Update on 8/26: ok… So sometimes a rant is justified and sometimes not – and sometimes it is unclear. You are welcome to read the following rant, since I still stand by the concerns about higher clicks and potentially lower conversion based on positioning of the Adwords sponsored links in search results pages, however…

After looking more closely at my campaign changes for the week, it seems that much of the degradation in conversion rates were based on changes to the content campaigns, not just the search campaigns (although some were affected).

Pardon what is going to be a bit of a rant. I want to warn you, so that if you are a Google-phile, you can walk away now….

According to a post on The Search Agents blog, Google Moves Ads to the Left, Clickthrough Rate Jumps 10%, Google moved the PPC ads from right justified to right next to the natural search results, starting around August 18. Zack MacLean shows some nice graphics and information about the change.

Now for the DARK side of this change…

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On Tuesday, I reorganized my content campaigns so that I had separate adgroups for banners and for text ads. I wanted to test some things in creative ads, and having them organized this way makes sense. I was anticipating some changes, but not nearly what I saw.

Starting on August 18, my costs sky-rocketed and conversion rate dove. I was absolutely confused!  Now, after three days of head-scratching, soul-searching and spreadsheet-hell, I find out that it wasn’t me – No, Google, it was you.

At first, I thought my campaign reorganization was to blame. When you make big campaign changes, it can take some time for results to even out, especially since I am using the Conversion Optimizer on content campaigns – so I expected fluctuation – but not a 50% drop in conversion rates AND a 30% increase in costs… IN ONE DAY.

Here is the summary from Google Adwords. The change date is highlighted in yellow.

Higher costs, lower conversions.

So, those of you who are used to looking at daily results in Google Adwords (or in Analytics) can see the problem. Cost per conversion jumped DRAMATICALLY and conversion rate plummeted.

So, by changing the location of the Adwords ads, Google has increased their profits and decreased their value to their customers considerably. Unfortunately, what Google seems to not understand is that people have something called “fixed budgets.” Yes, we do not have endlessly deep pockets from which we can pull money to put in your coffers. But on the other hand, you have us over a barrel – you have the traffic, can set the price (auction my a** - there are enough black-box metrics that you control to keep us all in the dark), and now you are finding new and creative ways to gouge your advertisers.

So, I am back to the drawing board with setting up my campaign optimizations. Just when I was getting on a positive roll. Thanks, Google, because I really DO want to spend all of my time optimizing, tweaking and changing my PPC campaigns. Really, I don’t have anything else to do.

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Now I feel better. Oh, and I would suggest that you look at your campaigns, too, to see if your metrics are slipping around the same timeframe.

Conclusion: changes to the positioning of ads will increase the likelihood that people will click on them. This may also mean that people are likely to click on more ads before committing to one advertisers product or service. That being the case, costs per acquisition will go up, conversion rates will go down, and how you think about ad positioning may change.

Last week, I was updating some bids in my Adwords account and saw a new little icon next the bids on in the keywords view. Although I can’t be certain, it looks like a little key.

Since I didn’t get any notification that there was a new feature, I had no idea what it meant or what it would do. So, being curious, I clicked on it.What resulted was a light box with several different bid levels and associated impressions listed.

That was last week. This week, it now includes estimated clicks and impressions at different maximum bids for keywords that have (I would guess) accumulated enough data to support a projection.

Although interesting as a concept, I am a bit skeptical about the application. For instance, the keywords that I looked at were primarily brand phrases, where my bid levels (one would think) do not need to be very high, given that I have a 10/10 relevancy score, average position of 1 and plenty of budget for the ads to be shown all day long.

The bid simulator, however, suggested some outrageously high bid levels! Here is a screen cap of one of my brand phrases – notice the top bid it recommends is extremely high. Why would I want to risk paying up to $36 per click on a brand term to get an additional 31 impressions?

I recently participated in a case study with Google on their Conversion Optimizer tool in Adwords. The case study was published, and there have been a fair number of associated articles that link back to the Adwords blog article, which quotes part of the discussion. At this date, fifteen links now go to the post, including an article at WebProNews, and it has a PR of 4. Pretty cool stuff. Read the various articles here:

Conversion Optimizer – Google Adwords Blog

Using Google’s Conversion Optimizer – WebProNews

Back in early June I went to the SMX Advanced meeting in Seattle (see several live-blog posts from that event). During a session break, I went to the show floor and was going from booth to booth. At the Google booth, Courtney was talking to several visitors about the value of the conversion optimizer. I had recently set up a number of campaigns and had seen some great improvements in visibility, conversion rates and lowered cost per conversion. Although a bit rude, I jumped into the conversation and shared my experience.  Courtney asked for my business card, and reached out to me right after the show to start working on the study.

Here are some things I learned from participating:

1. Don’t be shy. If you have a good experience with a company’s product, tell them. Also, tell them you would be happy to participate in a case study.
2. Ask for what you want. I wanted to get exposure for PRWeb’s services – not just the results that I got from using their tool. I really wanted a solid description of our services included, and they provided that as background to the case study story. I also wanted a link from Google. So bad I could taste it. Instead of just having them link our URL to our domain, I specifically asked for an in-content link with my target keywords, pointing to the URL I wanted. Kaching! DONE!
3. Follow up and keep the ball rolling. I have been on the other end of case studies – and it’s easy to get distracted with day-to-day work. If you want the visibility that a good case study can provide, be persistent (and friendly) with the company providing it.
4. Be picky. There are other case studies I have not participated in. Why? Well, either it would show the pale under-belly of what I am doing, it would not bring value, or there are political reasons not to participate.
5. Be in the know. If you work for a larger company, do  your research – there may be someone else in the organization who is working with a vendor who might feature your company. Reach out to your colleagues and see what opportunities there are. Also, be certain to help with guiding inbound linking and company positioning so that you do get the exposure value that you want.

Although it can be a fair amount of work to participate in case studies, they can be a great solution for both getting visibility and providing value to a valued vendor. And if you are looking for inbound links – a great way to get those, too!