Impressions fluctuating wildly.

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Impressions fluctuating wildly.

From 2,500 to 100,000

ptech

6:57 pm on Apr 27, 2004 (gmt 0)

I've been trying to figure out why my Adword traffic has virtually halted in the past few days. For April, my impressions have averaged around 2,500 to 3,000 per day at approx. 1.2% click through ratio. But on 4/20 to 4/26 the impressions spike up suddenly to 45,000-105,000 impressions per day and a 0.1% CTR. Today the impressions are back down and the CTR isn't back up to 1%.

I'm also noticing that there aren't any sponsored links at the top of the page, only on the right side for all of my search terms. Any ideas what's going on? My traffic is down big time and I'm even bidding higher on keywords. My fear is that somehow content targeting bumped up my impressions last week, as a result my CTR was reduced, and now my adds are displaying lower because of the lower performance/CTR.

How can you turn off content matching?

ganderla

7:02 pm on Apr 27, 2004 (gmt 0)

What genre are you in?
I know that content targeting can really up your impressions.
If someone that has adsense suddenly has a huge amount of visitors, that would explain it. Check your logs to see if the traffic came from content pages.

Shak

7:32 pm on Apr 27, 2004 (gmt 0)

How can you turn off content matching?

go to:

Edit Campaign Settings

5. Where to show my ads

search network
content network

that should do the trick

Shak

eWhisper

9:12 pm on Apr 27, 2004 (gmt 0)

My fear is that somehow content targeting bumped up my impressions last week, as a result my CTR was reduced, and now my adds are displaying lower because of the lower performance/CTR.

Content targeting has no impact on your CTR as it relates to the G formula (CPC X CTR) of your ad positioning, pricing, etc. The CTR used in the formula is only for searches on Gs site, not content or search partners.

shorebreak

6:53 pm on Apr 28, 2004 (gmt 0)

Could it be Google's hugely inaccurate impression estimator?

TomWaits

6:15 pm on Apr 29, 2004 (gmt 0)

In the last 7 full days ending yesterday, we lost about 2/3 of our impressions, almost entirely Content, not Search, and had a drop of click-throughs by about -20%. My logs don't really support that, I think the Google reporting may be screwball this week.

zeus661

8:26 pm on Apr 29, 2004 (gmt 0)

If content marketing has no bearing in the CTR then shouldn't you just leave it ON all the time? Why would a person want to turn it off?

AdWordsAdvisor

8:56 pm on Apr 29, 2004 (gmt 0)

In the last 7 full days ending yesterday, we lost about 2/3 of our impressions, almost entirely Content, not Search, and had a drop of click-throughs by about -20%. My logs don't really support that, I think the Google reporting may be screwball this week.

I've just pinged the tech team, TomWaits - before responding - and have had my notion confirmed - no issues with reporting this week, beyond an occasional slight increase in lag time between stats on the Campaign Summary page, campaign pages, and Ad Group pages. In other words, no major (or even close) screwballosity to report. ;)

When I hear that impressions have gone down suddenly, I immediately think of the possibility of recently edited ads that haven't been reviewed/approved yet - and thus are not on partner sites.

The difference between being on one site (Google.com), and Google plus potentially thousands of partners can be substantial.

Is this a possibility?

AWA

TomWaits

12:08 am on Apr 30, 2004 (gmt 0)

Unfortunately not. I added a few new ads but didn't take down any others. Are you suggesting that by adding ads I've now thrown all of my other ads into review purgatory? That's not what's going on. If it is, that's insane and I'll never touch another ad.

AdWordsAdvisor

12:44 am on Apr 30, 2004 (gmt 0)

Are you suggesting that by adding ads I've now thrown all of my other ads into review purgatory?

Nope, not suggesting that. New ads shouldn't affect the existing and approved ads, except in really exceptional circumstances.

AWA

zeus661

12:51 am on Apr 30, 2004 (gmt 0)

If you have two ads, each with different titles and descriptions, linked to different web sites BUT with all the same keywords, will both display when a search is done?

Meaning can you advertise two different companies that sell the same stuff and use the same keywords?

TomWaits

1:30 am on Apr 30, 2004 (gmt 0)

>>Nope, not suggesting that. New ads shouldn't affect the existing and approved ads, except in really exceptional circumstances.

What would one such exceptional circumstance be?

AdWordsAdvisor

4:31 pm on Apr 30, 2004 (gmt 0)

What would one such exceptional circumstance be?

TomWaits, here's an example that should serve to illustrate the principle:

If, in an account with many approved ads, an advertiser submits an ad for 'product XYZ' which links to a site which offers an illegal product or service, then all the ads in the entire account may be reviewed again. Why? To make sure that things are still as they should be.

However, the ads would be reviewed right then and there - and either approved or disapproved. In other words, they would not be sent into into "review purgatory".

Hope that makes it clear.

AWA

FromRocky

4:55 pm on Apr 30, 2004 (gmt 0)

If you have two ads, each with different titles and descriptions, linked to different web sites BUT with all the same keywords, will both display when a search is done?

If both ads are in the same account, only one will display at any given time. The ad will display under two cases:

a. If you use "Automatically optimize ad serving for my ads." One of the ads will be preferred and showed more often than the other.

b. If you're not using "Auto....", both ads will display equally (50% vs. 50%).

For your case, I would prefer to case b.

TomWaits

6:54 pm on Apr 30, 2004 (gmt 0)

The only explanation that I can come up with then, AWA, is that all of my ads were reviewed and many are now disapproved, even after all I did was add like 5 new ads. I lost a huge chunk of my content exposure and I can't figure it out.

I'm so tired of this idiocy, I'm going to start the same policy I have with Overture: don't touch a thing because you never know when something is going to trigger something they never told you about.

TomWaits

7:02 pm on Apr 30, 2004 (gmt 0)

Are there ads that are disapproved for content, but are approved for search?

When ads are disapproved for content, how does one find that out?

Are there ads that may be approved for some content, but not for others? Or is it all or nothing?

TomWaits

5:52 pm on May 3, 2004 (gmt 0)

AdWordsAdvisor, any input?

AdWordsAdvisor

6:13 pm on May 3, 2004 (gmt 0)

Are there ads that are disapproved for content, but are approved for search?

When ads are disapproved for content, how does one find that out?
Are there ads that may be approved for some content, but not for others? Or is it all or nothing?

Thanks for the bump, TomWaits. I missed seeing this question till now. Basically, the short answer to all of your questions is that it's 'All or Nothing'.

To provide a bit more detail: un-reviewed ads may only show on Google, while reviewed/approved ads may show on any partner sites for which they are eligble by virtue of their individual kewyords (in the case of search partners) or their entire keyword lists at the Ad Group level (in the case of content partners).

Hope that makes sense.

AWA