My account probably only differs from everyone elses by CTR and keywords. I NEVER use broad matching. I don't see the point in using broad matching. It is just a bad idea in general because you cannot control the cost of all matches separately. You also can't see what is hurting your CTR, where your traffic is coming from, any other things. Maybe keywords are becoming inactive because the broad matchers show up on bad searches, where the actual search was not relevant to your ad. Example:
I search for "widgets offend me" (no quotes of course). Your ad is a broad match for widgets. Your ad shows and tries to sell widgets. I am offended.
That is a totally crazy example, but it illustrates how your broad matching was totally irrelevant to the search. You ad may be totally related to widgets, but it is not related to "widgets suck."
This is just something to think about, and IMO, good advice. Broad matching is for lazy people. You should be adding all the individual keywords and exact matching. Sure, you can use the negative keywords, but you can't hit everything. Atleast with exact matches you know you won't get the negatives.
If you are selling "new widgets," you shouldn't target "used widgets." In fact, you don't want to target used widgets. I have a feeling that most people do anyway, hoping it works out and you convert the customer. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, but the point is, you aren't giving the user what they want. They want used. You have new. You are just trying to pursuade them to buy something that they didn't want in the first place.
Exact is what I use. And they are what got jacked up. I also send mostly directly to the sponsor. You mentioned you changed the landing page and the CPC went down. That may be an advantage of having your own landing page. And is good to know. When you go direct to the sponsor of course you give up that option.
BTW, congrats on not losing too much. You are either doing something right or your a lucky WM. :) Id be a damn happy guy if I was you. Really sucks to see your work go up in smoke. Esp words getting good CTRs.
I don't know what to say. Kind of in shock last couple days.
But I'm hopefull ither mSN or Overture can help me out here.
But I must say Overture has one funky signup process plus you have to pay in advance based on what you think you'll sell.
And Microsoft ADCenter doesn't allow adult of any kind.
In all honesty, I had started what I thought would be a simple test to pretty much eliminate MSN as a necessary part of my ad campaign but now it looks like I will have to find a way to make it a bigger part of my strategy.
I can't pay 5.00 and 10.00 for a word and make a profit. I don't have url's that drive enough traffic without promotion. Finally I have no clue how to fix the problem because Google is not making it easy for me to figure out what I am doing wrong.
I am sure you will see a huge campaign by Microsoft to capitalize on this seeming wrong turn by Google.
[edited by: Soze at 6:18 am (utc) on July 13, 2006]
