A Regular Expression, or Regex for short, is a string of text that allows us to manage, match, filter and extract text.

Regex is particularly useful in digital marketing where it’s often necessary to extract specific pieces of useful data from large data sets.

Extracting this useful data can be a cumbersome task when completed manually, often requiring significant time. With Regex, we can use formulae to simplify and speed up these tasks.

Whilst Regex can appear daunting or intimidating at first,  this blog should demonstrate how simple Regex can be, and help encourage other marketers to make a start on eliminating and automating the most boring and time-consuming parts of data analysis.

Common Tokens:

A Regular Expression consists of tokens. Each of these tokens matches a single character or series of characters within your data set or determine the position in which a character must be. We can see some examples of the most commonly used tokens in the table below.

Examples of Useful Applications for Regex in Digital Marketing:

Screaming Frog

In Screaming Frog we can perform custom extractions using Regex. Custom extractions allow us to extract tons of useful information from a website.

Some examples of data we can extract include; Email addresses, tracking IDs, Schema Markup, Page Titles, URLs, and tons more. If you can think of it, you can probably use Regex to find it!

In the image below we can see an example of a Regex used to find email addresses. This can be useful, as having email addresses in plain text on your website can be a security vulnerability and result in email addresses being scraped. 

1. Step 1 shows the beginning of the capture group
2. Step 2 matches any upper case letters, lower case letters, or underscores
3. Step 3 tells us we are looking for 1 or more instances of step 2
4. Step 4 matches with the @
5. Step 5 matches any upper case letters, lower case letters, or underscores
6. Step 6 tells us we are looking for 1 or more instances of step 5
7. Step 7 matches with a period, we must use a \ so we match with the period literally, and not the “.” function
8. Step 8 matches with any upper case letters, lower case letters, underscores, or periods
9. Step 9 tells us we are looking for between 2 and 5 occurrences of step 8
10. Step 10 shows the closing of the capture group

If we do a custom extraction of screaming frog using the Codefixer website and run a crawl we can then see any of the email addresses that appear on the website.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics allows us to use Regex for a number of applications such as; filtering views, creating goals, creating audiences, content grouping, and channel grouping. 

In the example below we can see an example of Regex used on Google Analytics to filter to only show pageviews for either blog or case study pages. Admittedly this is a bit overkill, you could just use (blog|case), but this gives a better demonstration as to how it works.

1. Step 1 shows the beginning of the capture group
2. Step 2 means that this must be the beginning of the string
3. Step 3 matches with a “/”. We use the “\” before the forward-slash to match with exactly that character literally
4. Step 4 matches with the word “blog”
5. Step 5 matches with any character except a new line one or more times
6. Step 6 means we need to match with something before or after the vertical bar
7. Step 7 means that this must be the beginning of the string
8. Step 8 matches with a “/”. We use the “\” before the forward-slash to match with exactly that character literally
9. Step 9 matches with the word “case”
10. Step 10 matches with any character except a new line one or more times
11. Step 11 shows the closing of the capture group

When we filter our Google Analytics view, we can now see that we are only seeing page-views for our pages that are in the blog or case studies sub-folders. 

Google Tag Manager

On Google Tag Manager we can use Regex to trigger Google Analytics Events when a user completes an action. 

One thing we can track using Google Tag Manager is users clicking a telephone number on the website. 

Occasionally, on a website, tracking simple events such as telephone number clicks can be complicated by formatting or variations of the telephone number appearing on the website. 

This complicates the process of being able to create a tag in Google Tag Manager to trigger an event when a telephone number is clicked due to it not being in a consistent format, meaning we can not simply set this trigger to fire when the Click URL contains “tel:02890 923383”. 

Let’s say we have the Codefixer telephone number links on the website in three different forms;

• tel:02890923383
• tel:028 90 923383
• tel:(+44) 2890 923383

We can use the following Regex to match with all three of the telephone numbers above.

1. Step 1 shows the beginning of the non-capture group “(?:”
2. Step 2 will match with “tel:”
3. Step 3 opens the first capture group
4. Step 4 matches with “028” at the beginning of the telephone numbers where this is applicable
5. Step 5 means “or”, so we can match with the first or the next set of characters
6. Step 6 matches with “(+44)”. The “\” is to escape the special characters +, (, and )
7. Step 7 closes the capture group
8. Step 8 matches if there are zero or one whitespace character
9. Step 9 matches with any character between 0-9
10. Step 10 matches if there are zero or one whitespace character
11. Step 11 matches with 1 or more of the previous steps and finally closes the non-capture group

How To Learn Regex:

Whilst the above guide provides an introduction, some examples, and practical applications for Regex, I’ll be first to admit that I’m by no means an expert, and reading a blog post is probably not going to make you an expert all of a sudden.

The main way to get better Regex is by rolling up your sleeves and practising your skills on a regular basis. 

As part of my role as PPC Lead in Codefixer, I’ve started using Regex regularly to simplify and automate simple tasks, and as time has progressed, I’ve begun using it in more complex or complicated situations which have helped to improve my understanding and uses for Regex.  

There are a ton of fantastic free resources online for learning Regex. The main three websites that I have found most useful are:

• https://regex101.com/ – A fantastic website for building, testing & debugging your Regex. I usually always have a tab open on my browser with Regex101 open. This is an absolute lifesaver when you just can’t quite figure out how to do something!
• https://regexone.com – Regexone is a website with easy to follow and informative, enjoyable exercises to help you learn and use Regex. The tasks begin quite easy, but quickly progress to become more challenging. Ideal for beginners.
• https://www.sitepoint.com/learn-regex/ – This Sitepoint blog explains Regex in very simple and easy to understand terms. Whilst you probably won’t need this every day, it’ll always have a place on my bookmark bar as a great resource for beginners.

The post Using Regex (Regular Expressions) in Digital Marketing appeared first on Codefixer.

The key to success on Google Ads in 2021 is having an organised, well structured, and correctly maintained Google Ads account. 

Auditing your Google Ads account regularly ensures the account is properly managed and is adapting to the fast-paced environment of paid search, keeping up-to-date with new product features and best practices as they continue to evolve. 

This Google Ads audit serves as a check-box exercise ensuring that critical errors are not missed when analysing your account, and serves to remove poor-quality and outdated components of your account, ensuring the account is in keeping with contemporary industry-leading methods and techniques. 

This audit consists of various sections pertaining to each level of your account, segmenting these steps into the different levels of your account including; Account level, campaign level, ad groups, ads, keywords, extensions, and conversions. 

Whilst some sections of this audit may be more, or less relevant than others depending on your specific objectives, products, and/or services, we endeavour to provide a holistic guide of overall Google Ads account management and provide guidelines relevant to every account irrespective of these distinctive characteristics. 

Account Level

Account Settings:

• Ad Suggestions – This should be set to “Don’t Automatically Apply…”, If this is enabled, suggestions from account notifications will be automatically applied 14 days after notification. 
• Auto-Tagging – This must be set to “Yes”. This allows Google Ads & Google Analytics to correctly attribute site visits from Google Ads.
• Call Reporting – This must be enabled if Call Extensions or Website Call Tracking is being used so we can analyse the call details report.  
• Inventory Type – Inventory types provide an extra layer of control over the content your Video ads show on by letting you opt-out of groups of sensitive content.
• Excluded Content – This allows us to opt-out of showing our ads on the search & display network on sensitive content.
• Excluded Types & Labels – This allows us to opt-out of showing our ads on certain types of content or digital content labels. 

Linked Accounts:

• Google Analytics – Google Analytics must be linked to track paid traffic, and to import goals and audiences.
• Google Merchant Center – Google Merchant Center must be linked to advertise items on your shopping feed in Google Shopping campaigns.
• YouTube – YouTube must be linked for monitoring view count, remarketing & viewing engagements.
• Search Console – Google Search Console must be linked to view the paid & organic report.

Billing Settings:

• Payment Users – The payment user should be someone that isn’t likely to leave the company or a shared accounts department email address. This is very difficult to change if it’s not possible to get in contact with the person that was previously listed as the payment user.
• Payment Methods – Ensure the payment method hasn’t expired, or that there is a secondary payment method added. 
• Identity Verification – If Google Ads has requested identity verification it is imperative that this is completed within the timescale and accurately to prevent disruption of service. There are a limited number of attempts to complete this, so it’s worth taking the time to ensure this is done correctly.

Shared Library:

• Negative Keyword Lists – Negative keyword lists should be organised by theme and applied to appropriate campaigns. Negative keywords should very rarely be applied at the campaign or ad group level. It’s generally recommended to have the match type set to phrase for negative keywords.
• Placement Exclusion Lists – Placement exclusion lists should be used to prevent display and YouTube ads from showing on poor quality websites, apps, and videos. These can usually be shared between accounts. There are extensive placement exclusion lists available online for free.

