AdWords Website Optimizer

Those of you who use AdWords to advertise products or services will now have another help from Google. It’s called Website Optimizer.

Though Overture (now under Yahoo!) began before it did, Google can be said to have pioneered contextual advertising ever since it started AdWords in 2002. Popularly called pay-per-click ads or PPC ads, it has made Google fabulously wealthy. Its current year operating profit is estimated to be over $5 billion (source: The Economist, April 21st-27th), which will grow at a whopping rate of 36% over next 3 years.

Paid search continues to overwhelmingly dominate Google’s earnings. It has also made AdSense publishers, who display its text ads (like the ones displayed in this site at the top and immediate right column) in their sites, rich (see my story, Making Money With AdSense).

Though Google’s profit margin is just about 10-20% from AdSense compared to about 60% it earns from text ads in its search pages, the fact that AdSense is still continued speaks volumes of Google’s strategic plans.

Since AdWords constitutes nearly sole earnings for Google, it makes sense that Google will try to maximize the ad-givers’ return on investment. Because if the latter can convert more and more click-throughs to sales or actions as desired, it will mean more income for Google by default.

Website Optimizer is therefore aimed at its AdWords customers, who can now test free of cost how the landing pages should be designed to ensure more conversion. If anyone wishes to get help from experts, Google suggests using the services of their partners.

But success with AdWords is not only about landing page(s). It starts from selection of keywords, writing compelling ad text, narrowing or broadening the scope of search parameters by phrase-matching KWs or including negative KWs or similar, grouping of ads, analyzing search results, and so on.

Google helps with assistance in these works too, which is especially useful for small website owners with limited ad budget struggling to make money through AdWords.

I’ve used AdWords for one of my other sites, though in a very limited way. And I found Andrew Goodman’s book, Winning Results With Google AdWords (cover image on the left) quite a good help.

I believe a thorough study of Google AdWords is necessary in order to reap handsome returns from it. On its part, Google is doing everything it feels it must do like acquiring DoubleClick on April 14 last (the deal is yet to close), its biggest thus far, and YouTube last October (see my post, Google’s YouTube), to spread the reach of AdWords.

This and the fact that Internet penetration is rising in all countries present a big opportunity to take advantage of AdWords to farther online business. It’s just that Google too will be a handsome gainer in the process.

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