Warning: this blog post may offend the short-sighted. Our company has worked with a large number of online businesses over the years. And most understand the basic principles of how Google AdWords works. We advise most of our AdWords clients to use conversion tracking, as this provides a useful gauge as to how well different parts of the account are … Read More

I have had the pleasure of working with hundreds of Google AdWords accounts over the past ten years, and am yet to see a single account that isn’t wasting money and missing opportunities. I’ve seen accounts that waste hundreds or even thousands of dollars a day. I’ve seen accounts whose owners think they’re making a good ROI when they’re actually … Read More

Watch our for yet another phishing attempt pretending to be from Google AdWords: The usual rule of thumb applies. Don’t ever click one of those links. Login to your account normally through your browser. The other rule of thumb is that Google’s emails usually make sense. They don’t say things like “make sure your keywords are jighly relevant” and “if … Read More

Two weeks ago we ran a 45 minute webinar on 14 ways to cut your Google AdWords costs. The feedback we received was fantastic, and some of the attendees (and people who missed the webinar) wanted to know if a recorded version of the webinar would be made available. We listened. We re-recorded. And we put it on YouTube. The … Read More

AdWords Editor is used by many advertisers, mainly because it makes our lives easier. But many users overlook a useful feature – the ability to add comments as reminders to themselves, or as explanations for other AdWords Editor users working on an account. I personally make notes of dates that I add keywords, pause keywords, raise/lower keyword bids, add negative … Read More

Have you ever seen this girl before? She may look familiar to you. But you probably don’t remember where you’ve seen her. And you probably don’t realise that she might be costing you a lot of money. This girl’s image is on a massive number of websites which are part of the content network. The websites in question have one … Read More

Google AdWords is a wonderful sales tool. But  the system is complex, and Google’s defaults are a far better fit for Google than their advertisers. As a Qualified AdWords Professional, Dave Collins has worked with hundreds of AdWords accounts for more than nine years. Two facts emerge time after time: Fact 1: Most accounts lose money without the account holder … Read More

On April 10th 2009 we wrote a blog entry entitled New AdWords Ads Increasingly Getting Stuck in the ‘Under Review’ Black Hole: “It seems like every new ad I create takes longer and longer to actually begin running. Depending on the client, and which AdWords GUI format they’re using, the new ads assume the label of  ‘under review’ or ‘Active’, … Read More

The word “Optimize” implies a sense that it is a worthwhile or a good idea. For example: Financial optimization – sounds like a good idea. Search engine optimization – we know that we should all be doing this. However, optimized ad rotation is not a good idea when it comes to AdWords. You may have noticed when setting up an … Read More

Hidden within your AdWords account, there is a little known section called the Site and Category Exclusion tool. Within this section you can exclude specific sites or categories of sites from displaying your ads on the content network. Adding site exclusions has been around for some time, and they can be added from within the AdWords Editor as well as … Read More