Editing the Display/Destination URL

Is there a way i can retain the old ad CTR?

[gopi]

I have to change the display and destination url's of some of my ads , i understand editing the ad will result in loosing the CTR those ads earned all this time.

Is there a way i can add a new ad (with the new url's) and force it to run 100% of the time - this way i can also keep the high ctr old ad in case i want to revert back to it in the future...

I am not sure i can achieve this by de-selecting the ad optimizer campaign setting?

[eWhisper]

You can't do that, there's no way to 'force' an ad to show more often, it's the optimizer or even distribution.

However :) You can change the keyword destination URL to run to whatever page you want to. This means the ad won't be edited, but your landing page will change. Of course, this won't edit the display URL, but it's about the only control you can take of that situation.

[inasisi]

Through the API, you can re-activate the old Ads. So if you do use the API, you can go ahead and delete the old Ad, run the new Ad at full flow(the same as editing an ad) and if the new ad doesn't work, you delete the new ad and re-activate the old ad.

[FromRocky]

There's no question that eWhisper's suggestion is the good one. But there is a limitation on this suggestion. To make it works you have to add the URL for every kw. To avoid the ad disabled, the ad landing and displacing URLs should have the same site as the kw landing URL. You can't have the merchant URL in the ad and your site URL in the kw landing page.

Is there a way i can add a new ad (with the new url's) and force it to run 100% of the time - this way i can also keep the high ctr old ad in case i want to revert back to it in the future...

Another way.

Add a new ad with the same content but different URLs. Wait to the new ad to show and then delete all of the old ads. Now you have a single ad, it will show 100%.

When you want to revert the old ad back. Copy the old ad as the new one and then repeat as above.

[gopi]

>> You can change the keyword destination URL to run to whatever page you want to

eWhisper, i have to change the display url also due to some reasons!

>> Add a new ad with the same content but different URLs. Wait to the new ad to show and then delete all of the old ads. Now you have a single ad, it will show 100%.

FromRocky , this is the method i first thought , but the problem is if i revert back to the old ad (by recreating the ad) it will start from scratch (will not inherit its old CTR)

>> Through the API, you can re-activate the old Ads

Very Very interesting opservation inasisi ,are you sure that the re-activating the old ad thro API will result in regaining the old CTR ...AWA , can you pls comment on this?

[vibgyor79]

This is not a solution but a workaround

- Create a new identical ad copy (title and body) but with the new destination/display URL

- Uncheck automatic ad optimization for the campaign

- Wait for a week or more and then compare the CTR of the ads.

- If the CTR of the two ads are similar, then get rid of the old ad copy.

[eWhisper]

If you must change the display URL, then the above suggestions are better than mine.

I haven't seen the 'official' Google policy on this one (not sure if there is one), but I'm finding that if ads have one display URL, and some keywords goto a different website, Google is not disabling the keywords or ads.

It seems (and I'm sure Google will take a look at this after these posts), that the automatic checking Google does is for the ad, and not the keyword URLs. Of course, manual account reviews would catch these discrepancies.

This is most often seen in large affiliate accounts where an affiliate might try a few keywords to a second merchant while sending the majority of the traffic to their primary merchant (which is shown in the ad display URL).

[sanrishi]

I think that you can pause the current ad and have the new ad run for sometime.
If you are not happy with the performance of the new ad, you can resume the old ad so that you won't lose the CTR for the old ad.
Does my point make any sense? I am a beginner and I am still learning.

[gopi]

Vibgyor , thats what reccomended for me by my rep , hmm , let me see...

Sanrishi ,as far as i know there is no way to pause an individual ad alone without pausing an entire adgroup , actually if its possible that would be my perfect solution :)

[sanrishi]

Gopi... Here is my recommendation...

Option 1 - You can start a new ad group and pause the old one within the same campaign. According to AWA in a response to one of my queries, pausing an adgroup for a couple of days will not affect your CTR if you were to revert back to it.

Option 2 - Start a totally new campaign with an adgroup and new settings. This way you can keep running the old campaign with high CTR.

Last but not least, I will not recommend adding a new adgroup to the same campaign with your old adgroup. Even with optimization turned off, AdWords seems to prefer the adgroup with higher CTR if they have same set of keywords.

Hope all this makes sense. Experts, please correct me if I have misstated something

[gopi]

Sanrishi ,option 1 is also suggested by my rep .actually i think i am going to do this for one ad and vibgyors suggestion for some other!

>> AdWords seems to prefer the adgroup with higher CTR if they have same set of keywords

I beleive if you have the same set of keywords for different ads in the *same* account , adword tend to prefer the high CTR one even if its from the different campaign ....not 100% sure about this though!