Slight change to campaign stops it?

[nickyo]

Last week I was tweaking a campaign a little, reduced the geographic radius very slightly. This resulted in a massive reduction in impressions, taking the campaign to a virtual standstill.

So I reverted the settings back to what they were previously, and the campaign is still at a standstill.

Has anyone experienced similar problems when making changes?

Account is only around 4 months old by the way - don't know if this would affect things?

[smallcompany]

How old should not matter.

You use your own site? If URL is not yours, it may be that AdWords has picked some other ads.

[netmeg]

Do most of your impressions come from Search or Content?

[phranque]

an edit is like a new ad and it probably needs to reestablish its quality score.
have you checked cpc and position since the changes?

[chinara]

an edit is like a new ad and it probably needs to reestablish its quality score.

very true!

NEVER edit the ad! This will stop your edited ad from showing and mess up your quality score.
If you want to make a change to your existing ad - create new ad with that change, wait for "approval" make sure that new ad is getting impressions, wait a little and pause the old ad(s)!

Exampe: if you have 3 ads and you add just a dot to each of them, it will stop them all. If you add something to one of your ads system will stop showing that ad. so be careful!

[smallcompany]

mess up your quality score

I want to share something I’ve experienced few days ago, first time in a very clear way.

I had two ad groups, where I had keywords related to each other, but different enough to be divided into two (ad groups).

After a long time in the premium yellow area, ads from group 1 went out of it (second position) and QS went to OK, minimum bid to 10 cents.
Group 2 got into similar situation (in and out).

I remembered I had an ad in Group 2 under pause, one that performed well, but I wanted to change it (didn’t like it).
So, I paused the rest and set “ugly” one to active. All was right, QS great, minimum bid 5 cents.

In Group 1 (that was on a side all that time) I created a new ad that was in wording similar to the good performing one from Group 2, and BINGO, in 2 minutes it was in yellow area, QS Great, minimum bid, 5 cents.

This was the clearest and quickest QS change I ever saw in AdWords so far, which resulted in regaining the premium spot in paid search results with no change in maximum bid, but by changing ad text only.

[nickyo]

Thought this might be the case that it need to re-establish quality score, but just thought I'd check other experiences.

Made minor changes in past and it's kept running, but maybe one too many tweaks pushed it over edge.