• Seller Ratings (reviews) are matched to Adwords advertisers’ ads through the domain of the display URL of the ads.
• Seller Ratings allow users to make more informed purchase decisions.
• Adwords advertisers with good reviews on ads can potentially increase earnings by receiving more qualified leads.

Google Adwords Seller Ratings by Google Product Search

Google Adwords Seller Ratings Extensions are collections of user reviews aggregated by Google Product Search from:

• Reseller Ratings
• Bizrate
• Viewpoints
• ReviewCentre.com
• Google Checkout reviews

About Google Product Search Seller Ratings:

• Original rating by users are re-scaled to a 1-5 scale before showing up on Seller Ratings.
• At least 30 seller reviews are required before Google Product Search Seller Ratings show up.
• Reviews are not added to Google Product Search results in real-time.

Qualifications for Google Adwords Seller Ratings

Google Adwords Seller Ratings can show up on Adwords ads on Google.com, Google.co.uk, Google.de, Google.fr, and Google search partners.

Your Google Adwords ads are qualified to show Seller Ratings Extensions if:

• Adwords campaigns are opt-in to run on Google Search.
• Adwords ad does not already have Google Adwords PPC sitelinks.
• You as a business have at least 30 seller reviews and a rating of 4 or 5 stars on Google Product Search.

Other Adwords PPC Experts on Seller Ratings

• Blogstorm explains Google Adwords Seller Ratings when it was launched in the UK.
• Adwords Advisor explains how you can opt-out of Google Adwords Seller Ratings.

Click-through Rate (CTR) Improvement

Google proved Adwords display URL in lowercase letters could improve Adwords ads’ click-through rate (CTR), one of the important PPC metrics, after tested Google search results pages’:

• Font sizes
• Colors
• Layouts and spacing

Lowercase Display URL

Google Adwords will automatically change the uppercase/capital letters in your ads’ display URLs to lowercase when your ads are served.

• The domain part of Adwords ad’s display URL will always be shown in lowercase.
• The sub-directory part of Adwords ad’s display URL can still have the first letter capitalized.

For example:

• www.Example.com/Subdirectory will become www.example.com/Subdirectory
• Subdomain.Example.com/Subdirectory will become subdomain.example.com/Subdirectory

Other Changes to Adwords Display URL

Google has previously made policy changes to display URLs:

• Adwords Display URL Policy for Ad Groups
• Google Adwords Enforces Display URL Policy

A/B Ad Testing

If you are using one of the SEM/PPC systems (e.g. Kenshoo Search), run A/B testing on your ads to improve ads’ CTR and/or Adwords conversion rates.

Adwords Brand Zone Ads

Google offers two slightly different versions of Brand Zone ads during the Beta test period. Each Chinese Adwords advertiser has to submit both versions of ads in which they will be rotated to display during the Beta test.

The first version of Brand Zone ad displays a single company logo (90×90 image) on the left and 8 PPC site links beneath the ad headline, description, and display URL, all within the sponsor link area.

The second version of Brand Zone ad shows a company logo (90×90 image) on the left and a 220×210 image on the far right. Below the ad title, logo, description and display URL, the ad shows 4 PPC sitelinks with further descriptions next to each of the 4 site links.

Eligibility to Adwords Brand Zone and Google Adwords PPC Sitelinks

Adwords Brand Zone is eligible only to the brand owners. Only trademark (or brand) keywords that are above the minimum search volume threshold are eligible to participate.

Google Adwords PPC sitelinks will only show up when your ad is in the first position above the search results. Adwords Brand Zone ads can only appear on Google.cn and are restricted to appear in every 1 out of 10 searches that may trigger your brand (trademark) keywords.

Brand Zone ads follow Google Adwords search ad auction algorithm when ranking within Google’s sponsored links. Chinese advertisers participated are billed on cost-per-click (CPC).

With PPC sitelinks appearing under your Adwords brand zone ads when your trademark keywords are searched, you ads’ click through rates (CTR) are expected to increase. Higher CTR is one of the major factors for improving your Adwords Quality Score. Once your ads’ and keywords’ Quality Score are improved, your keywords’ actual cost-per-click (CPC) will decrease.

Google Adwords PPC Sitelinks in Other Countries

Darrin Ward first discovered Google Adwords PPC sitelinks appeared under Staples.com’s Adwords sponsored ads. Later, Search Cowboys found Google Adwords PPC site links in Germany.

