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What to do with inactive campaigns?

         

Sowe

8:46 pm on Mar 10, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



All my campaigns were running fine since months. I usually got 30,000 impressions and 600 clicks per day combined to my 11 campaigns.
Until I changed the destination url for 9 of my campaigns and adding a new one last saturday. Now my campaigns rarely getting any impressions, most of them are getting really 0 impressions at all.

I emailed the support team several times, but I think they have no clue what I'm talking about.

It really took them 4 days to find out that 6 of my campaigns were still not reviewed. They didn't saw this before. They then approved them and I was happy about this solved issue.

But the next day (today) 8 of my campaigns were getting inactive again. They aren't getting any impression at all. But I haven't changed anything in these campaigns!

So I emailed them again and told them that this issue is still NOT solved and that now 8 of my campaigns were not running. They looked into it but couldn't find anything suspicious. They told me that the ads are active and running, but that I might should rise the daily budget to the recommended amount. Well, it's set to 5 euro (and always was for the last months) and the campaigns are not getting a single impression, I really don't know in which way it should help me to rise the daily budget.

I told them to look into my stats of the 5th of march (the day before I changed my ads and the last day they were running correctly) and all days before the 5th of march to see that I usually get 600 clicks per day and not 200 or less like now.
Impressions are down from 30,000 to under 15,000 per day (without changing anything!). Today so far I have only 4,000 impressions and more than half of the day is over. 8 of my 12 campaigns are not getting any click now. My ads getting now only 30% exposure compared to what I usually get. But adwords support tells me its all ok, and all ads were active. They don't see any difference to before.

So I'm really lost here. What else can I do to show them the obvious? I mean you don't need a diploma to see that there is something wrong when impressions and clicks for several campaigns decrease by 50%-70% overnight without changing anything.

Imagine you'll lose 70% of your income overnight and all are telling you everything is alright.
At this time of the day I usually have between 250 and 400 clicks to my campaigns, while now I only have gotten 66 clicks. Well, what can I say...

Any thoughts are much appreciated!

Renaz

9:50 pm on Mar 10, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Strangely same thing hapened to me today. Yesterday had 2000 impressions. Today I can't find my ads and statistics show only 30 impressions. I haven't been changing anything a week or two efore that. I wrote an email to Google support, but I know that it will take a week for them to answer...

Very strange...

FromRocky

10:10 pm on Mar 10, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Sowe & Renaz,

This has happen to me from time to time. I do not know whether this case is applied to yours.

When I ad some new keywords to the existing ad groups and these KWs somehow trick a KW review. These ad groups do not stop right way but it takes a couple of days before I realize the problem. Once the KW review is taking place, any edited ads or additions will also be not showing. If any ad group which has only new ads or edited ads, therefore, is also stopped. The only way I can do is to wait for the review. If everything is OK, all ad groups will show. If any KW that is needed to be revised will be informed by the AdWords team. This process is normally took about a day or two.

Good luck

Renaz

10:14 pm on Mar 10, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I haven't been changing anything for a week or more now. Just logged in and saw that my ads are not runing. No new keywords, no changes... no response from google :)

Sowe

10:32 pm on Mar 10, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



@ Renaz
yes, sounds familiar.

@ FromRocky
The thing is that the reviewer were getting several times through my campaigns and didn't find anything suspicious. Also I didn't added any keywords, I only changed the destination url. And this couldn't have any influence on impressions.
Worst part is that today is the 5th day in a row this happened, support doesn't find anything and I'm losing hope that this will be solved. So maybe I have to live with 70% less in ad exposure and sales for a reason nobody seems to know.

Renaz

10:51 pm on Mar 10, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



@ Sowe

AdWordsAdwisor is a guy from Google, so you should ask him to look into your problem deeper. Hopefully he will help you. Also then post a resolution for this problem if solved.

It's so frustrated when suddenly something happens without any intervention and you can do nothing about that...

archie goodwin

11:22 pm on Mar 10, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Also I didn't added any keywords, I only changed the destination url.

Changing your destination url will always trigger your ad to be reviewed, which as you probably know can take up to a few days. It sounds like this is what is happening to you. That would easily explain such a drop in impressions and clicks. I would suspect that your performance will return to its usual levels soon.

AG

Sowe

11:31 pm on Mar 10, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Changing your destination url will always trigger your ad to be reviewed, which as you probably know can take up to a few days. It sounds like this is what is happening to you. That would easily explain such a drop in impressions and clicks. I would suspect that your performance will return to its usual levels soon.

I hope so.
Although, like I wrote, all my campaigns were already reviewed several times since I did the changes.

ikbenhet1

11:40 pm on Mar 10, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



hi sowe, i don't call myself an expert, but what i think can be the issue is that is that when you change your destination url all your keywords are 'reset', as in your ctr is set to 0.