Campaign Level

Campaign Settings:

• Campaign Name – The campaign name should accurately describe the purpose and scope of the campaign, including the type of campaign, where it’s targeting, and what it’s advertising.
• Campaign Status – This can be enabled, paused or removed. Check that campaigns that shouldn’t be running are paused, and campaigns that should be running are live. 
• Campaign Goal – Campaigns should have a relevant campaign goal dependent on the purpose of the campaign. This can be leads, sales, or website traffic.
• Networks – Generally search network & display network should be disabled. 
• Locations – Check that the locations selected are the correct location you intend to target and that no additional locations have been entered by mistake, or left in from the defaults.
• Location Options – Ensure that target setting under location options is set to “People in, or regularly in your targeted locations” to prevent ads from showing to users outside of the targeted locations. 
• Campaign Budget – There should be a sufficient dedicated budget for campaigns using automated bidding strategies, and the campaign should not show as “Limited By Budget”. 
• Bidding – The bidding option should be appropriate for the bidding strategy. Campaign level bidding is used to set a max CPC, or target return on ad spend on some automated bidding strategies, otherwise, this is handled at the ad group level.
• Dynamic Ad Targets – Campaigns with Dynamic Search Ads or Dynamic Remarketing ads should have a page feed for search ads applied, or a feed and filter applied for Dynamic Remarketing.
• Conversions – The “Use the account-level ‘Include in ‘Conversions’ settings” option should usually be applied. 
• Ad Rotation – Ad rotation should be set to “Optimise: Prefer best performing ads” unless when specifically testing new ad variations. 

Ad Groups

Ad Group Settings:

• Ad Group Name – The ad group name should accurately describe the purpose and scope of the ad group, briefly describing the keyword theme of the ad group.
• Ad Group Status – This can be enabled, paused or removed. Check that ad groups that shouldn’t be running are paused, and ad groups that should be running are live. 
• Bidding – On campaigns with manual bidding strategies the bids are set at the ad group level. Ensure there is an appropriate bid applied in the ad group settings.
• Ad Rotation – This should normally be set to “Use campaign setting”, the default option.
• Targeting Expansion – Targeting expansion should be disabled when targeting audience lists on display campaigns to prevent poor quality impressions and clicks.

Ads

Ads Best Practice:

• Ad Variations – Each search ad group should have a variety of expanded text ads with unique headlines and descriptions. These should be regularly reviewed and updated to test well-performing combinations. Each display ad group should have a variety of dimensions for standard display ads, or assets for responsive display ads. 
• Ad Strength – Responsive search ads and responsive display ads should have an ad strength of average, good, or excellent. Ads showing a poor ad strength should be updated to include more high performing keywords in the headlines and descriptions in responsive search ads, or a better variety of assets in responsive display ads.
• Ad Types – Each search ad group should contain, at a minimum, one responsive search ad, and two expanded text ads.
• Ad Status – This can be enabled, paused or removed. Check that ads that shouldn’t be running are paused, and ads that should be running are enabled. 

Keywords

Keywords Best Practice:

• Keyword Match Types – Keywords should be a combination of phrase and exact match in most circumstances. A high number of broad match keywords suggests a poor quality ad group.
• Search Term Accuracy – Assess the search terms report and identify the quality of these compared to the keywords that they have matched with. Poor quality search terms should be identified and used to populate the negative keyword lists. 
• Keyword Quality Score – Check that keyword quality score is good. If the quality score of the keywords is very low it could suggest that the keywords are not relevant to the ads, the landing page quality is poor, or the expected clickthrough rate is low. Consider pausing low quality score keywords.
• Conflicting Negative Keywords – Look for conflicting negative keywords, this can be found in the recommendations tab, or you can use a script to scan your account for negative keyword conflicts. 
• Keyword Relevancy to Ad Group – Make sure that the keywords in each ad group all match a similar theme and are not applied indiscriminately. If there are a large number of keywords with poor relevancy you may want to consider segmenting these to create new ad groups.

Ad Extensions 

Ad Extensions Best Practice:

• Call Extensions – If one of the goals of the Google Ads account is to generate calls make sure a call extension has been added at the account or campaign level and that there is a conversion action applied.
• Location Extensions – If users can visit the business location, location extensions should be applied to the account. This will allow us to measure Google hosted conversions such as store visits, calls, direction requests, site visits, and messages. 
• Structured Snippet Extensions – Structured snippets should be used to highlight products or services offered.
• Image Extensions – Image extensions should be used to display extra information to users on the search engine results page. 
• Dynamic Image Extensions – Dynamic image extensions can be used in place of, or complementary to standard image extensions. These should be monitored to ensure no inappropriate images are showing.
• Sitelink Extensions – Sitelinks should be applied to the account, campaigns, or ad groups and should contain sitelink text and two high-quality descriptions. 
• Callout Extensions – Callout extensions should be used to highlight information about the business, products or services.
• Price Extensions – Where price extensions are used they should be up-to-date and relevant to the ads they are showing on. 
• Automated Extensions – Automated extensions should usually be disabled with the exception of the seller rating extension where appropriate.

Conversions

Conversion Actions:

• Calls From Ads – This conversion action is triggered when users call from the call extension on the ad. Ensure an appropriate click-through conversion window has been selected and that the call length is set to a minimum of 20/30 seconds to ensure users who connect and drop off in the first few seconds aren’t counted as a conversion.
• Conversions Imported from Google Analytics – Goals in Google Analytics that are of high value should be imported to Google Ads. These may include contact form tracking, lead form submissions, or similar. 
• Website Call Tracking – Website call tracking can be implemented with Google Tag Manager allowing us to track information in the call details report from users who call the telephone number on the website.
• Google Hosted Conversion Actions – If location extensions are added to the account Google hosted conversion actions will be automatically applied to the account.

Conversion Settings:

• Attribution Models – Consider which attribution model is most appropriate for the conversion actions. This will generally depend on the length and complexity of the conversion paths. The attribution generally shouldn’t be left on the default of last-click, however, this doesn’t affect conversions, only how these are attributed to each interaction the user has. If data-driven attribution is available it’s suggested that this is used.
• Call Conversion Action – Ensure a call conversion action has been applied so that details of calls received from the Google Ads account aren’t missed on the conversion reporting.
• View-Through Conversions – View-through conversions are useful in identifying ad impressions that haven’t resulted in a click, but have still led to the user converting on the site. This should be enabled. 

If you would like to discuss improving your Google Ads account don’t hesitate to contact us!

The post The Ultimate 2021 Google Ads Audit Template appeared first on Codefixer.

In December 2019 there was a WordStream Blog suggesting Google was now rolling out new image extensions to a select group of advertisers.

In July 2020 Google then released a blog entitled “Decoding decisions to grow online sales”. In this blog, Google announced that they were launching an image extensions beta program, which ran until May 2021 when image extensions were extended globally to eligible accounts across the platform. This was rolled out in parallel with Dynamic Image Extensions.

In the image below we can see how image extensions were originally supposed to look back in 2013!

What Are Image Extensions?

Image extensions allow advertisers to display a landscape (1.9:1) or square image (1:1) alongside their search ads for users searching on mobile devices. 

The introduction of image extensions allows us to further enrich and enhance our search ads, helping us to provide more information to the user, as well as helping our ads stand out from the competition. 

These new image extensions can be added at either campaign or ad group level, and each ad group or campaign can have 20 individual image extensions each. 

There are now two types of image extensions; Standard Image Extensions, and Dynamic Image Extensions.  

What’s The Difference Between Image Extensions & Dynamic Image Extensions?

Standard Image Extensions are simply added at the ad group or campaign level on your search campaigns. These image extensions are generated using assets that have been manually added to the Google Ads account and can be either a square image of 1:1 aspect ratio or a landscape rectangular image with dimensions of 1.9:1. Whilst adding our image extensions there is also a function available enabling us to crop our images if they are not of suitable dimensions. There are other requirements to ensure your extensions aren’t disapproved, we will go into this in more detail further down this blog.

Dynamic Image Extensions are generated from images that are currently available on existing landing pages from the website your ads are pointing towards. To enable Dynamic Image Extensions Google requires that you sign a box acknowledging the following content disclaimer; 

“I confirm that I own all legal rights to the images on the landing pages used by this account (or I have permission to share the images with Google). I hereby instruct Google to publish these images on my behalf for advertising or other commercial purposes.”

Simply put, once you have found the rather difficult to find setting to enable Dynamic Image Extensions and accepted the conditions, Google will begin presenting images available on your landing pages alongside your ads. 

