If they are it may be that the campaign/adgroup has hit the number of impressions that pauses it until an editor has manually reviewed the account.
Also, are any of the new keywords getting any impressions at all? I can add a million keywords that get 0 impressions quite easily - its not always about the most keywords, but the keywords that are actually searched.
Make sure you understand the difference between the following in Adwords:
blue widgets
"blue widgets"
[blue widgets]
I only use the later two forms of keyword/phrases.
Date - Impressions - Clicks - CTR
6/19/04 - 5,155 - 178 - 3.45% - Saturday
6/20/04 - 5,160 - 188 - 3.64%
6/21/04 - 8,717 - 273 - 3.13%
6/22/04 - 8,639 - 263 - 3.04%
6/23/04 - 8,315 - 287 - 3.45%
6/24/04 - 7,806 - 248 - 3.18%
6/25/04 - 7,324 - 236 - 3.22%
6/26/04 - 5,627 - 210 - 3.73% - Saturday
6/27/04 - 5,710 - 191 - 3.35%
6/28/04 - 9,512 - 291 - 3.06%
6/29/04 - 8,626 - 313 - 3.63%
6/30/04 - 9,402 - 298 - 3.17%
7/1/04 - 6,883 - 246 - 3.57% -- Add thousands of more keywords
7/2/04 - 5,198 - 189 - 3.64%
7/3/04 - 4,126 - 180 - 4.36% - Saturday
7/4/04 - 4,584 - 172 - 3.75%
7/5/04 - 7,381 - 278 - 3.77%
7/6/04 - 8,419 - 272 - 3.23%
7/7/04 - 8,115 - 263 - 3.24%
7/8/04 - 8,495 - 295 - 3.47%
7/9/04 - 8,728 - 262 - 3.00%
7/10/04 - 6,707 - 204 - 3.04% - Saturday
7/11/04 - 7,710 - 205 - 2.66%
7/12/04 - 12,112 - 356 - 2.94% - burst
7/13/04 - 9,092 - 276 - 3.04%
7/14/04 - 8,315 - 277 - 3.33%
7/15/04 - 8,017 - 274 - 3.42%
7/16/04 - 8,913 - 234 - 2.63% -- change ads & add new ones for each AdGroup
7/17/04 - 5,372 - 135 - 2.51% - Saturday - TOTAL MELTDOWN!
7/18/04 - 8,172 - 215 - 2.63%
Totals and Overall Averages: 225,733 - 7,293 - 3.23%
On this period we didn't make any major changes until 7/1 when we added thousands of more keywords (explained below). As you can see, the traffic was suddenly down from 9,402 to 6,883. Traffic is normally down as we get closer to weekends, but this one was worse than any previous weekend drops. And it continued to drop until 7/4.
One explanation was it was the July Fourth weekend and people were out in the beach. Okay, that's totally understandable, I thought. In addition, a Google rep told me that the new keywords were put on hold waiting for approval from partners' sites. Okaay, I accepted that.
But then, as you can see, as the week progress, the traffic didn't really go up beyond the level before we added the new keywords. It was like we had never added the new keywords!
But on 7/12, all of sudden we got a burst of traffic. It was the best day in the whole month in terms of traffic and clicks. But after that day, things seemed to go back to the way it had been.
On 7/16, which is last Friday, we changed and added more ads for each AdGroups in some of our campaigns. Now we have 3 to 6 ads per AdGroup instead of just 1. Again, as you can see, the traffic went all the way down the next day. It was a TOTAL MELTDOWN! Sure it was Saturday, but it was the worst drop ever!
And worse, the CTR went down as well. We got only 135 clicks that day. Does it mean our new ads caused this drop in CTR?
Does Google stop the traffic everytime you make major changes?
Now about the new keywords that we added. Most of our new keywords were just the more specific versions of the keywords we had. For example, we added "blue widget" while we already had "widget". I understand this only allocates the traffic.
However, we also added totally new and independent keywords. In fact, we created several new AdGroups for them. And yes, they got traffic too. One of them got over 1000 impressions so far today.
But, looking at the data above, it doesn't look like we added new keywords at all. The impressions remain steady. With the lower CTR we have now, we are actually worse off than before.
Does anyone have any suggestion to what we should do next?
Our current target is to get 400 clicks per day, but we almost never get pass 300. As far as the budget, we only spend about 35% of our Daily Budget. So it's not the money issue. For Ad Position, we are between 1.0 to 3.0 Position, so that's not bad at all.
Any thought?
Thanks.
In fact, we created several new AdGroups for them.
When you first add/modify an ad, the ad needs to be reviewed, so it won't be shown on partner sites, and if it hits enough impressions, it won't be shown on Google until its reviewed.
The new KWs probably weren't approved until at least 7/5-7/6 due to the holidays, so might not have been shown, and that holiday is one where impressions usually go down quite a bit.
Overall, before 7/1, your impressions varied from 5-9.5k. After you added the KWs, besides one day (which is probably due to the ads needing reviewed), and a couple weekend days, your impressions never drop below 8k, so overall, you are getting slightly more impressions. The biggest difference is that your CTR rate seems to have gone down. If you maintained your previous CTR with the fact you have slightly more impressions, you would be getting more clicks/day - although, you'd still not hit your target number.
When you added all these KWs, were they more exact versions of previous keywords? If so, you'd be reallocating your clicks to different KWs, not necessarily gaining more total impressions.
Do these numbers include content targeting? That can widely affect a great many things.
YES! I'm looking at the data right now in 2 seperate graphs: The search only's traffic is actually going up after the addition of new keywords.
BUT...
The content-targetting's traffic is actually going way down! On 7/9, it dropped from 1,782 on previous day to only 261. And it remains between 300 to 700 impressions per day until today, while previously it was 1000 to 3000 per day.
So how come? Why our content-targetting traffic is going down? If it's waiting for the review for partners sites, it's been almost 2 weeks already since we added those new keywords.
Any help is appreciated.
Thank you.
