Google+ Is Dead & Bing Is Expensive? The Top 10 WordStream Blog Posts in March

This morning, as I walked into work through Boston’s bone-chilling wind-tunnel of snowflakes, I pondered how hard it is to believe that spring is upon us. Yes, SPRING, even though I spent my weekend skiing and sipping hot chocolate.

Yet, even with Boston’s never-ending snow-pocalypse, the month of March has been another exciting one. The .COM turned 30, Senator Ted Cruz announced his candidacy for presidency, and most importantly, Zayn Malik left One Direction! And then there’s the tragic news of Germanwings Flight 9525, in which co-pilot Andrea Lubitz intentionally crashed the plane into a mountain, killing 150 people onboard. Truly devastating news; our hearts go out to all of the victims and their loved ones.

On a lighter note, at WordStream, we’ve had quite an exciting month. With an all-time traffic high, we’ve leaped into spring with full-force. Now, let’s recap the top 10 performing posts of March:

1. Goodbye, Google+: Social Network Broken Into Photos Products: Wowza! Is Google+ finally plummeting to its predictable death (sorry G+, I just envisioned this happening years ago)? Well, sort of, it’s being split into streams and photo products, so I suppose the original intent of the social network is dying. This post BLEW up, with 90.5K shares on Twitter alone. In the blog, Larry eloquently explains why Google likely made this decision, and what this means for the future of Google+.
2. Search Trends by State: Top Trending Searches in All 50 States: Another post that struck Twitter-sharing gold, this visually engaging mini-infographic (check it out below) shows the top 50 search trends across the U.S. in the past 12 months. WordStream’s Content Manager, Elisa Gabbert, really knocked it out of the park with this interesting study reflecting on what we searched for in the past year, even diving into specific trends in various fields like education, sports, celebrities, and earthquakes. With everything from Jennifer Gardner to Credit Karma, it’s fascinating to see what search queries trended in specific states across the U.S. 
3. These 7 New AdWords Tools & Features Will Change Your Campaigns Forever: Larry’s always one step ahead of the game when it comes to staying on top of the ever-changing paid search space. AdWords releases an insane amount of new features every year, lots of which aren’t even announced! To save you time, Larry compiled this list of the 7 game-changing tools to utilize to truly make a positive impact on your AdWords campaigns.
4. The 20 Most Expensive Keywords in Bing Ads [INFOGRAPHIC]: Bing has always been seen as Google AdWords' more affordable, less attractive cousin. Spending too much on AdWords? Try Bing! Too much competition on Google? Bing has less, go for it! This colorful infographic shows that there are indeed keywords that can burn a hole right through your pocket on Bing. "Lawyer" tops the list at an average cost-per-click (CPC) of $109.21! My, oh my, that is an expensive click! The law industry is not only competitive on AdWords, but it’s also extremely competitive on Bing with the top 5 most expensive keywords falling in the field. Check out what other keywords could really break the bank on Bing, with additional tips from Larry, on how to survive on Bing without selling a kidney!                                                                                                                                                                                 
5. 6 Steps to Building a Brilliant Paid Search Account Structure: Have you been tasked with building out an AdWords account from scratch? Or perhaps you’re taking over an account, which needs to be completely restructured? Whatever the case may be, building out in the AdWords interface isn’t as easy as it sounds. Not all of steps are necessarily intuitive and it’s pretty easy to make a small mistake, screw up your account, and waste a huge chunk of money (and maybe even get fired). To ease these pain points, I’ve created this in-depth step-by-step guide to help advertisers create a well-structured account and avoid blowing their budget on irrelevant search queries and un-qualified clicks,
6. The 21 Best Productivity Tools to Add More Hours to Your Day: Do you consider yourself a procrastinator? That’s cool, I guess… But let’s face it, procrastination actually equals being unproductive, which in terms leads to lower performance and can lose you opportunities for promotion, free time, money, etc. But some of us are natural procrastinations who need a little push to stay on task and be more productive. Megan Marrs compiled this list of 21 tools to spur productivity and prevent procrastination!
7. Your Facebook Company Page is About to Lose Likes! But, Why?: Take a deep breathe, it’s not the end of the world I promise! On March 6, Facebook warned marketers of their initiative to remove inactive accounts, which naturally will bring down the amount of “likes” per company page. Lots of marketers and business owners have already seen an impact to their page, others may not see much of a change, but in either scenario, there’s no reason to panic. Facebook isn’t doing this to penalize you, but instead you’ll have a much more accurate representation of your followers and even improve your ability to target them with features such as lookalike audiences.
8. 8 Things I Hate About LinkedIn Ads: A controversial post from Larry! Sometimes he just can’t help himself, but as always he makes interesting and valid points. LinkedIn has so much opportunity to make their advertising platform so much more useful for marketers. There’s not even an option to remarket! “This is pretty nuts,” says Larry, and I couldn’t agree more! LinkedIn could learn a few things from this post.
9. Everything You Need to Know About Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA): Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA), might be a mouthful to say, but they’re a seriously powerful and underutilized remarketing tool available to AdWords advertisers. So, RLSA, is pretty much remarketing for the search network, right? Nope! It’s a bit more complicated than that, but this guide breaks it down and shows how you can get return from this underutilized feature.
10. Is Quality Score Really Just Click-Through Rate?: We know that click-through rate plays a factor in the secretive quality score formula, but is it actually the sole determination of how this mystery number is determined? There has been speculated throughout the years, but Jess Armstrong dives into this theory, and provides some tips on how to improve your quality score.

That’s all I’ve got for you folks! So stay warm, pray for sunshine, and get brainstorming on some clever pranks because tomorrow is April fool’s day.