Google Instant gives you suggestions as soon as you type a single letter. It's a bit distracting, and pretty annoying, and potentially extremely disruptive to search.

Mike Marshall and I were talking abou this at his Search Engine Academy this afternoon. After chatting for a while, we decided to start the Google Instant Alphabet project. 

Here's how it works: Enter the letter A, and see what listing comes up first. 

Here's my personalized alphabet (at least customized for geography):

• Amazon
• Best Buy
• Craigslist
• Durham Bulls
• Ebay
• Facebook
• Gmail
• Hotmail
• Imdb
• Justin Bieber
• Kohls
• Lowes
• Mapquest
• Netflix
• Orbitz
• Pandora
• Quotes
• REI
• Skype
• Target
• USPS
• Verizon
• Walmart
• Xbox
• Youtube
• Zappos

Justin Bieber? Really, Google?

Is yours similar? Identical? Do your own (it will take about 3 minutes), and post your Google Instant results to comments below. Together, we'll figure this thing out.

And maybe I'll become so famous that my name will eclipse Hotmail some day… ;)

A reader asks:

I purchased your Google Adwords book and on page 54 at the bottom, you said to "click the approx avg search volume header to sort by average monthly search volume, from greatest to least", but I don't see this option on google's keyword tool. Is there something else I can click on to get the same results?

My response:

I'm lying in bed with a wrenched lower back, so the keyword I gravitate toward is "low back pain." Next time someone asks me a keyword question, I hope I respond with an example more like "ultra-marathoning over 40" ;)

Here's how you do it in the new Google Keyword Tool:

1. Enter your keyword and get a table of results:

2. Next to "Sorted by" at the top right, click the drop-down menu that currently shows "Relevance".

You'll see the whole menu, and then you can select the sort field:

Notification: Camp Checkmate Chicago: June 10-11, 2010

If you're doing keyword research, what do you do with all that research? How do you write compelling "Game Over" Ads based on all your insight and hard work?

Most instructions on market research tell you what to research and where to get the information, but now how to use that intel to create compelling marketing messages that make you the obvious choice to your ideal customers.

Camp Checkmate is the answer to that problem. Two days of high level workshop and mastermind, where you'll come away with your marketing done for you.

Read more: CampCheckmate.com

A reader asks:

I just finished going through your book Google Adwords for Dummies.

In plunking around in Google search (now that I know what those results down the right side mean), I’ve noticed that some search terms result in zero Google Adword ads on the result page.

Would that indicate that firms who would likely use Google Adwords see no value in Google Adwords for their businesses?

My reply:

When there are no ads for a given keyword, it’s either because it has a huge search volume that no one has figured out how to monetize, or because it has such a low search volume that it’s not worth the effort of writing ads for.

Here’s an example of a very popular keyword that doesn’t attract advertising:

bridges

This keyword gets about 2 million searches per month. Take a look at the Google SERP (search engine results page) for bridges:

As you can see, no ads.

In the examples that you gave me (which I’m not sharing publicly), I see very long tail, specialized keywords that Google may not know what to do with. If the search volume is very low, Google will disallow the keyword. This forces you to bid on more general keywords with higher search volume. This makes Google happy by aggregating auctions and keeping bid prices high.

It also makes life easier for many advertisers who can’t be bothered to brainstorm lots of keyword variations.

For example, if I wanted to sell off my collection of Three Mile Island paperweights (of course, I never would), I might bid on the keyword Three Mile Island Unit II Dedication Acrylic Paperweight.

And if you typed in that exact search term, you would hope and expect to see my ad. But in fact, all you’d see are a few ads for paperweights:

If I wanted my ad to show up when you search for the long tail keyword, I need to bid on the broad match for acrylic paperweight and hope that Google  finds it a good match. Annoying, but that’s the way things are in 2009.

Google wants to show ads for every search (ads is how they make their money). So if you see zero ads for a search, it’s because nobody has figured out how to make money from that keyword.

For your specialized, long tail keywords, you need to find the more general keywords and bid on those in broad match.

But for some B2B markets, you may find that so few of your prospects exist in the world (let’s say, Directors of HR at Fortune 1oo companies, or purchasing managers at injection molding factories) that AdWords is an impractical way of reaching them. In that case, focus on SEO for the long tails (easy to rank high) and take out ads in print and online journals and go for PR.

Anybody else out there confused about keywords? If so, please check out the Traffic Surge course that begins October 8, 2009. My guarantee is that you’ll go from beginner to Market Master in 8 weeks.

