The Google AdWords blog has announced a new test of the advert format so that longer headlines are appearing on some ads that appear above the search results on Google. For some ads where each line appears to be a distinct sentence and ends in the proper punctuation, the first description line is moved to the headline and separated by a hyphen. As a result, some top placement ads will have longer headlines.

Google says that in testing they have found that the longer headline results in higher clickthrough rate for those ads, as well as other top ads that appear beside them. Therefore they say it creates a better experience for users by highlighting more information in the ad (and of course more revenue for Google too!).

While only some ads will be shown with the longer headline, advertisers can now increase their chances of this happening by ensuring that each line of the ad appears to be a distinct sentence and ends in the proper punctuation (e.g., a period or a question mark).

Google has announced the introduction of a Contextual Targeting Tool to help display advertisers select and reach customers more easily with the Google Display Network - part of the AdWords advertising service.

By using contextual targeting, advertisers can reach potential customers as they read webpages related to the products or services being sold and this new tool enables advertisers to create new contextually-targeted campaigns more easily and quickly. The tool automatically builds keyword lists that can be used to show ads on relevant webpages in the Google Display Network.

When planning and selecting lists of target keywords, the tool can help create new groups of terms more automatically and also provides suggested bids and predicted placements to give advertisers an idea of the types of sites in the Display Network where the ads can appear.

The Contextual Targeting Tool has previously been available to advertisers using AdWords Editor but this new launch means that all advertisers can now access it from the Opportunities tab in their AdWords account. However, advertisers will still need AdWords Editor to implement the new adgroups in their account for now but Google says that this requirement will be lifted soon and so that the new adgroups will also be added directly from the online AdWords account in the coming months.

Google continues to develop new features for AdWords and has released a number of new enhancements this week.

Firstly, on Wednesday the AdWords blog announced some new additions to the Keyword Tool, based on feedback from users. The new tool hasn't been that well received since it was first introduced and compared to the previous version, but the new features are helping this to become a more valuable resource for advertisers.

There are some new filters added to the tool, including the option to choose specific terms to include or exclude from a keyword list. There is also a new ‘More like these’ button to search for terms that are similar to the specific keyword ideas that have been selected from the suggested list of terms. Users can also access results that include just the exact words or phrases (and their close synonyms) that have been entered in the search box.

Several other new features include adding 'stars' to keywords that users may want to save while still searching for new keyword ideas. There is also the option to view the selected keywords in text form, so that users can easily edit them and paste them in a spreadsheet or AdWords Editor.

The second announcement this week was for some new options in the Opportunities tab which include:
* First page CPC ideas - to help users adjust bids so that ads have a better chance of appearing on the first page of search results.
* More robust statistics for keyword ideas - the broad estimates for suggested new keywords have now been improved to show estimates for impressions, cost, and clicks whenever these statistics are available.
* Bid ideas for ad groups - bid ideas can now be found at the ad group level in addition to the keyword level.
* Exporting ideas - if there are a lot of ideas being listed, users can now export these to a .csv file to allow review and editing.

Google has announced the introduction of a new 'automated rules' feature in AdWords, so that advertisers can set up specific requirements to be adjusted depending on campaign performance. This new addition to the available tools for advertisers allows users to create rules to automate bid, budget, and status changes on a specific part of an AdWords account (such as selected keywords, ad groups, campaigns, and ads) that are triggered at a particular time.

For example, Google provides some examples of when automated rules could be set up to perform the following tasks:
* Enable ads promoting a special offer late on a Sunday night when the offer goes live
* Automatically raise the bids to the first page CPC for all keywords in a campaign that contain the word ‘sale’
* Generate more traffic on peak shopping days by automatically increasing the daily budget on Mondays and decreasing it on Wednesdays

This last function has been something that's been required for some time and will enable more flexibility in managing campaigns and adjusting settings to suit the market or business requirements.

As usual with the introduction of significant new features, the automated rules are only available to US advertisers at the moment but are expected to be gradually rolled out over the coming months to other countries.

Google AdWords has announced the expansion of their Product Listing adverts, which are now available to US advertisers. These ads allow retailers to promote their product inventory as part of their AdWords listings and during the beta trial period, Google says that the results showed that people were twice as likely to click on a Product Listing Ad as they are to click on a standard text ad in the same location.

