Author Archive

The folks on the AdWords support team often hear the question "why can't I see my ad?" If you've ever had this question yourself, you'll probably know that there are a number of reasons why an ad may not be appearing.

To assist advertisers in getting to bottom of 'can't see my ad' mysteries, there are some excellent resources available. One of these, the new "Can't see your ad?" troubleshooting wizard, will walk you through an ordered list of possible reasons why your ad is not showing.

And, of course, the already popular Ads Diagnostic Tool can help you to identify why a particular ad, or group of ads, may not be appearing -- as well as provide tips to get things up and running again.

If you ever find that one of your ads is not running as expected, give these a try.

Posted by Blake, Inside AdWords crew

Have you ever found yourself browsing content on a particular site and realized that it would be the perfect place to promote your product? Perhaps you even logged in to your AdWords account to add this site to your site-targeted campaign. Now, with Onsite Advertiser Sign-Up, we've made this process even easier.

The next time you see AdWords ads on a site that you'd like to target, look for the 'Advertise on this site' link in the ad unit. After clicking that link, you'll be taken to a page that provides additional information about the site and allows you to log in to your existing AdWords account. Upon logging in, you'll simply complete the three step site-targeted campaign creation wizard, and your ads will be eligible to run on that site. Easy, right?

So, remember to keep your eyes open when you're surfing the web, you might just find another great advertising opportunity.

Posted by Sarah, Inside AdWords crew

It's been a big year for the Google content network. In the past few months, we've written about site targeting, site exclusion, and, most recently, content bids. Now we'd like to introduce a new resource page that gives you additional information about the network and its features. Here, you can learn how many unique users you'll reach through the content network or check out a selection of our partners.

Intrigued? Take our content network quiz below. If you don't know the answers, you can find them on the site (though we'll also point you in the right direction).

1) In how many different ad formats can you show your ads across the content network?

2) If you target the United States, how many unique internet users will you reach through the content network?

3) Name two of our partner sites who specialize in news.

Once you've found the answers to the questions above, try our new Optimization Demo, which is also located on the site. It will give you tips for setting up your content campaigns and help you maximize your ad's potential.

Posted by Sarah, Inside AdWords crew

Especially around the last minute holiday crunch, advertisers are often looking to maximize their ads' exposure to targeted audiences. To that end, they often contact our friends over in AdWords support to ask how their ads can appear on other Google properties, like Froogle and Groups.

Well, it's simple: the Google search network not only includes partner sites, but many of Google's own properties as well. And as long as your campaigns' distribution preferences includes our search network, they're eligible to appear for searches on Froogle, Local, Book Search, and Groups.

In addition to these Google sites showing keyword-targeted search ads, your ads can also appear alongside the content of books on Google Book Search and related to discussions in Groups and Gmail as long as your campaigns are opted into appearing on the content network. These contextually targeted ads work the same way as ads on content pages across the web -- the keywords you provide in your campaigns are automatically matched with the content of books, postings, or emails on Google's pages, and the ads which most closely match the subject at hand are eligible to show.

As always, the goal is to provide users with useful, relevant ads, whether they're browsing books, looking for the local dry cleaners, shopping for holiday gifts, or checking their email with Google.

Posted by Arielle, Inside AdWords crew

As 2005 comes to an end, businesses close out their books, people start making New Year’s resolutions, and AdWords advertisers like yourselves start planning for 2006. To help you review this past year’s campaign performance, we’d like to remind you of the handy tools available in the Report Center. To drill down on specific metrics, try generating a custom report for the past year, 6 months, or whatever date range you specify.

Here at Inside AdWords, we’re also doing our own annual review of sorts – reading over your emails and the topics we’ve covered in our inaugural year in order to plan for 2006. We’re taking a bit of a break for the holidays (and hope that you’ll do the same), but we’ll be back after the New Year with more tips, insights and otherwise interesting AdWords tidbits to share.

Happy Holidays and see you in ’06!

Posted by Arielle & Vivian, Inside AdWords crew

We've written our New Year's resolutions (hopefully I will bike 35 miles to work once a week), toasted with friends over glasses of champagne, and are ready to embrace 2006. Before moving full steam ahead though, we'd like to take one last look at all that happened with Inside AdWords in 2005.

So, to follow in the footsteps of David Letterman and the Google Zeitgeist, here's our very own Top 10 list. While our highlights don't include any references to Brad and Angelina, we do re-visit our favorite feature releases and top Inside AdWords moments-

10) New features are added to the Keyword Tool

9) The Report Center gets a face lift

8) An artist is born...and yes, she also writes for our blog

7) Site exclusion allows you to prevent your ads from showing on specific sites in our content network

6) Our friends over at AdSense notice that we started a pretty good thing

5) My Change History provides you with a record of your account changes

4) Sitemaps allow you to inform Google when you've made changes to your web pages or created new ones so that they'll be included in our index

3) Specify the websites where you want to advertise with site targeting (and learn about our vast array of niche sites)

2) Place separate bids for search and content within the same Ad Group

1) Jon, Vivian, Blake and Andrew hear this blogging thing is going to be huge...

With that, we'll close the door on 2005, and welcome you to a new year of AdWords tips and insights with the Inside AdWords crew.

Posted by Sarah, Inside AdWords crew

As you can imagine, we get a lot of questions daily from advertisers like you. While some of these questions are sent right into the Inside AdWords mailbox, the majority go to our AdWords Support Team. Since many of the questions may be relevant to all of you as well, I thought it’d be nice to share some of the common questions (and answers!) being sent to our other inboxes. (Note: names have been excluded since these advertisers did not send their questions directly to Inside AdWords.)

We’re closing out our books for 2005, and our accountant has asked us for invoices and receipts for our AdWords spending. How can I get them?

Receipts and invoices for your AdWords payments and charges are available for printing directly in your AdWords account. To print a receipt or invoice, simply login to your AdWords account and click the “My Account” tab to view your billing summary. (You can then choose to change the date ranges if you are looking for a specific time period such as January through December 2005.) For receipts, click the “Payment received” link for any given payment, and then click “Printable receipt” – your receipt will then pop up in a new window for you to print at your convenience. To print invoices for your records, just click on the invoice number for any line item.

Occasionally, I get emails from AdWords describing new product changes and policy updates but I always misplace them. Do you have an archive of these emails?

Other than account notification emails, we try to minimize the amount of additional email we send to our advertisers since we know your time is valuable. To this end, we usually send out product or policy updates via email only when they absolutely impact your account, or provide a significant benefit to you. These emails can be found in the Google AdWords News Archive located here. Bookmark this page and you’ll be sure to never misplace these updates. For more information about new product changes, you might want to consider bookmarking this blog or subscribing to receive posts by email as well.

I keep hearing about an AdWords Learning Center. What is it, and how can I use it to my advantage?

The AdWords Learning Center is an online resource that teaches you the in’s and out’s of AdWords. Available in both multimedia and text-only formats, the Learning Center contains individual modules covering everything from how to set up an account to optimization tips. As an advertiser, you can use the Learning Center to learn more about tools and features you may be less familiar with, or to brush up on specific AdWords concepts such as keyword matching options, or local targeting. If you’re feeling inspired, you can even take the mini quizzes at the end of each module to see just how much you’ve learned! By the way, you can always find a link to the Learning Center from the AdWords Help Center main page, in the "About AdWords" section at the top.

That’s all for now, folks. Keep sending your questions our way, and who knows—maybe you’ll see yours answered next time.

Posted by Vivian, Inside AdWords crew