Any ideas would be appreciated.
Shak
Bear in mind that with adwords you are a paying customer no longer a "hopeful webmaster" at their mercy of their algo changes.
I recommend you pop them an email, adwords staff have I think responded in the past and its a straight customer supplier thing with adwords.
hth
It might be that many advertisers in that sector get a much better CTR than yours and as a result you suffer.
I've seen other advertisers maintain ads running with CTR well below 0.5%.
It is difficult to give a definitive answer with the limited info given here. A look at the account itself would probably be enlightening - and support can do this.
With all that said, however, it is very possible for a keyword with a CTR well above 1% to be disabled - although 4% is certainly pushing the envelope.
When this happens it means that the keyword has done poorly on Google, while doing very well on partner sites. As often discussed in this forum, the CTR standard is measured for impressions and clicks that have occurred on Google alone.
Account performance:
Each account is evaluated after every 1,000 ad impressions are delivered on Google. If the CTR for your account falls below a minimum required CTR (which varies by ad position but is 0.5% for the top spot and slightly reduced for each subsequent position), we’ll only show your ads occasionally on your underperforming keywords. (The status of each of your keywords will be clearly indicated in your keyword reports.)
Yesterday I had two keywords disabled.
keyword 1 124 clicks from 5496 impressions (2.2%) since Oct.1
keyword 2 57 clicks from 2526 impressions (2.2%) since Oct. 1.
The results are similar for the last 1000 impressions and our posistion was 1.4 and 1.2.
The quote above is from the AdWords help page.
If in fact these terms are underperforming on Google why do they not show the figures seperately if that is the standard?
Why is the standard just Google search if the results on the partners are so good?
AWA - this is a policy that is not very well thought out. It doesn't make very good business sense to me that you would disable ads that are making you (& me) money. Now, in most cases, no ad will show up for these terms.
I realize that you must have a policy but in this case and in the case of MarshallClark it is evident that the system is working to your disadvantage. Perhaps the person who initiated this rule didn't imagine that the numbers between Google search and the partners would be so different.
If in fact these terms are underperforming on Google why do they not show the figures seperately if that is the standard?
Point well taken, and I'll pass your comments on.
Please know that we are considering various ways of providing this information separately.
I am in fact a Google AdWords employee, and have been deeply (and happily) involved with the program for about a year and a half.
I'm posting in this forum with the blessings of Brett_Tabke, Shak, the other moderators, and GoogleGuy - hoping to provide needed information in the world of AdWords.
I think one of my more important roles is to pass your feedback about AdWords on to the appropriate groups here at Google, and I do this on a regular basis.
Very happy to be here!
Its in this post and as I dont yet have a firm grasp of any equations involved myself I have as you might expect some trouble explaining it to my clients :-)
[webmasterworld.com...]
On one other matter, one of them is reporting to me that for not the first day recently his adwords account has cost him more than his set daily maximum spend which is something that he and I are both concerned about.
Hope you can offer advice on both of these.
I have just been disabled on a KW that had 1.7% CTR over the last week.
(Yes I fired of an email, should get a response sometime early Nov.)
In fact that KW and its negatives have been unchanged for about 6 months.
I have noticed my competitors getting less and less. Where there used to be 6 or 8 a month ago there is now 1. No way is that Google's intention. It would be madness to forgo the income.
It makes be boiling mad as I know Google is blowing it for us and for themselves. They make sneaky changes, don't tell anyone, there is no comback for us (canned responses most of the time and very slow 4 day average response, no I'm not counting the weekend.).
Makes doing busines with them an absolute joke. They act like some sort of deity instead of making a win win situation for their money suppliers. When this sort of thing happens it opens up opportunities for rivals.
Steam is shooting out my ears.
Tom
Sure, use Google for SERPs and stick own ads on top. Obvious.
Hm... Let's see how this works. I'm the President of a very large XYZ corp. showing Google's ads.
The CTR is 4%, I'm getting a slice of the money, great.
NOT GREAT! Google cuts ads. Why? 'cause it only shows .4% on Google network.
I complain, Google says "don't worry you're still making X amount of money" on lots of other ads.
I say, "baloney, I should be making X + Y amount of money" 'cause you guys cut money making ads.
What a Joke!
It's fine that Google wants to have relevant ads. It's great, even. But the fact of the matter is that relevance (as measured by CTR) dramatically varies by search engine. Part of that is a demographic issue, but I'm sure the varying ad presentations are also a factor.
If we have a low CTR on Google, fine, drop us from Google. But if we have a 5% CTR on AOL, why in the world should our ad be dropped?
And to top it off they don't even give you the tools to know what your CTR is really like.
One CTR for GOOGLE and another for the advertisers.
My successful ads were running unchanged during the broad match changeover, had higher CTRs, and were kicked off. They talk about .5% in their FAQs but you have no idea what you are really doing.
This is amateurland; kindergarden; just outta uni and I dunno much of the real world; sorry didn't realize you advertisers needed to know what is going on; gosh I didn't see that one coming; stuff.
I think I may be right in assessing that the heavy advertisers in this forum are not coming down hard on Google like I am becasue they do Adwords for multi-clients and have 1000s of keywords so they may be down on some and up on other KWs.
I don't have that. I developed and sell my own software and have (HAD) a very narrow range of performing KWs, so when the elephant turned I got squashed.
Regardless, in my area there were 6 to 8 solid competitors for the last year, and now there is ONE solid and the rest are blow ins.
No matter what the stats say for the whole of Google empire, there are now ORPHAN keywords, and many very unhappy campers.
I say it again, WHAT A FARCE.
