Wordwatch Software: PPC Adwords campaign managers heard of, tried, or actively using this?
-
I've been trialing WordWatch for about a month. I'll admit I've been skeptical from the start. I don't quite understand the results they're delivering or how it works.
So I did a search for "Wordwatch review" hoping someone out there could shed some light or help me decide whether this software was worth keeping. But all I can find are two suspicious and badly written posts, immediately raising red flags. (Penuguin should have eliminated crap sites using the Flesch-Kincaid reading level, but I digress.)
**Wordwatch premise: **They take over keyword bidding to maximize budgets and clicks. They monitor the Adwords campaign to find an "optimal" bid price. Two questions about this premise:
- How is it different than using the Google settings for optimize for clicks or conversions?
- Since Google Adwords is based on a Vickery auction, wouldn't lowering my bid only lower my position?
- Bearing everyone has the same QS, then lowering my bids to the range between 2 positions does not increase my actual cost.
I have Wordwatch enabled for a few of my campaigns. Their interface leaves a lot to be desired. They don't report the activity or the changes they make to the campaigns from the dashboard. I had to go into my Adwords Change History to track what they were doing. And lo and behold they're also adding long tail keywords to my ad groups.
Bottom line I didn't notice any huge impact, and I don't see how it's better than Google's own version of campaign settings. I don't know that they're really legit. But their marketing was so convincing, and they raised $1.4M that I need other opinions.
Any one with some pro/cons, or yay/nays?
-
We've been trialling WordMatch for around two weeks now and I am a bit suspicious as to whether or not any of what they do is actually automated, or if they are just outsourcing management to [insert low cost of living country here].
The only trend I can see by using, the 'Adword's Change History' is that every day they increase around 5 keywords, and then every third day, they decrease 3 words.
It all seems a little strange to me, as I would expect a lot more to be happening than this.
- Paul.
-
Hi Pashmina,
I'm currently going through a similar thought process to yourself.
I was wondering if you came to a conclusion about Wordtracker?
Anything would be useful!
Thanks - Alex
-
I'd be interested in seeing your reviews as well.
-
Thanks for posting this reply. I agree completely, it's a mistake to expect the supplier to volunteer the best price.
Did you ever publish your reviews for the other PPC software you mentioned above?
-
Pashmina-
We have been testing close to ten different PPC software solutions over the last 3 months and I will probably be releasing my findings in another month that hopefully will be useful to people. There is no one size fits all approach, so depending on what you specifically what you need and what you want to do, will determine what software makes the most sense. I am managing over $150k a month in PPC spend so what I need might be different then you....
Googles tools are solid tools that work. But there is a reason that all of these other companies are in business and selling software and collecting money from companies.....googles tools are free and if they were as good these other companies would be out of business. Googles tools are a little cumbersome and arent really user friendly but they get the job done. But there is one HUGE fundamental difference that no one seems to want to talk about. If you go to a car dealer and you want to negotiate the best deal on a car and you will spend up to $40,000, do you walk in and write them a check for $40k and tell them use your system to get me the best possible deal? NO WAY. But that is what you do with google. We cut them a check and load our ad accounts and then allow them to tell us how to optimize our bids. Fundamentally that is also enough to make you a little nervous and look for other tools......
Having said that we have tested the "wordwatch" system. (The fact that they raised $1.5 million is better than if they were broke but doesn't guarantee their success). This is what we have found so far:
- They have made some PPC changes related to normal analysis that has saved us some time. On average I am saving 2-3 hours of analysis a week because of the data and recommendations.
- Typically systems will make recommendations and require you to go in and make changes. Their system will actually go in and make them directly. (Good and bad news)
- Their negative keyword recommendations and long tail keywords have been helpful.
- Their GUI isn't great.
- Their dashboard is ok but the fact that it doesn't have an audit/change report is a weakness.
This system is a light system. If you are managing fairly simple campaigns in a business that is fairly stable and you didn't want to do any PPC work then this is a solid value for the cost....and there really is no risk with a month to month contract/pay as you go.
Let me give you another recommendation that is more expensive but more robust. wordstream. They also have a freemium trial. There are some things I dont like about the system but overall it is a powerful system and provides more tools and functionality than wordwatch and has worked well with our MCC system importing the data directly.....Worth comparing for you.......
Hope this helps.
Mark
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
PPC: how to get rid of an ad appearing on a keyword we don't want?
