This is a video from Hal Varian, the Chief Economist at Google. It's a great in depth explanation of how the Adwords Ad Auction system works.

He explains how vital the Quality Score is to a Successful Adwords Campaign. The video explains the Quality Score is calculated. It also explains how it plus your CPC determines ad position. Quality score is the reason your Adwords Campaign will be a success, or the reason it will fail. The Free Adwords Strategy Guide show you how to improve your Quality Scores and Save Money. Request your copy of the Free guide.

I had question from one of my customers regarding the keyword level destination url. It seems there some confusion between the adgroup level destination url and the keyword level one. Below is my reply.

There are two kinds of campaigns you can generate with the campaign creator. One, the recommended way of one adgroup per keyword, which results in multiple adgroups. Two, a campaign with a single adgroup and each keyword in the adgroup has a keyword-level destination url. If you "switch to advanced mode" you get the choice to generate multiple adgroups or a single adgroup in the dropdown labelled "AdGroup".

Now, a keyword-level destination is a url attached to the keyword. If you are familiar with adwords, you know you use syntax like this...

   Keyword ** Max CPC ** Destination URL

This provides a keyword-level CPC and Destination url. Thus you can have single adgroup with multiple keywords and multiple destination urls.

A regular destination url is at the adgroup level, and applies to all keywords.

You must have a destination url, in one form or another.

The error message "No need to apply destination url to keyword if generating multiple ad groups." means you have the "Adgroup" dropdown set at "multiple" and you've checked the "Keyword dest. url". What you are saying is generate mutlkiple adgroups with one keyword per adgroup, but then give that one keyword a keyword-level destination url. The system is preventing you from doing that. The only way you'd ever want to check the "Keyword dest. url" checkbox is if you set the "adgroup" dropdown to "single".

I got the following question from one of my customers. I think it addresses something I may not have been clear on.

First, Your display url doesn't have to match the destination url. In fact, the display url in Google Adwords has severe size limitations, so you probably can't use the destination url.

The only requirement Google Adwords imposes is that the dispay url domain must match the destination url domain.

What I would do is use only the domain in the display url. For example, if your keyword is "college football", your destination url is something like...

     http://www.mydomain.com/college-football.php

then I would make the display url simply...

     mydomain.com

But, there is an addition tip you can use to get the keyword in the ad one more time. Both Google Adwords and your potential customers will like seeing the keyword as many times as possible. That makes it worthwhile to use this tip.

The tip is to but the keyword in the display url. Again, Google Adwords only makes the domains match, so once you have that you can do anything you want. So you could make your display url this...

     mydomain.com/go-away

So, use the display url to get the keyword out there one more time...

     mydomain.com/college-football

And if you exceed the maximum characters for the display url, so can always use a partial keyword...

      mydomain.com/football

All of this can be done inside the campaign creator using the "keyword"/"dash" tokens. We'll use the "dash" token since spaces are invalid in urls. Make your display url in the campaign creator look like this...

     mydomain.com/[Dash:football]

Which means try to replace the "Dash" with the dash replaced keyword. Then, if the total display url exceeds the character limits, just use the word football instead. This is just like the way Google Adwords Dynamic Keyword Instertion works.

I recommend only using the exact and phrase matches. Broad match will generate impressions and clicks on unrelated searches. Unrelated searches are unlikely to buy from you. By using only exact and phrase matches, you are screening out some of these unrelated searches.

Would you be interested in joining a free discussion group where authors of money making websites actually shared their websites? How many times have you heard gurus show screen captures of sky high earnings, but they never share the websites. Each guru claims he needs to protect the niche market from competition, but often it is because the guru is not sharing the whole truth (or maybe is making it up).

Imagine if the discussion group required every member to share their website url and earnings. Members could share and copy marketing ideas by looking directly at what is working.

You would be required to provide the website url and earnings from a website making at least $500 a month. This limit would keep the group small and limit members to those with online success.

The format may be that of a privately accessible blog, where each member has a page detailing their website and earnings. Each member could participate in an open discussion by emailing posts to a specific email address.

Please comment on this blog entry or email me if you would like to join such a group.

This morning I got an email from Amazon. They are no longer going to pay associates for paid search engine traffic, like Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing.

This may be of particular concern to Howie Schwartz and his "Black Hat is Back" products. Howie recommends finding niche markets on Amazon. Amazon lets you see what are hot products, and then gives you an affiliate program to promote them. Fortunately Howie and his "Conversation Domination" product talks about driving traffic through the use of social media websites, and does not promote Adwords. Still one has to wonder if users of Howies program made the step to advertise on Adwords. Perhaps the popularity of these program influenced Amazons decision.