Search Engine Land received Google’s confirmation about PPC sitelinks:

As part of our ongoing commitment to help users find the information they’re looking for online, we are testing a feature in which links to various pages of an advertiser’s website may appear within the text ads on Google.com. Presenting multiple landing page options is intended to make specific website information such as gift registries, special deals, store locators and the like more easily accessible to users. It also offers brand marketers a new way to quickly engage potential customers. This feature is currently in a limited beta with a small number of advertisers.

Google’s Policies on Adwords Trademark Keywords

In the US and many other countries, Google Adwords trademark keywords are open for fair competitions. In the US, trademarks can be used in Adwords ad text.

Google Adwords Ad Sitelinks Out of Beta

Inside Adwords Blog announced the official launch of Ad Sitelinks:

Ad Sitelinks is a new AdWords feature that allows you to extend the value of your existing AdWords ads by providing additional links to content deep within your sites.

Currently, the option to set up Ad Sitelinks will only appear for advertisers whose ads meet a certain high quality threshold.

If your account qualifies to run this feature, you’ll find the option to set up Ad Sitelinks in your Campaign Settings tab — it will appear as “Show additional links to my site” under the “Ad extensions” section.

Issues on Ad Sitelinks

The major downside is that Google Adwords Ad Sitelinks can only be set up on the campaign level. As long as your keyword meets the quality threshold, it will be triggered by some search queries and 4 additional links will be displayed beneath your triggered ad. However, the same 4 additional links each time will be displayed even though the keywords triggered are different, as long as they are within the same campaign. This prevents you from tracking conversions that came off a specific keyword and one of the specific ad sitelinks.

Google Adwords Ad Sitelinks are not suitable for campaigns that:

• Have extremely large amount of keywords
• Use more than one destination URLs (or landing pages)

Google repeats showing the first two sponsored ads again below the organic search results, in which the first two ads will require Google Adwords Quality Score high enough to rank above the organic search results. The third sponsored ad above the SERP does not seem to be eligible for an additional spot at the bottom.

For Google, the introduction of the bottom ads is another new way to further monetize from Adwords.

For Adwords advertisers, having 2 identical ads showed above and below the organic search results at the same time does not count as 2 impressions. With this new change, your trademark keywords on Adwords are most likely to be showed twice (above and below).

• US trademark policy on ad text
• Google Suggest

The Adwords US ad text trademark policy change has created some short window of opportunities for non-trademark owners who are in the search affiliate space. With all the non-trademark owners are now eligible to include trademark keywords in their Adwords ad texts. These ads are now more competitive in terms of click through rates, which means the clicks used to land on the trademark owners’ ads would have been decreased. The favorable condition to the non-trademark owners would have also caused them to bid more aggressively and drive up cost-per-click on trademark keywords.

The best defense for the trademark owners now is to rely on the continuous improvements of Google Adwords Quality Score.

The launch of the Google suggest Adwords ads makes it easier for users to find what they want with a single click.

Besides showing your Adwords ad in as the last item Google Suggest, Google also includes a direct link of the top organic search result as the first item in the “search suggest” list. The downside for PPC is that users who previously used to click on one of the top PPC ads will now click on the direct link of the top organic search result. Your benefit is that instead of paying for those Adwords clicks, now you are getting the traffic for free (via SEO).

Some of you may already have spotted this shift of traffic through your Google SEO and Adwords reports.

How other blogs talked about Adwords Trademark policy change:

• Google Loosens Its Ad Copy Trademark Restrictions: Now What?

• Suggestions on the results page
• Personalized suggestions
• Navigational suggestions
• Sponsored links in suggestions

The fourth feature (Sponsored links in Google Suggest) will definitely have some effects on your overall Adwords traffic and CTR. When this new feature is fully out of beta, your position one Adwords ads will start showing up in Google Suggest.

The first version of Google Suggest was officially launched in last August to:

• Help formulate queries
• Reduce spelling errors
• Saves keystrokes

SEO Book has some free search engine optimization tips on Google Suggest (including both short and long term influence on Google users’ search behavior).

How other blogs talked about Adwords Ads on Google Suggest:

• Ads in Google Suggest – Google Operating System
• Google Suggest Ads Hyperlinks, Personalization and Yes, Ads – Techcrunch
• Google Search Suggest Get Ads, Links and Answers – Search Engine Land

In the US, Google allows the use of trademarks in ad texts as long as your websites satisfy one of the following criteria:

• Resale of the trademarked goods or services
• Sale of components, replacement parts or compatible products corresponding to a trademark
• Informational sites

This ad text trademark policy update will be effective as of 15 June.

Before the policy update, non-trademark owners were not allowed to include trademark in their ad copy. However, Google has always been insisting one of the best practices is to include your keyword in your ad text.

