Google AdWords™ For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Display Network

Below your keyword list are three rows: Total – Search, Total – Display Network, and Total – All Keywords. These rows break down your results by source of traffic; Search refers to visitors who enter a keyword in the Google search engine, and Display includes visitors who click your ad after seeing it on some web page.

In most cases, you will begin with Search only for the purpose of keyword research (see Chapter 4 to find out more). After you size up and validate your search market, you typically choose one network — Search or Display — and stick with it until you achieve profitability. At that point, and not before, do you want to get more traffic. Until you can make money with your “best prospects,” you do not want all the traffic you can possibly get.

A lot of AdWords beginners don't understand this concept, and it costs them a lot of money. If you find yourself tempted to expand your traffic before you prove your ability to make money from your existing traffic, please recall this joke from the beginning of Annie Hall: “Two elderly women are at a Catskills mountain resort, and one of 'em says, ‘Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.’ The other one says, ‘Yeah, I know, and such small portions.’”

Do not ask for bigger portions of traffic until you can make that traffic tasty. And under no circumstance should you ever combine search and display traffic in the same campaign. More on this in Chapter 7.