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How are AdWords PPC paid search ads ranked?

Marketing, social media, advertising

Andy Black

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Can anyone tell me (in simple terms) how one PPC ad is ranked over another? Is it whoever pays more? Is there "optimization" involved in the Ad to rank it higher?

Ads are shown in order of Ad Rank.

Ad Rank is based on your bid price and your Quality Score.

Quality Score is based on a lot of factors, and mostly it's down to your ad CTR and landing page relevance and user friendliness (that well known metric!).

CTR is based on showing the right ad to the right people, which is based on bidding on the right keywords (and using the right negatives to get rid of unwanted impressions as well as unwanted clicks and spend).

The best guys do this by building campaigns in a more granular structure than most think to do, know how to do, or could be bothered to do.

Get all that right then it's based on who can pay the highest CPC.

Which is based on who's getting the highest EPC (earning-per-click).

Which is based on increasing the conversion rate of visitor to sale, the AOV, and the average customer LTV.

Paid search is just the top of the funnel. It gets the business a new buyer. It's up to the business to convert buyers into customers (people with a custom of buying from them).

R + R = Profit, where R + R is Repeat Business plus Referrals.

The winner is typically the person who can pay the most per new customer (buyer).


Bonus tip: PPC = Pay Per Click.

You meant Paid Search.

SEM = Search Engine Marketing = Marketing on search engines = SEO + Paid Search + Google places etc
 
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maverick

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Also good to know that Google continues to use these metrics to rank organic results as well e.g. CTR/ time spent on site and/or page etc.
 

Einfamilienhaus

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Can we put Andy's threads about Adwords in one big thread together? A Thread full of links from his work before.

For me as a newbie I totally get lost what I have read before and what not.

Too much value get lost in different threads.
 

Andy Black

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Can we put Andy's threads about Adwords in one big thread together? A Thread full of links from his work before.

For me as a newbie I totally get lost what I have read before and what not.

Too much value get lost in different threads.
Great minds think alike.

Check out the Google Ads/AdWords braindump in my signature.
 
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perchboy

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How does google spend your money if you set it to maximize clicks with no bidding limit?

Does it spend as much as the highest bidding competitor?

Would you ever recommend not manually bidding?
 

Andy Black

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How does google spend your money if you set it to maximize clicks with no bidding limit?
I've no idea. I've never not put a bidding limit on search campaigns. I tried not having a bidding limit when testing PMax and it may have helped, but I haven't done PMax since.

Would you ever recommend not manually bidding?
Yes. If you're consistently losing impression share due to budget and can't figure out what bids to use to maximise a set daily budget, then we'll often test maximise clicks and then maybe maximise comversions.
 

BizyDad

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How does google spend your money if you set it to maximize clicks with no bidding limit?

Does it spend as much as the highest bidding competitor?

Would you ever recommend not manually bidding?

I've no idea. I've never not put a bidding limit on search campaigns. I tried not having a bidding limit when testing PMax and it may have helped, but I haven't done PMax since.


Yes. If you're consistently losing impression share due to budget and can't figure out what bids to use to maximise a set daily budget, then we'll often test maximise clicks and then maybe maximise comversions.

85% of the time, it's fine. The other 15% will make you wish you added a max bid 100% of the time. (Regular search ads, not Pmax)

I'll typically run it 2 weeks no cap, then add the max bid once I have a sense of what it is bidding.
 
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