Include one of your keywords in your ad text
Find the best performing keyword in your ad group and include it in your ad text, especially in the title. Whenever a user types that keyword and sees your ad, the keyword phrase will appear in bold font within your ad on Google. This helps draw the user’s attention to your ad and shows users that your ad relates to their search.

Part of your ad text will appear in bold whenever it matches or nearly matches a user’s search query.

The new policy will allow non-trademark owners to include trademark in their ad copy and compete with trademark owners’ ads on a more level ground.

Google already allows the use of trademark as keywords for most of the countries.

www.example.com
example.com
www.widgets.example.com
widgets.example.com
www.example.com/widgets/redwidgets/
www.example.com/index.html

However, the following URLs would not comply:

www.example.com
www.example.widgets.com

The above two URLs are considered as two different top-level domains as they are essentially:

example.com
widgets.com

If you have always been keeping one website (essentially one display URL) per Adwords account or per campaign, you will not be affected by this change.

The new display URL policy will be implemented on 24 February. This means ads that do not comply with this policy change will be disapproved by this date.

Ad position has been taken into account for the calculation of a more precise Quality Score.

Ads in high positions typically earn better CTR than those in low positions, because ads in high positions are more visible to searchers. To calculate the most accurate Quality Scores, it’s important that the influence of ad position on CTR be taken into account and removed from the Quality Score. We’ll update the portion of the Quality Score algorithm that accounts for ad position.

Higher quality ads are given the more opportunities to move above the search results.

We’re also improving the way we determine which ads show in the yellow region above the search results. In the past, if the ad with the highest Ad Rank did not meet the quality threshold, we may not have shown any ads above the search results. With this update, we’ll allow an ad that meets the quality threshold to appear above the search results even if it has to jump over other ads to do so.

• The domain of your ad group’s landing pages
• The geographic region of your server
• The HTML of your landing page, but it will be extended to other components on your page including images, flash, videos and Javascripts

A keyword’s load time grade is based on the average load time of the landing pages in the ad group and of any landing pages in the rest of the account with the same domain. If multiple ad groups have landing pages with the same domain, therefore, the keywords in all these ad groups will have identical load time grades.

When determining load time grade, the AdWords system follows destination URLs at both the ad and keyword level and evaluates the final landing page.

If your ad group contains landing pages with different domains, the keywords’ load time grades will be based on the domain with the slowest load time. All the keywords in an ad group will always have the same load time grade.

Multiple measurements will be taken when recording the load time of your landing pages to ensure accuracy.

When you keywords are affected by slow load time of your landing pages, an obvious sign is that your keyword’s minimum CPC will be raised. Alternatively, you may also check each keyword’s load time via the keyword analysis page. Your page’s grade is displayed next to “Landing Page Load Time”.

• The grading of “This page loads slowly” means your landing page quality and quality score may be negatively affected.
• The grading of “No problems found” means your landing page quality and quality score may not be affected.
• The grading of “No problems found” and “Load time is faster than the average in your server’s geographic region” means your landing page quality and quality score may be positively affected.

Good practices to prevent from affected negatively include minimizing the file size of your landing page by reducing the use of components that can take long time to load, such as flash or videos, and avoiding using redirects whenever possible.

For Adwords advertisers with text ads targeting the UK and Ireland, keywords that were disabled for trademark investigation may begin triggering their ads.

However, trademark policy within ad texts will be unchanged. Though all advertisers’ ads will be allowed to appear on sponsored links for their competitors’ branded / trademarked keywords, Google will allow only trademark owners to have their trademarked brand names appear on ads. For instance,

Say “Expedia” is considered a trademark. The owner can use “Expedia” as a keyword, and can include it in the ad text. Other advertisers are allowed to use “Expedia” as a keyword, but are forbidden from using it within ad text.

The downside for trademark owners certainly is that they may face more competitions on their branded keywords. Keyword prices may be deliberately pushed up by their competitors. Bidding on keywords that are of your competitor’s brand can have negative effects on quality score, and you may require professional PPC ad copy writing to complement.

Example #1:

If your destination URL is www.google.com, your display URL must also be www.google.com. The following would not be acceptable display URLs for an ad for www.google.com:

www.google.co.uk – because this URL leads to a different site
www.gogle.com – even though this URL simply redirects to www.google.com it is still not acceptable
www.gooogle.com – because this URL leads to a page showing content identical to www.google.com

Example #2:

Display URL: www.google.com/adwords
Destination URL: www.trackingurl.com/google123
Landing page URL: www.google.com would be acceptable

Display URL: www.google.com/adwords
Destination URL: www.trackingurl.com/google123
Landing page URL: www.trackingurl.com would not be acceptable

Example #3:

Display URLs such as the following:
sub.google.com
google.com/extratext
www.google.com/extratext

would all be acceptable for the landing page URL below, as the top-level domain of google.com is matched:
http://sub.google.com/miscellaneous

As advertisers, if you have not yet made the required changes, you will still have only several days to do so.

