Google certification: Explore the Value of Google Search

Long-tail automation

"I want my users to find me even on my long-tail products." This is great for you if your website content is large and dynamic, and you fear the risk of missing long-tail traffic with a keyword-targeted, campaign-only strategy.

Rapid expansion

"I want to enter new markets quickly." Dynamic Search Ads can help you broaden your current activity to new business areas or countries.

Incremental reach

"I want to make sure my ads appear for more relevant user searches." Use Dynamic Search Ads as a complement to your existing keyword strategy. This requires little effort and ensures good coverage without complex implementation or campaign management.

How does broad match modifier work

Adding a + sign in front of a keyword turns it into a broad match modifier. This prompts your ads to appear only if the keyword or its close variations are in any part of the search terms. This is different from broad match, which allows for any variation of the keyword to appear in the search term. Broad match modifiers only allow for close variations.

How does negative keywords work

Adding a minus sign in front of the keyword scooter makes it a negative keyword (-scooter). This means ads won't show if someone includes that negative keyword in their search.

Ad scheduling

Allows you to choose certain days or hours of the week for your ads to show. For instance, Hiroko can choose to have her kid bikes ads display during evening hours or weekends if she knows that customers search more often during those days and times for kids bikes.

Categories

Based on your website content, Google creates targetable categories, or sets of landing pages organized by theme. You decide which sets of pages to target, how to group similar pages, and the level of granularity. Example: In an online electronics store, you can target just the "digital camera" category of the store.

Why will hirokos ad show when the search term is blue bicycles for sporty girls and broad match modifier keywords are +blue +girl + and bike?

Because the search term bicycle is a close variant of bike, and all the broad match modifier keywords appear in the search term.

Tip*

Broad match is a good fit if you want to spend less time building exhaustive keyword lists. Your keywords will match to a wider variation of search terms, and you'll reach people not necessarily searching for your specific brand or business. It's like casting a wide net to reach searches related to your keywords. Broad match modifiers allow you to indicate if there are certain concepts related to your keywords that must be present in the searches you reach.

How does broad match work

Broad match shows ads if a keyword (or any variations like misspellings, synonyms, or related searches) are included in a user's search terms.

How does negative keywords help hiroko

By using the negative keyword -scooter, Hiroko's ads won't match to people searching for scooters.

Campaign

Campaigns are created around a marketing goal and set up based on the actions you'd like customers to take. The marketing goal should be the main thing you want to achieve for your business and can be changed at any time. Search campaign marketing goals can be set to Sales, Leads, or Website Traffic. (Display, Video, and App campaigns have additional goals to choose from.) For example, if Hiroko wants to increase store email list signups, she can create a Leads goal campaign. Next, Hiroko needs to determine where her text ads will show and how to get the most exposure for them. She selects the Google Search Network, which includes, by default, Google Search partners. Her ads will show on Google Search, but also extend to the hundreds of additional sites partnering with Google. Showing her ads to even more people out there should help her grow her business!

Devices

Campaigns target all types of devices, which include desktop, tablet, and mobile. You can also choose to customize ads for different devices. Since the majority of Your Adventure's sales are from online purchases, she targets all the locations they ship to. She also chooses to target all languages, as she doesn't want to miss out on anyone looking to purchase a bike

The challenge of creating keyword lists

Creating keyword lists for user searches that are relevant to your business can be challenging and time-consuming. The rapid rise in smartphone use and adoption of voice search and digital assistants have changed the way customers find you, resulting in a high volume of searches you just can't foresee. More and more search moments with new searches are happening every day. In fact, out of all the searches made on Google daily, 15% have never even been seen before! This can make manually covering all searches a never-ending task, resulting in lost opportunities. Building ad creatives at scale and correctly matching them to each of your different landing pages can also be a demanding task. You might have a website with hundreds, thousands, or even millions of ever-changing landing pages that require you to update your ad headlines and display URLs constantly.

What are Dynamic Search Ads?

Dynamic Search Ads can help you increase the reach of your Search campaigns. Instead of creating an ad for each page on your site and adding keywords for each of those ads, Dynamic Search Ads uses Google's understanding of your site to customize and target your ads.

Note*

Dynamic Search Ads produces highly relevant ads that complement your other Google Ads campaigns. These ads deliver value for relevant searches that aren't covered by existing keywords, complementing your keyword strategy and ensuring that you aren't missing any relevant searches.

