AdWords Announce Improved Ad Relevancy

"you may start to see a change in your website traffic"

[running scared]

E-mail this morning from Adwords saying that they are making changes to how broad match works.

When broad matching it appears as if the overall minimum CTR will no longer be relevant. Instead, if you bid on widgets and only sell red widgets, you will probably find blue widgets getting automatically disabled but your ad still showing for red widgets.

What I would like to know is how will they determine the relevancy - will it be based on the text in your advert or will it be based on CTR or something else?

future improvements will include other keyword matching options

Any thoughts about what they will be?

[wheel]

OT - but this really flagged my interest:

"Any chance that the new improvements will include capability of adding unique title and description data to the powerposting upload sheet? This is currently not an option. This would certainly help make things more relevant."

AWA? - Can someone expand on this powerposting bit? I'm spending 15-30K a month for my customers - and growing - and still have to enter all my new campaigns by hand. Google service has assured me that I have no alternative (which I really doubt, but this is the first evidence I've seen otherwise).

[skibum]

Power posting enables you to put in a unique max CPC and URL for a bunch of different keyword tied to one ad. It helps to make things a little faster on the setup but if you want to have unique ads for each keyword ya still have to type all that in.

[Clark]

Does this development affect Adsense? I'm seeing sitewide the same ads over and over due to broad match. I think that showing a wide variety of ads will cause some people to click on them more often because they will want to scope out the scene more. And it would cause more opporunity to use the system, better conversion, better for advertisers, better for publishers = better for everyone except overture.

[running scared]

letting the system sort of 'reach equilibrium' for a week or more before drawing conclusions

AWA, since the changes, we are seeing ranks jump around all over the place at the moment between refreshes. Typically ads move up to four places between searches done in quick succession. Would you expect this to settle in a week or so?

[latimer]

Clark - "showing a wide variety of ads will cause some people to click on them more often because they will want to scope out the scene more." = they will do more searching to find the pages most relevant to the search term they typed in. = more clicks before they buy = lower conversion ratios = better for google, but not necessarily better for user or advertiser.

For our type of more granular targeted search terms, overture offers much less noise, better user experience and higher ROI. Hoping these improvements will turn things around a bit.

[Clark]

I didn't word it very well, but I'll give an example and maybe it will be more clear. My website is about widgets in general but can cover other topics too. Let's say I have 250 pages on widgets. 100 on red ones. 150 on blue ones. All the pages put together would show 6-7 ads of the same people. Low CTR, low conversion. Now there are a lot more advertisers showing, and sites dealing with nuance of red widgets, nuances of blue widgets. Additionally, I have 1000 pages on a variety of other topics. Instead of showing the same 6-7 ads on widgets, now there are thousands of ads showing up. So my users are more likely to buy a variety of things and the adwords advertisers are reaching more users. That's why I say it's better for everyone. But we'll have to wait and see the results.

[AdWordsAdvisor]

Wow.

I had intended to visit WebmasterWorld this morning about 9:00 am, and instead I am just getting here now - a mere 8 hours later.

Some days are like that.

Ok, to start out, I've double checked my answer in post #29, and have had it confirmed that it is correct.

And on to new stuff:

Does this development affect Adsense?

In a word: No

In two words: Not yet

Please see this blurb from the FAQ for confirmation:

[ics.corp.google.com...]

AWA, since the changes, we are seeing ranks jump around all over the place at the moment between refreshes. Typically ads move up to four places between searches done in quick succession. Would you expect this to settle in a week or so?

This is really a tough call, running scared, because the behavior you describe has always been the case, to a greater or lesser degree, depending on a variety of variables. These variables (often discussed in this forum) include constantly changing CTR, Max CPC, daily budget, edits to ad copy, approval status, and so on.

I've often worked on the phone with an advertiser and watched the ads shift from one search to the next (sometimes substantially) as we looked for their ad.

Is it happening more now? Honestly, I'm not sure. Will it settle? Not sure there either. Sorry to be vague - but I'd rather be vague than give a solid answer that is really a guess in disguise.

Also sorry not to have been more 'present' today, btw. I've missed being here.

AWA

[eWhisper]

* Each variation has it's own CTR to determine yes-no in terms of when EBM will be switched off for that term (to quote nyet), and...

* Each variation has it's own CTR which determines position, when calculated with the Max CPC of the broad matched term.

To me, this sounds like Google is tracking a lot of broadmatch variations of a single keyword.

If Google is tracking these keyword variations, it would be really nice to be able to run a broad match report which shows all these individual CTRs, especially to break up some broad matches into phrase or exact matches.

[nyet]

If Google is tracking these keyword variations, it would be really nice to be able to run a broad match report which shows all these individual CTRs, especially to break up some broad matches into phrase or exact matches.

You will never see that. It would give too much away (and allow reverse engineering) about the EBM Algo.

[Clark]

Thanks AWA. I tried to visit that faq you mentioned but I get server not found.

[AdWordsAdvisor]

Thanks AWA. I tried to visit that faq you mentioned but I get server not found.

Clark, because this is a 'secure' page, it may help to check your SSL settings, as follows:

(MS IE)

1. Select 'Tools' from the MS IE browser menu.
2. Select 'Internet Options.'
3. Select the 'Advanced' tab.
4. Under 'Security,' check both 'Use SSL 2.0' and 'Use SSL 3.0.'

Mozilla/Netscape Navigator

1. Select 'Edit' from the Navigator browser menu.
2. Select 'Preferences.'
3. Select the arrow next to 'Privacy/Security' in the side menu.
4. Select 'SSL' from the sub-menu.
5. Check both 'Enable SSL Version 2' and 'Enable SSL Version 3.'

(Or the equivalent process for your browser of choice.) ;)

Hope this helps.

AWA

[AdWordsAdvisor]

If Google is tracking these keyword variations, it would be really nice to be able to run a broad match report which shows all these individual CTRs, especially to break up some broad matches into phrase or exact matches.

Good point, eWhisper, and I'll add it to the 'Wish List' going out later today.

(I do suspect, though, that nyet may be on to something...)

;) AWA

[Clark]

AWA, thanks but I did that and both were enabled and it still doesn't work. I added the server to Trusted Sites and still nothing. It also doesn't work on Opera (let me know if you have special security instructions for Opera).

[dkandasamy]

Here's what we've started doing:
* Use the G Keyword Suggestion Tool to generate the list of board matches for our base KWs. (Is this actually the true broad match list?)
* Add all the resultant KWs (at least the ones that make sense) to our existing campaign.

So we should now have accurate CTR data on individual broad match terms and this can now be used as base data to decide where to add more specific creatives.

Make sense?