Or, if you’re just interested in fine paperweights, I’m entertaining offers:

A reader wonders:

How many keywords (max) would you associate with your individual ad?

My response:

No more than 10 or so. The exact number is less important than the main concept, which is that all the keywords be tightly linked to the ad copy.

So if your ad group is about vidalia onions, and your ad headline is "Sweet vidalia onions," you might include the following keyword variations:

sweet vidalia onions
vidalia onions
vidalian onion delivery
buy vidalia onions
buy sweet vidalia onions
order sweet vidalia onions
order vidalia onions

I would put the following keywords into different ad groups:

vidalia onion recipes
vidalia onion relish
sweet onions
vidalia onion farms

I might use "relish" as a negative keyword if I don’t think relish seekers are my market.

A reader wonders:

I actually DO have a pertinent question for you – an answer to which the Google Ads help team was conspicuously unable to give me. In your book, one of the main themes is to make keywords as specific as possible so as to avoid unnecessary clicks and placements. I worked hard to develop such a set of keywords, upon which Google stopped showing most of my ads because they say the keywords have too low a traffic volume.

But this isn’t logical. As far as I understand it, the whole idea of Google Ads was that if you search for "6 1/2 inch yellow oblong slightly curved widgets", you should get not only any site that deals with such an oddity, but any Google Ad that refers to it or has it as a keyword shoujld also show up on the right.

So my question is two-fold: why is Google doing this to me, and is there anything I can do about it?

My response:

When AdWords For Dummies was published, the long tail keywords were the cutting edge in competitive advantage. Think of keywords nobody else is using, and you get hungrier searchers and less competition. Better conversions on cheaper clicks! What could be bad?

Unfortunately, Google has decided they make less money on long tail keywords with very few searches. Combine that with improvements in their matching algorithms, and you get a new situation: a high quality ad with robust CTR on a less specific keyword will trump a lower-quality ad on a more specific keyword.

My friend and "ears to the ground" AdWords Answerman David Rothwell (David, no charge for the catchy moniker ;) has moved from lots of exact match keywords to ad groups with more general broad match keywords and lots of negatives, which he collects by running the Search Query Report every week.

I have a case study from David which will appear in the second edition of AdWords For Dummies, scheduled for publication some time before Duke next wins the Final Four.

Wanna get a Great quality score for a keyword? Don’t just stuff that keyword into the title tag, headline, alt tags, etc. You need to think about other keywords as well – those related to the keyword you’re trying to optimize for.

What are they? Well, now Google kind of tells you, sometimes, with a new-ish feature that appears at the bottom of the search engine results page (SERP).

The "Searches related to: Keyword" section lets you know how Google is applying its latent semantic indexing algorithms.

In the example above, a search for shamanism is related to a whole bunch of keywords that don’t even include the main keyword and aren’t synonyms for it. A "dumb" search engine or keyword research tool wouldn’t be able to link shamanism to ayahuasca, or animism. Google knows this because it follows us as we search and re-search and re-search again, refining and varying our keywords until we get what we want. So ayahuasca (the "vine of the dead," a psychotropic plant used by Amazonian shamans to facilitate seeing into the spirit world) is linked to shamanism by virtue of iterative search behavior.

Once Google understands these connections, it looks at your web page trying to rank for shamanism to see if it contains any of the other related keywords. The more the page seems to display the correct context for the keyword, the more highly rewarded it’s likely to be.

So run your big keywords through the SERP and take a peak at the related feature down at the bottom. Then go see which of them can logically appear on your landing page.

(This insight comes courtesy of Search Engine News, to which you can subscribe for $144/year.)

A reader wonders:

Am currently using the Look Over My Shoulder (LOMS) videos to get started using AdWords. They’re very helpful, and I’m very grateful to Howie for creating them.

As I will be writing ads and landing pages in French, I need a tool that will help me identify the top 100 French keywords. Are you able to recommend one (either free or paid)? Before checking anywhere else, I wanted to check with Howie because I trust him to steer me in the right direction.

My response:

Aw, shucks. Thanks for the kind words. What was your question again?

Oh yeah, French keywords.

First thing I’d try is the Google free keyword tool.

In the Tools tab, find the "edit" link next to the default language and location:

Change the parameters on the page that displays next:

That should do it for you.

Note to everyone else: If you’re interested in the LOMS AdWords success videos, and you would also like to send me fan mail of gratitude, I think that’s an excellent idea. Find out more here.

A reader wonders:

If I have a lot of related keywords, do I need to send each keyword to it’s own landing page? Or can I automatically insert the keyword into the title tag of a dynamically generated landing page?

