So I read the FAQs and posts on this board and broke the words in to several subgroups, created new ads that were more targeted and contained more keywords in the text. I turned off the old Ad Group and created new groups for these new ads. The turnaround was great. Nearly all my keywords are getting strong CTRs.
Unfortunately, some of them have been disabled again regardless. One has had a 1.9% CTR in the 265 impressions since I created the new ad group. There's only one other ad for that word (Carl Jung) so it's not like there's a bunch of competition that Google can't afford to have my ad there.
The FAQs say that the words get disabled with a 0.5% CTR after 1000 impressions. They say that if it is disabled, to refine it. So why do they then disable with 1.9% and less than 300 impressions? In fact, another word was disabled after 46. A third was disabled after zero impressions!
Why do they have us go through all of those FAQs if they don't mean anything. I know that some of this is venting, but I'm hoping AdWords Advisor can help, or one of you has been through this too and knows what I might have left out.
Just placed an E-mail to Adwords support asking for an explanation. I wonder how long a wait that will be.
90% of my Adwords experience has been very good. But this keyword disablement stuff is really starting to leave a bad taste in my mouth.
2. Does that keyword appear somewhere else in your account? If so, its possible that your keyword is getting more impressions than you think.
3. Don't forget, the CTR used for calculating CTR/keyword status is Google only. If you have a 0.01% on Google and a 5% on AOL - your keywords may be disabled.
I just deleted the original groups, not each individual word. Basically, I just started over. Is there a better way to do that?
I went back into my campaign to check them out, but in my case.
1) I am NOT running Content ads
2) I have only 1 occurance of the keyword.
Any other ideas would be appreciated
Personally I think that Google show do away with the stupid Strong, Moderate, At Risk field that is our only indicator of how a keyword is doing on Google and just tell us the real Google CTR as well as the total CTR for all searches.
Also to w_s_o, you need to go into those deleted adgroups and delete the keywords themselves so they are not counted in the rest of your account.
I'm not sure how much time should pass between deletion and new group. (Seconds? a day? more?)
The time between deleting, and then creating a new Ad Group, is not an issue.
No need to wait. ;)
AWA
AWA, can you provide some insight as to why words are disabled after so few impressions?
Actually, I think that eWhisper, RedWolf and HitProf have already correctly answered this question - at least based on the limited details available to us in this Forum.
Basically, when you re-use a keyword that has been disabled you must first delete the keyword in every single place it has occurred in your entire account - even if that is within a paused or deleted campaign or Ad Group.
If you don't do this, then the re-entered keyword will be disabled again rather quickly. Why? Well, in the eyes of the AdWords system, it is still 'active', and therefore still disabled.
So, short story: make sure you delete your disabled keywords, everywhere, before trying to use them again.
BTW, in my opinion, it is a very good practice to delete any disabled keyword, as soon as you see it, regardless of if you intend to re-use it again or not. It is simply 'good housekeeping', and may prevent a search through an entire account, in case you do decide to re-use a word at a much later date.
AWA
In large accounts, it's easy to overlook one keyword, and these reports make it easy to keep on top with what isn't currently running.
I've just zapped a keyword because it was marked at "At Risk" with ~500 impressions on the day and showing a CTR of > 1.7%.
I *assume* therefore that (a) previous days' behaviour (>1000 impressions) is taken into account and (b) it must have had a terrible CTR on Google search only and a great one on content.
With reference to another thread, could we have a button/option to view CTR (etc) split by search/content and/or even better the facility to run keywords only on the side where they work if there is a disparity like this?
Rgds
DHD
Personally I think that Google show do away with the stupid Strong, Moderate, At Risk field that is our only indicator of how a keyword is doing on Google and just tell us the real Google CTR as well as the total CTR for all searches.
I agree with that. Or at least they should consider the coversion rates before disabling the keyword.
