Words Disabled with 2.5% CTR?!?

Disabled Google adwords

[Nelson]

Hello everyone,

I've recently just joined Webmasterworld (affiliate marketing) and appreciate the loads of experience here.

Google just did something I don't understand. They disabled two keywords even though I met or exceeded their guidelines. One word had a CTR of 2.5 %! and the other .6% - both in #2 position.

When I asked them why the words were disabled the email response said something like " these rules are a guideline, not exact....". Then suggested I use targeted combination words rather than general words. But how can they disable a word with 2.5% click-through? And now they have left my competitor bidding on the exact same two key words (with absolutely no competition)! How can they let someone else do it but not me?

I have written them again last nite - what do you suggest is my next move if they still don't "enable" words?

Appreciate any guidance here. Thx.

[martinibuster]

Strange.

Do you reference a competing product?

Are the keywords the name of a competing product or company? There was a hulla-balloo about that around here two months ago.

Is your ad a copy of your competitors ad?

In any casse, you may want to re-write your ad and submit it. Make sure you reference the keywords within the ad.

Let us know how you fare!

:)

[edited by: martinibuster at 5:09 pm (utc) on Feb. 13, 2003]

[gsx]

Google calculate each word, advert and campaign separately. Any under 0.5% are discontinued. This applies to the last one thousand displays only, so it possible to have 2000 displays and if every one of the first half were clicked upon, your rate would be 50% but Google would discontinue the advert set up because the last one thousand displays yielded a 0% rate.

[Nelson]

Thx Martinibuster,

Here's more detail:
- no, the ad doesn't reference a competing product
- no, the ad isn't identical to my competitors
- the two ads both reference single words in a company name
- my competitor does the same
- the 2.5% ctr was for the last 7 days

(just checked the keywords again and noticed another competing ad just popped up on one of them - interesting)

I'll keep you posted what happens.

[vibgyor79]

>>> the 2.5% ctr was for the last 7 days

Check yesterday's CTR for that particular keyword. The only logical explanation I can think of is that your keywords collected more than 1000 impressions without get a click yesterday.

>>> what do you suggest is my next move if they still don't "enable" words?

Delete your keyword from the existing AdGroup and create a new AdGroup with the ad "customized" to your keywords.

[webdiversity]

It is the <0.5% in the past 1000 impressions.

It also tends to happen more in mega competitive arenas, so if you are one of a few advertisers then they'd rather you were paying money at 0.3% CTR than nobody at all, but if they have 20 advertisers willing to pay a dollar a click, and you are prepared to pay $1.01 and get not traffic it's costing money you being on the first page. This is why they reard high CTR, because it means high spend compared to other advertisers for the same word.

It is such a clever system!

[Nelson]

Just to wrap this up I wanted to let you know what Google's emailed response was.

Basically they said that yes, my CTR was showing over 2%, however my actual CTR on "Google only" was less than 0.5% That's because my ads were "syndicted". Therefore my syndicated ads were getting a CTR well over 2.5% but CTR on "google only" was less than 1% and so the word was disabled.

The other thing they said which surprised me was they measure CTR only on Google (not including syndicted ads) for everyone so it is consistent for everyone.

So - onwards. I am trying to improve my campaign, bid, etc. to improve CTR and hopefully profitability.

Thx for your comments everyone.

[martinibuster]

Great information. Thanks for sharing that.