Google Adwords Outline Google Adwords is the fastest evolving paid advertising platform in the entire world. They have made some significant changes over the past year they have made their system very robust and feature oriented. Google Adwords is our number 1 choice of networks to drive quality traffic to our websites, and they have made us a fortune online. Many of the tutorials, guides, and resources here at WA are written based on the Google Adwords system. We know that Google Adwords traffic converts into sales at a very high rate which is why we highly recommend using the system. Google’s main focus has shifted to user quality, and the result has been a ranking system for their paid listings called Quality Score. Quality Score is a unique algorithm that combines several different factors, and is used to determine an ads positioning and how much it costs. Quality Score is compromised of the following: (1) CTR (Click-through ratio) (2) Landing Page Relevance (3) Keyword Group (4) Ad Relevance (5) Account History The feature set within Adwords continues to grow as they receive feedback from advertisers. Their advertising interface is client-driven, so if you see changes upon logging in, chances are it has been requested by several fellow advertisers. Here is a list of the features within Adwords. Features: Targeting: Language, Countries, Regions, Cities, Site Targeting Monitoring Performance: Account Stats, Full Report Center, Google Analytics (Formerly Urchin), Conversion Tracking, Cross-channel tracking Stats: CPC, Ad Position, Click-through Rate (CTR), Conversions Ratio Manage Multiple Accounts: Google has a Client Center where you can manage multiple accounts from the same login Tools: For a full list of Google Adwords tool, visit: http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=7038 Minimum Cost-Per-Click: $0.01 USD (dependent on account and ad group quality) Daily Budgeting: Yes Ad Scheduling: Yes Adwords has become one of the more difficult programs to use recently, but much of the competition has been removed. The changes have allowed marketers who know how to use the system to thrive on less competition and more traffic. Google’s network is the largest network available in the paid advertisement industry and includes the likes of AOL, Ask.com, Earthlink, and New York Times. The quality of the traffic has been questioned at times (with click-fraud lawsuits), but the bottom line is that it converts just as well as Yahoo Search Marketing or MSN Adcenter.