Is it true that google will not fully deliver those "moderate" keywords?
Is there a new upgrade for adwords system recently to cause this or just me?
Thanks for the help.
Feng
Is it true that google will not fully deliver those "moderate" keywords?
No - 'Moderate' keywords will be fully delivered to the extent that the daily budget allows. (An exception to this would be if the entire account was 'slowed', and you see the 'Restore Full Delivery' button appear.)
Is there a new upgrade for adwords system recently to cause this or just me?
No - no new updates relative to your question that I'm aware of. And I don't think it is you either, zf007. ;)
My guess is that it's actually a low daily budget at work.
When ads show up sometimes and not others, IMO it is almost always a daily budget issue. There are lots of threads on WebmasterWorld on this subject in the recent past - so a site search would net you a lot more detail.
AWA
Anyways, what would cause an account to get slowed?
There's no 'Restore Full Delivery' button.
The daily budget is set very high.
This problem exists across all the campaigns in this acount, "strong" keywords show up every time. "moderate" keywords rarely show up or don't show up at all.
I'm wondering if this has something to do with the number of keywords or the bid price in this account. I use dynamic keyword insertion and there're more than 200,000 keywords in this account. Most of the keywords are bid at .05 and I raised them 1-2 cents higher yesterday, but still not working.
The overall CTR is between "0.7-1.0". There're pretty many disabled keywords and "risk" status though. Do I have to remove those "disabled" or "risk" keywords?
Thanks for the help.
Feng
Where is the 'Restore Full Delivery' button? I never knew it existed!
Anyways, what would cause an account to get slowed?
Vanderbolt, very briefly, as I am just about to walk into a meeting, the 'Restore Full Delivery' button is something you never want to see. So if you've never seen it, be very happy!
It'll appear in your account when, for the most recent 1000 impressions measured account-wide, the minimum CTR standard has not been met.
The advertiser is then asked to make appropriate changes, in order to make the ads/keywords more relevant to Google's users, and then to 'Restore Full Delivery'. Every third time this occurs, there is a small reactivation fee, the purpose of which is not to make an extra few bucks. (We'd make lots more just letting the ads run, no?). Rather, the purpose is to motivate the advertiser to create more relevant ads/keywords.
I hope that makes sense.
PS to zf007: I'll try to get to your questions by the end of the day. But gotta run for now. ;)
AWA
The "Restore Full Delivery" button and "slowed" sign as I believe are only applied to a new account but not to a well established account.
I used to get these warnings and I got a lot of times in my first two months, after that I have never seen them again. What I get now is “Strong”, “Moderate”, “At risk” or “Disabled” status. I thought Google has no longer using "Restore Full Delivery" button but now you mentioned it so they're still there. But only for a new account?
This problem exists across all the campaigns in this acount, "strong" keywords show up every time. "moderate" keywords rarely show up or don't show up at all.
This happens to me all the time. That is a reason why I came up with the “cut-off” theory. If your ad position ranking is lower than a certain cut-off value, your ad will not be shown. However, AWA has assured me that he is 99% sure there isn’t such a cut-off in work.
I still think there is some kind of cut-off. In your case, the cut-off may be the allocated daily budget for each keyword. Since you have very big list of keywords in the campaign, the allocated daily budget for the weak keywords will be very low and this may cause a slowdown for these keywords. My suggestion is to create a new campaign for no show or slowed keywords if you do not want to increase the current daily budget to an unrealistic value.
Once they get the hang of it, and the account develops a solid history, it almost never happens again.
Quite honestly, an account with 200,000 general keywords could be slowed in a matter of seconds, if not sooner. And I'm not kidding about the sooner part either. Searches happen at a pretty good clip on Google, and it doesn't take long to get 1000 impressions between 200,000 keywords!
BTW, I'd never recommend to a newer advertiser that they start out with 200,000 keywords. It is simply a recipe for frustration.
Zf007, I’ll try to return on Friday with a bit more insight/advice. But in the meantime, here are a few thoughts:
* The recommended maximum number of keywords in an AdWords account is 50,000, and at 200,000 you are well above that. I'd like to warn you to the possibility that you'll have difficulty logging in to your account, and navigating once you are there. I think you can expect it to be painfully slow.
* 200,000 keywords will make it nearly impossible for you to keep your account running, in my opinion. This is especially true if they are general keywords, with one-word keywords being the worst culprits.
On the subject of massive numbers of keywords, may I point you to a recent thread, below. (Yes, I know, it seems as if I am on a mission for keyword responsibility or something! OK, I admit it. I am.)
Please see:
[webmasterworld.com...]
More later.
AWA
Quite honestly, an account with 200,000 general keywords could be slowed in a matter of seconds, if not sooner. And I'm not kidding about the sooner part either. Searches happen at a pretty good clip on Google, and it doesn't take long to get 1000 impressions between 200,000 keywords!
Yes, if I create a new account, the new account will be slowed down within 2 days with these massive keywords. But if I put these massive keywords into a current account with pretty high CTR, my account has never been slowed down, although in the first several days, the CTR may be a little bit low(0.4), now the overall CTR stays at 0.7-1.0 after deleting under-performing keywords manually and automatically disabled keywords.
