Ad Preview and Diagnosis: Together at Last

We recently introduced a new version of the Ad Preview Tool that integrates ad diagnosis: instead of simply showing you a preview of the search results for a given keyword, the tool now also tells you if your ad is showing for that search. If not, you can see the reason why.

Now that you can preview and diagnose your ads in a single location, we’re retiring the separate Ads Diagnostic Tool and directing you to the Preview Tool instead. We’ll consolidate names too; you’ll see a single Ad Preview & Diagnosis tool under your account’s Reporting and Tools tab in the future.

Over the last several months, we’ve also worked to integrate diagnosis options directly into your Campaigns tab. If you’ve been using the Ads Diagnostic Tool option to diagnose many keywords at once, don’t worry -- you can find it without leaving your Keywords tab! Just click “Diagnose keywords...” under the “More actions” menu to get integrated diagnosis results directly on the page:

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To interpret the distribution of results more quickly, click the “Filter results” link, then “Show diagnostic status” in the filter panel that opens. This will open additional filter options that are specific to the results returned by a diagnosis. Here, we’ve used filters to focus only on keywords that aren’t triggering ads due to budget, bid, or Quality Score issues:

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With filters, it’s easy to focus on a specific set of issues and then make the necessary changes to get ads back up and running!

You can find more information on the integrated keyword diagnosis feature in our announcement from last summer, or visit our Help Center for additional details.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew Read More...

Show ads that are most likely to receive conversions more often

Today we're announcing the launch of a new ad rotation setting in AdWords that allows you to optimize for conversions. Previously, you had two options:

• Optimize for clicks: Ads that are expected to provide more clicks are shown more often
• Rotate: Ads are shown more evenly

Now, with a third option, you can choose to show ads that are expected to provide more conversions more often. We'll look at a combination of clickthrough rate and conversion rate to determine which ads to show.

We’ve always encouraged you to test multiple ads in each ad group, and we’ve offered our help by showing ads with the highest clickthrough rates more often. However, some of you have told us that the ad with the highest clickthrough rate isn’t always the ad with the highest conversion rate and that you’d like to be able to optimize for conversions rather than clicks. Starting today, we’re allowing you to do just that.

To use the new setting, you’ll need to have Conversion Tracking in your account, as we use the data from that tool to determine which ad is the most likely to receive conversions. When we don’t have enough data to make a decision, we’ll show the ad that is the most likely to receive clicks. If you have Conversion Tracking, the Optimize for conversions option will be available in the Ad delivery: Ad rotation, frequency capping section under Advanced settings on the Settings tab of any campaign. Once enabled, it will apply to all ads that appear on Google and our search and display partners’ sites.

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By providing another way to define the “best-performing” ad, we hope to make it easier for you to experiment with your ads and learn which ones are the most successful in helping you reach your advertising goals. For more information on ad rotation settings, please visit our Help Center.

Posted by Lisa Shieh, Inside AdWords crew Read More...