New Google AdWords Reporting

It has been a long time coming for those of us who use AdWords data day in day out to analyse our clients account performance. AdWords have finally released some new functionality and report data available to us in our accounts.

There are 3 main changes, search funnel conversion data, control panel quick reporting and the new link in Google analytics for AdWords traffic report data.

Previously the reports available consisted of:

Placement / Keyword Performance -View performance data for keywords or placements that you’ve specifically targeted.

Ad Performance – View performance data for each of your ads.

URL Performance – View performance data for each of your Destination URLs.

Ad Group Performance – View Ad Group performance data for one or more of your campaigns.

Campaign Performance – View performance data for your campaigns.

Account Performance – View performance data for your entire account.

Demographic Performance – View performance data for sites by demographic.

Geographic Performance – View performance data by geographic origin.

Search Query Performance – View performance data for search queries that triggered your ad and received clicks.

Placement Performance – View performance data for content network sites where your ad has been shown.

And even with this fairly extensive list there have been gaps, such as hourly conversion reporting, time lag reporting and first or last click analysis. Therefore the following changes do address many of these. So let’s have a look at what the changes offer us:

Control Panel

Within the control panel which can be found alongside your campaign management advertisers are able to set custom alerts, quick report templates and audience management and retargeting.

The key area I want to focus on today is the reporting templates. How often have you tried to copy and paste the campaign management page as a quick fix report. Well this is what Google have now made easier.

By selecting the metrics that are relevant on your overview and setting a date you can simply click the download button for excel, csv, tsv, xml, pdf and csv.gz. This snapshot report is then saved into your Control Panel and Library. You also have the option to email this report to users of the account.

In essence this new function should allow faster reporting and a new storage centre alongside your campaign data. The only real challenge I have found with this new reporting function is you can not allocate sales values and other specific metrics which are very important to many accounts.

Search Funnel

This new reporting functionality offers advertisers a way of analysing how users convert. It applies additional metrics that have not previously been available form Google own reporting but often available from 3rd party tracking tools.

The additional metrics now allow us to see:

Top Conversions – which of your metrics is performing the best.

Assist Clicks and Impressions – The number of clicks or impressions which lead to a conversion but were not the last click

Assisted Conversions – performance of the click assisted conversions

First Click Analysis – Reports based on what was first clicked leading to conversion.

Last Click Analysis - Reports based on what was last clicked prior to conversion.

Top Paths – Ad impressions and clicks leading to conversion.

Time Lag - How long it took customers to convert.

Path Length – How many ad clicks or impressions it took customers to convert.

This data now shows an insight as to which clicks have influenced conversions but may not have been allocated that conversion via the standard reporting. From this data it allows us to analyse which keywords and ads are potentially generating the initial interest that finally leads to an online action which we may previously reviewed as a poor performing listing.

Analytics Traffic Source AdWords Report

Finally we have seen the new AdWords Beta report under the Traffic Sources report within Google analytics.

This reporting offers us a more in-depth insight to how the AdWords visitors are getting to the website. These reports now show traffic and conversion data in one place, for example we can see which time of day we are seeing the highest bounce rate, highest conversions, best conversion rates and highest traffic volumes. This advises us on what scheduling would therefore have the most benefit where as AdWords reporting previously only gave us data on clicks by time of day.

Overview – Summarises performance of AdWords campaigns
Campaign – How do people referred from your AdWords campaigns compare to the average visitors on the site. Filter down by ad groups, keywords and ad copy.
Keywords - This report shows metrics for each keyword on which you’re bidding in AdWords. Drill into any keyword and segment by any of the new AdWords dimensions. For example, segment by search query to see if certain queries result in higher engagement visits.
Day parts – Find out when your ad campaigns are most effective with the Day Parts report. Drill down to any hour of the day listed in the table to view the data by day of week.
Destination URLS – This report lists the Destination URLs through which visitors from your AdWords Campaigns entered your site. If the Bounce Rate is high for certain Destination URLs
Placements This report shows how well AdWords traffic from your content targeted sites performs.
Keyword position – This report allows you to see which positions for your keywords perform best by breaking down % of activity for first page positions.

So with the new data available from Google AdWords this should offer agencies and advertisers a clearer insight to how users are arriving at their website and their user behaviour once they are there. There are some reports now available which have been a long time coming and now they are available some of these reports should create a better understanding of how we can retarget and continue to develop intelligent strategies to engage with users searching for the products and services we are advertising.