Google Adwords Interview Questions

AdWords is an advertising platform by Google where the keywords go through a bidding process. The search engine and its affiliated sites then display the advertisements based on these keywords, when a user searches for a product or service online. The advertiser has to pay for every click on his advertisement.

Adwords Keywords are the phrases, which are auctioned by Google and advertisers bid on them. The advertisement shall then appear on a Search Engine Page Result (SEPR) based on the auctioned keyword when the user is looking for a product or service. The keywords can be searched using a Google Keyword Planner where an advertiser can also check the performance of a specific keyword.

In order to make sure that the advertisements displayed are relevant to the users, Google uses metrics. The Google gives a quality score to every keyword, which depends on certain factors such as CTR, keyword relevance, and the quality of the landing page. A high-quality score will result in higher ad ranking thus getting more conversions.

Ad group is an umbrella term for all the AdWords advertisements, keywords, and landing pages. It contains one or more ads that target a shared set of keywords. An advertiser can put relevant keywords in one ad group and not dump all the keywords into the same ad group. Google rewards those advertisers who use well-structured ad groups in their campaigns, thus; one should use ad groups to organize the ads by a common theme. You can bid on your ad group’s keyword to trigger ads or you can also set individual prices for each keyword in your ad groups.

Conversion optimizer in AdWords is a feature that helps you drive more conversions at lower cost. It uses your AdWords conversion tracking data to manage the bidding process at keyword level so that your ads drive as many conversions as possible at or below your (advertiser’s) specified cost per conversion (also called cost per action, CPA). It helps in getting a better return on investment by segregating the unprofitable clicks from the profitable clicks for your campaigns.

Also Read Best Digital Marketing Interview Questions

Once a user shoots a query in Google search box, the search engine processes the request and runs an auction. It checks the keyword entered by the user and if one or more advertisers are bidding on that keyword, then auction in triggered. Once the auction process starts, Google looks upon various parameters such as advertiser’s quality score which includes CTR, ad relevancy, etc and maximum bid given by the advertiser. The ad with the highest ad rank (maximum bid x quality score) wins the auction and the ad is displayed in first position. The SERP contains 7 ad positions and the auction process decides the ads position of each ad run by different advertisers.

Google Ad Extensions are extra space provided to advertisers for giving additional information about their business. These include extra snippets of relevant information about your business such as location, phone number, business ratings, sitelinks, offer ads or a link to some specific website. Ad extensions are free to your ads without any extra payment of clicks. It also improves your site’s visibility and can help you generate more lead which in turn would create greater ROI.

CTR is calculated by dividing the total clicks on your ad by the total impressions received by your ad and then multiplying it by 100. You can use CTR to gauge the efficiency of your keywords and improve those keywords, which are less result-driven. A higher CTR is a good indication that your ads and keywords are relevant to your users.
CTR= (total clicks/total impressions) *100

Google is entitled to disapprove any ad if it doesn’t lies within its protocols. If your ad gets disapproved, then you will receive an email from Google saying that your ad has been disapproved. You have scrutiniz your ad and find out the reasons for disapproval. Once you know the reason, you have to work on editing your ad and fix it immediately. Sometimes, you need to change the content of your ad and sometimes you have to alter it along with your website. However, there are other reasons for disapproval of ads that marketers should be aware of like your ad may contain some copyrighted elements or your root domain is different in your display and destination URL.

A PPC campaign takes help of various metrics to check the performance of your campaign. One important metrics among them is Impression share metric that marketers have to eye on for checking the efficiency of their ads. It is gauged by dividing the impressions you’ve received on the search network with the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive. High search impression share is a positive indicator of whether or not your budget can support the search volume of your keywords.

In order to make the auction process fair and to avoid abuse in ad networks, Google has discouraged advertisers from running ads for the same or similar businesses across multiple accounts triggered by the same or similar keywords. This policy is known as 'double serving policy' and Google has strictly prohibited multiple ads from the same company from appearing on the same search engine result page. It curtails the problem of displaying more than one ad and users can see ads from different companies in one SERP.

Advertisers have to be extremely careful while creating the AdWords account of their clients. Once the account is made, there are few options, which cannot be edited or changed. These include Time zone and currency. Time zone and currency are used to determine how you are billed.

CTR also known as click-through rate is a metric that tells about the number of visitors on your ad per number of impressions of your ad. It is calculated by using the formula: (total clicks/total impressions)*100. It plays a major role in determining the quality score and the price you will pay for each click no your ad.

There are five categories of keywords:

• Broad match – These keywords let you reach the widest audience possible.
• Broad modifier – It lets you have a wider audience reach but also ensure better control than broad match.
• Phrase match- “Your ad will only appear when a user puts your key phrase in the exact order you enter them, but there might be other words either before or after that phrase.
• Exact match- these are the most specific and restrictive keyword type.
• Negative keyword- it is used when the advertisers do not want to display their ads in specific keywords.

AdWords API allows developers to build an application that interact directly with their account details on AdWords server. It facilitates the following activities-

• You can automatically generate keywords, texts, landing pages and custom reports.
• It manages your account by developing additional applications and tools.

Tracking conversions can be done by using basic tracking code provided by AdWords and modifying it with additional code unique to a particular platform. The view-through conversion window option tracks the impressions of your ad. You can also access the search funnels inside the tools and analysis, where you can know when your customers first click the ad and how frequently they saw your ad before converting.

The headings should contain a maximum of 25 characters whereas the second description line should contain a maximum of 35 characters. Description URL consists of 1024 characters and it doesn't contain any image in URL.

Field	Max length
Headline 1	30 characters
Headline 2	30 characters
Headline 3	30 characters
Description 1	90 characters
Description 2	90 characters
Path (2)	15 characters each

Ad rank tells how high on the SERP the advertisement will be displayed. It is very important to understand the impact of ad rank on CPC because it plays a major role in determining the actual CPC that your competitors pay when someone clicks on their ads. Cost per click is the actual amount that you pay to Google when someone clicks on the ad and not what you are most willing to pay. Ad ranks help to determine both your ad position and CPC of your nearest competitor.

AdWords bidding process helps in determining the actual position of your ad. It is calculated by multiplying the maximum bid with the quality score of the advertiser. The highest ad rank gets the first ad position in SERP. Your actual CPC will be determined by the ad rank of the next highest competitor divided by quality score of your ad. AdWords bidding heavily penalizes advertisers who bid with low-quality scores.

Google auction runs billions of times each month. Change in bidding amount or the quality score of one advertiser will have an impact on your ad position. The results are such that users find ads that are relevant to their query. Advertisers try to connect with their potential customers at the lowest possible prices and Google earn billions of dollars in revenue.

Following are the maximum number of campaigns and ad groups you can create in Adwords.

Number of campaigns (both paused & active) : 10,000

Number of Ad groups per campaign: 20,000