What is the best way to deal with disabled kws?
I still have problems with disabled keywords that I can never get to run again. Even though I have deleted all other instances of the keyword in my account and created a better ad in a new campain, but it still gets disabled after 0 impressions. I guess I should read the forum more...
What is the best way to deal with disabled kws?
So, I am a little sick, and my poor brain is not working as well as one might hope. But after thinking about it for a bit, I can't think of a single advantage of keeping a disabled keyword in your account.
I know that making an absolute statement like this virtually guarantees that someone will post with a good reason very soon, though. And I am ready to admit I was wrong. ;)
So my advice? Delete them as soon as you see them.
(By the way, the database still keeps a record of them, and you can always see them later - for your reference - by checking the checkbox above your keyword list that says "Include deleted items that were active in this date range".)
With all the continuing changes with Adwords, what is "disabled" today may become "normal" tomorrow.
That is one change that I suspect we will not see. ;)
I still have problems with disabled keywords that I can never get to run again. Even though I have deleted all other instances of the keyword in my account and created a better ad in a new campain, but it still gets disabled after 0 impressions.
This leads me to believe that the word still exists as 'disabled' somewhere in a deleted or paused Ad Group. (Avoiding this scenario is, by the way, one very good reason to delete them as soon as you see them.)
Have you thoroughly scoured the account, using the "Search my campaigns" box near the top right of Campaign Management pages?
AWA
So, I am a little sick, and my poor brain is not working as well as one might hope. But after thinking about it for a bit, I can't think of a single advantage of keeping a disabled keyword in your account.
I just reviewed my deleted keywords in some of my campaigns. Many of these keywords would have been "disabled" had I not deleted them due to Adwords statuses insisting I must. In reviewing some of these deleted keywords, the CTR's in the long run (all time), exceed many of my currently "normal" keyword's CTR's. I've just resurrected some of my deleted (could have been disabled) keywords. Some of my campaigns target two word phrases that are simply not searched for very often; uncommon illnesses might be a category where phrases occur very infrequently. As PPCBidder has mentioned in several threads these campaigns might yield 5-10 impressions per day or less, a low rate. But in the long term the CTR on these is 0.8 - 1.6, but the adwords statuses forced me to delete them. These click throughs are highly targeted, just infrequent, and they can have great value (not necessarily even monetary)!
In one campaign I currently have a keyword "on hold" with a 1.3% CTR for all time, 4.8% last seven days. Basically this month with 76 impressions I got 2 clicks on Nov. 6th (To quote Bart Simpson "I didn't do it"). This is completely normal random statistical behavior. Why did this go "on hold"?
This is all indicative adwords is making decisions based an insufficient sample size, making low volume advertising very difficult, also making many advertisers throw out potentially very good keywords that might not get any clicks for 10 days, but on the tenth day, 10% CTR! Again normal and expected random behavior, not even touching on chaos theory.
I'm sure adwords is trying to avoid the scenario where an account just throws in thousands of keywords to get many impressions hoping for that stray click, but the strategy to date seems to be killing legitimate campaigns.
Well, enough rambling.
As it is now, some ads get judged on 10 impressions or even less, even though statistically the ad could easily still go as high as 10% CTR.
ANY ad is unlikely to get a click on a mere 10 impressions.
Furthermore, if a 0.5% CTR is considered OK, how can you justify disabling any ad before it gets at least 200 impressions?! Whether those impressions come over the span of minutes or days shouldn't matter. The system is very flawed.
I shouldn't have to delete these KW's with 3%+ lifetime CTR in the first place!
I have had disabled keywords re-activate themselves accidentally when I add a new ad to the adgroup. Yep, I was surprised to see zombie keywords racking up $1.50 clicks even during disabled status!
This was a few weeks ago, before strong/moderate/atrisk/disabled changed to normal/intrial/onhold/disabled. Not sure if they have corrected it or not.
I also have a hunch that the disabled keywords may influence the content pages your ads run on, but can't prove it.