Making the Quality Score more transparent

Partially making the level of Quality Score available to Adwords advertisers is becoming essential, as since Yahoo! Panama’s pricing and ranking is still pretty much visible.

We’re releasing an optional Quality Score column that shows the minimum bid for all of the keywords within an ad group as well as a Great, OK, or Poor quality label for your keyword. You can select this column by clicking ‘Customize Columns’ in one of your ad groups (selecting this will also automatically populate the column for all other ad groups within that campaign). Use the quality label to get a quick overview of the quality of your keywords, or look at the minimum bid for a granular understanding of your Quality Score.

Updating the Quality Score algorithm

Google is determined to reduce or even to eliminate low quality ads altogether, by introducing an update of the Quality Score algorithm.

We’re launching improvements to the Quality Score algorithm that sets minimum bids for keywords in order to improve the quality of ads that we serve to our users. These changes should make it easier for high quality ads to enter the auction while also discouraging low quality ads. First, we’re improving the way that we set minimum bids for keywords where we have limited data. For example, if the system does not have any data on a keyword, we’ll try to assign that keyword a lower initial minimum bid until we have enough data to make a more accurate assessment of the Quality Score for that keyword in your account. Second, we’re improving the Quality Score algorithm to make it more accurate in predicting the quality of all ads. This will improve the overall quality of ads that we serve by lowering minimum bids for high quality ads and raising minimum bids for low quality ads.

Releasing Adwords Editor version 3.0

In the past Adwords Editor was built purely for search targeting campaigns, as advertisers were only able to make changes directly to your content targeting campaign within their Adwords accounts. However, with the new version of Adwords Editor, advertisers are now able to:

• Add or edit site-targeted campaigns.
• Add or edit negative sites for keyword- and site-targeted campaigns.
• Edit another account while posting or checking your changes.
• Pause or resume individual ads, keywords, and sites.
• See the number of rows you’ve selected in the data view.

Allowing the pausing of keywords

Many advertisers were used to delete their under-performing keywords which were costing them a fortune everyday. But now, we are able to simply pause each individual keyword with a single click.

Introducing Retail Knowledge Center

The retail knowledge center is obviously a great resource for PPC beginners to properly create their Adwords campaigns for their industry-specific needs.

We know that you want to keep up to speed on trends in your industry to make the most out of your campaigns. Now, to help you find more of the information that you need, we’ve created a new resource for our retail advertisers: the Retail Knowledge Center. Here you’ll find a wealth of material including information about setting up and optimizing your campaigns, as well as recommended Google products for your business. You can also join a discussion forum, read case studies from other retail advertisers, and peruse recent industry news items.

We want to do everything we can to serve the most relevant and highest quality ads to our users. By making improvements to landing page quality, we’re not only able to help users (who are your potential customers) find what they want, but also help you maximize your leads because your ads will no longer have to compete with ads that are providing a poor user experience. It was best to launch these long-planned improvements as soon as we were ready to go, technically speaking.

To summarize it, these are the 3 major points:

#1 High CTR does not mean high quality landing page

An ad with a high CTR does not necessarily translate to a good user experience. For example, an ad may promote a new computer science curriculum from a college with search query ‘New Computer Science Curriculum 2007′, but after clicking on the ad, the user may be taken to a page that shows Spanish language curriculum.

#2 High conversion rate does not mean high quality landing page

A landing page may have very high conversion rate simply because the product or service is very much seasonal and is currently in very high demand. However, Google focuses on the actual content and relevance of the landing page to a user who clicks on the ad and ends up on the web page.

#3 Using Website Optimizer does not improve the landing page quality

Inside Adwords Blog explained,

Using Website Optimizer to experiment with your landing page does not have any impact on your Quality Score or your landing page quality. Website Optimizer evaluates your conversion rates to tell you which marketing messages are converting most often on your landing page, whereas the Quality Score doesn’t incorporate any conversion information.

This is the description on homepage of Google Website Optimizer,

Website Optimizer is a free and self-service tool. Without extensive experience or resources, you can run multivariate experiments on landing page content, including headlines, promotional copy, and images.

Later the day it was confirmed by a few other Adwords advertisers that the Adwords system really had a error.