Adwords in English and German

Experience in different click rates accross langauges

[tenerifejim]

I've just started running my English campaign in German and have seen an entirely different pattern of stats accross the two. While I do have a native German writing the ads, the click through rate is unusually low. So much so that I fear I will soon have keywords disabled.

Has anyone else had any experience with German adwords and any advice. Or do they simply not click them as much as the English?

[Robsp]

German CTR's on my campaigns are about 20% lower than on English campaigns for the same products. It looks like you have to tweak your translations. Do you speak German yourself?

[martinibuster]

German impression levels (in my industry) seem low compared to other languages, like Spanish, even with content match turned on.

[Robsp]

I agree with martinibuster there. I had to add content targetting to get the volume to the right level. Especially compared to Spanish.

[ThomasB]

CTR was the same or slightly higher for me in german. Might be because I'm a native german speaker.

[webdiversity]

We had good results, with decent traffic levels.

German ads to German speakers will do far better than English ads shown in Germany, both in terms of CTR and also click volume.

[tenerifejim]

Robsp, no I don't speak German, but I had the initial ad done by a native speaker.

As an update, I've just lost two keywords because the CTR was down at .2%. Easily the worst response I've ever had. It's a real shame because once the germans are 'on page' their conversion rate is much higher than the Brits.

I think I might need to get someone in specifically to do German ads for me.

I'm up for a French page next, any experience of that, anyone?

[martinibuster]

Here's one to think about:

If you have you campaign set to show worldwide, with German language targeting, then we'll be missing those searches done by Germans who have their Google Language Preferences set to a language other than German.

Do Germans search with their Google preferences set to a language other than German?

What do you say?

[rravenn]

I found that the French are somewhat behind Germany in Adwords usage.

My experience of French visitors to the Canary Islands is those that mainly like sailing and you might want to take that into consideration.

Nice site, however translating the terms and conditions to german in the german part of your site would help. The Germans love rules, even more when in their own language.

RvN

[ThomasB]

Just my expirience, didn't do any research on it.

Do Germans search with their Google preferences set to a language other than German?

Most "normal" germans use google.de without the setting "Only sites in german" unless they're not happy with the results. That mostly happens when they look for products that have the same name across the world and they get a lot of english stuff. If you have a proper german site you can go for german searches, but if not I doubt that the conversion rate would be high.

But feel free to sticky me if you have detailed questions.

[tenerifejim]

Thanks rraven, the T & C is the next bit to translate.

Martinibuster, according to the Germans I work with, they only use google.de. Although many will search for English terms and translate the page, which is interesting.

[Bluepixel]

To give you some tips about your translation.
It's "In Deutsch" not "En Deutsch" (it would be "En français" for french pages).
And the text on your german competition site is so "artificial"... I wouldn't like it ;)

[tenerifejim]

Thanks for feedback Bluepixel. I'm going to get another German speaker to look at it.

Although, to be honest, the problems I am having is not with people once they arrive on the site. It is getting them from adwords to the page.

[ThomasB]

I'm going to get another German speaker to look at it.

I know of at least 1 german who is also very active on WebmasterWorld who should be able to help you on that. Or just sticky some germans you know.