Analysing Google Search Ads Just Got Easier and Better

To help Google advertisers get a better sense of their search performance, Google has announced the launch of Click Share for Search.

Click share is the estimated share of all achievable clicks that an advertiser has received. Marketers can use the click share metric to understand where they have the potential to capture even more search clicks.

A handy key performance indicator (KPI) for Google advertisers, click share, is useful for clients trying to manage agencies, alongside those on the coalface of planning and implementing Google ad campaigns.

It shows how effectively your ads are engaging users compared to the competition. Whereas, Impression Share, which is often cited, shows how effective you’ve been at getting your ads shown to users.

Therefore, combining click share with impression share provides marketers with a more holistic competitive view of search advertising performance.

Applying Click Share For Search

Click share has been available for Shopping campaigns since 2015 and is very popular with retailers.

For example, if you received 70 clicks, and your click share is 70%, then it’s estimated that there were another 30 clicks that you could have received if you had more extensions, better copy/content/offer, higher bids, higher budgets or, in the case of Shopping campaigns, if you showed more products for search queries.

Therefore, this makes it a convenient way for decent Google advertisers to optimise, providing another useful metric to note, as they nudge up performance.

On the flip-side, if you have received 100 clicks on search ads, but your click share is 5%, that means searchers choose to click on other people’s ads 1900 times to your 100? Why is that? 

Sometimes with Google Ads, a business sucks and has no idea.

A scenario like above by no means implies the world’s collapsing. However, it could be viewed as a ‘smoking gun’ that prompts a client or account manager to double check activity and performance.

Which, having trained thousands of marketers, I’ve found can often be illuminating.

Click Share, Google Shopping Campaigns & Beyond

For a glimpse into the future of Google search ads, even if ‘just’ the immediate future, look no further than Google Shopping Ads.

They’re powered by Google’s artificial intelligence and gargantuan datasets and go off like Tony Abbot’s budgie-smugglers at a fundraiser. Smart retailers have shifted across from standard text search ads to Shopping campaigns in droves.

With Shopping campaigns an advertiser does not choose keywords, in the traditional sense.

Similarly, an advertiser sometimes has little idea exactly how ads will show up or when. Within reason. These details are entrusted to Google’s rather smart machine learning.

Therefore, since the environment/style/look of ads is in constant flux advertisers need a reliable performance metric which gives a good indication of relative performance.

This is where click share came in.  

Given the changes Google is making to how and where text search ads are displaying, a similar logic may increasingly take hold.

For example, in January Google announced that now your Google text search ads can show within YouTube search results. Excitingly for advertisers, Google claims early tests have shown similar performance results for text ads on YouTube and Google Search.

With the dominance of mobile, the rise of voice and visual search bubbling in the background, search engine marketing ad placements are starting to take on a very different structure and look.  

As text search ads becoming increasingly responsive and start appearing in more and more channels and locations, outside of the traditional search placements, advertisers will need a more flexible way of benchmarking their search ad performance.

One of the more useful KPIs may prove to be click share, as it is already with Shopping campaigns.

Click share for search campaigns is rolling out for all in the coming weeks. Click share will be available at the campaign, ad group, and keyword levels for search campaigns.