Special Characters in AdWords

[SemAdvance]

Hi everybody

I had read online about some who wanted to increase their organic SERP keyword rankings result by using special characters in their title tag. Their belief was that an unusual title would attract more visitor eyeballs and thereby clicks, and help boost ones ranking in the natural results.

I was thinking about a way to make my ads stand out from the competition in the pay per click campaigns, and truly felt this was a great idea and I could take a bit of the thought, and apply it to my various PPC campaigns.

I knew Google and others will not allow me to use special English characters in my ad and thought perhaps the bots would not be able to read non-English characters.

So what I have decided to do was use non english characters in my ads.

I have placed the characters within the title tag at the front at the end and at the front and
end.

Here is an example Ad below.

Ó Kenneth Jay Lane
New Kenneth Jay Lane jewelry
Order the jewelry you deserve now!
PlatinumTrunk.com


I have posted images so you can see the ads, and stats, and instructions on how you can do the same on my blog at
mediaviper.com

As a warning Google may or may not like this ;->

Hope it helps!!

[ArthurNYC]

Innovative idea ... but the CTRs are lower in your campaigns when you use those characters. At least what you are showing on MV.com.

Am I missing something?

Arthur

[SemAdvance]

Originally Posted by ArthurNYC

Innovative idea ... but the CTRs are lower in your campaigns when you use those characters. At least what you are showing on MV.com.

Am I missing something?

Arthur

Hi Arthur

No you're not missing anything, in some cases the CTR% is lower and in other cases higher.

What I found odd was the lower CTR% in the property campaign was the one that resulted in a conversion to lead.

Also as I have only received permission from two people to test so far, this it is limited in scope and results data but I hope to expand to others as well.

[sitecreations]

I'm going to suggest you focus your energies on ad copy split testing and display URLs. This ASCII manipulation method is tentative at best, and is not a long-term strategy.

By using thematic grouping you can get key phrases in the title and body of your ads, as well increase the chances of bolding, both being good long-term solution for improved CTR without the trickery.

[DrTandem1]

The first thing you have to realize is that Google will not tolerate anything to make an AdWords ad stand out other than by paying Google more money to be at the top and in more places. You see, if an AdWords ad actually stood out on its own, it would detract from other AdWord ads and Google would lose money.

[Peter (IMC)]

I'm doing a lot of ads in portuguese and never have problems. To give you an idea of how many special characters the portuguese language has: ã õ í é ú â ô ç and a bunch more... never any problem in Adwords.

[idansh]

is keywords in the ads important , I thought for geting to your audience you need to add keywords to google adwords, As much as you can, and than you have more chance of optimizing your ad for a specific crowd

[jtracking]

Originally Posted by Peter (IMC)

I'm doing a lot of ads in portuguese and never have problems. To give you an idea of how many special characters the portuguese language has: ã õ í é ú â ô ç and a bunch more... never any problem in Adwords.

ya well you can be tricky and put whatever characters you want into your adwords ads but when the person clicks on your ad and goes somewhere he/she doesn't want to go but was tricked into going cause of a fancy character, you just lost a customer and paid for nothing...

your ad text should tell the truth of what your offering, it's really simple.

[Peter (IMC)]

Originally Posted by jtracking

ya well you can be tricky and put whatever characters you want into your adwords ads but when the person clicks on your ad and goes somewhere he/she doesn't want to go but was tricked into going cause of a fancy character, you just lost a customer and paid for nothing...

your ad text should tell the truth of what your offering, it's really simple.

Hmmm, I guess I now understand better what this thread is about...

I thought it was about Google not allowing special characters. In our langauge it is a requirement and so Google allows it without problems.

Using special characters just to attract the attention of searchers is of course a big waste of time.

SemAdvance,

Why not use your keywords in the visible URL? Works much better than a rediculous Ó that makes no sence what so ever.

[orfeo]

I will also disagree with this method. It's a matter of time before Google catches you and then what will you tell your client.

Group ads and really making them relevant is the best method for me. And also we should forget that there are always limits.

Some campaigns can not naturally get many clicks because there are no matching searches. Maybe these companies should look to other ways to spend their advertising bugdets. CPA maybe or some sponsorships can prove great for some industries.

Google is just an alternative (precious though) and it should be part of a bigger plan not the plan itself.

[Peter (IMC)]

Using keywords in the visible URL is not against the rules. That's a very much accepted. There´s more to a successful Adwords campaign than just the ad it self. You need to create proper landing pages AND optimize those as well. (you know, the SEO way). With that you get your keywords in the URL, both visible and real URL.

[SemAdvance]

Originally Posted by orfeo

I will also disagree with this method. It's a matter of time before Google catches you and then what will you tell your client.

Group ads and really making them relevant is the best method for me. And also we should forget that there are always limits.

Some campaigns can not naturally get many clicks because there are no matching searches. Maybe these companies should look to other ways to spend their advertising bugdets. CPA maybe or some sponsorships can prove great for some industries.

Google is just an alternative (precious though) and it should be part of a bigger plan not the plan itself.

Hello

You are correct it is a matter of time...though its been over two weeks now....and I could string it along by deleting the ads and putting them back up later.

Before I would try this though I would insure I had my clients permission, which I do.

The quality of my Ads, Usage of keywords in title, body description, url etc is not the question I have managed Adwords campaigns for over three years, and manage 100k spend monthly, as such I did not stumble into the knowledge, or even taking the step of adding in these characters. I have spent countless hours studying Adwords... and I thought this out quite a bit.

The question is does this have any positive or negative effect on the consumer????

Thank you all for your great responses.

Clint