I got caught out again this morning. I hate it when that happens. I overlooked to change one of Google AdWords default settings.
On a client’s new campaign the ads were set to “Optimize for clicks: Show ads expected to provide more clicks”…. the campaign is a day old… How do you presume to know, Google??
So I changed the setting to Rotate Indefinitely and make a mental note to actually prepare that basic checklist of default settings I need to remember to change…. on every campaign I set up. EVER!
And this got me thinking – there are some default – out of the box – settings that simply go against Google’s own best practices.
They tell us to always test different versions of our ads, and then send all the traffic to the first ad that got the first click on a new campaign. OK – it’s not quite as bad as that, but, almost – this particular campaign had four ads in the ad group. Of 1,768 impressions, 1,175 were sent to a single ad.
And there are other settings that I question.
How about Auto-Tagging… who wouldn’t want auto-tagging switched on as the default. On Google’s own forums many questions relating to AdWords tracking in Google Analytics are down to the fact that auto-tagging was not switched on.
I struggle to come up with a single reason why the default setting should be “No, thanks”. If you are experienced enough to be manually or dynamically tagging your destination url’s, then surely you are also experienced enough to know how and where to switch off the auto-tagging. The 99% would benefit with this change at the expense of the experienced 1%.
The other setting I’ve never understood is why, when I open up a new report window I have labels (relatively advanced function) and view through conversions (relatively confusing) and yet Quality Scores are hidden. Again, I ask: Why? Almost every discussion we have about campaign performance centres on QS and improvements, so why is this hidden from the default view?
Surely a factor so important should be pushed into users faces at every opportunity instead being buried like a dirty little secret… oh, yes, by the way, so pleased you mentioned it – this is how we decide how much you are going to pay for your click and where your ad is going to appear in the results, but it’s not a biggie…. really?
So what are your pet peeves? What is the one (or two, or three) thing you change on a new campaign’s default settings – and why?
