If you haven’t already been using Google’s Adwords Call Metrics feature then you really need to look into it. Let’s first take a look at the functionality and the value that it adds, excluding the cost initially.

Call Metrics & Its Benefits

If you’re driving traffic through any form of internet marketing campaigns you are always looking for ways to track its effectiveness and justify ROI for your ad dollars. This is a great way to justify the offline conversion of your traffic and add value to your clients by letting them know the real effectiveness of a campaign if you are ultimately driving sales leads or calls over the phone.

How To Setup Call Metrics

1. First, go into your Adwords campaign under the Ad Extensions tab and add a Call Extension to your campaign.
2. Establish what the phone number you want those calls redirected to.
3. Check the box to use Call Metrics and you’ll be able to establish whether you would like a toll free number or a local area code number associated with your tracking that will be displayed. This brings up another factor of marketing and the local spin of your business if this applies to you. Users love to see local phone numbers and know that they are talking to someone local, so if you are a local business then I would recommend using a local phone number. Even if you need to start separating out campaigns for different geographic areas to achieve this the extra effort is worth it.
4. Either way now Google will use its Google Voice platform to assign you a phone number and they will handle the forwarding and tracking of that number. Another thing I want to mention with this is there is also another feature I have skipped over. The Call-Only Format is only possible to use if your device is capable of making phone calls. This could be any mobile phone or computer with Skype or a VOIP system. This will disable the functionality to click the headline of the ad and go to the website, and give the user only one option to interact with the ad and that is using the Click To Call functionality. If you’re trying to drive sales through a phone number then who doesn’t love a 100% conversion rate. Also, if you haven’t broken out your PPC campaigns and separated out a mobile strategy then you need to do that as well.

Google also announcing a few other changes with this launch:

1. More detailed reporting. In March we enhanced Call Metrics reporting to show the time, duration, and caller area code for each call. Based on advertiser feedback, we’re now making reporting available at the ad group and campaign level for manually-dialed calls (subject to minimum volume). And you’ll still be able to segment reports to compare how many calls were received from mobile clicks-to-call and how many were manually dialed after the ad was shown on a desktop, notebook, or tablet computer.

2. New pricing for certain calls. A $1 USD (or equivalent in CAD) charge applies to manually dialed calls completed to your Google forwarding numbers. These calls occur when a potential customer on a desktop, notebook or tablet computer sees your ad and dials the number shown.

Pricing for mobile clicks-to-call remains unchanged, whether you use Call Metrics or not. They continue to be charged as regular mobile search ad clicks.

3. Call Extensions replace Phone Extensions. To reduce possible ambiguity, we’ve renamed Phone Extensions to Call Extensions.

Reporting On Your Call Details

An extra feature that makes this even more valuable is the way in which we are able to report on this data. If you go into your campaign and look under the Dimensions tab you’ll want to view the Call Details information. This will give you:

• Start Time Of The Call
• End Time Of The Call
• Status – Received or Missed Call
• Duration In Seconds
• Caller Area Code

This information is very valuable because it gives you very valuable information regarding the effectiveness of your PPC budget. Also you should be using this data to setup your Day Parting strategy to further target your ads to drive the most ROI.

A report published by Google, AdWords report segment revealed notation of a big divide between the performance of #1 ads based on their position. The report suggests, that the #1 ads that appear on the top of the search result perform better, or, end up getting more clicks and more conversions, as opposed to the #1 ads on the right.

(click for full-size image)

(Sourced by Google Inside AdWords)

This report follows the announcement made by the Chief Economist at Google, Hal Varian, back in April about Understanding the Average Position metric where he explained “there is a big difference between when your ad appears in position #1 above the search results and when your ad appears in position #1 on the side.” Hal further explains, “This distinction is important, since, on average, ads that appear above the search results tend to get substantially more clicks than ads that appear on the right-hand side.” This distinction is clearly highlighted in the report.

There is a big difference in performance when an ad appears in position #1 at the top of search results and when an ad appears in position #1 on the side.

To help advertisers capitalize on that, Google last week announced its new “top vs. side” Adwords report segment. Advertisers can use the report to see how ads perform above and to the side of Google search results. While there may come a time when top vs. side targeting or bidding options are available, for now it is useful just to segment the data to help make bidding decisions and analyze comparative performance before and after changes.

The report will help you note how well your ad is performing be it on the top or the right hand side of the search result. This is done in Google’s bid to help the webmasters perk up their search optimization campaigns. The main aim seems to be to help you evaluate the relationship that exists between the location and the clicks and conversion of your ads. In addition to that it will also aid brand advertisers to get a transparent views of the location and the times their brand terms are being placed above the search results.

How to make use of the data:

Perhaps you must be wondering, “Okay all of that sounds good, but how do I actually use it?” Andrew Truong, from Google explains “To segment your performance data by where your ads appeared on Google and Search Partner search results pages, you simply need to add the “Top vs. Side” segment to your data table. Here’s how:

1. Select the Campaign, Ad groups, Ads or Keywords tab of your AdWords account.
2. Click the Segment button in the toolbar above your data table.
3. Select Top vs. side from the drop-down. Results will appear in rows beneath each of your ads.”
So, follow these simple steps and avail the services that are on offer by Google AdWords. The report sounds very productive. This report it will help you make better bidding decisions.

Google has rolled out one more feature to its social search. The +1 button is a button that will allow you to recommend search results, ads, web pages etc., to your friends. This feature is currently available for search results page. Google will add the +1 button feature to ads and also pages, you can sign up for e-mail updates for the same.

Google says that, “We expect that these personalized annotations will help sites stand out by showing users which search results are personally relevant to them. As a result, +1′s could increase both the quality and quantity of traffic to the sites people care about.” The +1′s will also be considered by Google just like it uses social signals from other services to determine a page’s relevance and ranking. It works quite like the Facebook ‘Like’ option.

How it works

When you run a search, with your Google account signed in, and find a quality page in the organic search results, you can click the +1 button and recommend it (the site or page) to your friends. The next time your friends sign in to their Google account and run a similar search, he/she will find that you have recommended a particular site or page. Your friend can then quickly follow the recommended link knowing it is worth a visit as it has been recommended by someone he/she knows and trusts.

The +1′s, according to Google, will make search even more personal and relevant. Users can recommend the content, ads etc., that are of high quality and the site or pages that has the quality content gets human recommendations and can expect better ranked for their quality. Here is a video of the +1 button released by Google. You can visit the Google Webmaster Central Help Center for any further +1 related queries.