whenever i type in the 2 words 'man van' (without the quotes) i always see the same ads, so i put up my ad (for a man and van service) with the keyphrase "man van" and my ad comes up also.
however when i type 'man van' (without the quotes)and any other wordin the englisgh langauge the same ads come up every time and mine doesnt,
it doesnt matter what nonsense i type after 'man van' (without the quotes) their ads ALWAYS appear .
how are they doing that and how can i do it?
"man van"
instead of
man van -or- [man van]
"man van" reaches any search that has the keywords in the quotes (in that order).
however when i google for 'man van wxvz' (without the quotes) where wxvyz is ANY random string my ad does not appear but there's does.
why is there ad appearing and mine isnt?
what are they doing that i am not?
is it because they have a higher CTR and CPC?
As a sometime programmer I know there is a difference in behaviour here.
I have been working this problem off and on for three days. I have put in complete jiberish strings in my keyword list and do a quoted search dor it. I have tried several jiberish strings. I get lots of hits besides mine.
I've done a lot of testing on this and am preparing a post with specifics. Read this post in the meantime that describes a dilemmn similar to your situation:
[webmasterworld.com...]
The next post is out of date in Google Years and things changed radically in November 2004. Nonetheless, a broad match doesn't start out as what you'd expect it to be and this may give you some history behind what causes your problem and mine also:
[webmasterworld.com...]
patient2all
Still trying to figure this one out :(
I feel as though I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place lately. AdWords has been throwing up a red box telling my "The keywords in your account are nearing an unmanageable size". Now between your experiences and what I am reporting below when I tested some keywords, it appears there is most certainly a bar in place guiding how much leeway to give a broadmatch. However, that bar appears to be a moving target and I find I'm hard pressed to believe I don't cut it with the stats showing below.
When I was a relative novice to AdWords last summer, I recall being impressed with the breadth of queries my fewer only broad match keywords (that's all I knew about then) would show for. I cringe when I look at some of the foolish keywords that I used then. Now that I've learned what words sell better, I'm being cramped by ads not showing on searches that I must honestly say that I'm best qualified to appear for. My ads are all handwritten and always refer to attributes of the widget in question including the honest price.
Consider this scenario for a moment please:
keyword---------------clicks---imp.----CTR---CPC---POS.widget with this quality------260---3,460----7.5%---0.09---1.9
[widget with this quality]--- 206---1,444---14.2%---0.11---1.5
"widget with this quality"------1------33----3.0%---0.05----2.9
The relatively low price I pay for bids here suggests that CTR is being taken into account in judging their position. The traffic estimator says it will take .41 on the broad, .05 on the exact and .49 on the phrase to reach #1.
Now by adding to a search query the simple, plausible article "the" as in "the widget with this quality" my ad does not turn up among 8 ads showing, most of those not nearly as relevant as my ad. My ad would take them right to the promised widget with no strings attached. The article "the" would be quite a likely qualifier for a searcher to use in this case. While I often DO include "the"'s to lead off keywords, I previously felt as though this was probably a waste. For that matter, "the" is just one of a few dozen terms I should then add to each key phrase.
Consider the results that consistently appear when "the" leads the query:
FWIW, it's clear most of these ads were using dynamic insertion based on the poorly phrased nature of the keyword(s) used in the ad.
----
Next test, the query "buy the widget with this quality" turns up 26 ads, but not mine. Only 5 of the 26 are for "widget with this quality", the others just want you to "buy" something. Of that remainder, if they were relevant to widgets at all, they simply wanted you to enter the site and search for your widget.
-----
What have they done to get this level of showing? Are these companies that have huge budgets who could afford to absorb some kind of useless click barrier that it took them to deserve the broadest match possible on any combo of "buy" and "widget"?
I also had similar disappointment when including the article "a", though that wouldn't have been appropriate for the search detailed in this instance. However, the usual suspects ads all turned up though when I tried.
Curiously, the famous "keyword asdf" test brings up no results for this example.
-----
The "1 1/2 sentence" summation AWA gave on 02/22 in a post cited above contains no specifics and just appears to be a general defense of the changes made to keyword assessment in November, 2004.
Obviously the intent is to deliver relevant ads, however articles, especially "the" and "a" (plus a bunch of other words) should be stripped from a query prior to assessing the ad at all. After all, a Google search tells the searcher certain "common" words are ignored. If I have to include all these variations in each AdGroup, I'll simply move closer to the "unmanageable size" I'm threatened with supporting.
----
And, no, it's not a budget issue. I'm the nut who opens each Campaign with $1000.00 a day budget though I know Google can't deliver the clicks for it.
Is it a CTR issue, I don't know? I'm always introducing new ads for the latest products so the ads themselves tend not to run long enough to develop a rich history. Are advertisers favored by their overall account history then?
