150% click increase but 50 % conversion decrease

[sebans]

with the new broad match I had a sudden incredible click number increase but strangely the conversions instead decreased of almost 50%.

Now I have been doing experiments with phrase match and negative match but no matter what i do I'm not able to get to the pre-broad match conversion level.

Has anyone an idea of How this could be and how to resolve it?

thanks

sebans

[Neil_S]

You're asking a key question, of interest to many people. How to get back to where we were before Google's new [- improved) system started about 10 days ago?

We're down 90%, and no combination of phrases, broad, negatives can get our clicks up.

Neil

[sebans]

for the moment I paused all my 160 ads and while slowly I'm converting all the keywords to exact match I reactivated my other PPc accounts.

Strangely for the first time "My PPC" accounts are converting better than the "new broad match adwords".

I would dare to say that Adwords with this broad match thing is now on a lower roi level than Findwhat, Ha-ah, 123search and Goclick.

sebans

[edited by: sebans at 5:47 pm (utc) on Oct. 20, 2003]

[Neil_S]

I just used the Google Keyword suggestion tool to expand out my raw individual keywords. It has produced 1200 key phrases, which I've split into 10 seperate, relevant ad groups. Then I used the Tools feature to convert this entire campaign from Broad Match to Phrase match.

I tested some terms I wanted to see the ad, and it poppep up every time! Only did this an hour ago, so too early to tell if it's going to work, but should know more tomorrow.

Neil

[Learning Curve]

Has anyone an idea of How this could be and how to resolve it?

I don't think you can resolve it.

If you had a well optimized Adwords campaign, Broad match just creates more competition for your keywords.

It used to be that people who bid on "widgets" didn't compete with you on "gadgets" but now they do and it hurts.

Competition is bad. It reduces your number of clicks and increases your cost per click.

Adwords will never be the same.

Now, I think I spent way too much time optimizing my Adwords campaigns when I should have been optimizing my sites for "organic" clicks. Oh, well.

[skibum]

In the process of transforming one seup that had about 300 keywords on the old broad match to thousands of phrase and exact match keywords. ROI was very good before the transition with everything on broad. So far the new and the old are both less than zero :([ROI] but its to early to tell on the new stuff.

If its like this across the board, it might be quite a long time till companies put all the work into refining their capaigns and ROI for everyone [except Google] begins to rebound....only to encounter another change that blows everything out of the water again? Who knows, maybe six months down the road it'll work out better for everyone.

</rant>

[Learning Curve]

Who knows, maybe six months down the road it'll work out better for everyone.

You're an optimist... which is good. But I just don't see that happening.

Well, our PPC programs will be more diversified in 6 months (and 6 days) and that's good.

[Learning Curve]

Okay, here's some specifics from my little PPC world that perhaps could help someone.

I target regional keywords. I was hurt hardest in my best ad group. This ad group has the most obvious keywords for this product. It also is the most competitive ad group although it produced the most clicks for me.

The main keyword phrases in this competitive ad group were too expensive for my blood. I had (through a ton of work) found many variations of the main keyword phrases that produced some clicks at a fraction of the cost of the ad group's top keywords.

Now however, with broad match when a surfer searches on those unusual keyword variations AdWords pulls in all the similar expanded broad match phrases. So now those niche keywords are just as competitive - and expensive - as the main keywords. Those cheap clicks are gone, gone, gone.

Nevertheless, I'm holding my own on some super niche keywords. Each of these keywords is so specialized that it has its own ad group. Often the ad group has only one keyword phrase. Often the keywords have no expanded broad matches. Each of these ad groups produces very few clicks but I have a lot of them. Some have seen no decline in clicks with expanded broad match.

Overall, after adding tons of negatives, my clicks are down one-third to one-half but by conversion rate is up which partially compensates for the lost clicks.

<begin total and complete speculation> I speculate that AdWords somehow uses keywords within ad groups to determine which keywords are related to each other for use in expanded broad match.

Perhaps, if you are a major player in a TINY niche with few advertisers, you would benefit by putting each keyword in its own ad group. That way you don't "teach" AdWords which of your keywords are related and you hinder broad match.

If perchance you have a keyword where you have (had?) the only ad (it happens), you should probably put it in a separate ad group which might protect it from expanded broad match.

I know this observation - even if true - would have little practical significance because the keywords involved produce extremely few clicks. But what the heck. <end total and complete speculation>

[ninhld]

I also got round 150% click increase, but my conversion is still almost the same, maybe only 10% decrease.

[Neil_S]

Learning Curve, I think a lot of people have learned a lot! Now AdWords is effectively down the tubes as a good ad medium (and I really think it is), we all regret sitting back and letting all those clicks and sales flow in!

We did try other PPC's, but the traffic was neglible, and Google's recent behavior does not compare with the incompetence and obstruction of Overture (though I think they're trying!). FindWhat looked like it had potential, but doesn't seem to have any traffic.

Back to organic optimizing, looking for affiliates to sell our products, and looking for good eZines to spend the money on ads which we would previously have spent with Google.

Neil