Can a Google Ad be triggered by something organically?

[Darren Charity]

Hi everyone,

I am an avid reader of this site so thank you for all the info you have given me over the years. Usually I can find what I want in the posts by your members but I have a question that has been bugging me for a few weeks.

Can a Google Ad be triggered whenever a certain organic listing appears?

Common sense answer (I think) is "no". And research into it hasn't provided an answer. Unfortunately I can't name names because I work for a charity and the ad that is appearing is from another charity that we (currently) have good ties with. Don't want to rock the boat but I would like my suspicions confirmed before I choose to take this further

I have found recently that an ad for them is appearing for search phrases where we are appearing on the first page of Google organically. And the search phrases are totally irrelevant to the condition the ad is talking about and makes no mention of it in the ad itself. The only connection I can see is that the charity I work for is listed organically on the same page.

I have 3 possible reasons at the moment:

1)The Google ad is being trigged any time our charity appears on the 1st page organically
2)It is targeting the name of my charity itself and any time that appears organically (in the title, description, or url), the ad will pop up
3)They are paying stupid amounts of money to get their ad to appear for search terms that they have nothing to do with as a charity and maybe using us as a reference point for targeted keywords

Originally my issue was they were targeting our charity's name (which is trademarked) so that their ad appeared anytime we were searched for. It has now moved on from that to find that these ads are appearing for keywords/phrases that are totally irrelevant to them but very relevant to us (hence why we appear well organically).

Any ideas? Is this even possible? Has anyone come across this before?

Anything would be appreciated.

Cheers,

Darren

[TheRealSaxman]

Hello Darren Charity,
#1 and #2 are not possible as there are currently no ways to target websites that rank organically nor Titles or Descriptions and such from the organic rankings. My guess, without knowing more information, is that #1 you have been to their website and most likely collected a tracking cookie from their Remarketing campaign. Then, #2 they are implementing
RLSA (Remarketing Lists for Search Ads) within their account. By doing this they can target some higher costing keywords that will only show their ads to people that have visited their website. You can check this theory by clearing your cookies and cache from your browser and then performing the same search again. If you still see their ad then they are simply targeting that keyword for whatever reason they feel they need to, but if you don't see the ad it should be safe to assume that they are using RLSA.

I hope this helps...you may get some responses from other people here as well, but this is my best guess as to why they are showing up for search terms unrelated to them. I would like to ask though... do you (your charity) offer a service that they offer as well? If so this may be a strategy for them to park on these keywords unrelated to them using RLSA.

Have a Great Day,
Ed

[Darren Charity]

Many thanks for your reply Ed, I had no knowledge of RLSA. Unfortunately I have had it appear for people who have never been to this website. AND when I cleared my cache it still appeared :-/

So still stumped :(

In answer to your question, it is probably easier to say that their service is a condition that they are a charity of. We also offer information on this condition as well as many other unrelated ones. The issue was that their ad was appearing for these unrelated conditions/search phrases even though their ad itself was simply about the condition that they are a charity of.

I find it very unlikely that they are bidding highly on these search terms as they are very competitive conditions. But they could well be doing it via a 3rd party and being charged a bomb for it!

I use Google Grants and that does our charity fine, especially as I concentrate my efforts on organic SERPS.

[aristotle]

TheRealSaxman wrote:
My guess, without knowing more information, is that #1 you have been to their website and most likely collected a tracking cookie from their Remarketing campaign. Then, #2 they are implementing RLSA (Remarketing Lists for Search Ads) within their account. By doing this they can target some higher costing keywords that will only show their ads to people that have visited their website.

I thought that the Adwords system tends to do this anyway, whether you implement remarketing or not. In other words, if someone has already clicked your ad once, then Adwords will keep showing it to that person again as often as possible. Isn't this correct?

[TheRealSaxman]

@aristotle ... it was my understanding that their competitor was not targeting the unrelated keywords in their normal search campaigns... when you implement RLSA you can target some broader or more expensive keyword terms to visitors that have been to your site before making sure to only target people that have a real interest in your cause...charity... or product. If they were targeting that keyword... you are right...their ad would continue to show for that specific term in search, but if you are talking about showing your ad through the display network as well you would have to have remarketing running unless you were using a "Search and Display" campaign. My initial response though was strictly based off of the idea that their competitor wasn't targeting the unrelated keyword in a search campaign... in which case they would have to be using a RLSA campaign.

[not2easy]

Another possibility is "Interest Based Ads" that show you the same item again and again after you search for, visit or buy something. Coincidentally there is a discussion today here: [webmasterworld.com...] about that.

[chewy]

Want to keep track of this topic - I'm sort of expecting to see this IBA thing that not2easy referred to.

They say that we are moving away from "keywords" - right?

Is this an example of what this might look like?

[Darren Charity]

If I am reading this correctly, does this mean that we will soon get irrelevant ads pop up for a search because they were relevant to us for another search phrase some time before?

The scenario that I talked about in the OP is still happening. It is more of annoyance in that I don't understand the thinking behind it, rather than doing my charity any harm. I came back to this topic because yesterday we had a helpline call asking why a certain term showed an ad for this other charity and did they deal with that condition as well. We had to politely say no and we had no links to them in connection with this search term (a condition).

It really does seem to be the case of searching for apple and getting an ad on bananas (or even worse). We have one link pointing to their site and they have one coming to ours. Surely this isn't a signal for Google to say "ah, they are both charities that are linking to each other, so must be dealing with the same conditions"?

I have logged everything and kept screenshots but.......seems pointless. If it is #3 of the OP then God knows what their budget must look like.