These Product Listing Ads enable users to see the exact products being offered before they even click through to the website, so they can be a way of increasing or filtering searchers to the site, which in turn should lead to higher quality visits and higher ROI.

Like Product Extensions -which lets advertisers add the pictures and prices of relevant products to the keyword-targeted text ads, Product Listing Ads makes it easy to show the most relevant products from a Google Merchant Center account to potential customers searching on Google. However, unlike Product Extensions, Product Listing Ads don’t require any keywords or ad text since the ads are automatically triggered whenever someone’s search matches an item in the Merchant Center account, making it easy to show relevant ads from the entire product inventory.

Once these options are established in the US, it's likely that they will be rolled out to other markets, in particular those that already use Google Product Search.

In another significant new announcement from Google, their AdWords blog has revealed that they are starting to test phone call tracking for a limited number of accounts in the US. This has been one of the main gaps in tracking enquiry conversions from an AdWords campaign, but one that might soon help advertisers get a clearer picture of the real ROI (Return on Investment) from their advertising spend.

AdWords call metrics will use the technology behind Google Voice, so that each campaign will be assigned a unique phone number which is automatically inserted into the adverts on both desktop and high-end mobile devices (where the number is clickable, as now).

When a user calls the number shown in the ad, the call is automatically routed to the business, and AdWords notes that this call took place. This data will be shown within the AdWords reports, where the number of calls generated by each campaign will be displayed, alongside call duration, and caller area code. Advertisers will still only pay for clicks on their ads, but Google says that they also intend to charge for call metrics in the future.

This will undoubtedly be a significant improvement for advertisers and one that will hopefully be rolled out to all campaigns and countries soon.

In another new product announcement from Google, local advertisers in parts of the US have the opportunity to test Google Boost, which enables business owners to easily create online search ads from directly within their Google Places account. No ongoing management is needed after the initial set up, and this beta is currently available to select local businesses in San Francisco, Houston and Chicago.

Boost ads are eligible to appear in the 'Sponsored Links' section of Google.com and Google Maps search results. Beyond the basics like company name, address, phone number and website, the advert may also include the number of reviews received by the business, an average star rating and a link to the Place page to help potential customers find additional useful information about the advertiser's business. When a map appears alongside the results, a blue pin will help searchers quickly find the business location on the map.

To create an advert, local advertisers will need a short business description, a web or Place page, some business categories and a monthly budget. From there, Google will automatically set up an advert campaign, figuring out the relevant keywords that will trigger the ad to appear on Google and Google Maps, and how to get the most out of the budget allocated. A full AdWords campaign isn't required but Boost works in the same way so that local advertisers only pay when a potential customer actually clicks on the ad. Basic ad performance data is available from the Google Places dashboard.

Boost does not affect the ranking of the free, organic business listings in any way. Google also says they will review the data and effectiveness of this trial and may make changes before making decisions about any future expansion.

Google has recently made a number of changes in AdWords to provide advertisers with estimates about the impact of bid level changes. Previously this included the ability to see the estimated number of impressions with the highest bid level, and a new blog post reports on another change whereby advertisers can view bid simulations across all keywords in an ad group at once.

This new adgroup level bid simulator provides simulations for two types of changes - applying a single bid to all the keywords in the ad group, and updating the adgroup default bid. Google says that, for some advertisers who manage bids at the keyword-level, they could achieve similar or better results by managing bids by using a single adgroup default Max CPC bid.

Google provides some examples of ways to use the bid simulator in the blog post and the intention of this tool is for advertisers to see ways of making bidding decisions across keywords in aggregate. They suggest checking the adgroup level simulations to find out if using a single bid for all the keywords in the adgroup could save time and money. In addition, low traffic keywords could be managed in aggregate by using the adgroup default bid for them by deleting their keyword level bids.

The Google AdWords blog has announced the introduction of Enhanced CPC, a new automated bidding feature that can help advertisers improve the ROI of their campaigns through manual bidding.

By using a campaign's historical conversion tracking data, the Enhanced CPC system will automatically adjust the maximum CPC (cost per click) bid for a keyword based on the likelihood that the ad will convert. As a result, Google says that advertisers should receive more conversions while maintaining or reducing their overall CPA (cost per acquisition).

