I just found a new option in my Google account. The ability to activate Google Gears for AdWords. This stores all you account data on your local computer for faster load times. Look for an offline icon on the top right of your AdWords account.

When you click on it you are prompted with the option to continue and activate:

This was reported by Search Engine Land last week:

Instead of loading the data off Google’s servers each time you click on a section in the AdWords console, Google will load the data off your local computer. Google said, “each time you access AdWords, your data loads directly from your computer, making your experience much faster.”

Do you have the offline option in your account?

Simple logic would dictate that if someone searched for your keywords, show them an ad. Sometimes hard facts are completely different from what you would expect. In most AdWords accounts that I have dealt with, I have seen much lower conversion rates and revenue in between the hours of 2AM and 7AM. Here’s how to check if this is the case on your eCommerce site with Google Analytics.

How Do I Check?

In Google Analytics, go to Ecommerce –> Conversion Rate. Select a 3 month date range, last 90 days is the best. The click on the little clock icon where it says “Graph By”. This will segment your conversion rate for the last 90 days by hour of the day. You should see two charts like this sample below.

Conversion Rate By Hour, Click To Enlarge

If your chart is anything like this one, you will see that specific hours of the day perform better than others. This means that your cost per acquisition will likely be higher during those times.

What Do I Do?

There are two possible solutions to help minimize wasteful spend during these hours.

Option A — Lower Bids

The first basic option, is to lower your bids in each campaign during these hours. You can do this by going to Campaign Settings –> Advanced Settings –>Schedule: Start date, end date, ad scheduling. It will pop up a window where you can set hours and percentages of your regular bids. (Click on Mode: Bid adjustment.)

Option B –Pause Ads

The second basic option, is to pause your campaigns automatically during these hours. You can do this by going to Campaign Settings –> Advanced Settings –>Schedule: Start date, end date, ad scheduling. It will pop up a window where you can set which hours you would like your ads to run. (Click on Mode: Basic.)

Bottom Line

Make sure that you are getting the most out of your advertising spend. Every little trick can help. Another thing you can do is to set your campaigns to use Accelerated Ad Delivery to display your ad every time someone searches for your keywords during the correct hours.

Google has been testing product ads for some time now. As of last week they have turned on this featured called Ad Extenstions. By turning this feature on you will attract more eyeballs to your ads and in effect raise your click-through rate. Google stated on their blog post which announced this new feature that some advertisers have seen a 10% increase in their CTR.

Here is how to turn on AdWords Ad Extensions, it must be done for every campaign separately:

Go to Campaign –> Settings; under Networks, devices, and extensions; click on edit under Ad Extensions and check the box that says: Connect to my Google Merchant Center account. This should automatically bring up your Google Base (Product Search) account, once it finds it, just click Save.

Here’s a quick tip that comes in handy when you are marketing a brand of products that has a similar name to other products or services on the web.

If you want to advertise Apple, Inc. products but are having a hard time coming up with a comprehensive list of keywords, this may work for you. Add the keyword Apple as a Broad Match term with an exact negative of [Apple]. At the same time add negative terms for anything that comes up on a Google search for the term Apple that you are not advertising. For example you may add these as Negative Keywords:

• tablet
• tv
• new york city
• bank
• trailers
• rumors
• store

This accomplishes the same as building out a huge list of Phrase Match terms but with much less work. Google will look at the Broad Match terms you have listed and show ad for all of them after cross checking and excluding all your Negative keywords. Keep in mind that this may cost slightly more than running a long list of Phrase Match terms. Best thing to do is run your campaign this way for 2-4 weeks and then look at the keyword list that Google actually showed your ads for — now you can just check off the good ones and add to your campaign for a lower CPC.

Image Courtesy: zenera

There is a cool feature in AdWords that allows you to restrict your ad to specific positions. This comes in handy if you know that a certain position, say position #3, has had the best performance historically. Here is how to set up Ad Positioning:

Step 1

In the Campaign Settings, under Position Preference you can turn on the ability to mange your position preference and have AdWords automatically manage maximum CPC bids to target a preferred position range.

Step 2

When you edit keywords in the Keywords tab, you will now have the option to select positions you’d like to restrict your ad to. It will let you select one position (i.e. #3) or a range of positions (i.e. #1 – #4).

Bottom Line

Keep in mind that if according to Google’s algorithm your ad should show up in position #4 and you set your ads to display in position #3, your ad will not display at all. Use it when you have the data to back it up, when you know that any clicks from other positions will not bring enough conversions.

It seems that Google is trying to standardize the new interface across AdWords. Aside from cosmetic differences, it does not seem to have any new features except for a newBudget tab. See screen shots below:

I just noticed this link today in my MCC account:

Link To New Google MCC Account Interface

New Google AdWords MMC Performance Tab

New Google AdWords MMC Budget Tab

Is the new AdWords My Client Center interface active in your account? Can you spot any other differences?

I’m not sure if this is new or not (seems new to me) — Google is now displaying a Google Product Search OneBox on the top right of the Sponsored Search section. This is great for merchants as Google is really pushing Google Product Search in prime real estate.

This is not to be confused the AdWords PlusBox where Google displays products next to a merchant’s ad from their Google Base data feed.

Search Sponsored Google Product OneBox

We’ve all seen the standard OneBox in the regular search results:

Standard Google Product Search One Box

Update: Matthew from the Rimm Kaufman Group points us to a post on Google Blogoscoped with more information regarding “Google Product Ads“. There are no screenshots there, but it seems to be referring to the image I have posted above.

If you are managing many campaigns with hundreds or thousands of keywords, then Google AdWords Editor is for you.

AdWords Editor is great for many things. It’s main function is to allow you to add/edit multiple campaigns/ad groups/ads/keywords in one shot. It is especially useful for creating new campaigns because your work will not be live until you are done and upload it.

In addition Google AdWords Editor is great for creating backups of specific campaigns or even your whole account. This is useful for times that you need to restructure your campaign but would like to have the ability to go back and reverse your changes at a later date. It can also be used to download campaigns for upload into Yahoo! Search Marketing or Microsoft adCenter.

Plug in to the power of AdWords Editor

AdWords Editor is a free Google application for managing your ad campaigns. Use it to download your account, update your campaigns with powerful editing tools, then upload your changes to AdWords.

• Work offline, then upload your changes any time.
• Make bulk changes (such as updating bids or adding keywords) in just a few steps.
• Copy or move items between ad groups and campaigns.
• Navigate through your account quickly and easily.
• Circulate proposed changes and get feedback from other users.

Download Google AdWords Editor

In the (relatively) new Google AdWords interface, there is a new tab called Opportunities, in here Google will periodically offer you campaign optimization tips.

The best idea is to go and review these suggestions on a monthly basis as these tips are constantly changing based on consumer search behavior and patterns.

Keyword Opportunities

On the left side, you can select a campaign the same as you would in the Campaigns tab. When you select a campaign it will show you a list of ad groups with suggestions. Click on each ad group and you will see a list of search terms that Google suggests you add to the ad group. You should always review before accepting because they will suggest many keywords that may be to generalized for your campaigns success.

By doing this monthly, you will keep growing your campaign target audience based on Google’s historical data and metrics.

Image Credit: Yodel Anecdotal