Customer Reviews

Mastering Search Advertising: How the Top 3% of Search Advertisers Dominate Google AdWords

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

...and only the owner of a company like AdGooRoo could write this, explaining why and how. It's one thing to look at search results and study your Google account; it's another to gather data from thousands of companies and show exactly what works and does not. That's what Richard has done with this book.

As author of The Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords & having taught hundreds of thousands of people how to advertise on Google, I was elated to see Richard put hard numbers on many things I've believed but was unable to prove.

Richard shows:

--Specific types of keywords and searches and how they relate to buying behavior

--Hard factors that influence Quality Score and Click Thru Rate

--Information that is very hard to get from Google, like % ad exposure and relationships between bid price, ad position, Click Thru Rate and Conversion Rate

Richard explains the inner workings of Google's formula, revealing why ultra-relevant advertisers get a wonderful advantage of being served *all* the available clicks and not just a portion. If you're up against competition who is in that enviable position, you need all the intel you can get.

This book is not for beginners. I really don't see that as a problem, though, there are plenty of books that do that (such as my own). There's a whole class of Google advertisers who know all the basic stuff but are still perplexed by Adwords. They're in hyper-competitive markets duking it out with hundreds of bidders and they need advanced info. This book is perfect for them.

The book quickly offers some great strategies and makes some very practical points, but there is not a lot of content and a few examples. Large fonts and big diagrams left me thinking wondering why this wasn't condensed into a pocket size 20 page book. It was a little annoying that throughout the book the author repeatedly pitches his AdWords management product. The strategies described are good and make great sense, but also often assume you're working with an unlimited budget. That said, the book did pay for itself with some helpful suggestions, but I think I'll probably pick up another text for more information.

I've been working professionally with pay-per-click advertising for several years and I'm in as good of a position as any to review books on this subject.

This book is a little different than the 300 page tomes one usually finds written about AdWords. At just over 100 pages, this is a quick and easy read. It's evident that the author is an expert and is speaking from experience. It dives quickly into intermediate and expert-level optimizations that can have a huge impact on paid campaign results.

In fact, this is what I liked most about the book - it doesn't waste time repeating the same kinds of things you can find in other AdWords books. For instance, there's a great chapter which explains why high bids don't necessarily translate to high traffic and how you can use this relationship to drive more first-page traffic while lowering your average bid prices. It seems like nearly every chapter presented some new insight, some of which go right in the face of common AdWords thinking

The main shortcoming of the book is that it's not suitable to first time PPC marketers. If you haven't run a campaign before, you'll need some other resources in addition to this book.

In short, this book belongs on every professional search marketers shelf. 5 stars.

This book was okay. It brings to light some vary basic concepts that were very helpful in refining my current paid search ad campaigns. It also cleared up some questions that I had about paid search ads. The book is a quick easy read and I recomened taking notes while you read it. It might also be a good idea to buy a new copy of the book since the used copy I purchased had a lot of underlined paragraphs in it. You want to be able to do your own marking up in this book. There were 2 down sides to this book. The first is the concept of Coverage. The author of this book talked as if Coverage was the most important thing when it comes to Paid Search Ads and actually, profitable ROI and Conversions are more important to me than Coverage. Any one can spend money in Paid Search Ads, but can they do it and return a profit. Coverage is more important if you a very large company with an unlimited budget and it is essential that you are seen in SERPs all of the time.

The other negative I have about this book is the author's continuous references to his company's software. I got the feeling there were always 3 solutions offered, 1 bad, one okay and then the best option is using a feature in his company's software. It is as if this book was published to promote the company's software.

Mastering Search Advertising is a highly concise, unique and useful book covering search engine marketing / Google Adwords. Many a book on this topic has said much more, but explained much less.

I draw this conclusion based on the following:
- The Foreword of the book gives a brief synopsis of Richard's journey of curiosity and passion for understanding and refining process, not an endless list of thank you's. You immediately feel a purpose, direction and his passion for the subject.

- Richard is clearly self-taught and has deviated from the beaten path and anyone reading this book would benefit from his years of effort. It reminds me of how Tommy Emmanuel learned how to play acoustic guitar without ever reading sheet music!

- The book explains clearly and transparently some of the basic rules of search engine marketing in a way that is rarely seen publicly.

- Richard does all of this with simple and concise explanations that are written in actual business language. It sets a foundation for the eventual moving of this space from mystery to science.

- The first four words of chapter 10 explain search perfectly: "Search engines prize relevancy."

- Some people might mildly object to his usage of his company Adgooroo as an example throughout the book. What those people don't understand is that: A) it would have been almost impossible to achieve the conclusions that are the foundations of this book without the Adgooroo solution having been developed, B) he explains the steps you'd need to do to achieve the results without Adgooroo (but it would likely be too time consuming) and C) he openly talks about alternative vendor solutions in a mutually respectful way lessens the sales element.

Enjoy your future reading. Your visit to Facebook, Twitter and/or my blog to continue this dialogue if you so desire is welcomed.

This is a good book and it has a number of great ideas and I learned a lot reading it. But,I'd like to see more detail on those ideas. For example, the books talks about the right way to set up adgroups, but doesn't talk about the logic behind grouping keywords.

It's incredible, but I never could imagine, that I will give 5 stars to book, that makes advertising of authors book.
But it's really rocks! There is a numerous new insights, and a-ha moments in. After a more than 5 years in PPC and SEM in general i found this book short, juicy and lot of gems rich. It's really, a good surprise.

Because of this book, we have altered the way we sell our PPC product. Not knowing this information can be fatal to your long term goals. I only wish it could have been a little thicker.

Found out about Richard Stokes from Perry Marshall. Amazing break down of what to do to be in control of my Adwords campaign. Neat little tricks and ways to save money. Technical but understandable. I'm seeing competitors' ads falling away because they apparently haven't read this book.

I stumbled upon this "find" by accident. A collegue reccomended it and let me tell you that after reading it I can say this book is a "must have" for any person who buys/manages keywords online. The author, Richard, provides great tips and techniques to improve your paid search campaigns.

A useful handbook for all people within the search industry from novice to advanced. I know I will keep this book as a reference guide for future search campaigns that I manage.