When search queries are ambiguous, Google attempts to disambiguate and present the most relevant results based on the user’s previous search history and analysis of the concepts within the query. We know this is the case with the organic results. Earlier this month, Amit Singhal on the official Google blog described some of the philosophy behind the ranking of search queries. He writes about the advances in understanding what the user actually wants beyond the 2-3 words that they type at any given time.

I saw some evidence of disambiguation happening in adwords just recently.

The example was with the query “web contacts”. The first search and you get a mix of ads, some for contact lenses and some for online dating. If you then search for “contact lenses” and then search for “web contacts” again, the ads shown are only those relevant to contact lenses. If you then do a search for “singles online” and then search for “web contacts” again, the mix of ads appears again.

Interestingly, once I got the subset then it didn’t matter if I typed in lots of unrelated queries, opened a new browser, restarted the computer or made sure I was logged out of personalised search. Whenever I searched for web contacts I only got contact lens ads. The only way to get the full set again was to search for singles online and then search for web contacts.

It’s similar to intersecting queries except that in this case it’s narrowing the results set rather than widening it and it appears to be wider in application than two consecutive queries.

Which adwords topics got the most attention in 2007? Here’s my top 5 list. What have I missed and what will be important in 2008?

1. Quality Score

This is always a favourite for discussion given that it has such an impact on campaign performance. It’s also complex and therefore susceptible to misinterpretation. Brad Geddes does a good job of explaining quality score.

2. New Adwords features - Top Ad Placement

The one that caused the biggest debate ahead of implementation would have to be the changes to the formula for top ad placement. Bloggers and forumites jumped on the idea that it would unfairly drive adwords costs up. Most commentators didn’t even bother to read the announcement properly or stop and think about it but jumped on the bandwagon once the consensus of opinion was reached. I’ve seen hardly any feedback since it was launched.

3. Most Maligned Adwords Feature - Expanded Broad Match

Expanded broad match would have to win the prize for the most hated feature. Here are a couple of “expanded match is EVIL” forum threads.

4. SEO versus PPC

The best posts on this were those describing how they work well together rather than one being better than the other but maybe I’m biased. Here’s a recent post from Dave Naylor with an example of organic and ppc working well together.

5. Pricing Models

How you charge for PPC services is always a favourite for debate. Alan Rimm-Kaufman shared his agency’s model and rates in a bid to open up the secrecy about pricing and structure.

Someone searched for the following and got to my blog:

change price in google adword text without reducing “”quality score”"

They probably didn’t find a good answer at the time so I’ll have a go now.

A common concern is that if you change anything at all in the ad copy you start afresh with a new ad and lose all benefits of a good quality score.

Quality score is tied to keywords not ads so in fact you don’t lose the quality score history by changing the ad copy. It’s a bit counter-intuitive. People click on ads. Click through rate is one of the biggest factors in determining quality score. However, it’s the click through rate associated with the keyword that counts. The quality score isn’t reset if you change an ad.

I have a better understanding now of what’s happening when sponsored links appear to be unrelated to the current search query and a hangover from the previous search query.
I blogged about it a couple of weeks ago showing an example where a search for wedding celebrants followed by a second search for string quartets resulted in a mix of ads for both celebrants and string quartets on the same page. Simon from the Found Agency pointed me to their blog post on the same thing where they have screenshots showing combined results for car insurance and child care.

Google’s explanation quoted on Search Engine Land is:

look at the user’s previous query and see how well it intersects with the current query

My initial interpretation was that this is based on some kind of semantic or topic matching. In other words an assessment of how relevant the second query is to the first query. I lost faith in the relevance argument when most of the examples I came across were for two queries that appeared to be completely unrelated - like the car insurance and child care example.

However it appears that the intersection is based purely on the combination of the actual words in the two queries. Mike Churchill has a detailed explanation but basically if all the words in a keyword phrase are present in the combination of search query one and search query two, then the ad will show on the second search if it didn’t for the first. For example, someone has the keyword phrase “large orange widgets” in their campaign. A search for large widgets will not show the ad but if this is immediately followed by a search for orange cars then the ad for large orange widgets should appear in the second set of search results as the two queries combined contain all the words.

