You may remember the 10% Clicks Rule is a technique to help identify the areas of your Google AdWords account which could benefit most from your time and effort (if not, you may want track back to Part 1: Overview and Part 2: Process).

What I want to do now is evaluate the rule using a real AdWords campaign data to assess its viability. Does it work? Does it help PPC management? Does it actually help improve results? Is 10% the right figure?

Example

Let’s start with the example I worked through in Part 2: Process.

As you may remember, we identified the ad groups which were receiving a large percentage of total broad and phrase-match clicks. In the example I used, 4 ad groups received at least 10% of broad and phrase clicks.I then suggested looking at the search queries for these ad groups.This gave me some great insight. Although search queries 54, 183, 55, 56 and 150 were relevant to my products and services, they were being broad matched to ad groups which were not relevant. Looking down the list, I found many similar examples of relevant searches being matched irrelevantly.

So I decided to create 16 new ad groups with 288 new keywords. Doing so gave me ideas of other new types of keywords, so I added them too, some in new ad groups. With these new keywords having their their own tailored ads, I could now be more sure than whenever someone searched for these search queries again, relevant ads would show.

Effects on click distribution

Let’s have a look at the before and after in terms of click distribution:

• The percentage of broad and phrase clicks going to ad group 17 fell from 22.8% to 12.4%
• The percentage of broad and phrase clicks going to ad group 27 fell from 15.8% to 11.3%
• Ad groups 30 and 26 dropped out of the top 5
• Ad group 36 (one of the new ad groups I added with new keyword ideas) moved into the top spot
• The number of ad groups receiving at least 10% of broad and phrase clicks fell from 4 last month to 3 this month
• The amount of broad and phrase clicks going to top 5 ads groups fell from 69% last month to 59% this month

(A more comprehensive comparison of ad group click percentages for both months can be found here).

So although most of last month’s ad groups are receiving a smaller share of broad and phrase clicks, one ad group (36) is now receiving more.

Not ideal, but it’s a step in the right direction. Next month, the search queries for ad group 36 can be analysed and split out into separate ad groups. If we repeat the process a few more times, what we’ll hopefully see is the broad and phrase click distribution spread over a greater number of ad groups.

Effects on actual results

Now let’s look at how overall AdWords results have changed:

• CTR increased by 22.5%
• Click volume increased by 43.2%
• CPCs stayed relatively constant (variation of $0.01)
• Average position of ads rose by 0.6
• Quality Score (weighted average) increased from 7.62 to 7.98
• Conversion rate increased by 33.8%

It seems like the improved ad group granularity, better tailoring of ads and 288 new keywords had a positive effect on CTR, Quality Score and conversion rate. Click volume also rose significantly for the same average CPC.

So great results all round.

More examples

We’ve only looked at one example so far. Let’s repeat the process for few more campaigns to see how the 10% Clicks Rule works on other campaigns.

Highlighted in red are the ad groups which are over 10% and could benefit from some insight.In examples 2 and 3, just looking at the search queries for these highlighted ad groups I found over 300 new keywords that could be added. Most were relevant to my products and services but were being matched irrelevantly.

Although examples 4 and 5 had fewer ad groups over 10%, just looking at the top ad groups helped me uncover some unnecessary broad-matching, suggesting maybe a ‘top 5 rule’ would be better to keep it relative.

Although no before and after results are yet available for these campaigns, it would be interesting to see how CTR, Quality Score and conversion rate improve over time with these ad group improvements.

Conclusions

So what can we conclude from all of this?

• The 10% Clicks Rule made it easy to identify ad groups where time and effort should be focused
• There is evidence to suggest he 10% Clicks Rule successfully helped spread the share of broad and phrase clicks across a greater number of ad groups
• There is evidence to suggest the 10% Clicks Rule helped significantly increase CTR, click volume, average position, Quality Score and conversion rate while keeping CPCs constant

So…if you are worried that too much of your traffic is being broad or phrase-matched, or worried that you are losing control over where your ads are being show, or just want to improve CTR, click volume and conversion rate, this technique could be for you.

I’m convinced of it’s use in helping to improve AdWords campaigns. I use it regularly and it really does help to quickly and easily get to the heart of broad and phrase matching. It saves sifting through mountains of data and becoming overwhelmed with analysis paralysis. That’s just me though – if you’ve tried it out for yourself and have any suggestions, good or bad, I’d love to hear your comments.

Happy optimising!

Alan Mitchell is an experienced Google AdWords consultant helping businesses in Australia increase their return on investment from PPC marketing. For more information on how efficient search query optimisation can benefit your business, get in touch today for a free consultation.

You may be familiar with a technique I shared in recent post called the 10% Clicks Rule (if not, you may want to come back once you’ve skimmed through Part 1: Overview). In essence, the 10% Clicks Rule is a technique that aims to improve the relevancy of ads for search queries which have broad or phrase-matched to one of you keywords. Since it is impractical to give every possible keyword or search query its own ad group with personalised ads, the 10% Clicks Rule helps to identify those ad groups which are most likely to benefit from your time and effort.

