MindValley Labs Internet Marketing Blog

As a reg­u­lar reader of this blog, you know by now my pas­sion for test­ing small things that can have a big impact on the click-through-rate and ROI of my Google AdWords cam­paigns. I love doing this for a few reasons.

1) I know that most of our com­peti­tors are too lazy to bother

2) I know it takes lit­tle time

3) I know that these tiny changes can have a huge impact

Here is another case study. This time, I sim­ply tested the impact of fin­ish­ing my ad with and with­out an excla­ma­tion mark!

I thought it might make a dif­fer­ence but I was stunned and amazed once I saw the results. The image below shows the detailed results of the two Google AdWords ads that we tested.

As you will see, the Google AdWords ad with­out the excla­ma­tion mark had a click-through-rate that was 3.3 times higher than the one that did. This is a very pow­er­ful Google AdWords opti­miza­tion tip. Will the results always be that dra­matic? No, and some­times you might even find out that the oppo­site is true. It all depends on the key­word that you are buy­ing and on the over­all ad copy of your Google AdWords ad. How­ever, once again this exam­ple shows that test­ing can go a long way!

Last 5 posts by

• Do you think SEO in other lan­guages is eas­ier? — Sep­tem­ber 18th, 2008
• Google Slap — How to recover from a Google Slap? — Sep­tem­ber 8th, 2008
• What Does Your Order But­ton Say? — August 29th, 2008
• Will Knol Rule The Search Engines? First Analy­sis Indicates…It Just Might — July 23rd, 2008
• Are small busi­nesses drop­ping out of AdWords? — July 23rd, 2008

About the Author

Prior to MindValley Media, Mike was the Head of New Ventures Strategy at eBay where he conceived of the strategies that led to the investment in Craigslist, the launch of Kijiji.com and the acquisition of Skype. Mike has an MBA from Stanford and previously worked for the Boston Consulting Group. He is also a certified Google AdWords Professional.

Check out other posts by Mike Reining

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