The world of search engine marketing is constantly changing and it is up to businesses as well as advertisers to keep pace. Google recently modified their campaign geo–target settings, which should gives advertisers a little more leverage.

The new geo-target settings are more informative, in regard to showing how many people can be reached. For example if a business is thinking of targeting Kalamazoo Michigan, they can see how people are in that target area.  Google will also display locations enclosing a particular area and offer related locations that might be of interest. This is a plus because many times people want to target a certain area, but don’t know if they’ll be reaching a decent amount of people with their advertising. This new reach feature solves that problem. 

Another adjustment Google made is in the map section of the geo-target settings. Previously, a very plain version of the map would display the targeted location. However, Google has upgraded the map to show a more detailed area of the respective location. The map is almost identical to the map shown when one does a Google map search; streets are shown and even landmark locations in the area are displayed on the map.

The geo-target settings seem to be a consistent work in progress because there are features that are available this week that weren’t available a few weeks ago. This should not be a surprise, because Google has a “send feedback” button for people to offer their opinion on the geo-targeting modifications.  When it’s all said and done, these changes should help businesses reach more of their target audience.

When most clients think of paid search conversions, they think of searchers who are using computers and laptops. However, paid search conversions can also come from mobile devices and tablets.  It would behoove businesses to do a device assessment of their campaigns to see the true source of conversions.

Most companies are taught to ask which campaigns and keywords are converting and which ones are converting at the best cost/conversion. Yet many should consider asking which devices are bringing in these conversions. This was not a question that companies needed to ask a few years ago, because mobile devices and tablets weren’t as heavily used as they are now. However, times have changed and the results bare witness.  Let’s say for example that a particular campaign produced 20 conversions in the month of December at a cost/conversion of $5.00. If the keywords and ad copy have good click through rates it may seem as if that particular campaign is well tuned. However, a deeper analysis may show that 15 of those 20 conversions came from mobile devices.  Now what? Break out that one campaign into two separate campaigns. Why? In order to capitalize on the conversions even more.

When a campaign is targeting all media devices, then no one device is truly being tested. However, if you create a version of the campaign that is only targeted to mobile devices and one that is targeted to laptops and computers, it then gives each device an opportunity to show its true potential. One may find that certain campaigns convert better on mobile devices than they do on computers and laptops.

 In the world of paid search, it’s all about testing and making adjustments. Take the time to find out how your campaigns perform on mobile devices. It might be an unexpected surprise to find that mobile devices and tablets are giving your company a better bang for your buck.

Google has officially introduced new ad placements on Google Search. We previously saw Google testing different ad placements and yesterday Google made the announcement.

These new ad placements will be found at the bottom of the search engine results page (SERP) instead of ads that were previously shown to the right side of the results.  The changes are being rolled out and will not always appear at the bottom of the page. Here is a screen shot of the new ad placement at the bottom of the SERP:

Google says that they dynamically optimize each search page, including its ads, to provide the best experience for their users. And in many cases, they have found that displaying ads below search results fits better into the user’s flow as the user scans the page from top to bottom, On average, placements at the bottom of the SERP performed better than side ads in terms of click-through rate (CTR) in their tests.

It will be interesting to see how these new ad placements will affect CTR and conversion performance. In order to gauge performance, you can run a “Top vs. Side” report to see where your ads perform best. All side, bottom and experiment impressions will now be classified as “Other” so you can see how your top placements performance against the other placements on the page. Google says that the report name will be renamed to “Top vs. Other.”