My response:

Dynamic keyword insertion into the landing page may work for Google in terms of assigning relevance (and hence a high quality score) to a keyword-landing page combo, but it doesn’t always work for the person searching. Different keywords may require different stories, different emotional appeals, different motivations, etc.

For example, look at a couple of keywords in my field:

adwords help

adwords consulting

They might be considered synonymous, but I’d probably send adwords consulting traffic to a page talking about my consulting practice, and adwords help traffic would go to a product, or even a free newsletter.

Simply swapping out "help" for "consulting" doesn’t capture the big difference between the two needs/problems/desires.

There’s an easy way to find out, though: Try it and see if the conversion rate is pretty equal across a bunch of keywords. If one keyword converts much worse than the others, then you know that traffic requires its own dedicated landing page.

I still see too many campaigns in which all the keywords are broad match. These advertisers are saying to Google, in effect, "You go and figure out who to show my ad to."

Aside from the fact that they’re ending the sentence with a preposition, they’re also abdicating their responsibility to select the exact keyword phrases which will bring targeted prospects.

So today, a brief reflection on the importance of phrase match, triggered by the bungled Presidential oath of office.

The Only Quotes in the Entire Constitution

I looked up the text of the Constitution online (as soon as I realized the only part I had memorized – "Hey, do you know about the U.S.A.? Do you know about the government? Can you tell me about the Constitution? Hey, learn about the U.S.A." – was actually from Schoolhouse Rock, and not the actual document).

So at http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html I discovered something interesting:

The only quotation marks in the entire 4400-word document appear in Article 2, Section 1, Row E, Mezzanine:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Because these words weren’t said in the exact order on Tuesday, some constitutional scholars – who must have a lot of time on their hands to be experts on just 4400 words – recommended the do-over, which was administered – flawlessly – yesterday.

What if the Oath of Office Were a Keyword?

If you were bidding on the entire presidential oath as a broad match AdWords keyword (which I’m not recommending, mind you, especially since Google limits search queries to 32 words, which I did not know until I tried to enter the presidential oath a few seconds ago), the second listing, from conservativeusa.org, is actually for the Congressional oath of office.

If you don’t think there’s a big difference between being a senator and being president, just ask John McCain!

But when you add the quotes back in to the search query, making it phrase match, you get an entire page of listings specifically about the presidential oath.

So What?

OK, so you’re not bidding on oaths of office. (Just a brief aside: nobody is bidding on "president oath" right now – what sorts of businesses could generate targeted traffic for that keyword this week? Public speaking courses? Historical book publishers? Commemorative Plate makers?)

What does this have to do with you?

If all your keywords are broad match (without quotes or brackets), then you are trusting Google to figure out which searches are actually relevant to you. And possibly more important, you are letting Google bundle low-quality prospects together with very high-quality prospects.

For example, let’s look at someone selling outerwear. Perhaps they bid on

fleece jackets

Google may show their ad for

fleece hooded jackets
North Face fleece jackets
Nort Face fleese jackets
North Face Denali fleece jacket sale
Men’s Large North Face Denali jacket

Do you think that some of these searches might be a little more valuable than others? Wouldn’t the merchant be willing to bid more on the very specific search term that includes product size? Mightn’t that merchant want to include some of those details in the ad and on the landing page?

Broad match allows you separate the different market segments, so you can learn and improve the relevance of your offerings. So take those longer-tail, higher "commercial intent" keywords and stick them in quotes, for broad match, and even brackets, from exact match.

So please repeat after me, "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute broad match keywords in my AdWords campaigns."

President-elect Barack Obama recently announced the appointment of Nancy Killefer to the newly-created post of Chief Performance Officer. Her role, in Obama’s words, is to "scour this budget line by line, eliminating what we don’t need or what doesn’t work, and improving the things that do."

In honor of this appointment, I’d like to appoint YOU as Chief Performance Officer of your own business. Even if you haven’t borrowed $1.2 trillion to fund your AdWords account, "eliminating what doesn’t work" is still sound advice.

Carefully Monitor Your Broad Match Keywords

Broad match keywords are the ones where you don’t wrap any punctuation around the word in your AdWords dashboard. 

For example, if you have a party supply store, your prospect might be looking for ideas or supplies for a birthday party. So you bid on the keyword 

kids party ideas

Theoretically, Google now knows which actual searches are relevant to that keyword. Hopefully, that keyword triggers an impression of your ad for searches like

party ideas for kids
children’s party ideas
kid birthday party ideas
kid birthday theme ideas

and so on.

