How To Sort Out Traffic From Google.com and Google's Search Partners

This one pay per click technique can save a marginal campaign.

Adwords is made up of three networks: Google.com, the search network, and the content network. They all behave differently. Smart advertisers will separate the three traffic streams into three different campaigns.

In this article, we'll focus on separating the traffic from Google.com and Google's search partners. It requires a bit of a trick, because Adwords's campaign settings won't let you have just the search network on. You can turn on just traffic from Google.com, though, and by making the most of how the Adwords systems allocates clicks, it is possible to isolate the traffic from the search network.

What sites make up the search network?
Google Product Search and Google Groups, AOL, Earthlink, Compuserve, Shopping.com and a few other large sites make up the search network.

Why break out search network traffic?
Search network traffic tends to convert at a much lower rate than traffic from Google.com. How much of a lower rate depends on your website and your business, but if you're spending more than $500 a month, its worth the time to break the two streams of traffic apart. It is not uncommon for advertisers to see conversion rates leap up 10-30% in the Google.com only campaign.

How to break out the traffic from the search network from Google.com
1) Duplicate your existing Google.com-and-search-network campaign in the Adwords editor to create the new search network campaign. Name the new campaign, including in the name that this is the Google and search network campaign. "G&Search" is a reasonable shorthand.
2) Before you upload the new campaign to your active account, do a mass bid change and drop all bids in the new Google.com-and-search-network campaign by 10-15%. To do this in the Adwords Editor, select the new campaign, click the "Keywords" tab, select all the keywords, then click on the link at the bottom of the Adwords Editor interface that says "Advanced Bid Changes" (its below the Destination URL box). Select the radio button to decrease bids, and drop them by 10% (not ten cents, but ten percent).
Next, upload the new campaign to your active acount. (Steps 1 and 2 should take about 15 minutes.
3) In your active account (ie, online) change the campaign level settings of the old main campaign so it runs on ONLY Google.com. To do this, go to "Edit campaign settings" and look to the top right hand side of the page under "Networks". Uncheck the search network and click save and your old campaign will now only run on Google.com. This will take about a minute.

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