Ads Are Paused But Still Being Charged for Clicks

Posted on October 26, 2015 by Jeff Aspacio

Question: Adwords ads are paused but why am I still being charged for clicks?

This was a question I myself have asked when I was new to my practice in pay-per-click management, specifically Adwords. I encountered this when a client requested to have a new campaign created that targeted the same keywords but wanted new ad copies and landing pages.

For four days my team was able to create a total of 12 landing pages and 12 ad copies. After adding in the keywords for the five adgroups I created, and having the ads approved by Adwords, I added ad extensions to enhance the ads. (Read a previous post to learn about Google Text Ads.

I then proceeded to pause the ads of the previous campaign (not the campaign itself) before running the new campaign. It was a Friday and I was confident there would be no ad spending over the weekend – and so I thought.

Come Monday, I checked on the new campaign only to find that there was some ad spending and there were clicks. I checked the ads, because I was sure I paused them. Yup, there was not any click on the ads. Now, why would Google charge me and report that there was a click when my ads were paused?

If you search for answers in Google to something that relates to this issue, what you would find are questions and answers in Google Adwords Forums and the Adwords Community. But do they really serve as definite answers to the question?

Google Adwords Contact Information

Worldwide Phone Support number: 866-246-6453
Monday – Friday: 9 am – 8 pm EST

Google No Longer Recommends AJAX Crawling Scheme: Update Alert

Posted on October 16, 2015 by Jeff Aspacio

Google is Deprecating Its AJAX Crawling Scheme

In a blog post in the Google Webmaster Central Blog, Google announced that it no longer is recommending the AJAX crawling proposal it made back in 2009. In other words, the major search engine is expressing its disapproval (that’s what deprecate means) of the AJAX crawling scheme.

What is the AJAX Crawling Proposal?

Six years ago, in October 7, 2009, Google proposed a new standard to make AJAX-based websites crawlable. AJAX, short for asynchronous JavaScript and XML, is a group of interrelated Web development techniques used on the client-side to create asynchronous (a form of input/output processing that permits other processing to continue before the transmission has finished) Web applications. There are websites that use AJAX on their pages because of its advantages.

AJAX Advantages

With AJAX, the following are made possible:

1. Update a web page without reloading the page
2. Request data from a server – after the page has loaded
3. Receive data from a server – after the page has loaded
4. Send data to a server – in the background

AJAX-based applications is a great development for users because it makes applications much faster and richer. And, back in 2009, it was proposed by Google to make these pages crawlable. But making applications more responsive has come at a huge cost: crawlers are not able to see any content that is created dynamically. Consequently, the most modern applications are also the ones that are often the least searchable. Thus, the proposal by Google to deprecate its AJAX crawling strategem.

What Now?

Google realized that the assumptions they made back in 2009 are no longer valid. They are now recommending strategies for web design that emphasize accessibility, semantic HTML markup, and external stylesheet and scripting technologies. An example given was using the History API pushState() to ensure accessibility for a wider range of browsers and Google’s systems.

Q & A with Kazushi Nagayama

Q: My site currently follows your recommendation and supports _escaped_fragment_. Would my site stop getting indexed now that you’ve deprecated your recommendation?
A: No, the site would still be indexed. In general, however, we recommend you implement industry best practices when you’re making the next update for your site. Instead of the _escaped_fragment_ URLs, we’ll generally crawl, render, and index the #! URLs.

Q: Is moving away from the AJAX crawling proposal to industry best practices considered a site move? Do I need to implement redirects?
A: If your current setup is working fine, you should not have to immediately change anything. If you’re building a new site or restructuring an already existing site, simply avoid introducing _escaped_fragment_ urls. .

Q: I use a JavaScript framework and my webserver serves a pre-rendered page. Is that still ok?
A: In general, websites shouldn’t pre-render pages only for Google — we expect that you might pre-render pages for performance benefits for users and that you would follow progressive enhancement guidelines. If you pre-render pages, make sure that the content served to Googlebot matches the user’s experience, both how it looks and how it interacts. Serving Googlebot different content than a normal user would see is considered cloaking, and would be against our Webmaster Guidelines.

If this AJAX-crawling update is too advanced for you and you have more questions, feel free to post them in the webmaster help forum.

Google Adwords Text Ads: Things You Need to Know

Posted on September 16, 2015 by Jeff Aspacio

Learn About Google Adwords Text Ads

Whether you are new to using Google Adwords or have been using this advertising program, that can help you reach new customers and grow your business, for a long time, knowing and being reminded about the basics is essential if you want to succeed in your advertising campaigns. The simplest form of online ads is the text ad, which is just one of the few ad formats in Adwords.

The Three Parts of a Text Ad

When you see a text ad above, beside or below search results when searching on Google, you will see text ads. It may look so simple but when creating one, it helps to know and understand its parts. There are three basic parts of a text ad.