The importance of Search

Every day, about 3.5 billion searches are made using Google Search. Everywhere, people are searching for information, shopping online, comparing product prices, getting directions, or just learning something new. Google's mission is to organize all this available information and make it accessible and useful. When people want to know, buy, go, or do, Google Search is their first stop!

Page feed

Generate your ad group's DSA targeting based on a feed of specific URLs, mapped to custom labels that can be updated automatically. Example: You want to make a campaign for TVs that are on sale. You'll need to create a feed and label all the TVs being sold at a discount "ON_SALE". In your dynamic ad group, choose to target custom labels, and enter "ON_SALE" as a custom label. You'll also be able to add a custom bid for that target.

Exact match

Hiroko is running a sale on kids' bikes, and she really wants to attract customers looking for deals. To get her ads in front of people only searching for promotions on kids' bikes, she adds exact match to her keywords.

Negative keywords

Hiroko is targeting the keyword kids' bikes in broad match and has noticed that her ads are sometimes matching to the search term kids' scooters. However, she doesn't have any scooters in her inventory at the moment. Until she gets more scooters in her store, she wants to put her ads in front of people only interested in bikes, so she adds -scooter as a negative keyword to her keyword list.

Phrase match

Hiroko wants to promote a deal on a new kids' bike called My First Big Bike. To get her ads in front of only people searching for that bike brand, she adds phrase match to her keywords.

Broad match modifier

Hiroko wants to promote her store's best-selling blue girls' bike. To get her ads in front of a wide audience looking to buy a bike, while still narrowing in on people searching for a blue girls' bike, she adds broad match modifiers to her keywords

Broad match (default match type)

Hiroko's adventure store just increased its bike inventory, and she wants to promote the new selection. To get her ads in front of the widest possible audience and to make sure she doesn't miss out on any searches, she uses broad match for her keywords.

How Dynamic Search Ads works

How are you, your potential customers, and Google all involved in how Dynamic Search Ads ultimately works? 1. You specify the pages of your website, daily budget, and an ad template. 2. The customer enters their search term in Google Search. 3. If you have content relevant to the search, Google dynamically generates an ad headline and destination URL to the best matching page on your site.

How does broad match modifier help hiroko

If Hiroko uses the broad match modifier keywords +blue, +girl, and +bike, her ads will appear for people searching for any combination of these terms in a search (and possibly including additional terms). However, the ads won't appear if any one of these keywords aren't in the search term. For example, her ads will match with searches for blue bicycle for 6-year old girls, because all three broad match modifier keywords are in the search. However, her ad won't appear for the search girl bike because blue isn't a part of that search.

How does exact match help hiroko

If Hiroko uses the exact match keyword [kids' bike sales], customers will see her ad whether they search for kid bicycle sale, sale on kid bikes, or children's bike on sale. This helps her narrow her audience down to only potential customers. Her ads won't appear for anyone looking for just kids' bikes, as that doesn't include the concept of a sale.

How does phrase match help hiroko

If Hiroko uses the keyword "My First Big Bike" in her phrase match, her ad won't match to searches that contain first big bike, as my also needs to appear. Her ads will only show to customers searching for the bike brand, My First Big Bike.

As extensions

Include even more information with your ads, such as location information, links to pages on your website, and your phone number. For example, since Your Adventure also has physical stores, Hiroko can add store locations and phone numbers. She can also add links to specific pages on her site for the different bikes she sells.

Targeting options for Dynamic Search Ads

Landing pages from standard ad groups Categories URL contains URL is Page feed

Recognize the value of Google Search ads

Right now, potential customers are searching for the products or services you offer. Creating a Google Search campaign can help them find you when they need you the most!

Dynamic Search Ads in action

Step 1: A person types in a search term. Step 2: Google matches that search to the landing page most relevant on your site. Step 3: Google's algorithm creates an ad based on your template and a tailor-made headline.

Landing pages from standard ad groups

This is the easiest option, as it includes all webpages that you're already using as landing pages for your ads across your accounts.

Start and end date

This sets a campaign start and end date. Let's say Hiroko is running a special promotion on mountain bikes during the summer. She wants to have specific ads promoting the sale. The sale only runs for 30 days, so she doesn't want her ads about the promotion to run outside of those dates.

How does exact match work

To use exact match, place brackets around the keywords. This way, your ads will only show if the search means the same thing as your keyword. It may include close variations of your keyword, like misspellings, plurals, and synonyms. This is different from phrase match, as there can't be any extra words before or after the search terms. For example, the keyword [men's bicycles] will show when someone searches for men's bicycles or men's bikes, but it won't show for men's bikes for sale.

