We have lots of geographically targeted adverts, both IP and keyword matches.
Google is matching keywords very poorly today.
e.g.
2 different adverts(different landing page and ad text):
widgets north carolina
widgets south carolina
When a search for 'widgets in south carolina' is done, the north carolina advert shows! Surely it's not that difficult to see that a much better match exists.
You could say that Google is broad matching 'south' to 'north'; but that's really bad (they are not synonymous). It's also made worse by selecting a poor 'expansion match' over an easy 'broad match'.
Are you seeing anything similar today/recently?
I have one ad group with an exact match keyword, [widget]. My bid on this keyword is fairly low and it is based on a long history of conversion data. Let's say I'm bidding $0.10.
Now I have a second ad group based around a company that makes this widget, ie brandname + widget. I have a higher bid, let's say $0.20 for this keyword and include it as both a broad and exact match.
Lately (for about a week now), Google has been displaying my ad for the brand-based ad group (driven by the broad match keyword brandname + widget) for the no brand search [widget]. From google's standpoint, this is more profitable (assuming that the ctr is similar for both ad groups) because I'm bidding twice as much on the brand-based keyword. I'm willing to bid twice as much because up until recently, it was worth more.
I'm not sure it's fair to say that search [widget] is a broad match for a keyword that includes a specific brand name but I realize Google makes these decisions.
The problem is that Google's system now seems much more aggressive in using broad match to pursue higher bids. If this continues, I'll have to lower many of my broad match keywords (even in high value ad groups) in order to avoid having these keywords "suck" in lower value phrases from other ad groups in my campaign. In the end, both Google and I will be losers.
Does this make any sense or seem relevant to anyone else? I noticed another thread about drop in conversion rates recently and I wonder if it's related.
