I have around 1500 place names as keywords and in two days have 7000 impressions and 70 clicks.
Around 200 keywords are "on hold", with around 100 of those having 0 impressions. I have 7 keywords "in trial" and these surprise me.
3 in trial keywords have 0 impressions
The other 4 in trial keywords have 1,2,4 & 10 impressions and the keyword with 10 impressions has a click.
On both days I was under my max daily spend.
Can anybody enlighten me?
My previous trial was using a personal adwords a/c. This campaign uses a new adwords account started last month expressly for this project. None of the keywords "on trial" was in the previous trial.
Why would a keyword which earned a click out out of its first 10 impressions be "on trial"?
I have around 1500 place names as keywords and in two days have 7000 impressions and 70 clicks.
Why would a keyword which earned a click out out of its first 10 impressions be "on trial"?
Welcome to WebmasterWorld ross_sheehy!
I'll try to get back to this thread tomorrow with some links for you to follow, to better understand how keywords are placed into a particular 'status'.
However, very briefly, your keywords are on-hold because the AdWords system predicts they will perform poorly (in terms of CTR on Google). The probable reason for this, in your case (and based on what you've said), is that place names are almost always far too general to perform well.
You would be better served to create more specific keywords which combined something about your actual product or service along with the place name.
I'm a bit pressed for time at this moment, but will try to get back to this tomorrow. But, bottom line, in most cases the key is to use very 'targeted' keywords, and have them bring up an ad about that exact same thing.
AWA
I can understand that place names generally aren't great keywords, but I'm promoting accommodation so they are a good place to start.
Let's use 'North haven' as an example. A search for North Haven shows one sponsored link, being a real estate firm with a property for sale. My North Haven keyword is "In Trial" yet it has had 0 impressions.
Equally curious are the keywords "on hold" like Proserpine (11 impressions 1 sponsored link) and Bogong (3 impressions 1 sponsored link) Lake Munmorah (0 impressions 0 sponsored links).
For reference the "In trial" keywords are North Haven, Beauty Point, Winton, Warwick & Maningrida.
As you can tell, I'm not exactly using "New York" or "Sydney" as a keywords. These are small towns in rural Australia!
Are these place names so rare they've confused the google radar?
Why would a keyword which earned a click out out of its first 10 impressions be "on trial"?
could not be
The probable reason for this, in your case (and based on what you've said), is that place names are almost always far too general to perform well.
So, ross_sheehy start with this link:
[webmasterworld.com...]
You will find the theory links there and the real life too.
I must try "upper numbucca west" as a keyword. That's sure to go straight "on hold" :-)
The "in trial" keywords have all changed in the last few hours. Contrary to what I said above I now find that Google has also overspent my daily limit each of the first two days. Maybe that has something to do with it.
I think I'll work on the conversion rate once the clicks arrive rather than worrying about how they arrive!
Are these place names so rare they've confused the google radar?
Nope, ross_sheehy - it's more that the keywords you've mentioned are simply too general to work well within the AdWords system, which is designed to 'reward' very specific keywords.
Here's an example to illustrate the point:
Take the keyword 'winton' for example. You have accommodations in Winton, granted, but a search on the word returns 857,000 results (which is a very low number, btw). However, most of these results are about something entirely different than accommodations in the Winton near you.
Winton Motor Raceway
Winton, Australia
Tim Winton
Alexander Winton
Royal Winton pottery
David Winton
Morgan Winton
Winton, Califoria
Royal Winton chintz
Winton Library, New York
Winton, England
And on and on - for another 856,990 or so possibilities. And I'm not even mentioning the folks how are looking for things like:
* dog sitting winton
* dog washing winton
* dog walking winton
* dog grooming winton
* dog nail clipping winton
* dog whistles winton
* and the several million other things people might be looking for in Winton. Whether it is Winton Australia, or Winton England, Winton California. Or, maybe even in the Winton near you. ;)
So, really, you'll have much better luck with keywords like:
* accommodations winton (and maybe add your state too, since we know there are other Wintons besides your Winton.)
* hotels winton
* motels winton
* affordable hotels winton
* and on and on...
In other words, the the trick is to use keywords that describe exactly what you have to offer, and (in your case at least) where you offer it. But using a place name alone will almost never work well - and such keywords are almost guaranteed to get disabled, since anyone, anywhere, who is looking for anything, in any winton anywhere in the world, will see your ad.
And only the tiniest percentage of them will be looking for accommodations in your Winton.
I hope that makes sense. ;)
AWA
I could understand this more easily if my ad had been displayed 1000, 100 or even 10 times, but why would it go "in trial" without a single impression? Moreover putting words on trial also seems to put other words "on hold" without any impressions.
Also why for winton are there currently only three adwords ads showing. "great deals on winton" from ebay and "100s of matching auction items" from ebay and "free access to info on any postcode in winton" from checkmyfile. Surely these are just spam!
At the moment I've got a more serious problem with the google search engine. The site: search was listing my terms and conditions and a few odd pages, then it found about 50 more pages, and for the last week site: shows no entries at all. If somebody can point me to a discussion of that topic I'd be grateful.
Thanks
I could understand this more easily if my ad had been displayed 1000, 100 or even 10 times, but why would it go "in trial" without a single impression? Moreover putting words on trial also seems to put other words "on hold" without any impressions.
For a detailed look at how this all works, please see msg #5 in the thread that dave741 mentioned up above. If you follow the links, you'll have a thorough overview.
Also why for winton are there currently only three adwords ads showing. "great deals on winton" from ebay and "100s of matching auction items" from ebay and "free access to info on any postcode in winton" from checkmyfile. Surely these are just spam!
When you find that there are very few (or zero) ads on a particular keyword, it quite often means that, since the inception of AdWords, this has been an extremely difficult keyword to use and meet the minimum CTR standards.
Keywords as general as 'winton' will certainly fall into the 'next-to-impossible-to-keep running' category. ;)
At the moment I've got a more serious problem with the google search engine. The site: search was listing my terms and conditions and a few odd pages, then it found about 50 more pages, and for the last week site: shows no entries at all. If somebody can point me to a discussion of that topic I'd be grateful.
Lots of search related topics are discussed in another Forum on WebmasterWorld, here: [webmasterworld.com...]
AWA, does the system 'look a little more' at a general kw/kp if there are negative match kw/kp's selected to balance out the 'too broad' assumption?
I'm not 100% certain about this, Import Export. I'll check into it.
AWA
It's flatly unfair not to let all the keywords in a new campaign have a chance to circulate at least for a while. JUDGE OUR CAMPAIGNS ON THEIR OWN PERFORMANCE, NOT SOMEONE ELSE'S!
A better title, better ad text, carefully researched negative keywords, and the domain name itself can all make a major difference in how a campaign performs.
I would buy that logic about Winton being too general a term if all he did was slap in some broad matches, but isn't that what negative keywords are for? To tighten the targeting?
I'm not 100% certain about this, Import Export. I'll check into it.AWA
Thanks for always looking into my items :)
adwordsadvisor,
thanks for the pointer about google search.
I had expected to be able to put in any keywords I wanted, watch what happened and then improve from there. It occurs to me now that there is a great deal more to this game than first meets the eye.
On reflection, I was expecting the system to work more transparently, and the actual behaviour confused me.
The info at google like "Maximize" has a lot more in it than I saw at my first reading as well.
So much to learn. So little time!
