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AdWords Spam Fighting Methods with Google’s David Baker

5/10/2012 by Leave a Comment

Key Points

  1. In 2011 Google had billions of ads that were submitted. Of these, roughly 130 million ads and 800,000 advertiser accounts were disapproved/suspended for violations of policy.
  2. Some of the spam problem is handled algorithmically while some is assisted with manual review. The system is constantly under work and revision.
  3. One of the biggest areas of bad ads is counterfeit. In 2011, of the 800,000 advertisers, 150,000 were for counterfeit violations.
  4. Of the counterfeit removals, 95% were proactive measures that Google has in place and 5% were from user complaints.
  5. Economic downturn gives way to new scams, as people are looking to save money and thus are easily tricked into deceptive billing practices or schemes.
  6. Bad ads are attacked with a 3 pronged approach:
    1. Looking for bad ad text or landing pages.
    2. Looking at sites in an industry, agnostic of which advertiser is advertising the site, to see if there is a whole class of policy that is being violated.
    3. Looking at individual advertising accounts (all of the ads and everything they advertise)
  7. The account review portion has a Risk Model where Google predicts the risk of a certain account to violate policy based on account history and a variety of account signals.
  8. Many complaints are from users reporting their competitors after they have been banned.

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Filed Under: PPC, Search Engine Marketing Tagged With:

AdWords Expanding Phrase and Exact Matching Technology

4/18/2012 by 1 Comment

AdWords has started releasing a feature that will expand the matching technology for Phrase and Exact Match Types.  Essentially, Phrase and Exact Match Types will begin matching closely related search terms, when Google’s technology is able to establish that the search intent is the same.  The opt-out functionality is live today; All Advertisers are auto-opted into this feature as a new Advanced Campaign Setting.  The matching technology will not actually change until mid-May.  Advertisers can begin preparing now, and opt-out now if they choose to.

My Take: This is a classic win-win-win.  Users get better results, Advertisers expand coverage with good performance, and Google increases the relevance of their search results and ads.  Of course, they are most likely also increasing keyword competition, i.e.: profitability for the auctioneer.

AdWords Opt Out Settings

Eric Enge and I had the opportunity to catch up with Jen Huang, a Product Manager on the Google AdWords team responsible for the new matching technology.  Ms. Huang filled us in on some of the details of what exactly is changing.

"Jen Huang: The technology is attempting to expand Advertiser Keyword coverage for Phrase and Exact Match when we can match to the same user intent. Keywords that reflect similar user intent."

Background

Search Engines use matching technology to match a limited set of Advertiser Keywords to an infinite set of possible search queries.  Match Types help Search Engines match Keywords beyond their literal, character-for-character match, to all of those possible search queries.  While Phrase and Exact Match are as close as Advertisers can get to literal control, Search Engines also use normalization (or canonical form). That is a broader topic, which I covered previously on Search Engine Land with this article – Canonical Form: The Hidden Keywords in Paid Search.  Normalization has always normalized Phrase and Exact Match on capitalization, for example. [nasa] has always matched [NASA], before and after this release. This release takes that further, to closely related variants, based on the notion of user intent.

When Search Engines match various keywords, they have to play a balancing act.  If they can maintain relevance and also expand the coverage, then they increase competition and profit as a result.  However, if they expand without preserving relevance, then Advertisers would notice the decline in value, competition would decrease, and falling profitability would soon follow.

Interestingly, Broad Match Modifier already uses a similar version of this technology.  This AdWords Help Center Topic, states:

Each word preceded by a + has to appear in your potential customer’s search exactly or as a close variant. Close variants include misspellings, singular/plural forms, abbreviations and acronyms, and stemmings (like "floor" and "flooring"). However, synonyms (like "quick" and "fast") and related searches (like "flowers" and "tulips") are not considered close variants.

"Jen Huang: This new matching technology is similar to Normalization, and to the technology that finds close variants in Broad Match Modifier.  The whole point is to match to keywords with the same intent, helping users find what they are looking for, and Advertisers serve more ads."