My overall account CTR from day 1 with AdWords is 1.4%, widely varying among the various campaigns that I've tried. We're talking about 86,000 clicks out of 5.8 million impressions. Not great, but I would think acceptable to AdWords. Last month, the overall account average was 1.7 and it's improving. The Campaign described above has a CTR of 3.0 so far this month with 28 AdGroups. The AdGroup described above has an 8.0 CTR this month. My account has never been slowed and I have a relatively small amount of keywords in "hold" or "trial".
----
What I'm getting at here, is that while I'm making decent money, I want to make more. Either I have to include every possible broadmatch variant I can think of to be seen by more customers or we need better insight into how broadmatch is working lately. Alternately, I'd appreciate being told exactly what I might be doing wrong, if anything!
Sorry for these long posts of late, but we need and deserve very precise explanations of how matching is being done currently. It helps everyone, advertisers, the searchers and Google. It should not be a secret. It's not like one can "cheat" somehow when equipped with the knowledge of what will bring relevant business to their site. Lastly, after all, we are paying good money for this.
Thanks,
patient2all
The Google (and other names) propaganda place a lot of effort into making the user believe "relevance" and "user results" are what drives
the Google business model. Frankly, my experience in the most recent 2 years of Google use makes me distrust that idea.
I suggest the following quote of yours has more truth than any search engine business would dare to admit:
quote:
Is it a CTR issue, I don't know? I'm always introducing new ads for the latest products so the ads themselves tend not to run long enough
to develop a rich history. Are advertisers favored by their overall account history then?
unquote:
From the users point of view, consistent irrelevant ads (and general data base results) appearing at the top of the list, prove that the
"better Google revenue producers" clearly get preferrential treatment. If I was running Google, I might be of the same attitude.
The published early search engine designs that favor results that clearly have a higher click history are assumed to be "more relevant" is
no longer useful. It is a disadvantage to the user, and favors the Google high spender. It's a basic "business model" that:
1. Favors the big spending advertiser, and
2. abuses the user.
That business model seems to fit ALL big business. Since ETHICS is not a realistic attibute of big business (any more), it is hard for we
smaller spenders to "outsmart" the Google machine.
When I build queries with a "required" random gobldygook string which IS in my keywords, and the offending ads still are at the top,it
proves my point. I think we have to plan accordingly. So sad that Google doesn't admit it so we can quit wasting out time trying to
defeat the undefeatable algorithm.
I have already moved to another search engine as my primary personal search engine. I hate that since Google used to be my favorite. I
wonder how long it will take for others to make Google secondary.
You said a lot of things that I wasn't brave enough to say (but was thinking.....). I had to laugh recently when I read an article that called AdWords a "level playing field". Unless we're privy to the same advantages that the insiders are privy to, there's a slant in the outfield somewhere!
It just kills when I know our customers are out there, but aren't given the benefit of seeing our ads consistently.
I see how many visitors I get from AOL Search. If AOL had its own PPC, they'd have to turn some of us away.
patient2all
I hope we get a good answer to this. Unfortunately, most really good questions go unanswered.
Raleigh,
Sadly, you are correct. I'm very disappointed. It appears only the "easy" questions get good answers here.
I really want to be a Google supporter too. I've worked so hard at reading everything available on Google/AdWords to get a good understanding of how to optimize campaigns, etc. The AdWords help itself is full of self-serving fluff that never addresses what we are really getting for our considerable spending here.
I'm happy that Google has made me moderately successful and try to play by every rule as it is written, but there is far too much being held back of late. Questions about current keyword guidelines are answered by more "senior" posters with either an arrogant RTFM attitude or just plain outdated information.
The lack of a response here from AWA appears to be very telling in its absence. For now, I'll refrain from voicing my suspicions as to the reason.
Regrettably,
patient2all
The lack of a response here from AWA appears to be very telling in its absence. For now, I'll refrain from voicing my suspicions as to the reason.
patient2all, I would not read too much into my lack of response recently.
My role here at AdWords has shifted, and recently I've only had time to scan threads. If I see a thread like this one with lengthy posts asking multiple questions, I put it on my mental list of things to get to later, when I have more time. And then I look for short posts asking single questions that I can respond too in a few minutes, and without research.
Honestly, I haven't even read this thread yet. Lightly scanned it just now, and picked up my name in your post. I did try to give you all a little heads up on this earlier, in my post #3 here:
[webmasterworld.com...]
Sorry to disappoint, but please don't read too much into it. The actual answer is really straightforward: Too much to do, too little time. I would ask you to recall that posting on WebmasterWorld is only one of the things I do with my day, although certainly a favorite part. ;)
AWA
