Sick of pulling 500 max keyword reports page by page from Google Analytics?

To avoid the manual labor of exporting and then consolidating all your CSV reports into one, follow the steps below:

1. Go to the report that contains the data you want to export.
2. Append “&limit=5000” (or however many rows you need) to the URL displayed in your browser’s URL window, and hit enter to reload the report.

Voilà!  Your 5,000 keyword report is ready with the press of a button.

To be fair to Search Engine Land, its editors declaimed the opinions of guest writer Matt Van Wagner of Find Me Faster. Van Wagner’s article, The Pitfalls Of A/B Ad Split Testing, Part 2, might as well have been titled “The Pitfalls of Pointless Analysis,” given how it goes on about matters insignificant to the business of improving results through SEM.

Though A/B testing is crucial to success in this pursuit, it’s not a simple thing to get right. Beginners seeking pearls of wisdom in Van Wagner’s lengthy piece would be better off asking their engine sales rep (who are probably not accomplished testers, either, but then again some of them were trained at Razorfish).

Van Wagner offers a free lobster dinner (he’s from New Hampshire, where crustaceans are currency) for help with the common A/B test conundrum of a winning ad that performs poorly on its own.

He correctly identifies the problem — lack of a true A/B split among rotated ads — but gets woefully lost on the way to a solution, considering complications from custom ad serving, search histories, repeat queries and something he calls “over optimization” without identifying the classic culprit of a back-test failure.

He should have asked: Were any of the keywords in this problematic test on broad match?

By far, the most common faulty assumption in search A/B testing is that both ads are eligible to show on the same query set. This is only true on exact match. Beyond exact, the eligible query set expands (i.e. broad match gets broader) for the ad with the higher CTR. During a test attempt, the ad earning the higher CTR for the shared query set will seem to suffer a CTR reduction as the engine finds the maximum yield (for itself) via query-set expansion. Sustained A/B tests on broad match routinely “fail” to achieve a significant result as the algorithm automatically challenges the winner, driving its CTR down. The test isn’t really a failure, because increasing yield is what the algorithm is designed to do.

This scenario causes confusion about the value of A/B testing in search. But there is no controversy: Understanding how paid search works enables experts to test to our hearts’ content. And the learning that pours in from a correctly executed A/B testing program makes our clients enough wampum to buy their own lobster.

We spent a good minute scratching the ol’ noggin over these two charts from SEMPO’s 2010 “State of Search Engine Marketing” report. They show that this year, 47% of surveyed businesses said they handle search in-house. Last year, no one said they handle search in house. A careful read reveals a note stating that “in house” wasn’t an option last year. Since none of the other answers are appropriate for respondents running search in-house, and we don’t have one of those handy “n=” captions tipping us off as to whether in-house search marketers skipped the question or entered a misleading answer last year, we can’t actually compare results year-over-year. So why even publish the 2009 chart?

Focusing on 2010 hardly clarifies the issue. We’re very curious about search provider choices, but this categorization is confusing. How would Razorfish Search’s clients respond? With 96 full-time search people and an average tenure over three years, we undoubtedly qualify as a “paid search specialist” and a “SEO specialist.” Though search is only one of many digital services Razorfish provides, some clients perceive us as a “search agency” because help with search is what they originally came to us for. “Digital Marketing Agency” might seem to be the best fit, unless our client considers that Razorfish is a leader in experience design, site creative and technology — projects that don’t fit neatly under the “Marketing Agency” header. At least we can rule out “PR agency”!

One question for our friend Sara Holoubek of the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization: Did you outsource your search survey to a “survey expert” or a “search expert”?

In Geekfight, a Razorfish expert challenges the published wisdom of another search pundit. Today, Razorfish Group Director Adam Heimlich takes issue with a recent blog post by Charli Rogers, UK Client Services Director for Efficient Frontier.

Rogers’ post “Strike the Right Match Type” has a lot of good search-geek information on multiple match type buying. We wholeheartedly concur with her main point: Search marketers should avoid over-reliance on broad match, and, whenever broad match is used, run query reports regularly to find new negatives and minimize irrelevant matches. Razorfish search clients benefit from this best practice.

But in Part 2 of her post, Rogers gets into the crucial “how to” of query report expansion, and gives a bit of advice that rips the “best” right out the practice!

She says not to triple-match all keywords – sensible enough given how big that can make an account – and explains as follows:

“As a rule of thumb, consider how many words make up the keyword.  If there are more than three, there is no need to add exact/phrase match versions to begin with. Use your common sense to inform what does/doesn’t need to be triple matched; cheap flights is a high volume generic which needs to be on all match types, but find a three star hotel in Paris probably only needs to go on broad match in the beginning…”

Rogers seems to be saying that buying long phrases on broad match alone doesn’t cause the same loss of advertiser control that we know occurs with short phrases on broad match alone. She implies that “find a three star hotel in Paris” won’t broad match to a high-volume query like “Paris hotel” or even “Paris.” Readers of the Efficient Frontier blog who took its advice can learn quickly from query reports that they’ve been misled.

In fact, token length doesn’t mitigate the risk of unwanted broad matching. Advertisers who experimented but later chose not to bid at all on “Paris” and “Paris hotel” would be most in danger of broad matching into those extremely expensive auctions. The matching algorithm is designed to fill up SERP inventory! If an advertiser with established relevance wants the power to opt out at will, all his broad match keywords must be reigned in, regardless of their length.

The smarter strategy is to build on exact match and either double up on broad, or, if account size is a factor, restrict broad match to short phrases. You don’t actually need long phrases broad matched: “Paris hotel” alone will broad match to all relevant variations omitted from the account. Adding these ON EXACT through regular query-report expansions maximizes advertiser control.

Confusion about match-type strategy is widespread in the industry. Until recently, even Google advised against the most efficient method. We thank Charli Rogers and Efficient Frontier for raising the issue, and cordially invite their response.

Have an idea for GeekFight! Email us at razorfishsearch@razorfish.com