I remember when broad-match was introduced with AdWords. It was not originally received well.  Advertisers found the technology was often way too far-reaching, and lacked relevance.  This was long before search query reports, when we actually had to do real work to parse server logs, extract the query string from the referrer_URL field… but I digress.  Most recently, AdWords added Broad Match Modifier, and adCenter is rumored to be following suit soon.

Long term, I am eagerly anticipating this shift towards intent-based advertising.  It will be an important shift that should enrich the user experience, provide some welcome simplification for Advertisers, and hopefully attract more direct-marketing advertising spend in an industry that has historically been dominated by branding and other non-ROI-focused advertising spend.

When Is This Happening?

The opt-out feature is live as of today, at the Campaign Level, giving Advertisers an opportunity to opt-out, or otherwise prepare.  The matching technology is planned to go live starting sometime in Mid-May, presumably in a rolling release.

Expected Impact

AdWords tested this feature in the marketplace with various Advertisers, across numerous verticals.  On average, with accounts already receiving greater than 33% of their traffic from Exact and Phrase Match Types, Advertisers generated 3% more clicks.  Performance metrics such as CTR, Conversion Rate, and Cost Per Acquisition were consistent.

In practice, we can expect there to be some variability between industries, and certainly amongst individual Advertisers.  With our clients, we will be advising that we take this one cautiously, and monitor performance closely.

Another impact for Direct Advertisers would be the ability to compress conversion data into one tracked keyword, while matching for more traffic on closely related searches.  This might be especially interesting for Advertisers with sparse conversion data.  On the other hand, Advertisers with a surplus of Conversion data, and the tools to support it, might choose to stay with the old technology, and the precision it allows.

What is Changing, Exactly?

Pardon the pun…

The technology uses the Google.com search engine to map similar keywords, and will generate a match along one of the following manipulations:

  • Spelling Correction
  • Word Stemming
  • Plurals
  • Acronyms
  • Abbreviations
  • Accents

It is worth noting that nothing else is changing as a direct result of this release.  In particular, Negatives remain unchanged.  They still get minimal normalization, and will continue to work with the same level of precision they do today.

Spelling Correction

This will work similarly to Google.com’s auto spell correction feature:

Spelling Corrections in Google

Essentially, Advertisers should not have to invest extra time in misspelling keywords.  Hopefully, it recognizes fat-thumb spelling errors from smart phones and helps get relevant searchers pointed in the right direction.

Word Stemming

This will match a root word with its various prefixes and
suffixes.  [snare] might match "snared", "ensare" etc.

Word Stemming Example

This one has more potential to conflict with the Advertiser’s intention when advertising on a word.

Plurals

For example, "car" will match "cars". Advertisers interested in distinguishing between singular and plural versions of their keywords might consider opting out.

Acronyms

For example, "NYC" and "New York City"  might be considered equivalent in this new technology.  Watch out for acronyms that might not work as intended, such as the state Abbreviations for Indiana (IN), Delaware (DE), Los Angeles (LA), etc.

Abbreviations

For example, "abbrev." might match with
"abbreviation", and vice versa.

Accents

This shouldn’t impact US-English traffic as much as it might Canadian traffic, or US-Hispanic traffic.  Of course, internationally this should provide some interesting results.

How Can We Measure the Impact?

As Advertisers, our ability to measure the impact will for the most part be limited to a "before" and "after" analysis.  We should be looking for an increase in traffic from Phrase and Exact Match
Keywords, with steady or tolerable performance metrics like CTR, CPC, ROI, etc.

My inner Excel Nerd is pondering if a more detailed analysis might work? Could we pull a Search Query Report? It might tell us the Keyword and the various expanded Search Queries? The current ones do not – they show us the normalized Search Query for Exact and Phrase. We may have to wait and see about that one…

Quality Score

Quality Score will continue to be calculated based on the performance of the original exact match keyword. Any close variants added by this new expanded matching technology will not impact Quality Score for keyword that triggered the ad.