As always, with any Dynamic vs Standard features within Google Ads, the main benefit of the former vs the latter is that we can have much better control over which content we are displaying to users seeing our ads in the SERPs. 

At Codefixer, we have found it particularly useful to segment the image extensions as much as possible. Results tend to be best when the image most closely reflects the ad, landing page, and keyword that they appear alongside. For example, if you have a campaign for “Mens’ Footwear”, and an ad group each for; “Mens’ Work Boots”, “Mens’ Adidas Trainers”, “Mens’ Wellington Boots”, and “Mens’ Slippers” it’s best to find images that match the ad groups, rather than finding one image for “Mens’ Footwear”. Pretty straightforward stuff, but I thought that would be worth highlighting. 

How Do Image Extensions Work?

Image extensions can display alongside your search ads to users searching on mobile devices. We haven’t yet been able to confirm any instances of image extensions showing up on either desktop devices or tablets. We will continue to monitor and update this in due course if we have evidence that these extensions are also appearing on desktop computers or tablets. 

Image extensions seem to appear only when your ads are showing on the top of the page, however, they are not limited to appearing on ads in position #1. You may wish to consider a target impression share bidding strategy to get these extensions to show as often as possible. 

In the image below we can see an example of how these image extensions appear to users in Belfast searching for “PPC Belfast”. In this example, the user (me) was searching from a mobile device (simulated iPhone X), and in this instance, our ad appeared in position #1.

What Are The Image Extensions Requirements?

For your image extensions to be consistently approved you must meet a few simple criteria to ensure the images are of high enough quality and meet the image extension requirements put forward by Google. 

First, there can be no promotional text or graphic overlay on your images. This includes having your brand logo appearing on your image. Google will also disapprove your logo if you are attempting to use this as an image extension on its own – Google appears to be extremely strict on this policy. If you submit an image with text or graphic overlay this will likely be immediately disapproved. There is currently no way to submit the image extension for automatic or manual review, so once it is disapproved it will remain that way. 

Google will also disapprove any image extensions submitted that have too much blank space on the image. This will also cause a disapproved image extension where the focus of the image is such that the product or service cannot be easily recognised. 

Images that consist of collages or images which are combined will also be disapproved. Google suggests that images containing “naturally occurring” collages such as scrapbooks, catalogues, etc, are all acceptable images, but any image collage that has been created in post-product will be disapproved. 

Image extensions can also be disapproved for some reasons relating to poor image quality. These include blurry images that make the subject unrecognisable or difficult to identify. Likewise, images that are visually warped or skewed are not appropriate for image extensions. Images that are poorly cropped will also be likely disapproved. All of these reasons relate to poor picture quality, as such, ensure you have the highest quality images possible when creating your image extensions. 

Prohibited content rules are also applied to image extensions, so ensure that images used do not contain nudity or sexually suggestive images. This rule sounds like it could be rather subjective, so it’s better to err on the side of caution and ensure all of your images are appropriate for all ages. 

Do Image Extensions Improve Campaign Performance?

We have now been running our image extensions for a couple of weeks, and already have discovered some interesting results during this short experiment. 

Across the 8 accounts that we used for testing image extensions, our clickthrough rate improved by having images extensions on all but 1 account, however, this account (#8) was also the one with the least impressions, clicks, and conversions on the image extensions throughout the testing period, therefore the integrity of this account data is less complete than on the other accounts and would benefit from continuous testing.

Accounts with the most impressions, clicks and conversions during our experiment (#3, #4, and #6) all appear to have a considerably higher clickthrough rate on our ads with image extensions, compared to the overall account average. 

 The average clickthrough rate on the ads with image extensions was 14.73%, whilst the average clickthrough rate on ads without image extensions was 9.61%. This represents a 53.28% increase in the clickthrough rate from just having image extensions on the ads. Whilst I’m eager to continue to test this further, it’s a promising result.

Improvements to the conversion rate on these accounts are less pronounced than that of the clickthrough rates. On 3 of the 8 accounts, our conversion rate decreased when comparing ads with image extensions with the overall account average. 

Our conversion rate did, however, improve on 5 of the 8 accounts we tested, with some of them showing considerable improvements. 

Our average conversion rate across all accounts was 10.27%, whilst our overall average conversion rate for ads with image extensions was 12.07%. This represents a 17.53% increase to our average conversion rate across our 8 test accounts, which is a considerable improvement.

Following a short, and not particularly scientific test with these 8 accounts, we can see that the data supports the hypothesis that overall, including image extensions on Google Ads appears to have a positive effect on, both, the clickthrough rate and conversion rate of our ads. 

Google Ads Account Eligibility Requirements For Image Extensions.

If you haven’t received access to image extensions yet on your Google Ads account, you may just need to remain patient and these should be made available on the account in due course. As of the date of writing this blog (15/6/21) we have still only received access on about half of our accounts, of which, most have only been available since the beginning of June, with only a small number of accounts given access in May. 

Google has, however, also provided us with account eligibility requirements for image extensions. 

• Account has been open for more than 90 days.
• Account has a good history of policy compliance.
• Account is in an eligible vertical or sub-vertical. Sensitive verticals or sub-verticals (for example, sexual content, alcohol, gambling) aren’t eligible for image extensions.

The post Comprehensive Guide to Google Ads Image Extensions appeared first on Codefixer.

This was in response to increasing concern relating to 3rd party tracking of users on the web. Other technology behemoths, like Apple, announced back in March 2020, almost a full year ago, that they were disabling 3rd party tracking by default from Safari, the native browser on iPhones, from version 13.1 onwards.

So what does the 3rd of March blog actually tell us?

Once you get past the grandstanding, it boils down to two main key points. First, that the future will be one where Google Ads divorces itself from tracking users with 3rd party cookies stored in the users’ browsers, and secondly, that Google is instead focusing on interest-based user targeting.

What is interest-based user targeting?

Interest-based user targeting will (rather than storing a cookie in the users’ browser) use on-device processing to help keep users browsing history secure on their device, in turn, making it more difficult to reveal personally identifiable information.

Google has, in turn, suggested a pathway forward for advertisers to reach audiences by clustering these users into interest groups. These new measures have been named “Federated Learning of Cohorts”, whatever that means.

The Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC for short) allows for a browser to use machine learning to aggregate users into audience groups based on URLs the user has visited, the content on those URLs, and “Other factors”, which is strangely non-specific.

Google has released a full whitepaper on GitHub regarding FLoC.

The key difference between 3rd Party Cookies and FLoC is that with FLoC, the users’ browser information is stored locally on the users’ browser and not distributed or uploaded anywhere outside of the device.

Benefits of FLoC over 3rd Party Cookies.

FLoC protects the security and privacy of the end-users data and prevents personally identifiable information from being distributed to anyone outside of their device. FLoC will also generate audience cohorts based on the previous weeks browsing behaviours, ensuring that your data is up-to-date, in turn improving the integrity of the data collected.

Another benefit of FLoC over 3rd Party Cookies is cross-device tracking. Creating audiences with cookies has certain limitations when tracking users across multiple devices. Using myself as a case study, I have four main devices, all with different cookies; My work computer is used for mainly PPC activities, my mobile phone is used for browsing the web, listening to Spotify and watching videos, my home PC is used for gaming, and my smart TV is used for Netflix and YouTube.

Now, just because I’m on one device doesn’t inherently mean I’m not still interested in PPC, browsing, Spotify, gaming, Netflix or YouTube. However, the ads I receive on each device are hugely different despite the fact I’m logged in using the same email addresses on each device. With FLoC audiences these different devices shouldn’t matter as the audience cohorts I belong to will be due to a user-id and not a cookie.

Limitations of FLoC over 3rd Party Cookies.

What Google hasn’t really addressed directly is how this will comply with international regulations and requirements for data processing such as GDPR. This is certainly something that will need to be addressed at some stage.

A second problem related to FLoC is that it will not be universal from the get-go. By introducing FLoC Google is trying to encourage device and browser developers to adopt this as the industry standard. But what’s to say it will? Companies like Mozilla and Apple will take some persuading before implementing FLoC. After all, Firefox and Safari have disabled 3rd party tracking by default on their browsers for over a year now.

The post Google Ads – Cookies vs FLoC – Guide for Advertisers appeared first on Codefixer.

1. Businesses were becoming much more diligent in how they spent their marketing budgets.
2. Most businesses that previously hadn’t considered digital marketing as a core function of their business were immediately thrust into the reality that it was no longer a choice, it was absolutely essential.

This blog will hopefully help some of you who are new to the world of PPC marketing, and even help some more experienced users with some of the tips and tricks we’ve picked up on over the years.

