Last Updated on 2020-12-30 by ppcguybklyn
When operating Google Ads during the past month, you will most likely find that the content of the search terms report is much less than in the past. Why? The reason is that Google installed an update to the search term report in September. Anyone who has been operating the account for a while should see the following announcement in the account to inform the amount of search terms available in the report after this update will be reduced:
After this update, the search terms report will automatically hide search terms with low search volume.Google stated that the reason for this update is to protect user information and their privacy. The following is a Google spokesperson’s response to the PPC information website Search Engine Land:
“In order to maintain our standards of privacy and strengthen our protections around user data, we have made changes to our Search Terms Report to only include terms that a significant number of users searched for. We’re continuing to invest in new and efficient ways to share insights that enable advertisers to make critical business decisions”
Google’s statement to Search Engine Land
Google itself did not elaborate on the definition of "Significant". No one knows the principle of Google's choice to hide these search terms, but it is preliminarily estimated that the report in the advertising account will directlyhide at least 20% of the search terms.
As for why they chose to implement this update at this point in September this year, there are different opinions. Some people think that it is part of Google's supporting measures in response to the GDPR; others think that this is Google's attempt to compensate for the loss caused by the reduction of advertising costs on Google Ads from large and small businesses due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the update is intended to make advertisers and agencies spend more money to find the most effective keywords.Some people even think that this is Google’s intention to completely eliminate advertising agencies and this update serves as one of the long-term plans to earn back all the money agencies can make.
Regardless of the reason for this update, advertisers must face a drastic reduction in search terms that they can see.
How does this affect advertisers ?
As the core of search advertising, the search term report is mainly used to exclude traffic that has nothing to do with advertising content to improve efficiency. Now that Google hides the words searched by fewer people from the report, we are able to find less search terms that generate irrelevant traffic.We are bound to spend more costs to know whether the keywords currently used can bring traffic that is beneficial to the ad campaigns.
Twitter user Collin Slattery estimates that his account will lose 31% to 50% of search terms due to this update, which is equivalent tonearly half of the advertising spend. Google will not tell him how this money is spent on those search terms.
Faced with this situation, most of the Google Ads users and those who work in the agencies are quite dissatisfied. Some people even think that searching for ads after the update is simply burning money.
There is a reason why everyone is so angry. Except there is no way to know what search terms the money is spent on. It is very unfair from the point of view of the advertising platform users. The exact match keywords cannot only target specific keywords because of the update of close variants, which also makes advertisers think that it will be more and more difficult to control search traffic in the future. Because we will inevitably face thatour keywords continue to bring in irrelevant traffic, and we have no way of knowing what the traffic in the advertising platform is based on.
How to respond?
Faced with such a difficult update, how should we, as advertisers, respond? I think we can start with the following steps:
Diversified advertising combinations
Although search advertising has always been the most efficient form of advertising in Google Ads, after this update we are bound to face the problem of increased advertising costs.How to prevent our advertising accounts from relying too much on search advertising will be the priority. When there is enough capacity, try testing the performance of other advertising forms (display, shopping, video advertising, etc.), and gradually make the allocation of advertising budgets more diversified, I think it will be a good way to avoid wasting money in unavailable search terms.
Strengthen website content and use automated tools
I think one of the big goals of this update is to push users to the various automated tools of Google Ads. This is a good thing. If keywords and bidding can be solved by Google’s algorithm. Advertisers In the future only need to focus on advertising design and conversion optimization. Google Ads has a dynamic search advertising function that automatically matches keywords based on website content and related information, so if our own website provides enough information and high enough traffic, you can consider using dynamic search ads to save the trouble of testing keywords. However, this premise is that Google’s algorithm must be accurate enough to not bring too much irrelevant traffic. If the account’s use of automatic tools has not been effective in the past, it is still recommended to manually choose keywords for search ads.
Use other advertising platforms
Although Google is still the dominant search engine and digital advertising platform, it does not mean that our account will perform poorly on other platforms. Linkedin Ads, Microsoft Advertising (Bing Ads), Amazon shopping ads, etc., can be good alternatives. If there is a way to succeed on other advertising platforms, then our account’s dependence on Google will be greatly reduced, which will also help improve the overall traffic of the website itself. Instead of continuing to spend money on search terms that you can’t see, investing these advertising budgets on other platforms may be a good way.
Conclusion
The search term report updates can be one of the most influential updates in recent years for the advertisers working at agencies. Although the updates themselves seem a bit unfair to the users, as ad account experts that help clients handle PPC ads., it is our job and our strength to formulate the best plans and strategies based on system updates. How to prevent our keyword budget from wasting in places that we can't see, and to find more ways to optimize and increase advertising revenue, will be the most important task for future advertising agency work.
