize mode even though others are not?

- No, there are no notifications. 

5.) Will there be a way to tell if an ad group has gone into the optimize for clicks setting?

- I don’t believe you will be able to tell other than seeing impression distribution changes.

6.) Does this affect only search campaigns or does it happen in display campaigns as well?

- This will happen in both search and display. 

7.) Is there a threshold for optimize for clicks like there is for conversions?

- Optimizing for clicks is a very different calculation than optimizing for conversions. It’s based more of a confidence interval rather than an actual threshold. 

8.) Is there a setting to make it optimize for conversions after 30 days rather than optimizing for clicks?

- There’s no automatic setting for that. You would have to do it manually. 

9.) How much will optimizing for clicks throw off my ad copy tests if I don’t get to it immediately after the 30 day limit?

- It will have some effect, but it shouldn’t immediately make your tests invalid. The serving percentages don’t automatically go from 33/33/33 to 98/1/1. Depending on the data, they will go to something more like 45/35/30 or 40/40/20.

10.) Since the ad rotation settings are at the campaign level, will updating an ad in one ad group keep the entire campaign from going to optimize for clicks?

- No. These decisions are going to be made at the ad group level, so each ad group would have to have at least one ad updated every 30 days.

11.) How major does the ad change have to be? Can it be something small or does it have to be a completely new ad?

- Any change at all will make the 30 clock reset.

12.) Does pausing or activating an ad count as a change and reset the 30 day clock?

- Yes, this will reset the ad test for each ad group you pause/enable campaigns in.

13.) If I change the rotation settings at the campaign level from Rotate Evenly, to Optimize for Conversions, and back to Rotate Evenly, will the 30 clock reset?

- No, because the clock changes only when the ad is changed, paused, or enabled.

If anyone has any other information given to them by their reps or has found contradictory answers anywhere, please share them in the comments!

I use impression share not as a metric to judge account success, but to gauge my performance as a manager. Everyone wants their ad to show up in every search that will generate a conversion, but that’s impossible to predict. A manager’s job should be to maximize the amount of impressions with conversions and decrease the number without. Since impression share is the number of impressions you received divided by the number of impressions you were eligible for, you have a built-in metric to help you reach 100% efficiency. Managing for impression share can be done two ways: cutting out the crappy impressions you know won’t convert, and grabbing the the highest percentage of the good ones that can convert.

Cut the Crap:

For every business, there are impressions you simply will not convert on. Get those out of there. As you exclude these bad impressions, the number of eligible impressions decreasing, improving your overall impression share.

Geographic Targeting:

Plain and simple. If you don’t sell products or provide services in an area, your ads should not be showing there. Geotargeting is a basic, common sense way to cut bad impressions out of your equation IS and make sure you’re not wasting your budget in an area that will never yield profits.

Dayparting:

Along the same lines as geotargeting, day parting can be a strong tool in optimizing your impression share metrics. Take a little trip to your Dimensions tab. Break down your account’s performance by hour of the day and day of the week. Look for periods where your ads are ineffective and exclude that time slot. You’ll cut out bad impressions and possibly make your budget stretch a little further too.

Negative Keywords:

Having a healthy list of negative keywords in your account is a great way to cut out crappy impressions and reduce its eligible impressions. When starting new accounts, campaigns, and ad groups, be proactive with your negative keywords. While conducting keyword research, keep a list of terms you know you don’t want to show for and add them to your account before you launch.

Also, be reactive with your negative keywords. Let’s be honest, if anything is going to think some ridiculous query is related to your keywords, it’s Google’s search algorithm. Regularly go through search query reports and exclude terms that are hurting CTRs and get them out of your eligible impressions.

Match Types:

Each match type gives a varying degree of control over what queries your ads are shown for. The more restrictive the keywords, the easier to it is to control impression share. But not every account can survive on only exact match keywords. When using the less restrictive match types (phrase, broad, and broad match modifier), be sure to stay diligent with the other crap-cutting methods to prevent your ads from showing up in crappy queries.

Grab the Good Stuff:

This is where you’ve got to get your hands dirty. You’ve cut out the impressions least likely to convert. Now comes the time to go after the ones that will. This is a little more difficult. Luckily, both AdWords and adCenter give good feedback. The first step is to check out the lost impression share columns.  Find out where the good impressions are being lost, then go after them accordingly.