1. Do you suffer from forgetfulness during your busy days of grinding Google Ads? 

If so, leave a note on your Google Ads account whenever you make a significant change such as adding new keywords, incorporating new bidding strategies, or adjusting your campaign targeting. 

By adding a note it will allow you to better identify the performance of the account before and after changes have been made. This makes it much easier to work out what is happening to your Google Ads account, and why. 

Simply look at the date of the label, and select “Change History” in your second column. We can then identify which change to the account was most likely to cause the change in performance.

2. Want to see the exact steps users take before successfully converting on your site? 

We can use the “Top Conversion Paths” report on Google Analytics to analyse the user behaviour flow. 

To find this, click on “Conversions” on Google Analytics in your left side-bar, then “Multi-Channel Funnels”, and select “Top Conversion Paths”. Use the advanced settings to show only paths from users who have visited from the MCF Channel Grouping Path including “Paid”. 

Once this is done, we can choose to show a secondary dimension for “Search Query Path”. Ensure only valuable conversions are shown on this report and set the lookback window to 90 days to see the maximum amount of data. 

We can now look at the different visits a user makes before successfully converting including viewing the search terms they used to be matched with your ads on Google.

3. Do you own one of those Google Ads accounts with tons of disorganised negative keywords? 

Here’s a tip – Don’t add negative keywords to the Campaign or Ad Group level unless necessary. 

Instead, create Negative Keyword Lists (found in the Account Library) and apply these at the campaign level where applicable. Keep these lists closely themed, such as having a negative keyword list for; competitors, cheap/DIY type searches, and to prevent ads appearing for users searching for irrelevant searches. 

A business may offer Industrial Tank Cleaning as a service, and want to bid on the keyword “Tank Cleaning”.  

The problem is, there are 3,600 searches for “Fish Tank Cleaning” each month, and only 390 searches for “Tank Cleaning”, as such, without having the negative keyword, “Fish”, you would run the risk of wasting your budget each day without any users having the chance to find you for the services you offer! 

(Yes, I learned this from experience!)

4. Noticing users from strange locations clicking on your ads?  

Presuming your location targeting is correct, this is likely due to one pesky hidden campaign setting. 

When you create a new campaign the default location targeting setting is set to target users “In, regularly in, or show interest in your targeted locations”. 

The problem with this is, I don’t care if someone in another location has spent a few hours binging YouTube documentaries on the history of Vikings in Ireland. They’re very unlikely to avail of the services of an emergency plumber in Belfast if they’re currently located in Timbuktu. 

To fix this, simply change the setting to “People in, or regularly in your target locations”. 

This can be found by selecting your campaign, clicking on settings, expand your location settings, and click on “Location Options”. Once here, you can edit your setting and click save. You should now no longer receive clicks on this campaign from users outside your target areas.

5. Ever wonder why your display campaign targeting a 30-day remarketing audience of 1,000 users is gaining tens of thousands of impressions per month? 

This is most likely down to another sneaky default setting, this time found in the targeting settings on your display ad groups called “Targeting Expansion”. 

This setting allows Google to also show your display ads to other users who are similar to your audience. However, how can Google create an audience similar to users who have added an item to cart and abandoned, or visited a specific product page? It can’t, turn this off, it will severely skew your results and guarantee you’ll be spending eternity adding negative placements to your campaign. 

To turn this setting off, select your display ad group, and click on settings. Following this, select “Edit Ad Group Targeting”, once here, just slide the targeting expansion slider to the left, and click save.

6. Is your business able to answer the phone 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? 

Ours neither. 

If you have set opening hours, and are missing calls from users calling out of hours, consider scheduling your Call Extensions to only appear during business opening hours. 

85% of the users whose calls you miss won’t call back! Not scheduling your call extensions could be costing you money. 

To add scheduling to your extensions, simply click the extension and select “Advanced Settings”, here we can add a custom schedule to our extension. 

You may also wish to consider running a sitelink extension directing users towards your contact page when your call extension isn’t active, meaning you’ll have warm leads by the time you get to the office!

7. Thinking of creating some new Google Ads campaigns? 

First, plan them out on paper rather than trying to build the campaign from memory.

Planning your campaigns correctly will ensure you haven’t missed any crucial components, and will allow you to visualise how the campaign will be structured without having to completely pull it apart and build it back together again! 

This is one of the most important factors in planning and building a well structured Google Ads account. 

8. Can’t decide on which keyword match types to use on Google Ads? 

Most Google Ads users are familiar with Broad, “Phrase”, and [Exact Match] keywords. 

But did you know that there is a 4th keyword match type? 

+Broad +match +modifier keywords are designated, as such, with a + before each word. For a user to match with a broad match modifier keyword their search query must contain every word preceded by the + in your keyword (or a close variant). 

This means broad match modifier keywords generally have less wastage than broad match and are more flexible than phrase match keywords as there can be varied orders in which the words appear in. 

This is the Goldilocks principle, not too broad, not too specific, just right!

9. Sick and tired of your display images appearing on nothing but spammy looking mobile apps? 

Not to bother, 5 minutes of work and you’ll never appear on one again! 

First, we need to download Google Ads Editor. Next, we must open the account, and select our offending campaign. Under “Keywords and Targeting” select “App Categories, Negative”. Simply right-click, click “New”, select “All Apps” click “Ok” and post your changes. 

You’ll now never see a mobile app appear in your placements for this campaign again.

10. Did you know that by default, you’ve probably allowed Google to make changes to your Google Ads account whenever they feel like it?

On your Google Ads account settings, there is an option for “Ad Suggestions”. 

With the default setting, Google will automatically implement recommendations to your account after 14 days. This means Google can automatically make changes to your keywords, ad copy and landing pages. 

To stop this from happening, visit your account settings, select “Ad Suggestions” and set the option to “Don’t automatically apply ad suggestions”. 

11. Are you using call extensions on your ads? 

If so, take 1 second to double-check that you have call tracking enabled in your account settings. 

This allows us to view valuable information in the call details report from users who have called from our call extensions on our ads. 

To view a detailed report of the users who have called, click on “Reports” at the top of your Google Ads dashboard, select “Predefined Reports”, then “Extensions”, and finally click on “Call Details”. Here we can see information such as the start time and duration of the calls, the date, the user’s telephone number, and the keyword that the user matched with when they clicked to call.

12. Confused by the jargon and not sure which bidding strategy to use on your Google Ads account? 

To put it simply, Google allows you to choose from one of two types of bidding, a manual bidding strategy, or an automated bidding strategy. 

The benefits of using automated bidding is that Google uses historical data and machine learning to optimise the performance of your bidding strategy. 

Manual bidding strategies, whilst not benefiting from historical data and machine learning, allow us to have much more control over how much we pay for our clicks. For this reason, we generally recommend users start off with the manual bidding strategy, manual CPC, and starting off bidding low. 

When the account begins delivering results and has a higher volume of clicks and conversions we can then move over to an automated bidding strategy, such as Target ROAS, Maximise Conversions, Maximise Clicks, or Target CPA. 

Which automated bidding strategy you decide on will depend on the objective of the campaign. If you are hoping to generate as many clicks as possible to get users into the top of your funnel and build your audience lists, then Max Clicks would be the better option. Want to generate as many leads as possible for your budget? If so, Max Conversions would be most appropriate. If you know how much each lead is worth to your business you can then try setting a target CPA bid strategy to get leads at a chosen cost. Websites with eCommerce tracking tend to benefit most from the Target ROAS bidding strategy, where Google will try to achieve a certain return on your Google Ads budget.

13. Would you like to see through the eyes of the users you’re targeting on your Google Ads campaigns? 

No problemo! Using only Google Chrome we can set our location to anywhere on earth, allowing us to emulate what users see on the search engine results page. 

To change your location on Google Chrome, first, open Developer Tools by pressing f12, and press ESC to open the bottom drawer.  Once here, click on the three dots on the left side and navigate to sensors. Once here, we can use Google’s preset list of locations, or add locations of our own. When creating your own locations, simply go to Google Maps and find the coordinates of the location you would like to emulate your location for, go back to Sensors, click manage, and add as many as you like! To then select these locations, simply select the location you would like to search from in the dropdown menu, and start searching on Google (Don’t forget to click “update location” at the bottom of Google and turn location tracking on!!)

14. Tired of completing the same mundane tasks on Google Ads each and every day?

Fortunately for you, so is everyone else, and odds are, someone has already automated that task for you! 

Google Ads allows users to use scripts to do anything on your account that a human can do (and more!). Best of all, little to no coding is required whatsoever. 