1. Headline

Similar to an article in a newspaper, the headline is what people looking at search engine results will most likely take notice of. That’s why it’s important to have your target keyword in this part of the text ad to match what the searchers are looking for. This can also show the ad’s relevance to what people want to find.

2. Display URL

This shows the address of your website. It is not necessarily the complete URL of the target landing page, but it could contain at least the domain name. So don’t fret that your ad copy might look ugly because you are using URL tracking parameters (to help you track your campaign) which can be created through the URL builder tool.

3. Description

Since the text ad headline has a shorter character length (see table below), this is where you can highlight and pitch what your website or company offers. Placing a call to action in this portion of the text ad helps the people who are searching know the next steps to take after viewing your ad and clicking it.

Character Limits in Text Ads

The Google Adwords text ads have character limits for each part mentioned above. The character limits are divided into two types of languages – the regular languages and the double-width languages.

Regular Languages

The character limits for most languages are:

1. Headline – 25 characters
2. Display URL – 35 characters
3. Description – 35 characters for each line (has two lines)

Double-width Languages

Obviously, for languages that occupy double the width (languages like Korean, Chinese and Japanese) when written, the character limits are:

1. Headline – 12 characters
2. Display URL – 17 characters
3. Description – 17 characters for each line (has two lines)

Mobile Format of Text Ads

The Google Adwords text ad, when seen on mobile, SOMETIMES does not show the description’s second line although generally, mobile text ads look like standard text ads that you would see on a desktop computer. It’s crucial to note this when creating a text ad and you are targeting mobile and not just desktop. Make sure that all you need to communicate is found in the first line of the description and it makes sense.

By experience, when creating text ads for desktop, one would tend to write a description that would use two lines and it would be in such a way that the second line is dependent on the first line to make sense. See the example below.

These are the ads that were triggered when I searched for “online advertising” and they appeared on the side of the search engine results. Notice the second ad from the top and its description lines.

Description line 1: Strategic digital agency based in
Description line 2: Manila, Philippines.

This makes sense when it appears on desktop. But if this ad targets mobile (which may not necessarily be the case when this ad was created), the ad would appear like this:

Based in ? The description line does not make sense at all, so it would be best to make the 2 lines of description independent from each other when you are targeting mobile and desktop.

When does the second line not show the description?

According to Google…

For mobile text ads, AdWords may sometimes replace your second line of description text with the most relevant ad extensions that you’ve enabled — like sitelink extensions, location extensions, or callout extensions.

Extensions for Text Ads

So you’ve heard of extensions. What are they anyway? Extensions are actually a type of ad format that show extra information (“extending” from your text ads) about your website or business. Ad extensions appear with ads on the Search network, and depending on the extension, they could also appear with ads on the Display network.

But for the Search network, this is how site extensions look like.

In the example above, the extensions are boxed in red. Those are actually site link extensions. There are actually twelve types of extensions and they are grouped into two.

Manual Extensions

1. Apps
2. Calls
3. Locations
4. Reviews
5. Sitelinks
6. Call outs

Automatic extensions

7. Consumer ratings
8. Previous visits
9. Seller ratings
10. Dynamic sitelink extensions
11. Social extensions
12. Dynamic structured snippets

For more information of what each one is and what campaign type they are good for, you can visit the Google Partners’ page on how to enhance text ads with extensions.

If you need guidance in setting up and optimizing your Google Adwords text ads, send an email at inquire@redlettersph.com. RedLettersPH provides consultation and PPC management services.

Chrome Will Block Flash Ads Starting September 1, 2015

Posted on September 1, 2015 by Jeff Aspacio

Google Chrome will Block Flash ads beginning September 1,2015

Announced first in June, Chrome will begin pausing many Flash ads by default to improve performance for users.

How will this look like on Chrome?

It’s actually very simple. What users will see is a “play” button on top of the ads that use flash, which will appear grayed out. Below is a screenshot of a page with two flash ads blocked (in red box).

How big will its impact be?

Continue reading →

How to View (Unavailable) in Top Conversion Paths Under Multi-Channel Funnels Report

Posted on June 10, 2015 by Jeff Aspacio

Extracting Valuable Insights from Top Conversion Paths Report Including “Unavailable”

By default, most analysts, when looking at the Google Analytics data of their website, credit or attribute conversions (leads) and ecommerce transactions (sales) to the last campaign, search, ad or step that referred the user when he or she converted. This is easily seen under Acquisition Reports which, by default, shows the Acquisition-Behavior-Conversions (ABC) columns.

Channels, Campaigns Report

Reports with the ABC columns are viewable under the following:

1) Reports under Acquisition > All Traffic

2) Reports under Acquisition > Adwords

3) Reports under Acquisition > Campaigns

These reports, however, do not reveal the role that prior website referrals, searches, and ads played in the conversions. The Top Conversion Paths report does. Continue reading →

Author: Jeff Aspacio