Sudden change in Adwords

Bug, changed geotargeting or broad matching rollout?

[lukasz]

Ther was a sudden change in a way how Adwords are served to me.

I am in Japan rigt know, my preffered language in browser (IE6) is setup to Japanese, my OS location is set up to Japan.
If I search on Google.co.jp for Japanese pages only, using english spelling for keyword, I would receive japanese SERPS yet Adwords will be both japanese and non-japanese. For typical Japanese more than half of the ads would be in foreign language - and therefore with little relevancy.
If this is happening in other countries - people will see sudden drop in clickthrought rates.
This is significant, can anyone confirm what is happening?

[lukasz]

Wow, this is a screw up.
I just checked japanese portal sites which are using Google SERPS and AdWords.
They are displaying ads in other languages on their Japanese only pages. I wonder if this is happening only in Japan?

[lukasz]

Well, I dont know if the rest of the WW is sleeping or Google decided to punish me for my sins..
It looks like I am the first casualty. One of my keyword which had CTR constantly above 1.3% for last 6 months suddenly in less than 24 hours went down to CTR 0.00% and got disabled. That was the only keyword which was spelled in english.
No one noticed anything?

[seasalt]

lukasz:

I don't know if it is related, but I am seeing non-relevant UK results that have begun showing up here in the US. It has messed up some long-term (over a year) positions in Adwords by lowering my CTR also. I wonder if the UK advertisers know where there ads are being shown. Its a great way to lose money if they don't.

seasalt

[TomWaits]

We've had some bizarre click-through plummets since yesterday.