Simply copy the script, click “Tools” on Google Ads, select “Scripts” under “Bulk Actions”, paste it in and hit save. 

Two great scripts to get started with are the keyword conflict scanner, which identifies negative keywords blocking your ads from showing, and the link checker script, which will notify you if a URL is broken. 

The sky is your limit with this one, there are thousands of scripts available out there for nearly every imaginable situation!

15. Are you finding it difficult to determine which keywords to use on your Google Ads campaigns?

Fortunately, there are a few tools which can help you to get started. 

Google Keyword planner in the Shared Library in Google Ads is a useful tool to begin prospecting for new keywords, we can start with a small selection of keywords, or a website URL and Google Ads will provide a suggested list of relevant keywords. 

Ahrefs, a paid SEO tool, has a feature called Keyword Explorer. With this tool, we can again enter keywords, or a URL to receive a list of recommended keywords closely matching your seed keywords or URL. 

Ubersuggest is similar to Keyword Explorer in Ahrefs and completely free for those without an Ahrefs account. 

Answer The Public is a handy tool that provides you with contextual searches related to your keywords, however, a free account will only allow you a limited number of searches. 

When used in combination with one another, these 4 tools will certainly get you well on your way with prospecting a list of keywords to target (Don’t forget to also pick out the rubbish ones to add to your negative keyword lists!).

16. Have you royally mucked up something on your Google Ads account by mistake and worried about how you’re going to get yourself out of this mess?

Okay, so just remain calm for a minute. 

There may be a very simple solution to this. Google Ads has a useful feature called Change History. In here, we can select a date range and look at the changes made on the account. What’s also very useful is that we can also undo these changes from here. 

On your Google Ads overview, select “All Campaigns”, and navigate to “Change History” in the second column (you may need to click +More). Once here, find the offending change, and click undo. Just note, some changes can not be undone. 

Never delete anything from your Google Ads account unless absolutely necessary, just pause. Once something is removed from a Google Ads account it’s almost impossible to get it back.

17. Have you considered tracking call data from users visiting your website from Google Ads? 

Now, what if we wanted to start collecting detailed data from users who click on an ad, and call the telephone number on our website? 

For this, we’ll need to have Google Tag Manager installed on our website. 

To set up advanced website call tracking, visit the conversions window on Google Ads and click to create a new conversion action. Next, click on phone calls, followed by “Calls to a phone number on your website”. Complete the details and select next. We can now see a tab saying “Use Tag Manager” which contains a conversion ID, and a Conversion Label. 

Next, go to Google Tag Manager and create a new Tag. The first Tag we will create will be the Google Ads conversion linker Tag, select “Google Ads Conversion Linker” from the Tag Type list, and set it to trigger on all pages, this will allow Google Ads to collect the call data. Now create a second tag, this time for the advanced website call tracking. Select “Google Ads Calls From Website Conversion” from the dropdown, and enter the phone number you will be tracking as shown on the website, enter your conversion ID and Conversion Label and set the Tag to trigger on all pages. Once completed, save and publish your changes to your website. 

Now when users visit your website from an ad, they will instead be given a Google Call Forwarding Number and the information from these calls will be available in the call details report on Google Ads.

18. So your keywords are great, your Ads are stellar, but you’re not receiving as many conversions from your Google Ads campaign as you would expect. What gives?

9 times out of 10 it’s down to your landing pages. 

Are you running an Ad for the keyword “Men’s Green Adidas Trainers”, but sending them to /footwear/? Or are you a business offering services, and sending users to your homepage, or a page chockablock with information? 

Users searching online are looking for one thing. They are asking a question, and want an answer to that question. Users want to see the content of their search reflected on the content of the page. If they’re searching for “Men’s Green Adidas Trainers”, then send them to the page for men’s green Adidas trainers. If they’re searching a question, provide them with an answer. 

Users rarely like being bombarded with endless text. Simply put, they only want to know 3 things. Who are you, what do you do, and how do they get in touch with you. Make sure your landing page is concise, straight to the point, and provides the information the user is looking for. 

Try to limit links and navigation to other parts of your website, everything the user is looking for should be contained on that page, and the more someone has to go rifling through every page of your website to find what they’re looking for, the more likely they are to exit. 

Landing pages should be simple and concise, not a history lesson on your business.

19. Did you know that you can use Custom Rules on Google Ads to automate some aspects of Google Ads Management? 

Custom rules can be created to pause, enable and adjust the bids on ad groups that meet conditions that you set. You can also set a rule to notify you by email when these criteria are met. 

Custom Rules on Google Ads can include pretty much any metric on Google Ads. For example, you can create a custom rule to increase your bids by a set percentage when you fall below 80% absolute top of page rate. 

To create a Custom Rule, visit the campaign or ad group overview, select the 3 “more” dots on the right-hand side, and simply click “Custom Rules”.

Why not start by creating a Custom Rule to pause an ad group when its spend exceeds £50 without a conversion?

20. Are you taking advantage of free clicks from Google Shopping? 

Implementing Google Surfaces on your Ecommerce website is an absolute must-have, especially if you’re currently using Google Ads to run Shopping Ads for your website. 

If you already have a Google Merchant Center Account, simply click “Growth” and “Manage Programs” on your account. Select “Surfaces Across Google” and complete all of the fields. 

You’ll start receiving free traffic in no time!

21. Have you been wondering where the user location report has gone in Google Ads over the last few months? 

Simply select “Locations” on the second sidebar, and change the dropdown from “Targeted Locations” to “Matched Locations (Account/Campaign)”. 

Once here we can see how our account or campaign has performed at a country, province, county, city, or postcode level. 

22. Want to see who your biggest competitors are on Google Ads? 

Viewing your auction insights report is the best way to determine who your biggest competitors are and how you’re faring against them in Google Ads. 

We can look at our Auction Insights at a campaign, ad group, and even keyword level. This report allows us to see our impression share, overlap rate, top of page rate, absolute top of page rate (#1), and much more! 

To find this, simply collect the campaign, ad group, or keyword you would like to see your statistics for and click “Auction Insights”. 

We can then use the information gathered to better improve our bidding strategy and budget on our account.

23. Looking for new keywords to add to your Google Ads campaigns? 

Monitoring your search terms report is one of the most important daily maintenance tasks on Google Ads. 

Not only does our search terms report help us understand how users search online and understand the intent behind specific search terms, but it also allows us an opportunity to add new keywords to our ad groups, and find new negative keywords to add our negative keyword lists. 

To make this job less cumbersome on large accounts, you can filter your search terms to only show “Added/Excluded=None”. With this option selected we will no longer see search terms that already match keywords which have been added to the account. 

Your search terms report can be found directly under the Keywords menu in the second column.

24. Want to optimise your Google Ads account performance during the hours of the day that you’re most likely to convert a user? 

We can use our time of day report to determine when users are most likely to convert from a Google Ads click. 

To view this report select reports at the top of Google Ads, click predefined reports, time, then hour of day. Here we can see important information about our users depending on which hour of the day they’re visiting. 

If your time of day report shows a ton of clicks before the office opens, and fewer in the mid-late afternoon, this means it is likely our ad budget is being used up outside of peak hours in the early morning. This would suggest that it may be a good idea to schedule your ads to not appear in the early hours of the morning. Likewise, if you find hours of the day where there are disproportionately higher conversion rates we can also use this to our advantage. 

First, select a campaign on your Google Ads account, next click on Ad Schedule in the second column. We will now need to create a schedule for each hour of the day we will be showing our ads, i.e 09:00-10:00, 10:00-11:00, etc. Once you have completed this step, we can now see our schedules below. Next, click “Bid Adj”, and set a bid adjustment for the hours which showed the best performance in your time of day report. 

Start by testing smaller increases, monitor, and adjust your bid adjustments over time. 

25. Are you using Google Ads for your business, but haven’t considered Bing Ads? 

Bing has recently increased its market share to 9.95% of the search industry in the UK. 

Whilst this figure is quite far off from Google’s 87.96% share of UK searches, it’s still nothing to scoff at considering there are an estimated 15 billion searches on Google every month from users in the UK.

Have I also mentioned how incredibly easy it is to create a Bing Ads account using your existing Google Ads account? 

Simply create a Bing Ads account, select “Import” in the top navigation bar, and click “Import from Google Ads”, next, pop in your billing details and you’re ready to go! 

Just make sure you’ve done a little bit of research as to how to get Bing Ads conversion tracking implemented as it’s not quite the same as the method you will have used for Google Ads. 

26. Is your Google Ads campaign showing as limited by budget, but you’d like more conversions? 

One simple way of increasing the number of conversions you’re receiving from your budget is by reducing the budget being wasted on under-performing keywords. 