Improving exact match and phrase match

Search Query Reports

Close variants matched by this technology will shows as a new derived Match Type &quote;Exact Match (close variants)" in the Search Query reports, once the technology is live.

Who Should Avoid It?

Advertisers who measure a decline in performance, for starters.  Additionally, Advertisers who use Brand terms with very different bids or ads, especially Brands that are intentional misspellings.  In this case, Advertisers may find the precision offered by the older technology allows them to maintain the control they need to treat Branded versus Non-Branded terms appropriately.  Likewise, any Advertiser who derives enough value from the precision of the old technology to offset the opportunity in the new version, should opt-out.

Summary

The opt-out feature is live as of today as an advanced Campaign Setting (you are auto-opted-in already), the matching technology changes in Mid-May.  You should expect good results, but I recommend keeping a close eye on things, as every Advertiser, and every Account, is different.

Filed Under: PPC, Search Engine Marketing, Uncategorized Tagged With:

adCenter’s Mantra: ROI on Time Spent, Interview With Rathna Sharad

3/27/2012 by Leave a Comment

photo of Rathna Sharad

Key Points from Interview with Rathna Sharad

The first person I met with during my week at Microsoft in January was Rathna Sharad. This was a great start because she set the tone for all of the interviews I did. In the discussion below you will see key insights into the thinking behind the overall adCenter strategy. Here are some of the other key points from the interview:

  1. “The Web UI is good for a couple thousand keywords, maybe even up to ten thousand keywords in an account.”
  2. “If you have tens of thousands of keywords, the adCenter Desktop Tool works very well.”
  3. “Anyone that has hundreds of thousands of keywords, or more, is a great candidate for the API.”
  4. adCenter strices to make all the same features available in the Web UI, the desktop tool, and via tha API.
  5. adCenter keeps old version of the API alive for 6 to 9 months to allow people using it time to update their tools, but they do need to make the switchover.
  6. Rathna indicates that there are no known latency issues with the API, but they recently did a desktop tool release to make that more efficient with very large campaigns.
  7. Filtering functionality was added to the Web UI in late 2011. You can filter on any of the columns in the reports.
  8. The adCenter team is working on features to make recommendations to advertisers based on their goals.
  9. “Our marketplace is different; our consumers are different, the way they interact within the ecosystem is different.”
  10. “What it (Microsoft Advertising Intelligence or MAI) does at a high level is really provide insights into the monetization aspect, which is adCenter, as well as the forecasting aspect which is based on historical performance. For example, here is what we think you should be bidding for mainline, sidebar, first page placement, those types of recommendations.”
  11. One of the key capabilities in MAI is the keyword estimation capability, which shows traffic you can expect.
  12. adCenter provides information on share of voice (aka impression share), including why it is your share is currently being limited.
  13. The two major points of focus for adCenter are Return on Time Spent and industry standardization (parity with Adwords) to make it easier for advertisers to spend incremental ad budgets with adCenter.

Full Interview Transcript

Eric Enge: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Rathna Sharad: My role currently is director of product management for demand. Essentially that I oversee the web UI, API, adCenter Desktop and the Microsoft Advertising Intelligence tool. I’ve been with Microsoft for almost six years now, and I’ve been working on search for that duration. The first two and a half years I was on the engineering side, so actually I’ve been through a lot of the products.

The latter half of the six years I’ve been on the product management team. Ultimately, I play a role in redefining our product strategy and the roadmap for advertisers. Prior to Microsoft I worked on transportation and supply chain solutions for UPS and freight forwarding companies.

The way I have my team organized is around the different areas that advertisers interact with. One of the product managers on my team is responsible for campaign management and the Web UI. We also have product managers that look after the adCenter Desktop tool as well as the Microsoft advertising intelligence tool which is basically around forecasting and prediction in terms of traffic and volumes, and also been in traffic estimation for specific keywords.

I also have people that take care of billing, and customer management, and agency management, capabilities within the platform. And, finally we have reporting, so essentially all of the recommendation engine as well as the reports generation if you will through the tools.