Part 1 was all theory. What I want to do now is provide a step-by-step guide explaining how to identify those ad groups in your own AdWords account which could greatly benefit from your insight. All we’re trying to do here is run a Google AdWords search query report at ad group level, filter out exact match keywords (to leave broad and phrase match only) and highlight those ad groups with more than 10% of broad and phrase clicks. These are the ad groups we want to look at. So if you’re a seasoned AdWords and Excel pro, feel free to skim through the bullets or jump ahead to Part 3: Does it Work?. For everyone else who might need a little more guidance, continue reading for a detailed step-by-step guide.

Download a search query report

• Log in to Google AdWords, go to the Report Centre and click ‘create a new report’
• Click ‘Search Query Performance’
• Select ‘ad group’ as the level of detail, ‘summary’ as the unit of time
• Select an appropriate date range
• Click ‘create report’, open it once it completes and export it to Excel

Pivot the data

Once we have the search query report in front of us, we want to summarise clicks by ad group.

• Delete anything above the campaigns/ad group/search query row so ‘campaigns’ is in cell A1
• Scroll to the bottom and delete the ‘totals and overall averages’ row
• Select all data and headings
• Go to Insert, click ‘PivotTable’, the ‘OK’
• This should create a new sheet

Calculate clicks by ad group

Next we want to filter out exact match clicks and calculate each ad group’s broad and phrase match click volume.

• Make sure you can see the ‘PivotTable Field List’ toolbar on the right-hand side (if you can’t, try clicking on the blank PivotTable or go to Options > Field List) – your sheet should now look like this
• Drag ‘ad group’ into the ‘row labels’ box – this should list all your ad groups in column 1
• Drag ‘clicks’ into the ‘values’ box and ensure it says ‘sum of clicks’ – this should show click totals in column 2
• Drag ‘Search Query Match Type’ into the ‘report filter’ box which should add a drop-down filter in cells A1 and A2 – your field list should now look like this
• Click the drop-down filter, click ‘select multiple items’ and ensure only broad, broad (session based) and phrase  are ticked – like this

Calculate percentages by ad group

You should now have a list of ad groups with totals of their broad and phrase clicks. Let’s now calculate each ad group’s percentage of total broad and phrase clicks.

• Scroll to the bottom and make a note of the ‘grand total’ number of broad and phrase clicks
• Click anywhere on the PivotTable to ensure it’s selected and click Options > Formulas > Calculated Field on the toolbar
• Type “Percentage” as the name
• Type “= Clicks / total_clicks” into the Formula box, where ‘total_clicks’ is your grand total of broad and phrase clicks you made a note of earlier
• Click OK – this should add a new column with each ad group’s percentage
• Ensure the ‘grand total’ of this new column equals 1
• Change the formatting so that each number reads as a percentage

Highlight high-volume ad groups

Now that we have percentages calculated for each ad group, make a note of those ad groups…

• Right-click anywhere in column 3, go to ‘Sort’ and select ‘Sort Largest to Smallest’
• Make a note of ad groups with more than 10% of clicks

These are the ad groups with a lot of broad-matching and phrase-matching going on. These are the ad groups that could benefit with your time and effort.

The fun part

You’ve now got everything you need to start make powerful changes to you AdWords account. You can stop here and use your own intuition to make improvements to these ad groups, or continue reading for some ideas and suggestions on what to do next.

Search query analysis

• Go back to your original search query report sheet so you can see all your search queries
• In the ‘ad group’ column, filter so that only the ad groups you made a note of earlier are ticked
• In the ‘Search Query Match Type’ column, filter so that only broad, broad (session) and phrase are ticked
• Sort the clicks largest to smallest

Your search query report should look something like this.

Take a moment to familiarise yourself with your search queries. People are typing these searches to find your products or services. You need to decide what action to take. For each of your search queries, you could either:

1. Add it as a negative keyword (if it’s not relevant)
2. Add it as a new keyword in its own ad group (if ads in that ad group are relevant)
3. Add it as a new keywords in a new ad group (if ads in that ad group are not relevant and new ads are needed)

First decide if any of the search queries are irrelevant to your business (option 1). Make a note of any irrelevant searches in a separate Excel sheet – you can add them as negative keywords later.

Great. Let’s now assume that all remaining searches are relevant to your business. You now need to decide between options 2 and 3 – whether to add the search query as a new keyword in that ad group, or in a new ad group.

To decide whether option 2 or 3 would work best, have a look at the ‘ad group’ column for the search query. It is this ad group the search query is being matched to. Open up AdWords Editor and now find that ad group. Look at the ads. These ads are being shown whenever someone searches for the search query. Are they relevant? Do they mention the search query in the heading or descriptions? Could they be improved in any way to increase relevancy, Quality Score, CTR and conversion rate?

If you think the ads are relevant to the search query, add the search as a new keyword to that ad group (option 2). If you think you could write better, more relevant ads for the search query, add the search query as a new keyword in a new ad group and write better ads for it (option 3).

