First, I looked to make sure that these keywords had appeared nowhere else in their campaigns ever, and they hadn't. They had only ever appeared in one ad group.
So, what else could possibly be causing these unique keywords to be disabled?
What (outside of content match) causes the most problems?Expanded Broad match
I then used google's suggestion tool for every word that was disabled, and what they did seem to have in common was that there was a broad match combination they would have shown for.
Is Google using broadmatch and synonyms of words to determine if other similar (but not exact) keywords should be disabled? That seems to be the only common link between words with 0 impressions being disabled.
Are my exact matches never being shown because of a broad match I tried just to see if it would work? Or because [crazy blue widget] must be related to widgets, and therefore is doomed to fail?
Somewhere, there has to be a logical explanation. Most programmers I know are logical, and they did create this algo we're dealing with.
...Maybe AWA will need to shed some light on why good performing keywords gets disabled even though it's CTR is way above 4%. (In jjv5 case it was 6.1% CTR)
james_allot, and jjv5, this essential subject has been discussed literally dozens of times in the recent past. So for lots of discussion and opinion on the subject, a site search will net you a great deal of additional reading material.
The bottom line answer to this question, though, is that your keyword's status (in terms of being 'normal' or 'in trial' or 'on hold' or 'disabled') is measured on Google alone, not including any partner sites at all - whether search partners or content partners. Performance being measured on Google alone is not new to the recent Smarter Keyword Evaluation program, BTW - it has always worked this way.
So, when a keyword is disabled with a 'high' CTR, it means that the keyword has performed poorly on Google, while performing better on partner sites.
In your account, at the Ad Group level, the column labeled 'Status' reflects performance on Google alone, while the column labeled 'CTR' reflects CTR on Google plus partners.
I think there is a bit of a misunderstanding in the posts above revolving around terminology. So let me clear that up a bit:
OK, all ads begin by appearing on Google.com, and then (once reviewed and approved) may also show on two different partner networks:
* Search network: These are sites on which your ads are delivered on search results pages, on the basis of keyword searches.
* Content network: These are sites on which your ads are delivered on pages of content, on the basis of an overview of all keywords within an Ad Group, taken together.
So, essentially, your ads can be set to appear in any one of these four ways:
* Google alone, or
* Google plus search partners, or
* Google plus content partners, or
* Google plus search and content partners
And it is worth mentioning that all ads show on Google. In other words, one may not show on partner sites only, while not appearing on Google.
And, as already mentioned, it is on the 'Google alone' searches that your keyword performance is measured.
Hope that'll clear it up.
AWA
The status label, based on your keyword's clickthrough rate (CTR) on Google search pages (not sites on the Google ad network), indicates the state your keywords are in.
So, we can't see the predicted CTR for new keywords that go into trial and we can't see the actual stats that get them disabled after being in trial. Is there some reason for this? It only seems to confuse and cause a lot of wasted time. Does google think I'm going to go start my own search engine if I learn too much? I'm sure many have said it before, but it seems every single part of this new performance measure is absurd. If google would just supply some stats it might all be cleared up. Why can't I have another column for CTR on Google Search for keywords that are in trial?
If that were that big a problem Google could just cap the number of keywords in an account.
What is bothersome and time consuming is when you do the research for the keywords, add them, and then poof they’re gone a short while later.
But the points are all moot to me because Google is trying to get as many of those high pay out keywords showing as they can. Eliminate the low pay out ads appearing and the high pay out ads fill the void. They’ll tinker and tinker to increase their pay out and Adsense carriers regardless of your profits.
To me it’s obvious Google smacks the order processing sites in the regular index. Now they’re trying to squeeze more out of them by eliminating smaller pay out ads.
I've gone into areas of Google where I do business an and seen lone ads for keywords. I uped my bid for the keyword and the previous ad was deleted and replaced with mine. Nuff said for me.
On one of my campaigns I had keywords that were disabled. However this may have been due to the not so great wording on my ad. I have since came up with better wording but am wondering if I start a new campaign, with those disabled keywords, will they get disabled.
Once a keyword is disabled from an ad campaign can it be reactivated or will it just get disabled again?
Hey, novice - I think you'll find the answer to your question sort of buried in this same thread. Please see msg #17 above.
The short answer, quoted from #17:
* If you delete the keyword and re-enter it in a new Ad Group with a new ad text, then it'll get a chance to run and gather impressions while the system decides whether to make it 'normal', or disable it, based on it's performance.
AWA
1. Google only wants keywords that have searches done for them to stay in accounts.
2. Advertiser wants to appear for phrase match of many different keywords.
3. Management company sets up 10k phrase matches.
4. Google disables 1/4 of them, without letting the management company know which matching option is actually disabled (it seems that broad match is being allowed to stay around as phrase match for some searches, but is disabling the phrase match).
5. 'Money word' searches, where keywords should be phrase matched show no ads (there are a lot of these now).
6. Management company adds these exact phrases to the keyword list - even though they should be showing from the initial setup.
7. These new keywords, because they are now 3-4 word 'money keywords, get some impressions (however, not many - but some), so stick around.
8. When steps 5-7 are repeated enough times, advertiser now has 15k keywords in the account which are active to replace the initial 10k which should have covered all the basis.
9. Google ends up with more total keywords in the system that are active keywords, in essence, the Google disabling of keywords has actually caused them to manage more keywords for these accounts.
I spend a good 5 figures a month on Overture and would gladly do the same on google and in fact am trying to.
The constant tinkering has me totally turned off to using adwords, it's basically not worth the effort when the "other" company makes it so easy.
I'm sure I'm not alone either
-Frustrated
New account online last night. Several broad match phrases disabled before recieving an impression. All adgroups performing well (except one mentioned below). Only possible connections I can think of for being tarnished with a poor performance are:
1. All disabled phrases are in a campaign consisting of c.40 adgroups all containing sub phrases of the main word ("widget"). Within this campaign there is one adgroup which contains only the main word on exact match. This adgroup is performing badly and has gone on trial (and I have now paused). Perhaps this is impacting on the other adgroups.
2. The client had been running a poorly performing account (totally seperate to ours but using the same destination domain). (This is now paused but because I was working late into the night I forgot to pause it immediately so there was also some overlap on the two accounts)
Bemused!
keywords that have received no impressions at all during a three month period are unlikely to receive impressions at any time in the future.
I have to say that I agree with this. There are literally, uhh, many dozens of searches done on Google each day. And given the volume, if a keyword has not been pinged even one single time in three months, it probably isn't going to happen.
I recently started managing an adwords account for a client selling a seasonal Christmas product. People start searching for this product several months in advance because it is a handmade sculpture.
Under these circumstances I wonder how can Google not allow this keyword to be active just because it hasn't been searched for in the previous 90 days?
The account I'm managing is operating under normal status with 5 keywords now but I'm wondering about next summer when people probably won't be searching for this term--when will the adwords kick in?
Be careful with that pause feature - I've been slowed because of poorly performing keywords in a paused campaign, which was generating 0 impressions and 0 clicks. You might want to think of just deleting it entirely, although actually in the end that did not help me.
Suddenly all the keyword phrases have been re-enabled. Nothing touched other than that mentioned in previous post.
Has whatever was broken been fixed?
No that happens RS. It'll bounce back and fourth at times.
From disabled?
Can certainly understand bouncing back from On Trial, but if it is disabled, then is it not disabled for good?
