New in AdWords: Experiment Tab

Update with test results (August 13th, 2010)

The test has run on two campaigns, both targeted on Google search. First I wanted to end the test on August 12th for both campaigns, but seen how the results are, I considered that I should delay the end date.

Test objective: to see how max CPC increasing modified the number of conversions
Experiment increased max CPC with 25% for both campaigns

For the non-branded keywords campaign these are the data I got:

More, the control conversion rate was aprox 4 times greater than the experiment conversion rate. Explanation I found is that the ads position increased. This brought a lot of traffic, but not necessary clients. Data being statistically relevant, I stopped the experiment on August 13th.

For branded keywords campaign, data are not statistically relevant, that’s why the test is still running.

Initial post version. Test Explanation

I noticed few days ago, a new tab in AdWords Campaign Settings.

It is called Experiment, it is in Beta, and it allows us to … what do you think? We can test a lot of things, from adding keywords to setting max CPC for an ad group. Depends a lot of what you would like to get how you will use it. More details about the steps you have to take for doing an experiment you can find on Google AdWords Help.

In this account (where I noticed for the first time the experiment section), I noticed that the conversion rate decreased while I was increasing max CPC. I decided to test and see what happens with conversion rate if I use a max CPC smaller.

I defined the experiment, as start date, end date and traffic – how much is controlled, how much experimental.

After I setup the experiment, an icon appeared in front of all the ad groups.

After I did the changes, I started the experiment.

I will let you know what I got and how the results look like .