The end result is untargeted and irrelevant ads. Not good! Even worse, as Mike points out, there isn’t a great deal you can do about it without adding a lot of complexity to the campaign management. There’s quite a lot of discussion happening about adwords “features” that are unwanted and detrimental to advertisers. This thread about expanded broad match on high rankings is one example. Maybe we’ll start to see some changes if Google starts to listen to their bigger advertisers or if enough people start recommending wholesale changes like avoiding broad match keywords.

I’ve started to notice personalisation happening in the delivery of adwords. An example came up today when I searched for “wedding celebrants melbourne”. I noticed an ad for “string quartet melbourne” and then searched separately for “string quartets melbourne”. I was shown a mix of ads for wedding celebrants and string quartets. Any search for string quartets after that had only relevant string quartet ads, no celebrant ads. I was able to replicate these searches with the same results.

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Is it reasonable to expect to know the rules when paying for advertising? The Google adwords blog stated yesterday that changes to the adwords quality score algorithm will not be pre-announced prior to implementation.

What’s odd about this is that there is quite an extensive help file for adwords. It’s not like the organic search algorithm which has never been outlined officially to the same degree. A search for quality score within the adwords help centre brings up 90 results and they answer questions like “what is a quality score and how is it calculated?”. Ok so at the end of every list breaking down the inputs to quality score there is the catch all “other relevance factors”. So there has always been the assumption that things are taken into consideration other than the main factors like click through rate, ad copy relevance and landing page relevance. However the announcement seems to hint at changes that might be worth announcing but nevertheless won’t be.

This was one part of the announcement. The post was mostly about the types of sites that may be singled out for a poor landing page quality score. These are:

• eBooks that show frequent ads or install malware
• ‘Get rich quick’ sites
• Comparison shopping sites
• Travel aggregators
• Affiliates that don’t comply with our affiliate guidelines

I was surprised to see comparison shopping sites and travel aggregators lumped in with the rest. On reflection it fits in with the philosophy of showing a broad variety of results to searchers as demonstrated by new initiatives such as universal search and the longer standing filtering of duplicate content.

I’m working on a new campaign which fits into the category “comparison shopping sites”. The website fulfils all the guidelines as laid out in the adwords help centre. It has relevant and original content on all landing pages. The campaign is organised into targeted ad groups with relevant ads. It’s only week three so still very early days but the campaign is suffering from a low number of impressions and I’m assuming that the quality scores are predictive and low and it’s a waiting game before realistic quality scores come into play.

It’s a different story if the site will continue to be penalised because it fits into a category that Google treats with special consideration. Comparison sites and travel aggregators are going to have similar content to other sites in their niche. Does it mean that only a subset of sites will be allowed to advertise and the rest will be forced out with high cost clicks due to quality score penalties?

The problems with broad and expanded match in Google adwords aren’t new but I’ve seen more discussion on it recently and I’ve also come across more examples in my own campaigns which I consider to be stretching the boundaries even more.

This article was sphunn (sphinned?, submitted to sphinn?) and generated some discussion on Rose’s blog and in sphinn itself.

It primarily talks about the problems with overlapping keywords in different ad groups. Sometimes broad match keywords can result in situations where you have carefully crafted a very targeted ad for a specific product and then Google displays an ad from another ad group unexpectedly (from your perspective). It typically occurs if you have an ad group with a general keyword like watches and another ad group with narrower keywords such as mens sports watches. If someone searches for mens sports watches then, in theory, either one of the keywords can trigger an ad as they both fit the criteria for broad matching with the search query. This is what I mean by overlapping keywords. From your perspective as an advertiser you want the ad targeted to mens sports watches but it’s not always the case. If the bid for the general keyword is higher this can be the one that is picked over the more relevant one.