Your position is determend by cpc x ctr. Your add will have less impressions or show up lower until your your ctr or cpc raises.

Again i'm no expert, but should check your ctr and see if they are below 0.5% , and is so make your ad more attractive to click on if that is possible. Changing your ad will 'reset' the ctr again...

Next time try creating a new ad and see if it works before deleting the old ad in stead of just editing the add.
regards

[edited by: ikbenhet1 at 11:49 pm (utc) on Mar. 10, 2004]

Sowe

11:49 pm on Mar 10, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



@ ikbenhet1
Thanks but CTR is above 1.4 and usually changing the destination url will not affect the CTRs. I changed my destination urls several dozen times cause I always try and test new landing pages or sending straight to sponsors or something.

archie goodwin

12:02 am on Mar 11, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Have you done any searches for your ads on any search partners to see if you really have been approved? Even though they think your account is fine, I can't help but think it sounds fishy.

Calling AdWords support is another idea that usually yields faster results. I think they're still there for another hour if you hurry! : )

Sowe

12:11 am on Mar 11, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Have you done any searches for your ads on any search partners to see if you really have been approved? Even though they think your account is fine, I can't help but think it sounds fishy.

Well that was one of the problems. I didn't get any impressions. Not on google and also not on other search engines. Although adwords support told me that the ads were approved and running. And I searched on google for my ads but they didn't aapear.

Calling AdWords support is another idea that usually yields faster results. I think they're still there for another hour if you hurry! : )

Maybe I'll do this if nothing will change. But english is not my native language and sometimes its easier to write about such issue.

Thanks.

AdWordsAdvisor

1:37 am on Mar 11, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



AdWordsAdwisor is a guy from Google, so you should ask him to look into your problem deeper. Hopefully he will help you. Also then post a resolution for this problem if solved.

As much as I might like to, I try to avoid taking 'I'll fix that' responsibility on individual accounts. I've done so a few times in the past, but only when all the usual avenues seem to have failed (meaning this forum, AdWords Support, the FAQs, etc). But I can't really make a habit of it, as there are too few hours in my 12 hour day. ;)

It seems to me that my most valuable contribution to this forum would be to answer questions, clarify, correct misinformation, offer 'insider' insight, etc - in cases where I can assist many folks at once.

I have to say that the problem being discussed here is all-but-impossible to troubleshoot without account access. There could be many contributing factors, and I'd guess that more than one thing is at work.

With all that said, Sowe, if you want to write AdWords support one more time, with ATTN ADWORDS ADVISOR in the subject line, I'll do my best to get it to the right folks. If your email is received in an office outside the US, it may take a bit longer to find me.

Lastly, one thing did catch me eye:

I changed my destination urls several dozen times cause I always try and test new landing pages or sending straight to sponsors or something.

Sowe, I am guessing you already know this. But I just want to make sure you're aware that every single time your destination URL changes, the ads will come down from partner sites - thus affecting your impressions. So if your ads are approved at noon, and you change the URL at 12:10, then the ads will need to be reviewed again.

Hope this gets resolved for your soon!

AWA

skibum

1:58 am on Mar 11, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



And if you want to do some landing page testing, you can setup the same ad copy on the same keywords with different click-through URLs to test. Done this way your ads will stay up and it'll probably be a pretty well controlled test.

Sowe

7:36 am on Mar 11, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



that every single time your destination URL changes, the ads will come down from partner sites - thus affecting your impressions.

But I never had this before with such a huge consequence. I changed the destination urls a hundred times (summering up all ads and all campaigns) over the last 7 months (and I always let them run some time). Some of them stopped showing after changing the url, but others were showing with the new destination correctly a few minutes later at least on google. My ads appeared where they appeared before just with the new destination url. The ones that were stopped from showing picked up after some few hours.
Now this time my ads didn't show up anywhere the first 11-14 hours of each of the last days. Only after this time they are getting a few impressions and clicks. And this goes for 5 days.

[edited by: Sowe at 8:48 am (utc) on Mar. 11, 2004]

Sowe

7:39 am on Mar 11, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



And if you want to do some landing page testing, you can setup the same ad copy on the same keywords with different click-through URLs to test.

According to the support to have more than one ad or campaign for the same keyword might just be the reason why they are not showing.

Sowe

7:41 am on Mar 11, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I'll now change all my destination urls again to see if a completely new review process will fix this. Maybe this is the easiest solution at the moment.

Renaz

9:16 am on Mar 11, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



@ AdWOrdAdwiser

I didn't ment to say that you are helping personaly, but the guy seemd so out of hope so the last institution he would possible to use could be you.

