For the last 3 months we have been running and testing a variety of google adwords campaigns for WizeHive.
We had done some variations of the ads, turned things on and off, and thought we had a good handle on what we were doing. Over the last few weeks I've really started digging in the last few weeks trying to understand every piece of data.
Since we are positioning our applicant manager product for foundations one thing we found was that the search term "Scholarship Software" provided a large # of hits but not a large payback so we turned it off for now.
Yet, I kept typing it into google and it kept coming up. We spent hours trying to figure out where this keyword was. It wasn't until this morning based on an exchange with Google that I realized that there was a report called "Search Query Report" under their Reporting section on adwords that may be one of their most important reports.
I had see the keywords showing up in Analytics and/or the other Adwords reports but did not realize they do not show the exact keywords that were typed; but rather the keywords that were triggered.
For instance, we paid for an ad and a click when someone typed "federal subgrant policies." We paid for another when someone typed "free money management software." Neither have anything to do with WizeHive. Using this report I can now either add negative keywords to reduce or eliminate these odd searches or I can change from "broad-matched" keywords to phrase and exact matched keywords. Either way they will significantly reduce our expenditures and probably increase our click through rates.
If you are doing any adwords work I would urge you to find and study this report. I'm glad I did now but wish I had known about it a few months ago.
