Horizontal & Vertical shift in Google Ads

Google removed Right side search ads some 6 months back. With this the game of search changed a lot. This escalated the bids to new levels and all of a sudden the metrics like lost impression share and relative CTR started looking relevant. In fact every metric which you dismissed as junk on dashboard needs to be analyzed for refinement opportunities. Google's Webinar a while back announced gradual roll out of features like demographic bidding and complete device wise targeting and bidding on search. So, competition on search won't be limited to the vertical space, it has many dimensions and more to come in future.

Changes in Adtexts

All of you must have gone through new format of ads. Display Url has two vacant fields. Since you can't change first one which defaults to TLD of your Final Url, the fun of writing myKeyword.XYZ.com seems gone for good. So, the format would only be XYZ.com/FirstText/SecondText. Probabaly, it has been done to keep ads along the line of Organic result's url structure, which shows breadcrumbs, like xyz.com > Category > Subcategory. I'd suggest you to always keep the spirit of change in your mind while writing ads.

People advertising on Bing already are familiar with continuously running two lines that Google has introduced now. Only thing to keep in mind is that Two Headlines sometimes become too long and Google Truncates them at many places. It has been observed that truncation of headlines on Desktop are quite common and truncation of texts below headlines are common on mobile devices. So, keep them a bit shorter, to avoid it.

Some precious Valuetrack Parameters

Set up your Tracking Template with valuable tracking parameters, like {adposition}, {devicemodel} and {Random}. Analytics , utm freaks tend to overlook adwords tracking features, but adposition and random are unique parameters that can be tracked only through adwords. The Random number tagging will help you identify & match the url with other metrics and present it side by side analytics data.

After tagging you would get valuable adposition data reported as 1t1, 1t2 for above organic result appearance and as 1o1, 1o2.. for below organic result ads. You know how helpful these data are these days! With proper tagging you would also know how ads perform on different device models.

Top Content on Display

A hidden control for display ads. You must have noticed this tab in Display Campaigns under setting tab. It is meant for changing the bid of placements you have opted for. Name of the tab is not intuitive. However, in one shot you can change the bid of all the "managed placements" in your campaign to a 10%, 20%, 30% higher bids than automatic placemets and hence improve the impression share on the placements you have selected compared to those which system has automatically selected for you.

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Adwords Adtext Optimization for Phone Calls

You all know, Google, no more allows phone number in adtext and sitelinks.

It has been documented that any new ad created with phone number in adtext or sitelink, will get disapproved and old ads will get disabled after sometime. Some old practices have become obsolete and new ones are in place!

You can still write Phone No. in Adtext Display URL

Is the new call extension, the only way, to show your phone number in adtext? Definitely Not! In fact, you can still show, phone number in adtext, because from what I have observed, Intelligent Google, neither considers Display URLs to be part of Adtext, nor Sitelinks, so Adwords Specialist, examining your ad would Approve it! So, the only thing you don't have to do is, not to write phone no. in Headline & the remaining two text lines of the ad.

Use of Suggestive prefixes in Display URL

You may write your display url like, example.com/Call-9910115853, or example.com/+91-9910115853 or example.com/dial-9910115853 or +91-9910115853.example.com. I have seen all these gets approved. I haven't tried but would suggest you to try, example.com/tel-9910115853. I think, it too should get approved.

Choose Mobile Call Extension in the option.

There are two options in the new call extension, one you all know will show phone number along with the ad text, and give users the option to call clicking on it if she is on a mobile interface. However, the other option, where on mobile device, click anywhere on the ad connects to your phone, is worth considering.

User won't land on mobile site but would rather get connected to you. This appears as 9910115853(mobile), in extension report. The difference is observed on mobile interface only, on desktop both kind of extensions appears the same. However, some callers may feel awkward, getting connected to the advertiser, when they actually wanted to examine their site. So, I personally run both the extension side by side. It is simple, you have to include both, 9910115853 & 9910115853(mobile) in setting and they will appear in rotation on mobile devices. Reporting too would give you two rows. After sometime you can take decision, which one is best for you !

Use of word "Call" in Headline or line after that

Use of word call in Headline, increases the response rate on phone, if you depend on call extension.If you have phone number in adtext(display url), both the positions, Headline and line just below it works well, to boost call response rate.

Call Forwarding Feature and Conversion Tracking

Call Forwarding feature allows you to investigate, all the interaction through phone number displayed on your ad. If opted in, Google shows unique number to every user who even if dials it after sometime, triggers the data metrics in your account. This feature is not available in India. So, the accounts which doesn't have this feature and also those who haven't opted for it by choice, will see considerable fall in reported conversion in their account, but that is a false alarm and you know why! Don't you??

POST SCRIPT: Google has clarified that an algorithm works behind, the call extension, which judges the occasions, where showing Phone number is of interest to users. So, stuffing nos. in display URL, may send wrong signal to the algorithm. It may cause rendering and Quality Score issues, while delivering ads. So, you may not use these techniques, if you find these issues in your account, and better rely on call extension. As claimed by google algorithm behind call extension, judges according to different signals it receives, from user behavior and website

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Breadcrumbs in Google Search may mean Bye to Fake Display URLs in Adwords!

Despite warnings by many SEO experts, I finally decided to use Breadcrumbs on netargument.

Blogger has labels already present, which can be used as breadcrumb. There are many tweaks of original Hoctro's code for implementing it on your blogger blog. It is using the last label of the post, though one may show many on your blog. After implementation, the domain name in SERP becomes unclickable & Label shown becomes clickable and lands you to the label list url. It does take away url keyword bolding effect from your search snippet, but what is visible there is more pleasant than the irritating URL string. So, it actually has the potential of enhancing your domain branding!

Now, after implementing Breadcrumbs code on the blog or website, label management becomes important. Labels are important for generating default #Hashtags on twitter too, if you share your blog through feedburner service. Here first label is most important. I am going to arrange the labels in the order of increasing relevance. The most broader category first and the most specific one in the last. Like

L1>L2>L3, where L2,L3 are subsets of L1 and L3 is the subset of L2. In this way L3 is the most specific tag for the post and L1, L2 are broader categories. I've seen people displaying many tags in rich snippet, but that is not a good practice, because, if on clicking those tags, which I believe has intentionally been generated to make it look like matching the search query, your plan may backfire. So, I advise you to keep it limited to the most specific last post label. Shouldn't blogger too replace the comma with '>' !!

Having said that, I also think, google adwords Display URL feature, where advertiser can write anything after Top level Domain, need to be retired. It might even be on Google's To-Do List. These Display URLs has been thoroughly abused for keyword stuffing, mobile no. insertion....  It creates a huge gap between what you see and what you get after landing, which may not prove to be good in the long run for either Google or the advertiser. With time people learn to ignore the Domain name in ad, & behavior may extend to ignoring Adwords ads in SERP in future, because you are giving them reasons for distrust. Substitution of Fake URL String, with Breadcrumbs should be better for both the website branding and usability, because the person seeing the ad would know, it is Breadcrumb which is not the part of actual URL, rather something that should be present on the landing page & that will be good, for Adwords!

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