Posts by Philip Pollock

A major part of the reoccurring optimisation process of any good Pay Per Click campaign is the continual addition of negative keywords, assuming that your account includes broad match keywords. This is a never ending task, and is the major downfall of using the broad match type on keywords. Yes it is great to generate traffic, open up your account to new keyword ideas, but you can find that 50-70% of the terms searched for are irrelevant to your campaign, and it can get even worse at ad group level as I’ll demonstrate later on in the blog.

But is Broad Match Modifier (BMM) the saviour of the broad match type?

I am currently conducting an experiment which will revolutionise the way I structure my accounts. Depending on the size of the account and the goals the client wants to achieve, I tend to split down my account very heavily at campaign level, trying to maximise budgets to top performing keywords. This allows me to change the level of investment on keywords which have a very low risk, and a high conversion rate, leading to a nice stable account which converts high. The downside, as there tends to always be one, is that it make optimising, especially the addition of negative keywords, labour intensive and difficult.

The main problem I have is at ad group level. As an example, I am going to take an imaginary client who sells branded clothing. I have broken the campaigns down by brand, then by clothing type. I’ve used all three match types as I want to achieve a broad coverage.

This structure is for demonstration purposes only and I realise it may not be the preferred structure. However, I am trying to achieve a good quality score for all keywords. The problem of the broad match type is that if I typed in PJP Clothes UK, it may not be the clothes ad group which gets triggered. It could be the hats ad group, which would display the incorrect ad and wrong landing page. The way around this is to add negative keywords. But the amount of negative keywords to ensure 100% success is almost infinite.

I think we now need to look at the broad match type in a different view and take it purely to get new keyword ideas and nothing more, so reducing the amount of broad match keywords massively. The new structure would be as follows:

I’ve created a new campaign which only includes the keyword PJP Clothes on broad modifier match type and removed all broad matching from the PJP Clothing campaign. The idea is that there is only one keyword which I need to have to control the related themed search terms. The downside to this is that the CPC will be higher, the quality score will be lower and not all search term will be triggered by this keyword. The positives are a more controlled account, with better controls on budget and you don’t need to worry about incorrect ads being displayed. We are now looking at the term +PJP Clothes purely as a testing area for new keywords, so the benefits of this structure will take time to show.

I’m unsure whether to increase the number of ad groups to the PJP Clothing (b) campaign, but my belief is that it could defeat the whole purpose of having the one related themed keyword.

Philip Pollock
Paid Search Manager

On 14^th September, Google will be relaxing its trademark policy in the UK and Ireland. It will now allow advertisers to use trademarked keywords within their Ad Text, as long as they are not trying to pass themselves off as the trademark owner. As an example, “iPod” is a trademark owned by Apple, and currently you are not allowed to include “iPod” in any Ad text, but with the new ruling, Google will allow advertises to create adverts around such products as long as they are not trying to pass themselves off as Apple.

Yes – Google is right to relax the policy

There is a very cynical view out on the internet that Google have done this purely to increase revenue. Although this is quite easy to believe, I do not believe this to be the reason, or even a main fact in the reasoning. If you are a reseller of a product that is trademarked, you would want to advertise that you sell a particular product. But due to the current trademark rules, Google will block you unless you get authority from the trademark owner to use it. So, the only way around this is to create similar words to the trademark, such as i-pod or i p o d instead of iPod.

Relaxing the rule will allow resellers to advertise more freely; they are not wanting to trick visitors into thinking that they are the trademark owners, just that they sell a particular product. This is also in the best interests of the trademark owner as a sale is a sale.

No – Google should not change the policy

The current policy helps protect brands that may have spent millions of pounds and many years in building up a reputation and recognisable brand. Under the current policy, if a client wants to use the trademark to resell they can always apply, giving full control to the legal owners.

Google is the provider of advertising space, so just like TV, newspapers and traditional forms of advertising they have a duty to help protect trademarks.

It will now be up to the trademark owner to stop any misuse of the trademark, whilst Google still profits.

Philip Pollock
PPC Account Manager