Setting up a Search campaign

When you set up a Search campaign, think through the different ways to drive more traffic to your site, service, or product. Where do you want your ads seen? How much do you want to invest? What do you want to share in your ads? What keywords will match your customer's search terms?

Translate user intent into business results

With Google Search campaigns, your ads show up alongside search results when people are looking for the products or services you off

How does broad match help hiroko

With broad match, Hiroko can use more general keywords like bike and match her ads to anyone searching for bike or its variations, like bicycle. For example, if a user is searching for best first bikes for a 6-year-old child or men's mountain bikes for sale, Hiroko's ad will appear because their search terms contain some variation of her keyword, bike. This gives her store's site a better chance to be seen and increases the chances of Hiroko's ad showing up for search terms she may not have thought about.

How to get the right customers to see your ads

With her Search campaign basics in place, Hiroko's ready to create her text ads and get them in front of the right customers. She starts by creating ad groups. For each ad group, she can create specific text ads and a list of search keywords — the words and phrases that will prompt her ads to show up. Since it's best to create ad groups around themes or products, Hiroko's plan is to create multiple ads groups, one for each of her bike types: kid's bikes, mountain bikes, and road bikes. This level of granularity gives her more control to get the right ad message to the right customers.

Will the term is my first big bike worth buying prompt hiroko ad to show if she uses phrase match on her keyword "my first big bike"

Yes, it will! This search term includes the keyword phrase my first big bike in its entirety and in the correct order. Other words are allowed to come before or after the phrase.

URL contains

You can target pages of your site containing specific strings. Example: You want to target all the blog-related pages of your electronics website based on the URL string that appears when you navigate the site. If all of those URLs follow a similar pattern, like example.com/blog/, you should target every one that contains "blog."

Url is

You can target specific URLs. Example: If you want to create a dynamic ad group based on your "special offers" page, you can choose to target just that page.

Bidding and Budgeting

Your bid strategy controls the manner in which you pay for users to interact with your ads. Once you choose the metric you'd like to focus on for your campaign, you'll see different bidding options to help you optimize for it. You can choose to manually set your bids for clicks on your ads, or let Google Ads do it for you. Your budget is the average amount you're comfortable spending each day on your campaign. The budget you choose is entirely up to you, and you can adjust it at any time.

Location and languages

Your campaign's ads are eligible to show to customers located in, or who show interest in, a geographic location. For example, a Parisian bakery owner can reach people located in Paris only, while an online shoe retailer that ships to Canada and the US can connect with people in both countries. Language targeting allows you to restrict where your ads may appear, based on the user's language settings and the language of the site After Hiroko decides where to display her ads, she focuses on how much she's going to spend. She determines her budget — how much she's comfortable with spending each day — knowing she can change it at any time. Then she determines her bid strategy, which is the way she sets her bids for different keywords. She can manually set her bid amount for each keyword, or let Google Ads do it for her. Since this is her first campaign, she chooses an automated bidding strategy to save time. Google will automatically optimize her bids based on the campaign goals she's set.

Key benefits of Dynamic Search Ads

-Reach and coverage Capture more searches! Match with searches you may have missed and that are highly relevant to your site. -Efficiency and time savings Don't spend time creating endless ads! Stop managing extensive keyword lists. You no longer need to pause or create ads based on seasonality or demand, as our web crawling technology manages that for you and is aware of what your website is offering and when.* *Crawler takes a few days to update -Transparency and control Don't sacrifice control! Dynamic Search Ads offers full transparency via the Search Term report, control through bids at the dynamic target level, and exclusions for irrelevant traffic.

How do Google Search ads connect you with your customers?

Let's follow a potential customer, Luca, to learn how Google Search ads work. After living in the city for a while, Luca has decided he'd prefer to bike to work. But which bicycle should he buy? Luca starts his search. He opens his computer and types in "best city bicycle" at Google.com. He scans the results. He sees: Shopping ads, labeled as Sponsored* Text ads, labeled as an Ad* Organic results Luca scans the organic results and doesn't see anything relevant. A few text ads appear at the top, and one catches his attention. The headline seems relevant to what he's looking for: Looking to commute to work? | 30% off city bikes | Free shipping The ad's description gives him more information about the sale, store location, and other great details. * Shopping and text ads don't always appear. He clicks on an ad. Immediately, he reaches a page about city bikes. He likes what he sees, but needs some time to think about making such a purchase. He explores the options. He goes to his local bike shop to try the superfastNsafe city bike model. He'd love to buy it, but it's not the same price as what he saw online! He revisits the website from before. Luca gets out his mobile phone and navigates back to the website he was on before. Time to make that purchase — at the right price!

