Adword Impression Flood Jan 1st

From 12 to 21173 weekly impressions.

[Insomniak]

One of my adwords which had 50 impressions for all of December suddenly went crazy January 1st rocketing to 21173 in the first week before I noticed. Each day it went until my max spend was used up. This is all search network, not content.

I was bidding 15cents on this word which sometimes had a quality score of 20cents so it wasn't even always active in the past, suddenly it looks like I have the best quality score ever.

Google tech support had no explanation for this and have directed me to the click quality team, does anyone here have ideas?

I think it is evidence G was doing some quality score algo tweaking Jan 1.

[tomasvdb]

or it could be that you're bidding on competitive yet seasonal keywords and all your competitors decided to pause their campaigns after New year's, leaving you the only person out there...

check your reports if your impression share hasn't jumped from nearly nothing to 100%, that should give you an indication of the level of competition before and after jan 1.

[poster_boy]

Google tech support had no explanation for this and have directed me to the click quality team

I think that's a good step - because I've encountered shady search syndication partner activity result in similar spikes.

How was your CTR before and after the spike? I've noticed that my CTR has risen almost as sharply as the number of impressions in these cases.