Enhanced CPC has the unique ability to consider a number of factors when predicting the likelihood of a conversion and may adjust a bid depending on how well a particular search or display network partner site in the Google network has converted in the past. It will also recognise when specific words within a search phrase convert well and so adjust a bid when users search on variations of these terms. Google says that the system will also detect attributes such as the user's location, language settings, browser, and operating system and analyze how these attributes may impact the likelihood of an advert converting.

This certainly sounds like an impressive new feature and one that could help advertisers achieve better results with reduced effort. However, like all elements of an AdWords campaign, this will need to be tested and the more conversion data to work from, the better. Some of Google's automated tools have not worked well for some AdWords advertisers in the past so it may work well for some and not others, so this is another aspect to test!

Google has announced in its AdWords blog that the ACE tool is going to be rolled out to all advertisers, starting in the US from this month. ACE - or AdWords Campaign Experiments - is a free tool within AdWords that makes it easier to test and measure the impact of changes to different campaign elements, including keywords, bids, adgroups and placements.

This new feature was first announced in a beta versions several months ago and is a significant enhancement for advertisers to test and review potential campaign improvements. Google says that advertisers in the beta test period have reported that ACE has helped them feel more confident in the impact of their campaign changes, making it easier and less risky to try different strategies and optimize more frequently.

Experimental changes to a campaign can now be run side-by-side using ACE, with the original campaign in a simultaneous split test. This approach lets advertisers run shorter tests that start and stop whenever they want, with less concern about results being affected by seasonality or other factors. Google says that advertisers will get more precise impact estimates and more chances throughout the year to test and improve performance.

The new ACE tool will appear under Campaign Settings for US advertisers initially and is still showing as a beta test, but this will hopefully be rolled out globally very soon and become a valuable part of an AdWords toolset.

In another new enhancement, Google AdWords has announced an improved keyword diagnosis tool that gives advertisers the chance to see detailed diagnostic information for multiple keywords at once. This can be accessed from the Keywords tab in an AdWords account using the "More actions" menu and "Diagnose keywords."

Within this new keyword diagnosis menu, advertisers have all the same options that were previously available in the standalone Ads Diagnostic Tool. However, this new enhancement now display the diagnosis information included as real-time results within the Status column next to each keyword. If the keyword is working well then "Ad showing" will be displayed, but if there are any problems then a brief summary is provided to help advertisers fix the issue (such as "Low bid or quality score").

To get more details on a keyword's status, users are able to hover over any speech bubble icon which may display Quality Score issues or other factors that are preventing the ad from showing. Google recommends that to focus on one issue at a time, advertisers should try creating filters for Keyword Status.

We are pleased to announce that Web Marketing Workshop has become recognised as a Google AdWords Certified Partner.

Although we have been an AdWords Qualified Company for several years, Google recently updated the qualification to include more detailed exams with a high pass rate of 85%. We successfully passed these exams, with specialisation in Search Advertising and Reporting & Analysis, which together with our broad experience of managing many AdWords campaigns for clients, gives us the depth of experience and knowledge to provide an expert service to our clients.

You can find more information about our certification status by clicking the link on the logo below:

Following a previous announcement by Google last November that they were starting to add 'Sitelinks' to the AdWords options, their blog has now confirmed that this feature is being rolled out to all advertisers.

Google says that the initial test has shown advertisers seeing huge gains with Ad Sitelinks, driving clickthrough rates up by more than 30% on average (and of course boosting Google's revenues at the same time!). The Ad Sitelinks option is now available within the campaign settings for all accounts and enables advertisers to create more links to relevant content pages from the AdWords listing.

Therefore when a user's search query matches a keyword in an Ad Sitelinks-enabled campaign, Google will automatically determine if the advert qualifies to show Ad Sitelinks and whether to show the two-line or the one-line format based on the quality of that ad. Since this feature is a campaign-level extension, the links that are created by the advertiser should be relevant to any advert in that campaign.

The Google AdWords blog has announced a new tool for advertisers to monitor competitive activity for their market. Aiming to create more transparency to AdWords, Google has launched 'Analyze competition' in the Opportunities tab, initially available to a small number of advertisers using the English language AdWords interface, but this is likely to be rolled out soon and should help to add an extra layer of data and knowledge to allow advertisers to improve their campaigns.

