What happened to Phrase Match? https://youtu.be/zbITxUoxiTk It’s easy to think of Phrase Match as a safe middle ground. Not too expansive. Not too restrictive. And traditionally, that’s the role it has played. First with the old, purely semantic match typing rules – by requiring an exact match within the search, but allowing for additional words […]

No slowdown in the pace of change with Google Ads updates in Q1 2024… Here’s a roundup and analysis of the key changes, and what to do about them. https://youtu.be/oqRYSkotv0Q Watch the vid for more context and analysis… but here’s a quick summary of the changes 👇🏽 1) Consent Mode v2   With the introduction […]

We’ve had a raft of Google Ads Updates in Q1 2023. Here’s a roundup and analysis of the key changes and what to do about them. https://youtu.be/C2jD7nR8s7U Watch the vid for context and analysis… but here’s a quick summary of the changes 👇🏽 1) Google Optimize to close at the end of September  “Google Optimize […]

The fluid nature of RSAs poses a challenge when it comes to rigorous testing. But – with RSA auto-optimisation not quite being all it’s cracked up to be, testing still needs to be done. In the new course unit (live today), we look at several effective tests you can run to improve RSA performance. One […]

What’s wrong with relevant traffic? (as if we didn’t have enough problems battling irrelevant traffic!) In this video we look at a key distinction that’s easy to overlook in paid search optimisation… It’s all about the difference between likely-to-click and likely-to-convert in Google Ads, and how it can catch out even experienced paid search pros! […]

Ad optimisation used to be pretty simple. Run 3-4 ads together Check them frequently Pause the losers Keep the winners Repeat It wasn’t always easy to keep it up, but the principle was straightforward. And by performing this kind of selection consistently, we could be confident of improving performance incrementally even without much “intelligent design” […]

RSAs are complicated beasts. No longer is ad creation just a question of what to write. We also have to decide how many lines to write… whether, where and how many lines to pin… How much to focus on quality and relevance vs diversity of lines, and how – if at all – to factor […]

Two (very broad) qualities that you want your paid search ads to have are: Relevance and Appeal Now, ‘Appeal’ has plenty of components of course… We could discuss differentiation, urgency, tactics like scarcity and social proof, from Robert Cialdini’s principles of persuasion… or Drew Whitman’s eight ‘biologically hard-wired hot buttons’ (he does have an advertiser’s […]

The algorithms are trying to take the reins… Should we hand them over, or should we hold on tight?

Google Ads isn’t what it used to be…