Sorry if I was too straight with this suggestion.

Thanks.
p.s. for my problem I'll be waiting support team answer.

AdWordsAdvisor

10:36 pm on Mar 11, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Sorry if I was too straight with this suggestion.

No worries at all Renaz, but thanks for saying the above.

I actually posted what I did in #13 because I've gotten a couple of 'unsolicited' emails addressed to AdWordsAdvisor. And I thought it was a good chance to mention my bandwidth limitations.

So thanks for giving me the chance to bring it up.

AWA

Sowe

9:08 am on Mar 12, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



My ads are still in the review process for 24 hours now and none of them is running. Why does this take so long? Is this normal now? I'm doing adwords since 7 months and I really never had something like this before. A normal review process after doing changes usually took up to 7 hours, at worst. But most of the times the ads were running while they were in the review queue. This is completely new to me and it seems it starts since I'm switched to the EU department.
Will this always happen now when I'm doing changes to my ad title or ad text as well? This is really scary!

webdevjim

3:41 pm on Mar 12, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Hello,
I wasn't able to find any info on the adwords site explaining what changes require human review, etc. If you can point me to the info on the following I'd appreciate it.

Does adding keywords to an ad trigger it for review?
Does changing the destination URL for a keyword phrase take the ad off of the partner network sites for just that keyword or for the whole campaign?
What changes can I make without having to wait for a review?

Thanks,
/WebDevJim

Sowe

3:54 pm on Mar 12, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Does adding keywords to an ad trigger it for review?
Does changing the destination URL for a keyword phrase take the ad off of the partner network sites for just that keyword or for the whole campaign?
What changes can I make without having to wait for a review?

I would like to know this as well.

I would also like to know how the review process for partner network sites work? Is this an additional review after the ads were approved to show on google? Is this done by a different google employee or does every partner site review the ads on its own?

Someone know this?

Thanks.

webdevjim

4:29 pm on Mar 12, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Sowe,
For the updated ads to show on google it has to go through some automated review process. You know to make sure you don't put up some vulgar or inappropriate ad.
And from my experience the changes show up in google in a few minutes. The content network not so fast :-)

Sowe

11:02 pm on Mar 12, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



A little update:

The same thing happened again. Two hours ago the support emailed me and told me that my ads were reviewed and now running and all is fine.

But again my ads are not running. I can't find any of my ads on google, nowhere. And of course I also do not get any impressions in the stats. I think this will be a never ending story...

Sowe

9:44 am on Mar 13, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



This is driving me crazy.

Here is a stats screencap of a usual day, its march 5th, the last day my campaigns were running correctly:
usual day stats [geocities.com]

And this is a stats screencap of the days I have now, while the support is telling me that all campaigns are running fine:
a day now [geocities.com]

What more can I tell them?
One of their suggestions to solve this problem was to raise the daily budget of the campaigns (98% of my keywords have a max CPC of 0.05 euro).

FromRocky

4:22 pm on Mar 13, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Sowe,
One of your campaigns is normal while the rest are not. This case is indeed very strange which all 11 campaigns are not working.

I would suggest that you creat a new campaign and select one of the old problematic campaign into this new one. Before you run the new campaign, make sure your the old one is paused. If one is working, the rest will be working. Best of luck!

Sowe

3:05 pm on Mar 14, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Sowe,
One of your campaigns is normal while the rest are not.

The one campaign which is working is the only one where I didn't changed the destination url.

This case is indeed very strange which all 11 campaigns are not working.

According to adwords support they are all working and running.

Sowe

3:09 pm on Mar 14, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I would suggest that you creat a new campaign and select one of the old problematic campaign into this new one. Before you run the new campaign, make sure your the old one is paused. If one is working, the rest will be working. Best of luck!

You mean I should copy one existing campaign completely into a new one and pause the old one? Well, sure I'll try this, maybe it'll help...

Sowe

5:24 pm on Mar 14, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



@ FromRocky
2 hours ago I've had setup this new campaign but it still didn't get any impressions as well and I still can't find it on google. But thanks for the suggestion, better to try new things out than to wait.

But another thing makes me pretty hopeful. All of a sudden, 45 minutes ago, one of my not running campaigns starts to get impressions, and I can find the ads on google now, they immediately jumped back to pos #1 for important keywords.

All other 10 campaigns are still not running, 0 impressions and I still can't find them on google.
But hopefully this will get fixed somehow...

nyet

5:28 pm on Mar 14, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



but what i think can be the issue is that is that when you change your destination url all your keywords are 'reset', as in your ctr is set to 0.

huh? is this true? I don't think it is....

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