Well, it's been a year since I gave our Google rep the following issue, which they could not answer. It continues to happen, so I'm going to pose this question.
I've got a keyword that's shut down, that shows 1.2% clickthrough for yesterday. As you know, .5% clickthrough on Google should be the shutdown trigger. So our rep gives me the easy-way-out argument that Google-only clickthrough must be less than .5% (though they can't see the number).
Well, I'm sorry, but I don't buy that. Not that I can prove it, because Google-only clickthrough isn't displayed. But let's say half of the traffic is Google, half syndicated. Then the syndicated traffic must have a clickthrough average of (a bit more than) 1.9%, and Google (a bit less than) .5%, to average 1.2%. Four times the clickthrough on syndicated traffic? I doubt it.
The next easy answer is that the Google-only clickthrough on the last 1000 Google-only impressions was below .5%. That's your understanding of how it works, right? [I wish it were all spelled out in black and white]. OK, I can't prove that wrong, since I can't run stats on the last 1000 impressions, and even then it wouldn't be broken out into Google/syndication. [this keword has thousands of impressions per day]
But even then, my understanding is that Google then throttles the ad slowly, and if the ratio comes back, it turns it on again. And with aggregate results at 1.2%, I would think that would have happened. But how exactly does that work? Does it throttle until the last 1000 [throttled] Google-only impresssions are above .5%?
I've got another kw that shows 1.6% clickthrough on the last 988 impressions. Also shut down.
Sorry for the rant, but it is a bit frustrating not being able to get a straight answer from the horse's mouth.
My understanding is that keywords/ads are turned off completely when the CTR is too low, and throttled when you're approaching your budget.
I don't understand why Google would distinguish between Google and non-Google click-throughs. Wouldn't it be easier to use the total that's displayed in the control panel?
They show a red asterisk. CTR too low.
When Google began syndication last year, Adwords reps said the .5% became a Google-only threshold, because CTR rates on partner sites were artificially higher, because of the position and display of the Adwords ads on partner sites vs. how they are displayed on Google. As is obvious, but worth stating, Google Adwords ads display off to the right, while syndicated Adwords generally display in-line before regular search results, resulting in a higher clickthrough rate.
If your site is matched to a popular search term,( like Shopping) many of the ads are so similar in nature that the visitor may click 2 or 3 of them as a form of comparison shopping .
Unless you are the top ad, I think that you are missing the boat if you shut down on 0.5%, especially if the product you are marketing has a nice profit/unit price ratio.
[edited by: Shak at 7:21 pm (utc) on Aug. 3, 2003]
[edit reason] edited keyword :) [/edit]
That being said in many industries the threshold is significantly lower, and in some much higher.
We have campaigns running where the CTR is only around 0.2 or 0.3% but still they run. It's probably because the CPC is high but there are not many advertisers. Google's take will be that something is better than nothing.
Equally, in arenas where there are significant number of advertisers, they can raise the bar because there might be many advertisers not getting in to the game at 0.5%.
My advice would be to remove said keyword for a day or two, and maybe consider putting it in "intensive care" all on it's own until you get it working the way you want.
We always try to remove keywords before Google do, usually you can see the signs, but work on the basis of 200 impressions with no clicks is a warning sign and that is when you should act.
