Duplicate keyword among Ad Groups

question on splitting one big Group into many

[rhyno]

Hi,

I currently have all ~30 of our keywords lumped into one Ad Group. I'd like to branch similar keywords (referring to a single product) into separate Ad Groups, each with a targeted creative.

***
e.g. Current Group:
"Come see our widgets!"
blue widgets, blue widget, widgets that are blue, red widgets, red widget, widgets that are red, etc.

New setup:
Group1:
"Come see our blue widgets!"
blue widgets, blue widget, widgets that are blue

Group 2:
"Come see our red widgets!"
red widgets, red widget, widgets that are red
***

My question is: do I lose the historical data for the keywords if I delete them from the main group and place them in the new, targeted group? A sample group I created didn't "carry over" the statistics from the main group...

Or should I copy them over? Or can you only have a keyword in one Ad Group at a time?

Thanks.

[hannamyluv]

The stat data wouldn't carry over to the new adgroups but you wouldn't lose it. It would just be a deleted adgroup that you could look at later on to compare how the different listings are doing compared to before.

I do believe that you can only have one ad per keyword at a time but if (and I am really straining the brain to remember so I might be wrong) I think even if you have the same keyword under two different adword groups, the ads will rotate as if you were testing two ads in the same adgroup.

Just create your new ads and then delete the old adgroup. If you decide the old adgroup worked better you can always undelete it later. (There should be a drop box at the top of the screen to allow you to see deleted ads. A recent change to adwords is that it now defaults to not showing the deleted ads)

[rhyno]

Hi Hanna,

I actually "paused" my original Ad Group... Google seems to fluctuate week by week as to features that are available -- "undeletion" might be one that disappears next! But pausing (hopefully) should be a standard feature.

[webdiversity]

If you have the same keywords in different groups, they do indeed rotate them....... until the good version rises to the top and then generally speaking the one with the higher CTR gets shown more than the lower one, because Google work on the basis that they'll make more money showing a higher clicked ad and you'll be happier with the results.

What you won't get is the same keyword producing several ads from within your account, it will be one at a time only.

Pausing is OK, unless you run out of campaign space, what you will then need to do is to delete campaigns if you get above the campaign limit of 30, but within the campaign you can have a bunch of groups (we have over 50 in some instances) so conceivably you could have 30 X 50 (1500) ad groups.

If you do remove a keyword from one group and add it to another, the system will remember the results you have had. If you had say 2 clicks and 800 impressions (0.25% CTR) and then delete the keyword from their and add it to another group, if you got another 200 impressions you may well get the keyword dropped.

[colinirwin]

"What you won't get is the same keyword producing several ads from within your account, it will be one at a time only. "

And that, in my opinion, is a real pain. I have one client with two separate websites, both of which share many common keywords. I wanted to set up separate campaigns that compete against each other and find that instead of both ads displaying, they are displayed in rotation.

Worse still, if you have the [keyword] in one campaign and just keyword in the other the [] version wins every time.

If you want ads to compete with each other for the same keywords the only solution is to set up more than one account.

This makes it a pain in the arse, from an agency point of view. What if I end up with three clients, all of whom want to advertise widgets?

What I would prefer is another layer, above campaign, that allows mutually exclusive keyphrases to be supported.
ie. Client / Campaign / Ad Group

Col

[hannamyluv]

It may make it a pain in the kester for a legit person but the opposite side of the spectrum is that if they didn't have that rule some nefarious person may put up 10 different ads on the same keyword to keep all the comp. out. Nah, no one in the internet world would do that, would they? ;)

[webdiversity]

We wouldn't end up with 3 clients in that scenario, as we don't work for clients in the same sector, gets around all those conflicts.

Besides don't all clients get a different account anyway?

Managing them all from within one accounts makes the poor ads of one client penalise everyone in the ad campaign. If across the board the collective results cause the account to be shut down and you have to pay the $5 which client pays?