Google Adwords Search Funnel Reports

Google Adwords has finally heard PPC marketers' calls by releasing new reports called Search funnels.

What is it?

These reports help advertisers address the attribution problems of Adwords advertising. These reports provide information such as

• The different keywords of your PPC campaign that help in getting a conversion.
• The time it takes for a visitor to become a customer
• The number of impressions and clicks required for a visitor to become a customer

Previously Adwords only attributed the last keyword that led to a sale on your website. But the buyer could have searched many times using different keywords before making a purchase. Now Google Adwords provides all the different keywords involved in getting a conversion from the first search to the final sale.

What's in it for the PPC advertiser?

The advertiser can make better decisions in terms of bidding on keywords. Now you have all the different keywords in your account that helped get a conversion. So you can allocate bids accordingly to the various keywords based on how often they lead to a conversion.
Ex. You sell Gourmet chocolates.

Chocolates online -> Premium Chocolates -> Chocolate Truffles -> Handmade Chocolate Truffles

Based on Adwords data, you know that "Handmade Chocolate Truffles" is one of your top converting keywords. You always bid high and allocate significant budget to that keyword. But you don't know previously about all the 3 other keywords that helped you get sales often. So you always were bidding low on them or might even been considering to pause those keywords.

Now you know all the keywords involved in getting a conversion. So you can determine the value of those keywords more accurately and bid more effectively to get more conversions.

You also know now about keywords which are not valuable at all based on these reports. So you can pause or reduce bids of these keywords reducing costs without affecting your existing sales. Further you can free more marketing budget to be allocated to better performing keywords increasing sales.