This is a bad thing.
Imagine you were selling blackberries (the PDA) in the early days. One of your search terms (when YOU set up your google ad) was "email on blackberry" since the product was new it got FEW if any impressions. So Google disables it *forever* from your account. NOT becuase of low CTR but because of LOW impressions - remember the product is new.
A year goes by and a new competitor enters the market and is getting LOTS of hits on "email on blackberry" because the public is now aware of the product and searches on those terms.
Google delivers to your (late arriving) competition a BUILT IN advantage over you! The new competitor can use the term you are *forever* banned from using.
Thanks Google.
My Google phone rep says "try to add the word back" (yea we know how that works) even if it were possible we are not selling blackberries but a hard to describe service. So we have hundreds and hundreds of specific terms (since they screwed up Broadmatching) trying to stay ahead of the curve (and competition). As the market gets bigger and more sophisticated we will now be PENALIZED in the future when our competition can use words we are prevented from using.
Google delivers to your (late arriving) competition a BUILT IN advantage over you! The new competitor can use the term you are *forever* banned from using.
Nyet,
You may not have to worry about that. Your disabled keywords due to your early prescience may have a "silver (grey?) lining" as far as whether is will benefit your late-coming competitor. The recent AdWords changes claim:
When you submit a keyword, we predict its CTR based on data such as the performance of your account and other accounts with the same or similar keywords.
from the help:(https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6110&topic=24)
Now this has everyone else in an uproar (the ON-HOLD mess threads). However it may provide some very small consolation to you..... :)
patient2all
But, because I was in the market earlier and *correctly* anticipated this search (before it would generate impressions) I don't get to use that phrase *forever*.
fair?
That is a good idea, but for me it would not work. We have *hundreds and hundreds* of phrases with all three types of matching (we did this when G essentially "broke" Broadmatching) we would have to "apply for exceptions" on hundreds of words/phrases.
One campaign of mine tends to have timely AdGroups that will only be "hot" for a few weeks.
So I've come to time it so that I only set up the AdGroup just long enough prior to their use so that they're guaranteed to have gone through review. Then they can enjoy their brief popularity before Google has a chance to disable them for low CTR.
That's low CTR by the new standards. The CTR for my disabled words are often between 1-2%, but sometimes as high as 5-8%. I used to think those were good CTRs!
patient2all
but for me it would not work. We have *hundreds and hundreds* of phrases
Surely all those PhDs could come up with a bulk exception form?
How about a system that treats "low volume disabled" differently and automatically reviews periodically?
OK, OK how about just providing a system that gives previously disabled keywords a chance :)
This whole issue stems really from thier disasterous "breaking" of the elegant and effective *original* Broadmatching logic. When they broke that the "hundreds of words" solution became an eventuality for many users and thus the problem.
The original Broadmatching was brilliant and effective. The more they tinker with it the more they will need to *impose* "fixes" for the unintended results of the tinkering.
I don't know when this rule came into being, but now when words don't get any (or few) system-wide impressions for 90 days, the words are removed from you account...
Just wanted to make an important distinction here. It is only keywords with zero impressions after 90 days that will be disabled. Keywords with even one impression will not be 'turned off'.
And I have to say that one impression in 90 days, on a system with tens of millions of searches every day is not a particularly high water mark.
Lets just imagine there are only 10 million searches a day on Google, which is really low, of course. In 90 days, that's 900 million searches on Google alone, not even including partners. If not one user searches on a particular phrase once in 900 million searches, I'd say there is fair chance the keyword is not really that useful. ;)
I am sure they are trying to solve a "load" issue...
You're correct, that is certainly one part of it, nyet - although it is more like trying to proactively prevent a problem, way before it actually becomes a problem.
AWA
So, since we tried to proactively "guess" as many searches as we could ahead of time *before* the market caught up, we can no longer use *many* searches.
When the market catches up, and it will. Our competition *will* be able to use those words and we will not because they came *late* to the game.
There is no mechanism for "retrying" zero impression disabled words.
I hate the idea that when (and I know, if) the market gets more sophisticated we will be blocked out of those words because we had foresight.
How about a automatic, periodic check of "ZIDWs"
(zero impression disabled words). Perhaps once a quarter whereby if some of those words *start* to get impressions they become re-enabled?
G seems to have (i suppose a natural) built-in bias for sellers of *things* as opposed to services.
Again, we sell a high cost, high margin service which people are not good at describing or searching for. If one of our "odd" words only gets one impression but that results in a sale we can make thousands of dollars making those odd words worth the effort. (for us)
Think of it a wringing maximum efficiency out of the market with adwords.
