Google Impressions

anyone else seeing a huge jump?

[shdsofblu]

Over the past month or so I've seen a huge jump in our Google Impressions stats. I have not changed anything in our account during that time and our # of click throughs has not changed (maybe its gone DOWN a little bit) So as a result our response rate (CTR) has dropped significantly.

Has anyone else seen this phenomenon or know what's going on?

Will my lower CTR make for lower quality score?

Thanks in advance.

[shdsofblu]

My apologies...I have read a few posts about this from back in November of last year for a little more info on the subject

[webmasterworld.com...]

But if anyone has something to add please let me know.

[Pengi]

Huge jumps in impressions are quite common on the content network (as are the huge falls that usually follow them). They can occur if your ad finds it way onto a very popular page for a short period.

Generally when this happens, the ad showing on a highly popular page does not achieve the CTR it does on less popular pages. The huge jump in impressions with low CTR then affects your overall average CTR.

Google has stated that Content CTR does not affect your Quality Score.

I use the AdWords Report tool to see separate totals for content and search impressions and clicks each day and track these. The big leaps up and down in content are then clearly visible, while the search values are much more predictable.

[netmeg]

I have one adgroup where, for the last two months, the impressions are so totally out of whack I finally emailed Google and asked if they had any explanation for it. It's a specialty term related to the banking industry, and there's just no way it should be generating over two million impressions a month, when the other 2200 or so search phrases don't come anywhere near those kinds of numbers. Google emailed back a couple of times, but were not able to provide any insight (unfortunately) The number of actual clicks wasn't particularly significant, nor the money spent - but since my client is fairly picky about where his ads appear, I am going to move that Ad Group to a separate campaign and turn off Content Network for it - I can only assume it's somehow being grossly mistargeted on some AdSense sites. In ten years time there shouldn't be two million impressions for this particular piece of equipment.

I was a little disappointed (but not terribly surprised) that I couldn't get any more specific information from Google about what was going on.

[Israel]

I am going to move that Ad Group to a separate campaign and turn off Content Network for it - I can only assume it's somehow being grossly mistargeted on some AdSense sites.

Netmeg,

Surely you know with your vast experience in Adwords that any kw remotely related to money, loans, banking attracts the MFAs. They perceive them as high dollar keywords. I learned that lesson the hard way at another PPC. Forutnately I learned it quickly. They had 100% real-time stats!

Since the term and its variants are only of interest to a limited group in the banking community, they seem like the perfect candidates for a site-targeted Content campaign, no?

Even though I've shunned the Content Network for some time, I've seem impossible amounts of impressions for terms that would only receive few searches. This I attribute to expanded broad matching. I'll search the term and see if perhaps it's also a city somewhere or has some secondary meaning and it does not. Since when this happens, it's not being clicked, I can't blame click fraud. I can only assume it's being wildly misinterpreted and the ad shown to people who wonder "What's that ad doing there?"

JMHO,

Israel

[edited by: Israel at 12:17 am (utc) on Mar. 24, 2007]

[karamkshetra]

I think as the awareness will be more the impressions and click as well will increase day by day.

Reagrds,
Karamkshetra

[shdsofblu]

Penji - Awesome and helpful reply. Thank you.

[shdsofblu]

PENGI - SP. :-)

[trannack]

Oh no, lets leave it at Penji.....;)

[netmeg]

Surely you know with your vast experience in Adwords that any kw remotely related to money, loans, banking attracts the MFAs

Of course I know that, and I don't advertise terms like that in the Content Network (learned the hard way with Looksmart, long ago) but none of the words in this particular term have anything to do with money, loans, or banking. It's a three word term using common everyday English words for a piece of equipment you'd typically find at a bank or a fast food restaurant - practically a piece of furniture. And there should be no reason for that many impressions (moreoever, we've been advertising this for a year now, and the big impression jump just started a couple months ago)

[netmeg]

Also forgot to mention, we're using phrase match on this one, not broad match, which makes it even stranger.