I run daily reports to show Impressions and Clicks for each keyword for each campaign.
The odd thing is there is always a keyword generated by Google called "Total - Content targeting".
I has assumed this was a sum of all keywords, but when i looked closer I discovered it is not.
Example
Sunday's report
Keyword,Impressions, Clicks
----------------------------
Total - Content targeting,1191,1
someotherword,210,3
that was all there was
it's not the first time i've seen it come up as 1,191 either.
What is this mysterious line on the report? It even showed 1 Click Through for Sunday.
When you say cumulative, do you mean cumulative for all keywords and all days the campaign has been running?
If yes, this figure should match the 5,229 I see for "Total Impressions" for this campaign on the "Account Snapshot" form shouldnt it?
If no, and it is only the cumulative total for all keywords on the one day which I have run this daily report for, then should it not equal 210 - which is the sum of all (and the only) keyword that was triggered on this day and on this report?
Or is there some other way it accumulates which I can't see?
When you say cumulative, do you mean cumulative for all keywords and all days the campaign has been running?
Cumulative per ad group per the date range selected.
If yes, this figure should match the 5,229 I see for "Total Impressions" for this campaign on the "Account Snapshot" form shouldnt it?If no, and it is only the cumulative total for all keywords on the one day which I have run this daily report for, then should it not equal 210 - which is the sum of all (and the only) keyword that was triggered on this day and on this report?
Or is there some other way it accumulates which I can't see?
I'm not totally clear on what you're seeing but in my account I see three line items per ad group... 'Content network total', 'Search total', and 'All sources total'. The 'Content network total' should be one line as it sums all Content stats for the entire ad group. The 'Search total' should sum the stats for each individual keyword. The 'All sources total' should = 'Content network total' + 'Search total'.
Are your numbers not adding up in this fashion?
Cumulative per ad group per the date range selected.
This is the part where I am seeing the discrepancy.
Here is the full content of the report (leaving out irrelevant columns for this conversation). I've substituted the campaign and keywords also. Ad Groups are as live.
Campaign,Ad Group,Keyword,Impressions,Clicks
Campaign1,adgroup1,Total - content targeting,1191,1
Campaign1,adgroup1,word1,210,3
Campaign2,ad group #1,word2,60,2
Campaign2,ad group #1,word1,29,2
Campaign2,ad group #1,word3,34,1
Campaign2,ad group #1,word4,4,2
Campaign3,ad group #1,word1,24,1
The report is an "Ad Performance" report and is run with these parameters
Report Details
Report type: Ad
Date range: Yesterday
View: Summary
Campaigns: All
Ad Groups: All
Ad statuses: All
Keywords: All
Filters: Clicks > 0
Ad Distribution: All
Keyword matching: All
Scheduled: Every day
I just checked the same report run without the "filters" and confirmed the total impressions for "campaign1" is 492 - so 1191 does not represent the total of unfiltered data.
Perhaps the reporting output is simply broken? This is my first experience with google adwords, but I do understand what I'm looking at having had a long career in software development.
I wanted to ask here because i thought there might be something more to it, but you are saying there should be other totals, and I do not see these either.
Thanks again for your interest, I'd like to be able to explain what is going on here to my client.
The report is an "Ad Performance" report and is run with these parameters
But... Text Ads, not Keywords, appear in 'Ad Performance' reports?
By default that is true. When creating the report I selected "Keywords" under "Add or Remove Columns", "Level of Detail".
I just tried including Keywords in an Ad Performance report (I've never tried that before), but it's a bit misleading. In the report, it shows one Keyword per Ad... but, the stats presented reflect the ad, not the keyword... The "keyword" field is more of a "sample keyword" field, if you will, because it's picking only one out of the many thousands of keywords contained in each of my ad groups.
That said, the Ad text numbers on my report do match the Totals shown at the bottom so I'm not sure why your figures don't add up.
I'd pull Keyword Performance reports if it's Keyword stats you're looking for and Ad Performance reports if it's Ad stats you're looking for... but, this report format - which combines the two - seems more confusing than useful.
What I can see from this report is "Total - content targeting" would appear to have a special meaning.
This is clear by the absence of Keyword status, Min CPC, Max CPC, Dest URL data for this row on the report.
This is what came out for the report:
Adgroup,Keyword,Keyword Matching,Keyword Status,Min CPC,Max CPC, Dest URL,Impressions,Clicks,
adgroup1,Total - content targeting,Content,,,,,667,1
adgroup1,word1,Broad,Active,$0.13,$2.00,default URL,5,1
adgroup1,word2,Broad,Active,$0.06,$2.00,default URL,17,0
adgroup1,word3,Broad,Active,$0.50,$2.00,default URL,1,9
adgroup1,word4,Broad,Active,$0.50,$2.00,default URL,13,0
I believe the question is still - what does "Total - Content Targeting" mean?
'Content Total' Statistics
This shows the breakdown of all the impressions and clicks your ad has received on Google's content network, including sites and products with content relevant to what you are advertising.
Clicks, impressions and costs from the content network are not attributed to individual keywords. Instead, this data is compiled into the 'Content Total' row you see here.
I'm not real clear on the basis for these sites to be include when they do not specifically relate to my keywords.
I wonder if this is Googles black box or if people know how it works.
