PPC5 Ways to Unlock the Value of the AdWords Dimensions Tab

5 Ways to Unlock the Value of the AdWords Dimensions Tab

The Dimensions tab in Google AdWords has a lot of data that you can tap into to identify insights that will take your account to the next level. Here are five ways to use the information to optimize your campaigns and get ahead of the competition.

When people ask me how they can separate their campaigns from the competition, my answer is always the same: “Those with the best data win.” When you really think about it, the rules of the game are the same for everyone whether you’ve got a big or small budget, or whether you’re new to the game or experienced.

You’ll get ahead of your competition using the depth of your data and how you leverage the insights. There are a lot of really great pieces of data to help cut through the clutter in the Google AdWords Dimensions tab.
AdWords Dimensions Tab

Here are five ways to use the information in this tab to optimize your campaigns.

1. Geography

Here you can see the states and regions that all your traffic is coming from. This is a great way to help understand differences by state. Many people forget that language and competitors vary widely by region.

See the data below for example you can see that the traffic from general U.S. is converting at one-sixth the percentage of New York traffic:

Geography

You might normally miss this when optimizing at the keyword or campaign level nationally. There are some real opportunities to create geo-targeted campaigns to bid differently or simply exclude various regions.

The other interesting piece here is the Location Type field. Here you can see if the traffic was allocated to that area based on their IP address, or if it was the users location of interest (e.g., “New York Running Shoes” vs. “Running Shoes” from NY IP address). This can provide some great insight about how people are looking for your products and brands.

2. Paid and Organic

This is Google’s newest cut of data showing the amount of overlap in coverage and traffic between paid and organic search. My last post covered this new report, so I won’t go into too much detail; however, I thought I would mentioned it again for two reasons:

  • You can’t understate the value of integrating these two channels together. The more integrated your strategy can become, the better the total value of your search program will become.
  • Google continues to encrypt all keyword level data from organic search and this report is a key report that allows you to still have some access to this critical level of data.

3. Search Terms

If you’re wondering what other keywords you’re getting traffic from and if you should be adding them as negatives, this is the place to go.

Too often when I talk to other paid search folks they aren’t updating their keyword lists very frequently. It’s amazing how many different variants of keywords people search for that make this task one worth the time.

The other important thing to remember is Google’s matching algorithms are in a constant state of change. What was a clean and pure keyword yesterday may not be so much today.

4. Time

This dimension report allows performance data to be bucketed through various set of time. I particularly like to see the day of week and time of day cuts of data.

Take a look at the data below it shows that over the past week the best converting times of day is from 4 to 8 p.m. where the conversion rate is as much as 2X’s higher than the early morning:

Hour of Day Conversion Rate

From this data I can alter my budget settings or keyword bids to ensure I have the best visibility during those times.

5. Top Movers

Top Movers

This dimension allows you to see how your metrics have changed over a defined set of time. I really like this because you can dive in quickly to understand the root cause of an issue or opportunity in performance.

There is also a quick link to “view change history.” Here you can take look for the changes made in the account that potentially created the change in performance. Being able to quickly diagnose changes in your account creates a great deal of efficiency in your optimization steps.

Summary

There are many different tools and reports available to help you optimize your account. The Dimensions tab has a lot of data that you can tap into to identify insights that take your account to the next level.

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