But right now, it seems like all keywords with "moderate" status have a hard time showing up. I highly suspect there're some sort of slowdown for my account due to the number of keywords in it.
* 200,000 keywords will make it nearly impossible for you to keep your account running, in my opinion. This is especially true if they are general keywords, with one-word keywords being the worst culprits.
I never use one-word general keyword, all are specific keywords. As a result, I can maintain a overall .5+ CTR without problem.
The logging time is about 30 seconds for one of my accounts with 300,000 keywords. Not bad for me at all:)
Instead, I met other weird problems sometimes though.
This is a post I wrote a while ago about slowly building up an account so that you don't run into the 'slowed' problems. Might be a useful read for you:
[webmasterworld.com...] message 6 (it's kinda long).
But today, the "slow delivery" button disappeared while my account is still being slowed.("moderate" keywords not showing up)
The overall CTR for my account in the last several days are around 1.0, really don't know why my account is still being slowed. Contacted adwords support, not helpful at all.
I'm just wondering how much spending/mo to qualify for a account manager.
Feng
I think it's very frustrating and don't understand why Google would do this when I am paying for a service. I don't have very much time to sit and try to analyze over 100 campaigns that I have. Plus, whenever I get the account slowed button, I never know what campains are causing it.
What is the minimum CTR that must be met per 1000 impressions to keep from the account being slowed, and how can Google determine this considering click through rates will be different for different ads? Also, someone said the account is evaluated every 1000 impressions. My account receives easily over 100,000 impressions daily, so does this mean the account is being checked for CTR over 100 times a day, and if the CTR has not been met for the last 1,000 impressions, the account is slowed? Also, I can understand maybe slowing certain keywords or ads, but slowing the entire account is uncalled for and not necessary.
I am a big spender with Adwords and have yet to receive an account manager, I think those are for big companies, with very high spending limits, but it is a little easier for them, as I can almost guarantee I have a LOT more campaigns and keywords being run. Hopefully my account will not be slowed anytime again soon, but even though I have been optimizing, it still keeps getting slowed.
So instead of building up and spending more money with Adwords (which I was trying to build up to over $50,000/year, I am now having to go the opposite direction). I can understand the disabling of keywords and see the slowing of the account to be a major mistake. (Why don't they instead just slow keywords that are 'At Risk' if they are so concerned about slowing ads that are irrelevant, instead of messing up the whole account. They also need to understand that the more money you are spending (the more campaigns you have), the harder it is to maintain higher CTR's).
2. In addition to popping up a "slow delivery" button, there should be some more information regarding which campaign or which ad groups need to be optimized.
My biggest question is what exactly is the minimum CTR to keep the account staying active(not being slowed down)?
The following is one of my account's stats:
clicks impressions CTR
121,319 15,086,669 0.8% (this month)
162,008 19,917,193 0.8% (all time)
This is account is still being slowed down at an overall CTR of 0.8%, it seems that google doesn't want my money at all.
Feng
However, on the theory that some answer is better than no answer, here is what I think is going on for you:
Background: The stats in your account are not real time. The Campaign Summary page is updated first, and it typically runs 3 hours behind. Your campaign pages, and your Ad Groups are updated later still. This is important here, because it is at the Ad Group level that your keywords (and their status) live.
More background: As I mentioned earlier, it may take all of a second or two for an account with 200,000 untried keywords to get slowed. Remember, all it takes is 1000 impressions measured over the entire account for that account to be slowed.
So, my guess is that your account is being slowed almost instantly, due to the fact that it gets 1000 impressions almost instantly with those 200,000 keywords.
However, your overall stats do not reflect this because they are, at the minimum, three hours behind. And your keyword 'Status' column will certainly not reflect it, because it is even farther behind still.
To put it into as few words as possible: your 200,000 keywords are probably causing your account to be slowed in seconds, but the stats don't reflect it because they are hours behind.
My AdWords Success philosophy, also in a very few words: Start small, be targeted, be prepared to spend some time to learn what works, then build up.
AWA
So, my guess is that your account is being slowed almost instantly, due to the fact that it gets 1000 impressions almost instantly with those 200,000 keywords.
No, this is not the case for my account.
Because I added keywords into a existing account(with exsiting CTR) and all new keywords were fully delivered until a couple days ago. Since the beginning of this month, all new keywords have got about 16 Million impressions and CTR has been steadily gone up from 0.5 to 1.0+
Now the strange thing is that the "slow delivery" button shows up every night and disappears next morning. Nevertheless, ads are not fully delivered all the time. As a result, these warning infomation is very misleading and not helpful at all.
Feng
a) Not punish an entire account because a couple low performing campaigns.
b) Allow the user to actually see which campaigns need to be optimized, and then proceed to optimize those
c) Cause less Frustration to the user
d) Make more money for you guys since high performing or moderate performing campaigns are not unneccesarily slowed down