To increase the number of conversions you’re receiving from your existing budget, look at your keyword performance over the last few months. Now, click on “Columns” and add new columns for Conversions, Cost/Conv., and Conv. Rate. Using the campaign averages at the top or bottom of our table, we can easily identify underperforming keywords. If your campaign average conversion rate is 5%, pause any keyword which has a conversion rate significantly lower than 5%. 

Once we pause these keywords we will be allowing our budget to be utilised for our better-converting keywords. Using our search terms report we can then identify new keywords to add to our ad groups to continue to improve this over time. 

During your investigation, you may also find that there are specific ad groups with poor performance. You may want to consider also pausing these, once again, funnelling our budget towards our most profitable ad groups.

27. Have you noticed strange extensions occasionally appearing on your ads? 

I first noticed this with an ad we were running at Codefixer that had a sitelink under it for “Hello World”. A little bit embarrassing, right? 

What was more embarrassing was that when I first originally noticed this, I wasn’t sure how it was happening! 

Everybody, by now, should know that using a variety of extensions on Google Ads is absolutely crucial.  What some may not realize is that Google will sometimes decide to display automated extensions unless this is explicitly disabled. 

Google can show automated sitelink, structured snippets, call, callouts, seller ratings, and location extensions.

It’s best practice to include all applicable extensions when we create new campaigns or ad groups on Google Ads, so we shouldn’t really need automated extensions at all if that step wasn’t skipped! 

This setting is probably one of the best-hidden settings in Google Ads. 

To disable automated extensions, select “Ads & Extensions” on your second side-bar, and click on “Extensions”. Now make sure that your extensions are being shown in “Table View”, rather than “Summary View”. Next, select “Automated Extensions” from the drop-down menu at the top left. Now we must click on the 3 vertical dots where it says “More” on the right-hand side, and select “Advanced Options”. Now we can choose which specific Automated Extensions to disable. 

I’d recommend turning all of these off and manually creating them, or failing that, at least the call and sitelinks extensions!

28. Visit the Codefixer Blog & Signup to the Newsletter 

We release new Google Ads & SEO content every month. We only send 1 newsletter each month to make sure you’re only seeing the best and most up-to-date content available!

The post 28 Top Google Ads Tricks & Tips To Help You Create An Effective Campaign In 2021 appeared first on Codefixer.

Below you’ll find our top 5 reasons for outsourcing your Google Ads compared to hiring an in-house Pay Per Click expert.

1 – Experience, Tools, & Resources

The biggest resource a PPC agency has is knowledge. Whilst an in-house PPC employee might have some experience in executing Google Ads campaigns, a single account manager in a PPC agency will have experience working on dozens of client accounts and spending hundreds of thousands of pounds in Google Ads and Bing Ads every year. This allows us to test strategies and analyse results at a much faster rate, resulting in better performance across accounts.

A PPC agency also allows account managers to share skills and experience to grow their knowledge. Often, with internal PPC roles, the PPC employee will be the sole subject matter expert in the business, meaning they will have to look to other places to find this information.

As PPC agencies dedicate more resources to this specific skill set, we often have access to tools and huge data sets from previous campaigns spanning years, helping us understand the ins and outs of the industry. Having access to these tools and data sets allow us to pre-determine the chance of success upon campaign implementation, reducing risk in the short and long term.

Agencies will also have networks of other specialists and will work alongside other agencies with varied specialities. What happens if you have a problem with Google Tag Manager? No problem, I’ve got a dude for that. Need some graphics designed? De nada, we know a team who can do these for us. Videos? Say no more, I know just the right person. Ad infinitum. The point is, having a network of other agencies and experts with varied skillsets means these problems are solved before they even appear.

2 – Less Expensive & More Cost-Effective

Depending on where you are in the world and the availability of qualified PPC specialists, hiring somebody for an in-house PPC job for Google Ads can be quite a costly and time-consuming endeavour. You can then risk the odds that this person will move on to greener pastures, setting you back to square one.

Hiring an agency, rather than an in-house PPC expert will save money and time on; hiring, training, equipment, management, creating processes, software tools, etc. Before you’ve paid the employees first month wages you’re already thousands of pounds in the hole, without being able to guarantee that they’re up to the mark, or even a good cultural fit for the business. Using an agency cuts out all of the complicated steps allowing us to use our 30+ years combined experience in generating results, while you can focus on other aspects of your business.

Hiring an agency with 30+ years experience is going to cost much less in the short, and long term, compared to hiring someone internally with a comparable skillset (well, that, and it’s physically impossible to find someone with 30+ years of PPC experience, but you get the point).

3 – More Flexibility

When working with an external agency, as we are not directly employed, we don’t have any direct involvement in other aspects of the day-to-day running of the business, allowing us to focus 100% on the end goal of generating new traffic and qualified leads for your business. We can offer impartial advice and recommend suggestions on other aspects of your business’ digital marketing strategy such as; web design, Search Engine Optimisation, and User Experience improvements. As we have internal departments for SEO and Web Design we can easily and seamlessly integrate other services on a short or long term basis whilst understanding your key business goals and objectives.

2020, as everyone knows, was a tumultuous time for businesses. The flexible nature of being an agency allowed us to quickly adjust and adapt our core services for our clients continually, especially through the initial lockdown period. This allowed us to pause services where necessary, reallocate our resources, reenable services, and keep aim on a continually moving target. This not only protected our clients, but also our staff, and our client’s employees. This allowed us to continue to offer the high levels of service our clients have grown to expect over the years. Had these clients hired internally for their PPC services it’s possible that they would not have been able to continue to keep these employees on the books.

4 – Agency Partner Benefits

As a Google Partnered Google Ads Agency, and Microsoft Advertising Partner we have access to a number of features that wouldn’t be possible in-house.

Partners have access to extra resources, programs, tools, promotional vouchers, events, support, and much more. This allows us to better serve our clients and ensure we are offering the cutting-edge of PPC services provided in the country.

We are extremely proud to be Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising Partners. This ensures that the quality of our services has continued to improve every year and that we have continually exceeded the requirements to be recognised as a leading agency. To be a Google Ads Partner or Microsoft Advertising Partner requires that we pass exams annually, continue to increase campaign performance, and adopt best practice in what we do.

We wear our Google Ads & Microsoft Advertising badges with honour, that’s why you’ll see them at the bottom of every page on our website.

5 – Case Studies & Testimonials

PPC Agencies should have a list of client testimonials and case studies which can help you understand the type of work they have previously completed on behalf of clients. Our case studies and testimonials help prospective clients see the different work we have completed in the past, and help to choose whether or not you think Codefixer will be the right fit for your business.

We are extremely proud of the work that we do for our clients and don’t mind showing our results off, and can gladly give examples of our work to any prospective client.

If you have a project you would like to discuss with us for Google Ads PPC, SEO, WordPress, or E-Commerce, don’t hesitate to Contact Us.

The post Top 5 Reasons to Outsource Your Google Ads to a PPC Agency appeared first on Codefixer.

Surfaces across Google is a Google Merchant Center programme designed to allow retailers and owners of e-commerce websites to promote their products for free on Google properties such as the Google Shopping Tab, Google Search and Google Images.

If you have an e-commerce website, and not using Surfaces Across Google, you’re missing out!

Surfaces Across Google was introduced in 2020 and allows businesses to list their products on Google, for free. Previously the only way products could be listed on Google was by using a Google Shopping campaign or Smart Shopping campaign on Google Ads. As such, adopting Surfaces Across Google is a powerful tool to display your products to a larger audience of users who are searching for similar products on Google.

Surfaces Across Google can be implemented in less than an hour. Your account will be usually approved within 72 hours by Google, so long as you have all the required information and your products and website are compliant with Googles terms.

Your products can show up as either standard or advanced listings on Surfaces Across Google, with both having their own unique data feed requirements.

Below, we will give you the exact step-by-step guide of how to get your products listed on Surfaces Across Google in no time!

How Do I Sign Up For Surfaces Across Google?

The first step in registering your products to show on Surfaces Across Google is by signing up for a Merchant Center Account. To do this, visit Google Merchant Center

Once you’ve visited Google Merchant Center, click on “Get Started”.

Enter your email address, click “next”, and follow the steps to create your Google Merchant Center account.

Once you have created your Google Merchant Center account you’ll be required to provide your business information. You should see the screen shown in the image below. Enter your business name, country, and time zone, and save your selection.

You will then be asked to select where you would like your customers to check out. Assuming you have an e-commerce website, you will want to select “On My Website”, however, if you also have a retail store and would like to sell products from there, you may also want to select “At My Local Shop”.