Eric Enge: Can you tell me a little bit about why people would choose the Web UI or the adCenter Desktop tool or the API?

Rathna Sharad: One factor is the size of their campaigns. The Web UI is good for a couple thousand keywords, maybe even up to ten thousand keywords in an account. Anything more than that, it gets a little tricky to navigate through it and find what you are looking for in a short amount of time.

adCenter Web UI

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Power Adwords Tools with Google’s Frederick Vallaeys

1/25/2012 by 2 Comments

photo of Frederick Vallaeys

Key Points from Interview with Frederick Vallaeys

  1. ValueTrack is the AdWords feature that allows advertisers to tag their URLs with parameters. The resulting URL can then be used within the advertiser’s own tracking systems.
  2. Too many advertisers settle for global level reporting and do not look further. Even if your top level metrics are OK, you can still get great gains in overall campaign performance by digging into more detailed reports.
  3. Segmentation is the biggest power reporting feature that is not used by many advertisers.
  4. Types of segmentation can include times of day, days of week, device type, social signals, and more.
  5. (Fred): “… no matter from which channel the +1 comes in, it all aggregates at the URL level.”
  6. (Fred): “In the social segmentation, you can actually see what the impact is of having each of these different variations.”
  7. You can run multiple segments via the downloadable reports or the API.
  8. (Fred): “… at the end of 2011, half of American consumers had a Smartphone in their pocket.”
  9. Google has a site at howtogomo.com that you can use to see how your site renders on a mobile device.
  10. (Fred): “Google Analytics offers multichannel funnels, and what these allow you to do is see what touch points people have with your online campaigns before a conversion happens.”
  11. (Fred): “One tool that we have is the AdWords Campaign Experiments. That’s a great way for an advertiser to explore how to improve their ROI. They can send 10%, 20%, 30%, whatever percentage they want of their traffic to that experiment.”
  12. (Fred): These (new ad formats) were a big thing for us in 2011, and will continue to be a big thing in 2012.
  13. The Bid Simulator tool will show you what to expect for different types of increases (or decreases) in bids.
  14. The Ad Preview Tool allows you to see whether or not your ads are running. It also allows you to test geotargeting in areas other than your current location, or various types of mobile devices.
  15. Top of Page bid estimates show you what your bid would have to be to show up in the space above the organic results.
  16. Impression share is a way to see what percentage of the time your ads are running. Tuning your campaign to increase impression share can be one of the best ways to get additional traffic.
  17. Google Analytics is planning to expand its social reporting to include more than just the data from Google owned properties – i.e. data such as Facebook Likes.

Full Interview Transcript

Eric Enge: Can you tell me some great power reporting features in the AdWords interface that people rarely use?

Frederick Vallaeys: When you look at AdWords, there are three high-level types of reports that we make available for our customers. You can go into the campaign management interface and pull reports right there in your campaigns. Then, we also have Google Analytics which goes a little bit deeper into some of the data, for example, with real-time reports, social reports and cross-channel reports that look at how ALL your campaigns are contributing to your success and your ROI. The third one is making reporting available for people who prefer using APIs or building their own reporting systems using our URL tagging feature, ValueTrack.

That is a way for us to attach some additional information to each click that comes to your website so that your own reporting software can capture that and then process it. If you look specifically at what is available in the AdWords interface, it’s really gotten very sophisticated in terms of segmentation. And, I think one of the biggest mistakes that advertisers make is they look at their reports at too high a level.

There are probably all of these micro-segments within your campaign where things are performing fantastically well …

There are probably all of these micro-segments within your campaign where things are performing fantastically well, but you don’t know it because you looked at things are an aggregated level. On the flip side you also have elements of your campaign that just aren’t working well. Examples of segments that you could be looking at are the specific time of the day, and the specific day of the week. You may for some reason find people just aren’t buying your product at certain times of day or days of the week.

AdWords Day Parting Report

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Filed Under: Google, PPC, Search Engine Marketing Tagged With: