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Hi Andy, Unfortunately I do not use any 3rd party software programs. Thanks for the tip on positions 4 -10. I will look at the conversion rates before moving the ads up. What do you consider an acceptable overall quality score for an ad group? Thanks Carla

Hey! Great question (sorry for not getting back to you sooner). The issue isn't your ad copy, or likely your landing page, but the keywords that you're targeting. As with venues or any arrangements offline, costs are significantly higher as soon as "wedding" is thrown in. I have had a similar experience with a client who was advertising on wedding rings -- low quality scores, higher CPCs. When you hover over the status bubble next to your keywords in Google, it should tell you exactly where the issues are. I just checked one of my 1/10 QS KWs and it said my landing page experience, ad relevance, and expected CTR were all below average. This is likely the same for you. I would work on testing your ad copy. But, you need a good adgroup structure for that. Here's my suggestion: I would put together one keyword with exact match with three different ad into one adgroup. That way you can start to isolate the issue. Is it the copy you're using? Can you get a higher CTR for that? Is it the landing page (it's my unsolicited opinion that this page does in fact need some work for a happier customer experience, but always be testing!)? Is it the keyword itself? What are your competitors writing in adcopy for this keyword? What are your ad extensions? What are their CTRs? Can you edit them to be better? For this test, you might want to just run these one keyword adgroups on the google network only, so that way you have an accurate understanding of the amount of traffic that's coming through and how they are interacting with your site. Not that the search partners network impacts your QS, but it will impact your results that will effect your tests (unless you plan on splitting the data by network + search partners).

We use If By Phone quite extensively and have always had a positive experience with them.

Google has stopped passing the search query in UTM Codes. It's a new development that you can read about here.

You could use the Segment dropdown to see the data by Network. It will display 3 rows, so you can see that broken down. You cannot however, isolate the Search Partners using a filter. It'd be a good request to make to Google.

Wow, that was ridiculous! Thanks.

If you look at your GA you should see All Visits to the left there's a drop down which allows you to filter your traffic using segments instead of creating a new view. In here there's a segment for Paid Search Traffic Here however is a Segment for Search Only Traffic : https://www.google.com/analytics/web/template?uid=uU7kkJBMR9OiwPYvEasNUw This will allow you to add the segment to your own GA account. By adding both segments to the graph you will see the vs effect

Couple of links addressing this topic below: Adwords and Analytics not matching up Adwords and Analytics tracking

Really good point Paul.  I hadn't thought about the build up of quality score, that is a biggy.  Thanks for your contribution!

Have you had any luck with other companies that are selling the same kind of service? It seems to me that reaching out to the companies that they put your ads on and just bypassing VSW would be a better option. I don't know if the pricing would be the same as what VSW offers but at least you would reduce the possibility of being scammed.

Thanks everyone.  It's actually not a sales tactic, but my thought was that people using it unscrupulously may make it a term that violates guidelines (even if it is true).  I'll update if/when I post.  Thanks, again.

Hi Sophie, We have built a reporting tool called ReportGarden (http://reportgarden.com). Using ReportGarden it is much easier and quicker to create your SEA/SEM reports. You can create templates that you can be reused to generate reports with a single click. We also provide automation so that you can schedule reports to be emailed to your clients daily/weekly/monthly. If you have any questions reach out to me at support@reportgarden.com Ashok

I would backup your htaccess file. then remove half the rules, then test. then you will know what half it is in. keep doing this to you find it

The budget is maxed out for this term - they just wanted us to up the bid (which we are spending .25 of the current bid).

Hi Guys, Does the Moz PRO tools have  anything to find out how much the top competition in my market is spending on adwords? Thanks

Ah, that makes sense. In that case, best practice is to make landing pages specific to your AdWords campaigns. I know that seems like a lot more work than just adding a modal pop up, but hopefully you can get your developer to make you a template and then you can easily make a number of very similar pages with different messaging. That extra expense to make a landing page will be worthwhile, since there's no chance that Google will have a problem with it, so your ads won't get disapproved, and visitors generally expect a landing page tailored to their ad anyway. Good luck!

The correct way is to add your email you used for AdWords as an admin on analytics

Thanks again for the help and Ill monitor the Blog review idea. Peter

Good point yet again, EGOL. Thank you.

You can run your landing pages URLs in adwords tools>keyword planner>Search for new keyword and ad group ideas>Your landing page. This approach will show you what google's crawler thinks are the terms on the page. This won't give you a quality score per se but it will let you know how google adwords sees the page. Even if there were a quality score tool it would only be as good as the creator and Google doesn't have a tool like that.