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
-
Adwords disapproving ads with the word "Jewish"?
Hi guys, I do marketing for many nonprofits, and one of my clients is a Jewish women's organization. In the past week or so, Google has started disapproving ads and keywords that have the word "Jewish" in them. I know Facebook got called out recently for allowing people to target based on anti-Semitic sentiments, so I'm wondering if this is just Google's terrible execution of caution. It's telling me that keywords with the word "jewish" in them (like "jewish women's organization in boston" is derogatory or dangerous). I've asked for Google's help, and they've been incredibly slow to respond. Is anyone else facing this with other religions or content? Natalie
Paid Search Marketing | | newwhy1 -
Adwords Conversions - Trying to track button clicks that fire when Bootstrap modal contact form clicked/opened
Hi there, I'm trying to implement google adwords conversions on a particular client's website. They have used bootstrap as the framework for their site and mainly open up contact forms within a bootstrap modal, after a button is clicked. See here: http://www.gtwstorage.co.uk/ I thought I had successfully implemented the adwords conversion tracking however it has been a week now, and my conversions still say they are "unverified". I wonder if anyone else has encountered this before and knows what I might be doing wrong. Thank you in advance, Darren
Paid Search Marketing | | SEODarren0 -
Can I auto tag my unbounce campaign?
Hi Mozzers, We are running ads for a client and we're using unbounce for landing page creation. Google Adwords is the main ad platform we are using right now. When you click on the ad you land on a subdomain (subdomain.Sitename.com) and you can click on Apply which lands on the form Page of the client's site(www.sitename.com). The campaign has been auto tagged but haven't seen any data which is probably because of the subdomain unbounce page. Do you think there is a way to track unbounce via auto tagging or my only solution will be setting up manual tagging? Thanks
Paid Search Marketing | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
World Localities in AdWords?
If I target the topic "World Localities>San Antonio", what type of sites my ads will be display? Are they sites about San Antonio, like tourism guides or event listings? Or are they related to San Antonio, like a university or flower shop in San Antonio?
Paid Search Marketing | | howlusa0 -
Adroll for Retargeting Campaign
Hi guys, Wondering if anyone can comment on their experience using Adroll, especially in terms of it's performance in comparison to Google Adwords retargeting campaigns. Thx!
Paid Search Marketing | | David_ODonnell1 -
How long does it ramp up a PPC campaign?
I was speaking to a SEO the other day. He is going to be working on an ecommerce site soon. I was suggesting that he might want to augment his SEO efforts with PPC in order to be able to show some results in the near term, as it would most likely take some time for his SEO work to be showing results. His response was that while he hasn't utilized them as much, he's found that it can take 3-6 months to get a PPC campaign to really make money. I'm just curious if you guys feel that this is an accurate statement?
Paid Search Marketing | | brettgus0 -
Will PPC elsewhere on my domain help my organic SEO?
I have an e-commerce site with a small product line which an on-going organic SEO campaign. As a side project, I'm planning on doing some PPC testing with a highly converting product squeeze page, which I'll run Google ads to gain traffic. (this is PPC only and for this page I am not concerned with organic SEO traffic - although of course the page itself will be fully optimized). I am wondering whether to run this squeeze page on a sub-domain or sub-directory of the existing site, OR to host it on a completely fresh domain? I would like to know if as side-effect my existing Website benefit 'organically' from some of the PPC traffic, helping with it's domain authority, etc.,? or could this possibly do any harm? p.s. Bear in mind this is not going to be a page visible on the on the main site itself, it's a separate entity for PPC. Would be great to have some expert Moz eyes on this and opinions. Thanks!
Paid Search Marketing | | GregDixson0 -
PPC ad guidelines?
I learned Google PPC years ago and got certified by Google. Back then and for a long time since I know it was best practice to capitalize words in your domain name. I know Google no longer does this and that words in your domain name of your ad are now all lowercase. I hear recommendations and see them practice that adding keywords in a directory are a good way to still get capitalized words in your ad. When I learned PPC, I was told your display URL and your destination URL had to match. Now I'm seeing ads where that is not the case. If I have an ad that takes someone to my homepage of a coupon site, can I have a display URL that says: mysite.com/Coupons Even if the destination URL is just mysite.com ? I'm seeing conflicting things online and it's hard because I don't know what the current guidelines are after this change.
Paid Search Marketing | | DanDeceuster0