Hi, Our ad on Google Ads is appearing for a search we don't want. it isn't in our search keywords and when i try and ad it to our negative ones, we get the error " You cannot exclude keywords that are targeted " which i assume means that google thinks we are bidding on it? We have a selection of broad phrase matches so i can only think that this is where it's coming from? Do you have any tips on tracking down which keyword is generating this ad and how we can turn it off? (we don't want to pay for clicks on this search if possible!) Btw - i have turned off each keyword in turn to test it = nothing. have then paused the whole campaign = gets rid of the ad (but this is our most successful campaign so i can't just turn it off). Any advice super super welcome. thank you!
Paid Search Marketing | | Fubra1 -
Can a third-party advertising agency lock me out of Adwords?
Hey all, I've just started at a new company. We spend quite a bit on Adwords and I'm tasked with seeing how that is going and assessing that spend. The problem is, Adwords and Youtube ads have been given to a third-party advertising agency. They are only willing to share the number of clicks, cost and conversions, stuff like that. They refuse to give us access to the account. Is this legal? I mostly want to get in there to look at keyword history, see what we have bid on, how often it was searched, stuff like that. But they won't let us in and I'm wondering if they are required to let us look at our account as I would think they are. Please help!
Paid Search Marketing | | DanDeceuster2 -
Have you had success using adwords to promote blog content?
From time to time I see an ad pop up in search results for blog content and have often wondered how much success these ads have had in promoting the specific post. Does anyone have experience with this? What results did you see?
Paid Search Marketing | | unikey0 -
3 domains, Same keywords targeting - Best way of managing this?
Hi, I manage 3 domains and am just about to start doing some Branded PPC (to start with) to promote these the problem is that that 2 of the domains sell the exactly same products under the same brand names. What is the most efficient way of setting this up. Obviously by setting up separate accounts and using the MCC I can manage the accounts accordingly, but i am going to be increasing my competition for my own brand terms. As far as i am aware google is not happy with you mixing 2 domains in one account? We also sell our products via a wholesale channel so there is competition with other competitors as well. The 3 sites is slightly different so has less overlap and its not until we hit generic terms that there is some form of competition, between site but i am not worried about this. Can you help? Regards Ben
Paid Search Marketing | | benjmoz0 -
Starting Out With PPC, Need Some Advice
We are starting out with PPC for our site. I wanted to know what the best starting point is for our site. First, some basic info: We sell thousands of products from a large number of manufacturers We can offer the same prices as competitors, but we can't beat their prices Here are my questions: What would be my USP if my prices are the same, and we have the same store policies as competitors? Is it best to start with product pages (as opposed to keywords)? Meaning, setting up a feed via MC and connecting to our adwords account. Any advice is appreciated 🙂
Paid Search Marketing | | inhouseseo0 -
Google Analytics and Adwords Tracking Codes
A site I help someone with in link building was recently redesigned. I do not have access to the site in any way. Well, after the redesign, no conversions were tracking in Adwords and Analytics ecommerce tracking showed no transactions and no amounts. I found the Analytics code and sent it to their programmer. I have linked the Adwords and Analytics accounts. So now conversions are tracked in Adwords and transactions are tracked in Analytics. However, amounts have vanished and not returned. I'm not technically savvy enough to figure this out. How do I get this Analytics code to track transaction amounts so that they appear in Adwords and in Analytics ecommerce tracking?
Paid Search Marketing | | DanDeceuster0 -
Proportion of traffic from adwords vs organic search
Hi People, I wanted to know if anyone knows what typical click through rates of paid vs organic search results are. We seem to be experiencing a very low click through rate with our organic search results versus our adwords and it seems to be getting worse. For example our website www.natureshop.co.uk ranks 4th for the search phrase "icebreaker" in google.co.uk (and we are the first online retailer). We are the first adwords listing as well. For the past 3 months we have had 867 clicks through our organic listing and yet with adwords we had 14,000 clicks. This seems pretty strange to me. Both have conversion rates of around 5%. Do you think these sorts of stats are becoming the norm for brand based searches? (icebreaker is a merino wool clothing brand). Adwords also says that there were around 125,000 impressions of this phrase in the search network for this period. Which means with a ranking of 4th our click through rate is less than 1%? If anyone else can share their experience or provide some commentary on this it would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance Conrad Cranfield
Paid Search Marketing | | ConradC0 -
In Google Adwords, can I create negative dollar-amount keywords?
example of negative keywords: -$40 driving lessons -35 dollar driving lessons The driving lessons I'm selling are $55 an hour, so I obviously don't want unqualified leads chewing through my budget when they clearly don't want to spend $55 on a lesson. I already have the price mentioned in my ads, but I want to negative out the dollar amounts because people are still stupid enough to click without reading the ad. Any help will be appreciated! Matt
Paid Search Marketing | | strilliams0