Great rule, but does it work?

Hopefully if you’ve made it this far you’ve managed to have a go yourself and found some juicy ways to improve your AdWords campaign. While I hope you found it simple and straightforward to follow, feel free to share your thoughts and comments.

In the final part of the Clicks Rule trilogy, I look at real AdWords examples and explore how it can actually help improve results of AdWords campaigns. Part 3: Does It Work?

Alan Mitchell is an experienced Google AdWords consultant helping businesses in Australia increase their return on investment from PPC marketing. For more information on how efficient search query optimisation can benefit your business, get in touch today for a free consultation.

Here’s the theory

No more than 10% of total broad and phrase clicks in your Google AdWords account should come from a single ad group. If more than 10% of your total broad and phrase clicks comes from a single ad group, the keywords in that ad group are being over broad-matched or over phrase-matched. Too many searches are going to that ad group’s broad and phrase-match keywords, so the ad group could benefit from keyword expansion and search query analysis.

Example

Suppose you found an ad group which accounted for 18% of your total broad and phrase clicks. This ad group is a prime candidate for improvement for two reasons:

1. Ad group expansion

High-volume ad groups are perfect for ad group expansion.

Spitting out the ad group’s keywords into separate ad groups allows you to write more tailored ads for each keyword. Tailored ads are likely to have a beneficial effect on click-through rate (CTR), Quality Score, costs per click (CPC), ad ranking and conversion rate.

Since it is impractical for every keyword to have it’s own ad group (imagine how tedious and time-consuming 10,000 keywords and 10,000 ad groups would be!), the 10% rule highlights the ad groups and keywords that are likely to benefit most from being split out and having their own tailored ads.

2. Search query analysis

High-volume ad groups are also perfect for search query analysis.

Search queries are what people actually type into Google before they click on one of your ads. Running a search query report for the whole AdWords account allows to to assess whether each of your search queries are relevant to your business, and adding them as negative keywords if not.

Running a search query report at an ad group level, is even better. Not only can you decide if each search query is relevant to your business, but you can also decide if each search query sufficiently matches the ads in that ad group. If the ads in the ad group are very different to the search query, the search query could benefit from having its own ad group with its own personalised ads.

So for each broad and phrase search query you found that matches to the 18% ad group:

• If the search query is irrelevant to your business – add the search query as a negative keyword
• If the search query is very close to the ad group’s keywords and ads – add the search query as a keyword in the same ad group
• If the search query is different to the ad group’s keywords and ads and you think it could benefit by having it’s own personalised ads – add the search query as a keyword in a new ad group

Since it is impractical to look at the every ad group’s search queries, the 10% rule highlights only those ad groups which are likely to have the biggest effect for the amount of time you spend making changes.

Broad and phrase only

You may ask why look at only broad and phrase clicks? What about exact match?

Exact-match keywords give you complete control over the user’s search query. Since you can be 100% sure what the user will need to type into Google for your exact-match keyword to be triggered, you are able to write highly-targeted and personalised ads without having to worry about hundreds of different search queries triggering your exact-match keyword. It is relatively simple to look at an exact-match keyword and decide whether its ad could be made more relevant.

However, with broad and phrase match, things aren’t so simple. You could spend all day trying to write perfect ads which closely match your broad and phrase keywords, but ultimately it is up to Google what kinds of searches get matched to these ads.

For example, you could write a highly compelling ‘Cheap Sony TVs’ ad for your ‘cheap Sony TVs’ keyword. However, if the user searches for ‘Bravia 42 inch deals’ and they gets broad-matched to your ‘cheap Sony TVs’ keyword, your ‘cheap Sony TVs’ ad will appear. It will look irrelevant to the user.

A better ad would mention ‘Bravia 42 inch deals’, although this is only possible by creating a dedicated ‘Bravia 42 inch deals’ ad group. You know you can’t create a dedicated ad group for every search query, so where do you start? Where do you draw the line?

This lack of control and uncertainty with broad and phrase match can be a real problem for advertisers trying to create highly relevant campaigns. The whole point of the 10% Clicks Rule is to help regain some control, by providing a technique to help you quickly and easily get to the heart of your broad and phrase matching and make changes that are likely to have a powerful effect. It’s not meant to be a strict ‘rule’ as such, more a ‘guideline’ or ‘rule of thumb’ which I have found to work in my experience.

That’s all for part 1. Comments and suggestions welcome.

In Part 2: Process, I’ll take you through a step-by-step guide to running rule for yourself – finding those ad groups in your own Google AdWords account that could benefit from a little TLC. If you’re more interested in exactly how the 10% Clicks Rule actually works or how it can help to improve your AdWords results, skip to Part 3: Does it Work?

Alan Mitchell is an experienced Google AdWords consultant helping businesses in Australia increase their return on investment from PPC marketing. For more information on how efficient search query optimisation can benefit your business, get in touch today for a free consultation.