How to reach a broad audience with match types

Let's see how Hiroko, a digital marketing manager at a major online bicycle and adventure sports store, uses match types to set up her keyword lists. When she wants to get her ads in front of a wider audience and also make sure she isn't missing any search terms her customers might be using, she uses the broad match and broad match modifier keyword match types. Let's examine each below.

Will kirokos ad match with the search words best kid bike sales if she uses the exact match keywords [kids' bike sales]?

No, it won't. Exact match keywords only match to searches that mean the same thing as the keyword. In other words, they don't match to searches that contain additional concepts or details not present in the original keyword.

How to narrow your reach with match types

Now that you know how to reach a broad audience, let's see how Hiroko uses the phrase match and exact match keyword match types to narrow the audience that sees her ads.

Tip*

Phrase match is a good fit if you're looking for something that's more flexible than exact match, but more targeted than broad match. It helps you reach more customers, while still showing your ads to those most likely searching for your product or service. Exact match is a good fit if it's important to you to match with very specific user searches. Exact match keywords allow you to reach only searches that mean the same thing as your keywords.

How does phrase match work

Placing quotation marks around the keywords turns them into phrase match. This prompts your ads to appear only if the keywords within the quotation marks or close variations of them match a user's search term. This is different from broad match modifier as there cannot be any extra words between the user's search terms, but similar since extra words can appear before or after the phrase match.

How do ads end up in front of customers?

Step 1: A person performs a search The search is for "buy city bike." A potential customer uses Google Search. In a Google Ads auction system, advertisers compete for space on the search results page by setting bids. Step 2: An auction starts Google's search engine goes through all of its advertisers' campaigns, including Hiroko's, looking for keywords in their ad groups to match with the user's search term, "buy city bike." When they created their ad groups, each advertiser, including Hiroko, set bids for their keywords, indicating the amount they're willing to pay when someone clicks on their ad. This type of auction occurs every time a search is run. Step 3: The Google Search engine ranks all the ads After ranking all the ads, the search engine decides which one to show, based on the advertiser bid and relevance to the search results. If an ad isn't deemed relevant, it won't show. During an auction, the Google Search engine ranks all the ads. Hiroko's bike text ad appears as a result of the auction, and a user clicks on her ad. Step 4: A search turns into a sale If Hiroko's text ad displays and the user clicks or taps on it, they're taken to Hiroko's landing page. She's specified for the landing page to be her website's city bikes page. And that's how a search turns into a sale! By using Google Ads, you can easily build and manage search marketing campaigns that advertise across the Google Network, and help everyone find just what they're looking for.

How to control which searches prompt your ads

Step 1: Think like your customer Match your keywords to what your customers may use when looking for your products or services. This is called keyword targeting. Step 2: Think about your business goals Do you want more people to visit your website or to reach customers that are ready to make a purchase? There are five match type options for your keywords. They are (from broad to narrow) broad match, modified broad match, phrase match, exact match, and negative. There are search terms you can be sure your customers are using, and then there are those that aren't as easy to foresee. Whatever your goal, you can use match types to reach as many customers as possible that are potentially interested in your business. Step 3: Get Google to do it for you Have dynamically created text ads and keyword lists developed automatically, based on your website content. This enables you to show up for more search terms than you may have initially included in your list. More on how to use Dynamic Search Ads later. Let's take a look at the different match types you can use to control the searches that prompt your ads.

Networks

The Networks setting indicates where you want your ad to appear, based on the campaign type you select. For example, with the Google Search Network, your ad can appear on Google Search sites, in addition to search results on Google Play, Google Shopping, and Google Maps (including the Maps app). Your ad can also appear on non-Google search sites (like CNN) that partner with Google to show search ads; these are called search partners. You also have the opportunity to expand to the Google Display ads network, where your text ad can show on sites that partner with Google to show ads. Now Hiroko needs to decide which devices to show her ads on, based on what her customers use to search and shop for bikes. Since they research, compare prices, and make purchases both at home and on the go, she selects the desktop, mobile device, and tablet options. This way, her ads can appear throughout the entire customer journey!