So one thing I noticed when playing with Adwords in their new interface about a month or so ago was that you can set your preferred placements between the 1 and 10 spots in Google Adwords. For those of you that remember companies like Go TO which became Overture which is now Yahoo Search Marketing, you’ll remember that you used to be able to pick where and which place your ads would show and you could really get a gauge for how to optimize your positions and get a seriously solid ROI.
The downside to not letting an algorithm pick your placements and make you bid was that it did not leave an even playing field for smaller advertisers since you would have to pay a lot more to get the 1 to 3 spots if you have a great converting term and it allowed your competitors to completely work your budget over and your spend because you would pay .01 per click higher than the next person bidding below you so your competition would reap the benefits of allowing you to be in the number 1 spot and make you spend a lot more than they had too for the number 2 spot, unless someone was doing it to them as well.
Now, there are some third tier search engines like Go Wholesale which I believe still do allow you to pick your placements, but I am not sure if they still tell you who is next behind you, etc… and it has been a while since I used that one in particular, but those ones get fun and competitive and make for a great advertiser vs. advertiser competition. However, you also have to be careful with these third tier search engines like GoWholesale because even though I have had great results with them, some weeks you will flourish and other weeks you can miss out big time. You don’t always know where the traffic is coming from or the quality so keep a close eye on them, you should also be very selective with the third tier engines as most will result in big time losses, high margins for ROI, click fraud, etc…. but there are a few like GoWholesale.com that actually do seem to be able to drive some legit traffic and sales, if you are in that niche.
Anyways, back to my point of this post lol.
What I am wondering is how relevant it would be to change the 1 to 10 spot for ad placement preferences in the keywords editor spreadsheet.
To get to this spread sheet and see what I am talking about,
- Log into your Google Adwords Account.
- Click on the campaigns tab on the top.
- Click on any campaign.
- Click on the ad group.
- Click on the keywords tab.
- Use the edit drop down and select edit in spreadsheet.
This is also where you assign unique urls to each keyword in the new Google interface as a quick heads up.
My question to all of you is have any of you tried using these placements, setting them to the 3-5 or 5-7 spots and has it been successful? Have you seen your average placement staying within that range? This could be a seriously fabulous way to help manage your campaigns and really find a higher roi by being able to focus your ads into a particular place in the Adwords rankings and as we all know, sometimes you convert well in the 1-3 other times you only convert in the 3-5. This could be a great way to find out which spots will convert and which will be a flop.
I’m testing it right now with one of my Clients and it seems like it is working alright, but I also want to hear if any of you are playing with this and how it is working for you.
Please feel free to leave a comment and how google ad preferences are working for you.
Best,
Adam