The 'Analyze competition' option enables advertisers to examine their account activity over the past two weeks and it lists categories that represent the products or services being advertised. These categories are based on actual Google.com search terms and are matched up against the advertiser's keywords, ad text, and landing page text. For each category associated with their account, the advertiser will see a bar graph displaying the campaign performance compared to the average performance of other advertisers in the same category.

By hovering over the data in the 'Competitive Range' column, advertisers will be able to see more details such as the exact size of the competitive range, the mean and median performance levels for this range, as well as data on the absolute top and bottom performers. This data can also be exported to a .csv file.

Google stresses that the 'Analyze competition' data is anonymous, and as part of their commitment to privacy, they don't reveal information about any advertiser's identity. However, the data can be very useful to get new ideas for an account and to consider how advertising goals are being achieved to allow a better focus on the most relevant metrics. If one or more AdWords campaigns are performing poorly in comparison to the competition, an advertiser can now get some more insight into changes that could help to improve the campaign.

Our sister website, Web Training Workshop, has announced some new training courses to be held in Perth in July. These include a full-day introduction to search engine marketing course on 15th July, followed by tow half day courses on Friday 16th July - one for Advanced Google AdWords training, and the other is a Google Analytics course for those who want to get more from their website activity data.

All these courses will be held in Perth's CBD and bookings can be made through the Web Training Workshop site, with an Early Bird price offer running until 18th June.

The Google AdWords blog has announced the introduction of the broad match modifier - a new keyword targeting feature for AdWords that lets advertisers create keywords that have greater reach than phrase match and more control than broad match. At present this feature is only being made available in the UK and Canadian markets, but is likely to be rolled out worldwide at a later date.

The default broad match targeting feature in AdWords has come under some criticism from advertisers as it can mean that ads are displayed for a wider variety of terms than expected, sometimes including search terms that don't include any of the targeted terms but which are seen by Google as related. It has sometimes been felt that the broad match criteria can be expanded by Google at times, without advertisers being aware of this, and therefore a close eye needs to be kept on search query reports and the use of negative terms.

Of course the alternative to using broad match is to get better targeting through phrase and exact match, although this can significantly reduce the number of likely impressions unless al possible search term variations are included. Now, by adding the modified broad match keywords to a campaign, advertisers should be able to find a middle ground and get more clicks and conversions at an improved ROI.

The new modifier works by placing a plus symbol (+) directly in front of one or more words in a broad match keyword. Each word preceded by a + has to appear in the potential customer's search exactly or as a close variant. Google says that close variants include misspellings, singular/plural forms, abbreviations and acronyms, and stemmings (like “floor” and “flooring”). Synonyms (like “quick” and “fast”) and related searches (like “flowers” and “tulips”) aren't considered close variants.

Match behavior from this new setting will depend on the specific words that are modified, so that a single word in a phrase can include the modifier in front of it, or a combination or all words can include the modify symbol. For example, the keyword formal +shoes will match the search “evening shoes,” but the keyword +formal +shoes will not.

The Google blog says that modified broad match keywords have a traffic potential closer to phrase match than broad match. So, if advertisers mainly use broad match keywords in their account, switching these keywords to modified broad match will likely lead to a significant decline in the overall click and conversion volumes. In order to maintain these volumes, Google recommends keeping existing broad match keywords active, adding new modified broad match keywords, and adjusting bids to achieve the target ROI based on observed performance.

More information on the new broad match modifier can be found here.

The Google AdWords blog has announced the introduction of 'interest-based advertising' which has now been released from beta testing. Called 'remarketing', this is a new feature for AdWords advertisers who are using the content network and enables advertisers to present their sales messages to previous visitors to their website.

Google claims that the testing period with selected advertisers has proved very successful and the concept allows companies to display tailored ads on sites throughout the Google content network to web users that have previously visited the site from an AdWords link. This is similar to behavioural targeting so that previous activity can be used to target new offers through text, display or video adverts.