Trouble is, Google isn’t always that smart. Your ad may be showing for keywords like

halloween party
bachelorette party
kids party supply rental 

And double trouble is, you probably aren’t keeping an eye on things.

This is like being a shareholder in, say, Lehman Brothers, and trusting the CEO and board to manage the company in a responsible manner. As a lot of unhappy people recently discovered, the entities who want you to give them control over your money don’t always have your best interests at heart. If you aren’t watching your broad match keywords like a whistleblower, you are abdicating much of your responsibility as an AdWords advertiser.

As Dan and Elan Perach point out in their January 7, 2009 blog post about AdWords broad match bloopers, Google often shows your ads for searches that aren’t meaningfully related to your actual keyword. Here are a couple of examples:

Keyword "shop designer" triggered the ad being shown for the search term "coffee shop names"

Keyword "advertising company" triggered the ad being shown for the search term "business for sale"

So what’s an advertiser to do?

1. Turn off "automatic keyword matching" in your advanced campaign settings

For some weird reason, I can’t find this feature in my "normal" AdWords interface. However, it does appear in the new beta interface (stuff in AdWords sometimes reminds me of the 9th floor in the Twilight Zone episode "The After Hours" – click the arrow below to get into the mood):

Make sure this box is UNchecked (if you can find it).

Shane Keller, PPC manager at GCFLearnFree.org, reported the following results:

I ran Keyword Matching for two weeks, and then turned it off and went back to manually monitoring and adjusting my keywords. Here are the results for the two weeks of no Keyword Matching compared to the previous two weeks of Keyword Matching:

Clicks -8.9%

Impressions -23.5%

CTR +19.66%

Conv. Rate +8.1%

Total Conversion +7.8%

As you can see, the campaign did better with Keyword Matching turned off.

2. Run the search query report frequently

The Search Query Report shows you the actual search terms that triggered your keywords. Run it frequently and based on the data, take steps 3 and 4 (below).

3. Add good queries as phrase and exact match keywords

Suppose you see a few searches for "Obama kids party theme" that got triggered by your keyword "kids party themes". If you have a bunch of Obama paper plates, napkins, and noisemakers you can sell, you probably want to add that keyword to your list as a phrase and exact match.

In the screenshot below, a whole bunch of people searched for what is uric acid – which I did not include in my keyword list. These searches were triggered because Google thought they were relevant to a keyword I was bidding on, uric acid.

Brief commercial sem-interruption: One of the 28+ Look Over My Shoulder (LOMS) AdWords Success Videos shows you exactly how to generate and interpret the Search Query report.

4. Add lots of negative keywords

Go through the Search Query Report with a fine-toothed comb (that’s a metaphor – an actual comb may damage your monitor screen or tear your paper) and find all the keywords whose presence in a search phrase means that your ad/landing page/offer/existence simply isn’t relevant to that search.

If you don’t sell Obama party paraphernalia, then add "Obama" as a negative keyword. Without stretching the brain cells too much, you may also want to negate "Sarah Palin" and "Joe the Plumber" and all the other pop culture figures whose images you can’t deliver on a balloon.

In the screenshot below, the word patients appears in several keyword searches. I never bid on any keyword phrase with patients in it, so Google is deciding on its own to show my ads for those searches. As you can see, none of these searches has lead to a conversion. The sample size isn’t very large – not a ton of impressions and clicks – but it’s something I’d keep a close eye on.

 You may be wondering what the keyword gout more:for_patients means. After all, that’s not something your Aunt Tilly is likely to type into Google after Uncle Waldo grabs his big toe and starts yelling. When you see the more: element in a keyword report, it refers to a refined search. For certain keywords, Google provides a list of refinements at the top of the organic listings. Here’s the more:for_patients link cited in the report:

No Keyword Left Behind

As the world’s attention focuses on the political transition in Washington, and the new administration’s push toward line-by-line budget accountability during this economic turmoil, my wish for you is the time, focus, knowledge and courage to rationalize your own keyword strategy without needing a crisis to get you going.

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BONUS BOP QUOTES (for reading this far):

I was going to thrash them within an inch of their lives, but I didn’t have a tape measure.
- Groucho Marx

With every mistake we must surely be learning.
- George Harrison, "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"

It’s clearly a budget. It’s got a lot of numbers in it.
- George W. Bush

A billion here, a billion there — sooner or later it adds up to real money.
- Senator Everett Dirksen

I have long contended that, however many zillion dollars the federal government costs us, we get it all back and more in the form of quality entertainment.
- Dave Barry

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