It gets more complicated with expanded match. Ads can be triggered when someone searches for something related to your keywords. So, Google might consider timex watches to be relevant to mens sports watches and show your ad.

The result is more traffic, which can be good, and this is how it is justified by Google adwords. The big downside is ads showing for queries that really have no relevance to you. This lowers the click through rate and generates unwanted clicks.

The fixes are:

Just over a week ago I wrote about the rules for when Google ads are shown in the yellow box above the organic results on the left hand side. To recap, you don’t always see ads there and it depends on whether the score of the top ranked ad is high enough to qualify for a position there. The score is dependant on quality score multiplied by the actual cost of the click.

A week is a long time in the adwords world and the formula for top ad placement is about to be changed again.

What will change is instead of the actual cost per click being used to determine the score, the maximum bid will be used instead. This is supposedly to get more ads over the threshold and eligible for the yellow box slot.

So, say an advertiser bids a maximum of 50 cents for a particular keyword. Due to the way the costing system works they may only pay 30 cents for a click depending on what the advertiser in the position below pays. This will all remain the same but currently the 30 cents may not be enough to qualify for the yellow box. When the formula changes it will be the 50 cents that is taken into consideration.

So, will there be an increase in bids in a move for the top box position? I doubt it for the majority of cases. I’ve been the only bidder a few times though and in cases like that maybe it will make sense to set a higher maximum bid to be promoted to the top left. Any thoughts?

I’ve been in the UK for 3 weeks and fully intended blogging during that period but it didn’t happen. Anyway, I’m back on board now and will make up for it.

I’ll ease in gradually with a report on a great article by Gord Hortchkiss that was published in searchnewz.com. It’s a transcript of his interview with Nick Fox and Diane Chang from Google’s Ad Quality team. The subject is the adWords quality scoring and it’s a long read (well worth it though) so here are my highlights:

The bulk of the interview centres around the positioning of sponsored links at the top of the left hand side of the page above the organic listings. This is a very desirable position. Scanning studies have shown that the top of the left hand side is in the primary scanning path of the user. The links at the top of the left hand side are viewed more frequently than links on the right hand side.

Not all searches result in the display of ads in this top left hand corner. Often there are only sponsored links on the right hand side and there hasn’t been much information on the criteria for when ads are shown in the yellow box and when they are not.

The interview clarifies this to some degree in that the broad criteria is outlined

• Only high quality ads are placed at the top so the quality score has to be high
• The auction order is never broken (if someone bids a high enough price with a low quality score and their ad rank is number one, then the ad will be shown at the top but on the right hand side
• The maturity of the market plays a part and ads will be shown less frequently at the top in immature markets (China was used as an example of an immature market, US and UK as mature markets).

Here’s the interview transcript.

Be careful when using broad match keywords in a Google adWords campaign.

On the positive side, broad matching means that ads will run for variations of your keywords without the need to specify what all these variations might be. So in the example given in the adwords help file, the keyword web hosting might trigger ads for the search phrases web host or web hosting company.

However broad matching incorporates expanded matching so not only will ads show for variations in word order, and queries with additional words to the keywords, but ads will potentially show for synonyms and other related variations.

This might not be what you want and there may be times when the expanded matching can be much broader than you might expect. In a campaign I recently set up, a broad match on a generic product name triggered ads for search queries for a manufacturer name, very specific model numbers (not relevant to my client) and other products sold by the manufacturer.

There are two main ways to deal with it.

1. Build up a list of negative keywords and add them to the campaign

• use the keyword tools (particularly the adwords keyword tool as this will indicate potential expanded matches); extract the words that are not relevant and including them as negatives in the campaign
• run searches and seeing which words and phrases come up in the search listings and ads to uncover potential negatives
• analyse your website logs to extract non-relevant search queries or words that can be input as negatives
• run the new search query performance report to see which search queries triggered ads and what negatives are necessary in the campaign

2. Opt out of expanded match by using phrase and exact matching

By doing this you know when the ads will be triggered and you eliminate the instances of unwanted expanded matching.