Once you have clicked to continue you will be asked to select your email preferences and agree to the Google Merchant Center Terms of Service. You may wish to read the Terms of Service to familiarise yourself with the rules when listing products on Google Merchant Center. If you wish to receive email updates about tips & best practices, as well as invitations to test new features, you will also want to tick those boxes.

Once you have completed the all of the steps so far and confirmed that the information is correct, click continue to visit your Merchant Center Account.

Now that your Google Merchant Center account is now set up, we still need to make a few changes before we will be eligible to appear on Surfaces Across Google. To appear on Surfaces Across Google you will need to complete your Product & Business Information settings.  The Tax setting is only necessary for the USA, and delivery settings are optional, however, we recommend you complete as much of this information as possible to maximise the chance of your account being approved.

If you are offering delivery on your orders, you’ll need to configure your Delivery Service Settings. Apply a descriptive name for the delivery service that you’re creating, select the service area, and the applicable currency, in our example this is GBP. Once this is completed, we need to configure delivery times. These include the order cut-off time, handling time, and transit times.

Once you have completed the delivery service settings, you will be prompted to create a delivery rate. This can be used to define a delivery cost by order price, order weight, or the number of items sold. In our example below, orders over £50, shipped to the UK, are eligible for free shipping. Orders under £50 have a fixed shipping rate of £2.99 per order.

If you ship to different countries or regions you will need to repeat this step for any subsequent locations. In the example below, we have created two shipping services, one for the United Kingdom, and one for Ireland. In the United Kingdom, orders over £50 are shipped for free, and a flat £2.99 rate for under £50 order value. In Ireland, all orders have a flat shipping rate of £4.99.

Next, we will want to skip across to “Returns Policies” on the right-hand side. Once here, we will want to click the blue button for “Add Policy”. Once you have done this, complete all the relevant sections. It will ask you the countries, your websites shipping & returns policy URL, whether or not you accept returns, the method for receiving returns, the return window, and restocking fees where applicable.

We now need to review and confirm our returns policy and click accept if all of the information is accurate.

The last step of configuring our product and business information, before adding our products, is verifying and claiming your website. Fortunately, this is one of the quickest and easiest steps. To verify and claim your website URL, simply enter it, and click save, then click verify. Done, simples!

Adding Products on Google Merchant Center

Next, we must add products to Google Merchant Center. This could be a fast and easy process, or a rather time-consuming process, depending on how many products you have, and the content management system you’re using for your website.
There are two options for adding products to Google Merchant Center, the first is by manually adding them one-by-one, and the second option is by using a product feed. Let’s go over how to add products manually first.

Manually Add Products on Google Merchant Center

On the products tab on Google Merchant Center, to manually add a product, click “Add Product” under where it says “Individual Product”.

Once here, you will see a number of fields to provide information, and images of your product. It’s recommended that you put as much relevant information into these fields as possible. Once you have completed this, you can save your product. If you sell a number of similar products, it’s possible to duplicate the product you have just created, meaning you will have fewer fields to complete the second time around. You will need to repeat this step until all of your products are now added to your Google Merchant Center account.

Listing Products Using a Feed on Google Merchant Center

Using a feed to update your products on Google Merchant Center can save you time. There are a few different methods to generate a feed; first, you can create it manually in a Google Sheets file, and upload this. Or, we can use a plugin or tool on our content management system. We recommend researching these to find the best option depending on your own circumstances. Some are free, some are paid, some are better for small numbers of products, and some are better for larger numbers of products. Your best bet is to head over to Google and search “Google Shopping Feed”+”WooCommerce/Shopify/Magento/Shopwired”, etc.

In the image below we have selected the option for Scheduled Fetch. With this option, Google will automatically pull information from your feed on a set schedule.

We have instructed Google to fetch our shopping feed, every day, at midnight. Make sure the time-zone is correct, and enter the URL for your newly created feed in the “File URL” box. If your feed requires a user name or password to access it, please include these in the boxes provided.

Once we create our feed, we can then head over to “All Products” and see that our images have added. We can see; their images, titles, ID, when they were last updated, price, number of clicks from Google Shopping, number of clicks from Surfaces Across Google, the condition, availability, country of sale, language, source, programmes, and status.

Activating Surfaces Across Google

Once we have provided our products and business information, we are now able to activate Google Surfaces. For this, go back to the “Growth”, select “Manage Programs”, and visit the option for Surfaces, its title should read “List your online products for free”. Once here, you’ll need to confirm that you have read the policies and that your account complies, and click activate.

Following this, your account will be reviewed to ensure it complies by all the policies. This should take approximately 72 hours. If your review is successful, your products should begin to show on Google Search, Images & Shopping for free in no time!

If you need help getting started with Google Shopping, or Surfaces Across Google, Contact Us!

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Below we will detail these changes, and explain the impact each of these changes may have on advertisers on the platform.

Digital Services Tax (DST)

On the 1st of September, users of Google Ads received an email from the Google Ads Payments email address, advising that advertisers in the UK, Turkey, and Austria would be subject to extra fees on their Google Ads invoices.

This email, unredacted and in full can be seen below.

 

 

Dear Customer,   On 1 November 2020, Google will begin charging new fees for ads served in the United Kingdom, Turkey and Austria.   New fees   As of 1 November 2020, we will begin adding a fee to your next invoice or statement for ads served in specific countries:   Ads served in Turkey: a 5% Regulatory Operating Cost added to your invoice or statement Ads served in Austria: a 5% Austria DST Fee added to your invoice or statement Ads served in the United Kingdom: a 2% UK DST Fee added to your invoice or statement   The Regulatory Operating Costs are being added due to significant increases in the complexity and cost of complying with regulations in Turkey. In Austria and the United Kingdom, the DST Fee is driven by the new digital services tax in these countries.   You can view a more complete description of fee changes, but here are the most important changes that may apply:   Ads purchased through Google Ads   These fees will be shown on your invoice or statement as a separate line item per country. They will also be displayed in the ‘Transactions’ section of your Google Ads account. You’ll be charged for advertisements served in the countries mentioned above. Any taxes, such as sales tax, VAT, GST or QST, that apply in your country may also apply to the new fees. If you pay through monthly invoicing or automatic payments, these fees will be added in addition to your account budget. For example, if you have a budget of €100 and accrue €5 in Austria DST Fees for ads served in Austria, you’ll be billed €105 (plus any taxes, such as sales tax, VAT, GST or QST, that may apply in your country). Learn more about adjusting your account budget If you pay through manual payments, these fees may be charged after your payment has been fully spent. You may be left with an open balance that will be automatically deducted from your next prepayment. For example, if you accumulate €5 of Regulatory Operating Costs for ads served in Turkey, and you make a new payment for €100, you would have €95 credit towards displaying ads (€100 – €5), and your available balance would show €95.   Learn more about country-specific fees   Thank you,   The Google Payments Team

This came as a surprise to many advertisers, however, those keeping a keen eye on the UK Governments Digital Services Tax legislation, publically announced in March 2020, expected there to be changes made to how much Tax Google, other Search Engines, Social Media companies, and online market-places would be required to pay.

The Digital Services Tax (DST) was first announced back in October 2018.

The wording of the policy paper made it very obvious who exactly the Government were targeting following years of controversy surrounding how companies like Google, Facebook & Amazon are taxed on their operations in the UK.

“The Digital Services Tax will apply to a group’s businesses that provide a social media service, search engine or an online marketplace to UK users. These businesses will be liable to Digital Services Tax when the group’s worldwide revenues from these digital activities are more than £500 million and more than £25 million of these revenues are derived from UK users.”

What was more surprising to the Google Ads community is how the responsibility for paying this tax was immediately forwarded directly to them, especially with no prior communication or consultation. Google appears to have still not published a press release addressing some of the many concerns of the advertising community one month on from the announcement. This, quite rightly, has the community feeling a bit let down, especially considering that advertisers generated £5.1bn in revenue for Google in the UK during 2019.

So how does this impact advertisers?

Quite simply, if you’re paying for ads on Google, be it display, shopping, search, smart, or video campaigns, and based in the UK, you can expect to find a 2% surcharge on your Google Ads bill beginning from the 1st of November.

Changes to the Search Terms Report

At the beginning of September, Google Ads account began showing a notification pertaining to the Search Terms Report. This announcement had a significant, and immediate impact on the Search Terms Report and had essentially stripped out a large number of searches from the report. The net effect of this was that only terms which had a “Significant” number of searches would be included, which means advertisers are now paying for clicks, without knowing what the user searched for.

Google announced the following statement on the 1st of September;

“Starting September 2020, the search terms report only includes terms that a significant number of users searched for, even if a term received a click. You may now see fewer terms in your report.”

