Have you ever wondered why a keyword performed so well few months ago and does not seem to yield the same results today? Your strategy remains the same; you are managing your account daily, but notice results that need to be explained.

Google offers a quick and easy way to determine if your ad is running and helps to diagnose potential delivery and performance issues in keywords.

The Keyword Diagnosis Tool analyzes data for each search query and its related ad(s) based on all account data at the time you perform the diagnosis.  The results can contain the following information:

• Whether or not your ads are showing right now
• Competing keywords in other ad groups
• Quality Score
• Expected CTR
• Ad Relevance
• Landing Page Experience

Once you diagnose your keyword status you can optimize to regain control of your ads. You may need to identify the more valuable keyword in a conflicting situation and pause its competitor. Negative keywords can also be utilized on the ad group level to alleviate conflicting situations. Simply add one of the keywords as a negative keyword to the opposing ad group, and you will resolve the problem.

You can see each individual keyword diagnosis by hovering over the speech bubble in each keyword’s status column.

To diagnose multiple keywords follow the below instructions:

1)    Go to the Keywords Tab in the Ad Words Interface

2)    Select the More Actions… button

3)    Run Test. Once the diagnosis is complete, you will receive an alert at the top of the screen.

4)    Once completed, the status column will update and you can individually review each keyword’s status in further detail by hovering over the speech bubble.

This diagnosis tool is great to employ if you are acquiring an account from another manager or agency. More often than not, accounts have thousands of keywords and can be difficult to sort through. A great way to identify conflicting terms off the bat is to run a diagnosis. Google will also let you know what campaigns and ad groups house the competing keywords.

Another use for the tool is to identify performing keywords that have been smothered by a growing account. Sometimes keywords get buried by adding similar keywords with different match types. The Keyword Diagnosis Tool helps to find these stifled performers and allow you to make changes to let them shine once again.

Now in the Google Adwords interface (UI) you can create email alert rules (under automation tab).  These rules can be setup to trigger based upon any available measurement in Google.  As an agency, the most common way we use this is to schedule daily or weekly notices for keywords that have spent more than $X dollars in a stated time period (such as 7 days) with a CPA over $Y dollars.

Here’s where you go to setup the Adwords automated email alerts:

Here’s a sample configuration for a daily email alert for all keywords in an account with a CPA over $35 in the last 7 days.

You can read more about this from Google

Great news, you can now import Bounce Rate, Average Visit Duration & Pages per Visit from Google Analytics into your Adwords account.  This is particularily useful for us as an agency when we have accounts whereas we aren’t tracking a sale conversion (such as an auto dealer whereas the majority of leads call in).  It allows us to focus the budget where our clients make money.  Below I’ve outlined the steps to add the 3 new success events to your Adwords “Grid”.  I found the Google instructions confusing…

1. Administrator (you need to have administrative access to both Adwords & Analytics
2. Auto – Tagging enabled
3. Cost Data – Analytics needs to be importing Adwords cost data (link your accounts)
4. Data Sharing turned on (see below)

1. Sign in to your Analytics account at www.google.com/analytics.
2. Click the Admin tab at the top right of any page in Analytics.
3. Click the account for which you want to edit Data Sharing Settings.
4. Click the Account Settings tab.
5. Edit the desired settings and click Apply.

Next, login to your Google Adwords account and add the Profile.

Finally, Add the columns for one or all 3 of the metrics.

Here’s what it looks like:

Have you been wondering when someone was going to create an easier way to get market research? Well, Google thinks they’ve found the answer. Learn more about how Google intends to get market research for about $.10 a response with their new Consumer Surveys. Note: we’ve also read that highly targeted research could be about $.60 a pop:

What do you think? Will you use Google Consumer Surveys? It seems like a great alternative to watching all of those ads on YouTube.

We’ve seen some businesses making some interesting (read: dumb) calls this week on Twitter, so we thought we’d remind everyone what is appropriate for your business’s Twitter account.

1. Do not complain. About clients. About the weather. About anything. If people want to be brought down, they can watch Toddlers & Tiaras or Teen Mom.

2. Be informative but don’t blindly aggregate information. Don’t copy people’s blog posts (duh). Add your own opinion to the conversation. Share videos and links if you are using someone else’s information or announcement.

3. Stop writing Pinterest posts asking if people have heard of Pinterest. Everyone has heard of Pinterest. If they haven’t, they’re definitely not reading your blog post about the 5 things your business should be pinning.

4. Don’t link to another brand or business unless it is positive. Tweets like “Customer service at @businessname is terrible” aren’t a good idea. Save that stuff for your personal account. You don’t want your business to be associated with negativity. Constructive criticism is okay if you’re being genuine about it.

5. Retweet more. I swear there’s not a limit.

6. Don’t tweet week old news. That’s what blog posts are for.

7. Post more forms of content. We want to see more photos, videos and infographics from businesses! They’re not only fun but they break up the monotony of the text-only tweets people read all day.

8. Stay in dinner conversation mode. Don’t delve into politics, religion or sex… unless of course your business is directly involved in one of the three, in which case people should know what they’re getting into when they follow.

9. Did we mention no more complaining?