Less than winning results with Google AdWords
I have about four Internet books in my pile of “to be read.” Plus, this past weekend was my birthday (no, I am not telling how old) and I received a few more great Internet reads. Winning Results with Google AdWords by Andrew Goodman was the one that I looked forward to the most, and I was disappointed.
Granted, it’s a tough topic, especially now that Google keeps adding new features to AdWords (I found myself looking for the copyright date in the book more than once.) Furthermore, the Big G doesn’t tell all (or even close to all), so Goodman should probably be forgiven for not answering some of my questions. For example, he probably has no idea how Google chooses to serve up one ad versus the other if they are identical AdWords in my account but are in different campaigns.
And, in the spirit of not dissing the guy and the book altogether, I really did pick up some nuggets of information. He also does an excellent job of tailoring the book to small business.
I think I was mostly disappointed because he contradicted himself so often. For example, first he pointed out that doing Google A/B ad testing is not that smart. Then, he did many pages on how to do A/B testing. Similarly, he talked about reviving dead keywords and first said, don’t clean them out and put them in a different campaign. Later he wrote, clean them out and put them in a different campaign. Or, Google now does stemming, he writes. But be sure to include stems in your campaign, like plurals and past tenses.
I’ll bet there were no real contradictions. He probably meant, Google tries to do stemming, but if you really want the “ing”, the plurals, the past tenses, be sure to create them for yourself.
Wouldn’t it have been nice if he had just said that?
Robbin
LunaMetrics