When you consider the fact that 15% of Google Searches are unique, and have never been conducted before, we can expect that a much higher percentage of data from the Search Terms Report will now be removed.

This has led many in the Google Ads community to feel outraged, arguing that this is another step towards hiding details of our Google Ads campaigns in a move towards automated account management.

What does this mean for advertisers?

It means pre-emptive negative keyword management is of paramount importance. Ensuring search term accuracy behind a shroud of secrecy is invariably going to be more difficult, as such, we must be watching our search terms like a hawk. This will likely be much more difficult on Broad Match keywords, as such, consider including more +broad +match +modifier, “phrase match”, or [exact match] keywords to ensure accuracy.

User Location Report

Also in September many of us logged in to our Google Ads account to find that our User Location Report appeared to have disappeared into thin air. Under Locations, we were used to seeing “User Location Report”. This is now no longer visible in here. The date coincides with the date that the Search Terms report was changed to only include queries with “Significant Volume”.

However, whilst the User Location Report was moved, it wasn’t removed!

To find the new User Location Report, first click on all campaigns, or a specific campaign, and select “Locations”, under “Locations” on the left side menu. Once you’re on the Locations Report, select the drop-down which should be currently selecting “Targeted Locations” in the top right, just below your selected date range, and click on “Matched Locations”. By following these steps you’ll now be able to see the User Location Report in all its glory!

What impact does this have on advertisers?

Little to no impact on advertisers. There are just two extra clicks you must make before finding the User Locations Report. I guess it’s also now called the “Matched Locations Report” which is also something probably worth remembering.

Location Targeting Settings

Google has had, for quite a while, set your default location selection settings to “Users in, Or Interested In My Location”, rather than the alternative option, “Users in, Or Regularly In My Location”.

If the default location selection setting is chosen, your ads will not only show for users in your location, but also for users who show an interest in your location. When this setting is selected it is common to find users who are outside your target locations appearing in your Matched Locations Report (see above).

For example, with the default setting selected, if you live in, for example, Belfast, but planning a honeymoon in The Maldives, you may see ads from advertisers based in The Maldives when searching for hotels. This, arguably, is good targeting as the user has shown intent in their behaviours and are likely in the market for a hotel in The Maldives.

On the other hand, if you live in New York and researching family ancestry in Dublin, then use Google to find a local dentist, you would be eligible to be shown an ad from someone targeting users searching for Dentists in Dublin with the default location selection setting enabled.

This is a setting that can waste between 7%-10% of clicks alone, therefore wasting up to 10% of your ad spend.

The alternative setting, “Users In, Or Regularly In My Location” can be used to exclude users who are not in your location from being displayed ads from advertisers who are not targeting their location.

Google announced that beginning the 1st of August Google would remove this location targeting setting.

Whilst this hasn’t been implemented yet, this again was a controversial decision by Google which appears to provide no value to the advertiser, or the end-user. Why would an advertiser want to spend money on clicks from outside of their target location, and likewise, why would a user want to be hit with an ad that is completely irrelevant to them?

What can advertisers do?

As this hasn’t been implemented yet, the only thing we can currently do is wait and see. If this is implemented it may come with alternative options, or there may be a workaround. In the meantime, wait it out, keep an eye on your Matched Locations Report, and hope for the best.

Text Ads Disappearing

In September many users reported that the option to create a Text Ad was now removed. When you tried to create a Text Ad you were displayed a dialogue box which said;

“Try a responsive search ad instead, which allows you to provide multiple headlines and description options and then adapts to show the best performing ad for each search. To create a text ad, first, click ‘Responsive search ad’ and then ‘Switch back to text ads'”.

This appears to only have been tested on a small number of accounts and was not rolled out universally to all accounts. This is another step in the direction of automated ad creatives. Whilst responsive search ads appear to perform very well, it’s worth noting that often the headline and description combinations, especially whilst the ad is still in learning, can lead to some unusual results with conflicting information. It’s of paramount importance when creating responsive search ads to understand that this ad can appear in a number of combinations. Headlines or descriptions including information such as “25+ Years Experience”, “Est. 2009” whilst making sense on their own, can give a contradictory message and undermine user confidence. Make sure your headlines and descriptions are not selected based on Google’s autocomplete solely and consider pinning headlines and descriptions which are of most importance.

For once, Google provided us with a rather simple workaround for this by clicking on “Switch back to text ads” once you select to create an ad. This may be something we will see in the future rolled out across more accounts, and based on the results, this may be the direction search ads are headed.

What must advertisers do?

If you would like to create a normal text ad, simply click to create a responsive search ad, and select “Switch back to text ads”. You will then be able to create a text ad as normal. This has no lasting impact on advertisers, however, in future, this may be rolled out as Google’s focus has shifted from manual account management towards their suite of automated tools such as smart bidding, dynamic search campaigns, and smart campaigns.

If you found this information useful, please consider checking out some of our other Blogs articles for up to date Google Ads & SEO news.

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How much does Google Ads cost?

Google Ads can work for just about any budget and is completely adjustable at any time. Unlike traditional marketing methods, Google Ads works on a daily budget, rather than a campaign budget, meaning that your budget can be increased or decreased very simply from the Google Ads interface. This allows advertisers, and our clients, complete control and flexibility over how much they spend on a month-by-month basis, dependant on seasonal traffic, unexpected closures, or any other event which might restrict or increase the budget available for advertising online. As a Google Partnered Agency, we can also provide you with up to £120 towards your first months spend for newly created accounts.

How long does it take for Google Ads to work?

Unlike SEO, Google Ads can provide almost immediate targeted traffic to your website or business with Ads often showing within just hours of the Google Ads account & campaigns being created. Likewise, the performance data received from Google Ads is continual, rather than in weekly, or monthly intervals. This allows us to continually evaluate account & campaign performance. We can then use this data to regularly adjust the account to increase the quality of traffic and the number of conversions.

Whilst a Google Ads account can be set-up and start delivering ads almost immediately, we routinely find that accounts that have been managed and maintained over longer periods of time appear to consistently improve as time goes on. This allows us to provide clients with better stats almost every month!

What types of products/services should you advertise on Google Ads?

We have had monumental success with a vast array of products and services on Google Ads and always offer a free, no-obligation consultation for Google Ads clients to evaluate opportunities and give a prediction, based on our experience, of how your Google Ads account should perform. We have over 90% customer retention with the many of our clients staying with us for multiple years.

Google Ads is most profitable for products or services with;

• A high customer lifetime value – Businesses that can expect customers to return over a long period of time, such as Solicitors, Dentists, or residential services.
• High Margins – Products or services with high margins allow us to more aggressively target users to allow us to compete better in the market place, such as electrical goods, manufacturers, or large B2B sellers.
• Large product/service ranges – Businesses with a large & diverse range of products or services allow us to more accurately target users for the most profitable/desirable products or services. For example, business services, or e-commerce websites with large product catalogues.
• Online/Mobile Businesses – Businesses that don’t have a physical location or that travel to the customer’s location find Google Ads allows us to target users in locations that you choose. This saves time, and money on travelling to further away locations to generate the same work. Our home improvement businesses find cutting down on travel times allow them to manage a larger number of customers, whilst choosing to prioritise advertising services which are of most value to the company.
• Specialist products/services – Business with little to no competition online benefit from lower cost-per-click, and can more easily corner the market getting you to the top of the page, consistently, for your chosen products or services. We have clients who offer parking services who appear on over 80% of searches for keywords we are bidding on.

What types of advertising can you do through Google Ads?

• Search – Google Search Ads show up, normally above the Organic (Non-Paid) search results when a user searches for a keyword that an advertiser is bidding on.
• Shopping – Google Shopping is a means of showing your products to users when users search for them on Google. Read How We Generated Over £1m For Our Client Using Google Shopping
• Display – Google Display Ads appear on the Google Display Network. The Google Display Network is a network of millions of websites such as news websites, blogs, and forums. Google Display ads are banner ads that appear to users on these websites to users who you are targeting.
• Video – Video Ads can appear on YouTube, websites, and smartphone apps running on Google Video Partners.

Why should I use Codefixer for Google Ads?

As a Google Partner, we must keep up-to-date with Google’s internal evaluations based on certifications, account performance, overall ad spend, and company growth. This ensures that we keep up-to-date with Google Ads and follow best-practice.

We have an impressive track record working with some of the largest companies in Northern Ireland in delivering best-in-class Google Ads results. On top of this, we also provide coaching and training, as well as speaking at events across the UK helping other businesses and advertisers get more out of their Google Ads campaigns. As a partner, we can help businesses with expert advice and support with strong working relationships with the Google Support Team.

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