Cut Your Google Costs by 50% in 30 Seconds

May 2nd, 2008 Tim White Posted in Google, Pay-Per-Click Marketing, Yahoo! |

How much are you spending with Google per month? $500? $1000? $5000? For the most part, Google really does try to look out for their advertisers, but there’s one thing that they do that usually isn’t in your best interest.

When you sign up to advertise on Google, you think that that’s exactly what you’re doing, however, by default, your ads will also appear in two other places other than in Google’s search results. These are Google’s Search Network and Content Network. The Search Network consists of websites such as Earthlink.net and AOL.com. The Content Network represents those sites participating in Google’s Adsense program, such as Plentyoffish.com

Here’s the problem: While there is a lot of click fraud in Google’s search results, there’s a lot more in their Content Network. So what’s the best way to deal with this? A quick solution is to simply opt out of the Search and Content Networks. You do this simply by unchecking two boxes.

1. Log into your Adwords account and go to the Campaign Summary tab.
2. Select the campaign (i.e. Campaign #1) you want to edit and then click on “Edit Settings”.
3. Unselect Search network and Content network.
4. Click on “Save Changes”.

Your ads for this campaign will now only appear in Google.com’s search results and you should see a significant reduction in your costs immediately. By the way, Yahoo! does not allow you to opt out of their Content Network, but you can block your ads from appearing on up to 250 partner sites. I highly recommend that you do this or have us do it for you as well.

You might be asking yourself, does it ever make sense to participate in Google’s Search or Content Network? The answer is yes, but it needs to done very carefully and monitored closely. Feel free to contact us for a free consultation.

Tim White is the founder of WhizClick and has been marketing online since 1994. He can be reached at tim@whizclick.com or 916.799.3999.