Slowed Keywords

[DerekOntario]

I decided to make an adgroup under a campaign that targets only misspelled keywords. After one day the group has had 306 impressions and 1 click, so CTR is less than 1%, but I haven't even hit 1000 impressions yet. Every single keyword in the adgroup has been marked as slowed, even keywords that have had no impressions. The ad is still being served at 100%, so it looks like it hasn't been slowed. I'm confused with how I should proceed to correct this.

[AdWordsAdvisor]

Hey DerekOntario, welcome to WebmasterWorld, and the AdWords forum!

This question has come up several times on this forum in the recent past. I've just done a quick site search, and I think the below referenced posts will give you the info you need.

[webmasterworld.com...] Post #3

[webmasterworld.com...] Post #6

You'll learn a ton in Forum 81. Have fun!

AWA

[DerekOntario]

Thanks AWA,

After reading those posts I'm confused as to whether performance analysis is account based or campaign based.

If performance analysis is performed at the campaign level, and not for individual adgroups within a campaign like I initially thought, would moving that misspelled adgroup into it's own campaign help prevent it from being slowed. I deleted a few of the misspelled keywords that weren't performing, so the adgroup is doing better and it should perform at about 1-2% CTR easily.

[AdWordsAdvisor]

After reading those posts I'm confused as to whether performance analysis is account based or campaign based.

Well, performance analysis is actually done at all levels of your account, but in different ways.

For example individual keywords are evaluated once they have reached 1000 impressions each.

However, in this situation:

Every single keyword in the adgroup has been marked as slowed, even keywords that have had no impressions.

It is the account level that is being evaluated. In other words every keyword in the entire account, taken together, must meet the standard for their most recent 1000 collective impressions.

The slowed message is a heads-up to take a look at your keywords and optimize a bit.

Here is info on 'slowed' status, and other descriptions you'll see in the Status column:

[adwords.google.com...]

And here is some basic information on optimizing. (Sort of grooming your account for success):

[adwords.google.com...]

AWA

[vibgyor79]

Derek - To prevent slowing down or disabling of keywords, try this -

- First delete all the slowed/disabled keywords from the adgroup

- Create a new adgroup within the campaign

- Type the mispelled keyword into the Google AdWords keyword suggestion tool. Make sure you select "All Countries, All Languages" even if your campaign is targeted at a single country. This way, you will get a larger number of "more specific keywords"

That is, if your mispelled keyword is "widjets", google will suggest specific keywords like

widjets
blue widjets
fuzzy blue widjets
.
.
and so on.

- Before adding these keywords into the new adgroup, make sure you add the exact and phrase matched version of the main keyword into the adgroup. That is, make sure you have -

widjets
[widjets]
"widjets"

That way, the impressions are split between the three keywords. Google will wait till you get 1000 plus 1000 plus 1000 impressions (rather than just 1000) before they disable/slow down the keyword.