Nick
1-866-2GOOGLE (1-866-246-6453)
8) Sometimes, your account may get frozen (no clicks/no impressions). Your ads are not disapproved but they simply don't collect any impressions. Possible reasons -
- You have opened multiple accounts and Google has found out what you have been upto. Send a mail to Google asking them to close one of your accounts. Call up Google and request account activation for the other account.
- You have had credit card billing problems with Google before. Solution is to sign up for premium option and prepay by wire transfer.
- Your account has received 100,000 impressions (or something close to 100,000). Your account will be "reviewed" and then re-activated. This is not documented anywhere and doesn't happen to all the accounts.
Also, always make at least 2 ads per campaign, this way you can tweak ads every once in a while, and see what's getting the higher CTR rate, delete the worst preforming ones, and then write a new creative. Also, this way if you accidently modify an ad, you'll still have an ad showing on partner sites.
For brand new adgroups, I write at least 5 creatives, then start trimming them down to the best preforming ones.
But to spare you all, I won't mention it.
But if I had chimed in, I would also have said that being really targeted is probably the single most important thing you can do to get great results. IMO.
;) AWA
But if I had chimed in, I would also have said that being really targeted is probably the single most important thing you can do to get great results. IMO.
But AWA that is what I want too. I would love to be able to bid on [buy fuzzy blue widget] and appear on the top of the search results even if I only had a CPC of .05 for the term. Instead, I have to bump up my CPC to compete with all the companies selling only red widgets, or only shiney blue widgets just because they bid on widgets or blue widgets respecively. Sure everyone says that CTR should raise the ad up, but there are a couple problems with this theory.
1) CTR is determined for the bought term as a whole not the just the CTR for the search results that it is shown for. In other words Widget World might have a great CTR for the term widget even though they don't sell fuzzy blue widgets.
2) Unless the ad is just totally out of wack for the search term (think Widget World Exclusively Red Widgets), it will still probably get a fair number of clicks by the searchers just to see if it has what they are looking for.
The nice solution is to have another parameter in the sorting algorithem to give more weight to more targeted keywords. For example:
Exact Match = 1.0
Phrase Match = 0.8
Broard Match = 0.5
Expanded Broad Match = 0.3
That way it would encourage more exact keyword targeting and more appropriate results for the searchers.
If I were a niche marketer - I'd probably completely disagree with this - but I'm not, so I don't have to :).
I spend a decent amount of money with Google every month (not nearly what ebay/amazon spend, but a good medium sized company). Over 75% of my broad term ads have ctr rates over 10%. My ads are relevant to just about any search done which includes my broad terms (and I think my CTR rates back this up). I don't want to spend the hundreds of hours it would take to convert all my terms to exact matches just to get the full 1.0 alghorythm you mentioned.
It is quite possible under the current system for your competitors to bid $2.00/click, and yet you can be number one and pay less than $0.25/click - it's called 4 times more relvant in CTR rates.
With most companies, and I doubt Google is an exception here, the mass amount of medium sized companies often end up setting the rules. The biggest companies will bid no matter what, the niche companies will figure out ways to be seen, but a major flow of money and new revenue streams come from the medium sized advertiser - who toghether - spend more than any other group does.
I guess I'm just bitter about all the Target and other big company ads that I compete against that do not even sell anything remotely related to my search terms.
But by broadmatching them, I catch all the phrases such as, and "painting widgets with red colours", "painting metal widgets in red", etc. These searches make up a significent number of our conversions as they aren't just window shoppers, but people looking for very specific info and things.
I guess I'm just bitter about all the Target and other big company ads that I compete against that do not even sell anything remotely related to my search terms.
This I understand, there are a lot of people who bid on my terms who aren't very related. But by building such a high CTR, they are pushed lower, while my ad climbs to the top, and I can pay less than they do for a better position.
That's what it's all about - being more relevant. Once you start to build the CTR, your ad will climb, theres will drop for queries they aren't relevant for, and for those queries which are specific to your site, you'll come out top in the long run.
20% of your keywords will reward you with 80% of your clicks and possibly conversions. The strategy to to keep maximizing your bid and CTR on those 20% keywords.
There is no question targeting your creative is also crucial. No need loading up on high CTR is your conversion rates are lousy.
Track conversions by keyword, you will be amazed at what you hit on.
Don