Google provides an example of how this might work for an advertiser, such as a basketball team with tickets to sell. By putting a piece of code on the tickets page of their website, this will let them later show relevant ticket ads (such as last minute discounts) to everyone who has visited that page, as they subsequently browse sites in the Google Content Network. Several remarketing campaigns could also be run at the same time. For example, the company could offer discount game tickets to users who’ve previously visited the tickets page, advertise VIP hospitality packages to users who clicked on a “How to get to the arena” page, and advertise a sale on team merchandise to users who previously visited a YouTube brand channel.

The Google AdWords blog has announced a new reporting feature for the conversion tracking function, allowing advertisers to gain a greater insight into the behaviour of searches prior to the point of conversion. Called AdWords Search Funnels, this new range of reports is gradually being rolled out to advertiser accounts and can be accessed from the Conversions section of the Reports menu.

Currently, the conversions that are tracked in AdWords - such as sales, contact enquiries, newsletter sign-ups etc - are attributed to the last advert and keyword someone clicks before making a conversion. As online advertisers are now trying to identify the 'attribution' of a conversion over a possible series of previous actions through a search engine or website, the existing conversion data is limited since it hides the fact that many customers perform multiple searches before finally converting.

The new AdWords Search Funnels should help advertisers to see the full picture by giving them a better insight into the ads their customers have interacted with during their shopping process. This is done through a new set of reports that describe the ad click and impression behaviour on Google that leads up to a conversion. In addition to the existing Top Conversions report, the Search Funnels reporting area consist of 7 reports including Assisted Conversions, First and Last Click Analysis, Time Lag, and Path Length.

The reports mirror the layout of Google Analytics, although AdWords advertisers don't have to use Analytics to view this data. By showing which ads customers clicked on before ultimately converting, Search Funnels give advertisers a more complete picture of the value of their keywords, ad groups and campaigns. The blog post provides a typical example of how this might work for a hypothetical company using AdWords.

This is a significant development by Google AdWords and extremely beneficial to advertisers to enable them to understand their conversion process more accurately. It also lays down a challenge to Yahoo!/Bing with their PPC service, to match this sort of tracking and reporting in their current systems and the new ones they are likely to be developing together.

NB: Search Funnel data is currently limited to search ads showing on Google.com, for ad impressions and clicks within 30 days of the conversion. However, this is likely to be expanded to all advertisers and versions of Google in the future once the reporting service comes out of beta.

The Google AdWords blog has announced a new feature to help brand advertisers who use the AdWords content network. Although most AdWords campaigns are aimed at achieving a direct response from the advertising, brand advertisers tend to use display ad formats to raise awareness and purchase consideration for a product or service a person might buy at a later date (or often a combination of the two).

Google has now added a new feature which filters out "below the fold" inventory - that is, ads that might be served up onto a webpage, but are not actually seen by the user if they don't scroll down the page far enough to see the advert. This will enable brand advertisers to be more selective about where ads appear as the filter allows them to choose to show ads only in places that appear on the user's screen when the page loads, without requiring them to scroll down.

Google's blog says that with a host of different web browsers, monitor sizes, and screen resolutions, it's hard for advertisers to predict where an ad will land, since the same placement may appear differently on each user's screen. Therefore to simplify the process, Google has implemented a statistically driven solution to determine which ads are above and below the fold. This statistically driven model only considers ads "above the fold" if they are completely on-screen when the browser window loads.

This is an interesting development and one that should help brand advertisers monitor and control their advert performance and to get a better understanding of how well these work across different sites on the content network.

The Google AdWords blog has announced the use of click-to-call numbers for advertisers targeting mobile users. This facility has now completed a stage of beta testing and is being rolled out to AdWords campaigns in Australia and worldwide. Google has been developing better options for AdWords advertisers to target Internet-capable mobile phone users, and the click-to-call option recognises the fact that many mobile searchers would prefer to call from the advert, rather than visit the website to find the number.

AdWords advertisers can now add a location-specific business phone number in the mobile ads, so that users can click the number to call the business immediately. Ads can be served based on user location, so that for companies with multiple locations or stores, a potential customer will see - and can click to call - the phone number of their nearest location. This new feature also makes it easier for advertisers to fully measure the results of their ads by allowing them to track how many calls they actually receive within the AdWords interface.

Google says that the beta trial demonstrated that those advertisers who participated saw improved click-through rates, plus they also received more visits to their websites in addition to incremental phone calls. The cost of a click to call will be the same as the cost of a click to visit a website.