In early April 2004, I made two changes:
1. Raised the daily budget from 4.00 to 10.00.
2. Took the 200 odd keywords which were all in one ad group, and separated them, thematically, into separate ad groups, each with its own ad text.
Initially, the results were great:
1. The daily clicks skyrocketed from 10 a day to 20-45 a day.
2. And the average CPC actually dropped, from 0.39 to about 0.23 -- some days considerably less.
3. The CTR rose to about 1.8%.
My April total was 838 clicks -- recall that the previous monthly high over close to a year was 369!
Then, on May 6, a day that will live in infamy, it all came to a dead stop: The number of clicks that day went down to 12. From May 7 to date, the highest daily number of clicks is 9. The daily average has been 4. Many days, I get 0, 1 or 2. This from a site which had a steady daily click rate of 10 for close to a year!
Please note that the CTR remains as high as it was before the plummet: a healthy 1.9%, and many of the keywords still have a status of "Strong" -- what has plummetted is the number of impressions. (The average CPC is 0.26, slightly up from before the plummet.)
So the questions are: 1. What happened? 2. What to do?
Please note:
1. I am pretty sure I didn't make any changes after those of early April. At any rate, what changes could I have made to drastically reduce the number of impressions even though the CTR remains healthy? I am 100% certain that I didn’t lower the Max CPC.
2. The Max CPCs of the new groups are roughly the same as that of the original group which had all of the keywords. Anyway, if the problem were one of a low max CPC, then why for a month did the performance skyrocket before it plummeted?
3. I checked, and the groups have an active status.
I am mystified and would appreciate your insight.
There are several reasons this could have occured. Were your keywords marked as slowed or at risk? The CTR applies to partner sites, yet the keyword status is compiled only from Google.
It sounds like you might have had this phenomena [webmasterworld.com] happen to you.
Have you opened a support request [webmasterworld.com] with Google to see if they have insight? It is difficult for us, not knowing the inside of your account, to give very specific advice on some issues.
the keywords still have a status of "Strong"
- Double check the keyword list. Eventhough some keywords are still 'strong', others might have been disabled or disapproved (thanks to trademarks etc)
- Increase your daily budget to $20 or $30/day.
- Do a search for your keywords on AOL. Do you see your ads there? If your avg pos. is less than 4.0 and you still don't see your ad, drop a mail to Google support.
For now, increase your bid price from the current levels and see if it improves the situation.