IS Lost (Rank):

You’ve got two options here: increase your quality scores or increase your bids. For quality score, increasing CTRs should be the main focus. There are lots of methods to try to increase quality scores. A few basic ones: constantly test ad copy to find the best keyword/ad copy combinations, try using special symbols, and use dynamic keyword insertion. Ad extensions also add a nice amount of bling to your ads to help you grab more click share. But if you’re quality scores are solid 7′s and above, the other option is to raise keyword bids. Take a look at bids vs. cost per clicks.  If there’s a decent amount of space between the two and you’re not capping out your budget everyday, raise bids a little to grab those good impressions.

IS Lost (Relevance):

Currently, this metric is only available in adCenter, and it also seems a bit redundant. Both landing page and keyword relevance are accounted for in the ad relevance portion of ad rank, but these metrics provide more focused feedback.

Impression share lost due to relevancy can be caused by two things: low landing page relevancy or low keyword relevancy.  Landing page relevancy takes page content into account and even some SEO type factors such as meta descriptions and title tags. Even if you don’t know SEO, take the time and learn enough ensure you’re grabbing all the good impressions out of adCenter you can.

Keyword relevancy is a little less technical. If you’re losing impression share here, employ the same basic strategies you would use to increase quality scores in AdWords. Ad copy testing, tightly themed ad groups, etc. As relevancy improves, your keywords will grab more impression share and get you closer to the goal of 100% impression share. For further suggestions, check out Microsoft Advertising’s Support Center.

IS Lost (Budget):

This can get a little tricky. If you’re losing impression share due to budget, then you’re burning through the allotted funds too quickly. If you’ve already cut out all the crap you can, and your ad rank is good, it might be hard to overcome a budget cap. The best tactic: achieve and exceed your KPIs, then suggest a larger budget. Not every company is going to be able to put more money toward their account, and in those situations you’ll have to cut your losses. But for the companies who can, increasing the budgets for a well performing account can help business as well as your impression share numbers. A win-win situation.

Although impression share metrics might not be the best way to measure your account’s performance, I’ve found them to be a great help when evaluating my own performance. What ways do you measure your own performance? Share your strategies in the comments section, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

You track them in Google Analytics.

And its pretty simple, too.
It just takes a little tracking set up AdWords and some filtering in Analytics.

The AdWords Part:

When creating your set of Sitelinks, add this piece of tracking onto the end of your destination URL:

?sitelink=”descriptor”  (Or &sitelink=descriptor if this is not the first tag you have on your URL.)

Give each of your URLs a distinct descriptor so you can easily tell them apart once you’re in Analytics. Usually something resembling the Link Text works well. (Note: If you actually chose Page 1, Page 2, etc as you’re descriptors, go back and try again.)

The Analytics Part:

Now that your Sitelinks are tagged, they’ll begin sending data to your analytics account. The data will show up in the Content portion of Analytics mixed in with the rest of your landing pages.  Simply search for “sitelink” and your pages will filter in.

But lets take this a bit further, and really make your data sing. Say you only want in-depth data about Sitelinks, and you want it in one place.  Now it’s time for custom reports.

On the create custom report page, skip down to the portion that’s labeled Filters. Where it says ‘+add dimension’, select ‘Content’, then ‘Landing Page’.

Change ‘Exact’ to ‘Regex’ and in the blank field, type “sitelink”. The ‘Regex’ setting tells Analytics that you want to include any landing page with the phrase you entered, in this case “sitelink”. If you want only certain sitelinks, you can keep the filter set for ‘Exact’ and type in the full tracking code found in the URLs you want. (ex: ?sitelink=pg1)

For the Metric Groups and Dimension Drilldowns, you can select which ever values you like/are most valuable to your company.  My personal setup has one tab dedicated to conversions and another to visitor behavior. I place ‘Landing Page’ as the top dimension since I’m centering my data around the sitelink URLs. From there, assuming you have your Analytics account linked to your AdWords account, you can select any dimension as a drilldown. (If you do not have your AdWords account linked to your Analytics account, the dimension drilldowns will not function properly. Here’s how to link your accounts.)

On the Conversions tab, I have the number of goal completions and the goal conversion rate for all of my conversions. This allows me see which sitelinks are driving the different kinds of conversions and at what rate.

On the second tab, I have the same Dimension Drilldowns but my Metric Groups are oriented to visitor behavior.

I can get an idea of the amount of traffic to each of the different sitelinks and how the users are reacting with the content found there. It’s worth nothing that none of these metrics are a true substitute for tracking clicks on individual sitelinks since AdWords and Analytics track users differently: visits ≠ clicks.

I hope this helps you get a better grasp on how your sitelinks are performing. Please feel free to share any feedback, successes, failures, or just say hello!