Keywords Disabled Due to Low Search Volume

[paladin]

Hello Everyone,
I'm working on a campaign that has a large number of low volume keywords. Each ad is targeted to the group of keywords and so is the landing page.

The problem is that these keywords are getting disabled due to low search volume.

As an example, let's say I am bidding on bar codes. So it might be something like:
item 1 barcode
item 2 barcode
item 3 barcode
.....
item 3000000 barcode
etc...

I have 2 questions that I was hoping for some help with:

1. Is there some way I can find out which keywords have enough search volume to stay enebled? (Without just putting them all in the account and seeing which gets disabled)

2. Is there some way to ask to have these ones enabled? Why are they getting disabled anyway? (that's 3 questions I know, but you get the idea)

thanks in advance for any help and tips

[netmeg]

They're getting disabled because there are not enough searches to keep them enabled. I don't know of any way to get around that.

I upload all my keywords, and then wait a few days and see which have low search volume, and then I siphon all those off to a separate ad group. Maybe searches will increase, or Google will temporarily enable them to see how they do, or the horse may talk. But they're not mixed in with my regular (well performing) keywords.

As a general rule, I like to separate things out by how they perform. Makes it easier to work on what really needs to be worked on.

[AdWordsAdvisor]

As a resource of possible interest, below I have linked-to a (short) page from the AdWords Help Center on the subject, which says a bit about the 'why' of this practice.

Keyword status: Low search volumePrint
[adwords.google.com...]

An excerpt, with bolding added by me:

[...] A keyword can have low search volume for a variety of reasons, including a lack of relevance to users' searches because of keyword obscurity, specificity, or a significant misspelling of the intended keyword. Keeping these keywords out of the ad auction helps AdWords serve ads more efficiently and reduces the volume of keywords on our system. Before stopping a keyword from joining the auction, our system evaluates the number of searches on a given keyword worldwide over the past twelve months. It takes very little search traffic for a keyword to be unsuspended, and for business practice reasons we don't disclose our keyword traffic thresholds. Our system checks and updates this status once per week. [...]

AWA

[Sujan]

AWA, problem is that this 'little search traffic' that is needed to unsuspend a keyword often is the ONLY traffic the keyword will get the next 5 months and would result in a 100% CTR for this keyword.

[RhinoFish]

the low volume thing always seems to me to be at odds with G other stated goals of high relevance and quality and consumer experience. i do understand there's a balance of resources in this decision equation at hand here, but i think it can be made better.

in the consumer's mind (and advertiser's mind), low volume generally correlates with a higher specificity - if an ad fits, it seems like it'd be a very high CTR and appreciated by both consumer and advertiser.

see the recently released study looking at position versus conversion rate, i'm confident the G crunchers look closely at things that do matter - i hope (and expect) they're looking closely at this issue.

[jkwilson78]

I think this is also a push to force advertisers into using more broad and phrase match terms.

Google can rely on their match type algos to show your ad for all these "low volume" keywords which drives more clicks and revenue without the extra strain on the system from all the keywords.

Making it all the more important to stay on top of your search query reports and build out better negative keyword lists to eliminate the junk broad match can throw your way.

Of course, do the extra keywords really cause that much problem to the system? I mean they seem to have no problem managing their massive search index so could the keywords be anymore complicated?

[Raheel]

Just increase the Keyword bid with respect to the others keywords in the ad groups will start triggering that keyword.

[paladin]

Just increase the Keyword bid with respect to the others keywords in the ad groups will start triggering that keyword.

Not sure about that. I think that would work if my bids were too low and I was getting a very high average position.

In my case, there is very little competition so I don't think the dibs are the issue.

[lucky]

How ironic.

This is against the QS system they created. Low volume keywords usually receive high click through rates. Isn't this one the most important parts of QS?

If a keyword doesn't have enough search volume, let it be. What's Google's problem with these keywords?

However, when the search volume is low for a given keyword, Google can't easily manipulate the system to make the bids higher. Because it will be difficult for them to force us to bid more when CTR of these keywords is extremely high.

[PayMePerClick]

Over the last 2 years this has been my biggest gripe with Adwords. If an advertiser wishes to go after long tail keywords that will result in extremely low CPCs and extremely high CTRs then they should not be denied this option.

The convenient excuse from Google is that their servers/systems/whatever cannot handle the massive amounts of keywords this would allow for with the ever-increasing amount of advertisers and keywords. This is convenient because this really does force certain advertisers to use broad or phrase matched short tail keywords to get their clicks (at a more expensive CPC, mind you) and then rely on the inconsistent search query report to determine the actual searches that led to clicks.

Weak.

[buckworks]

There comes a point where it makes no sense to keep adding new long-tail terms when the the ad would already be triggered by a shorter phrase within the query.

widgets
purple widgets
fuzzy purple widgets
cheap fuzzy purple widgets
buy cheap fuzzy purple widgets
buy cheap fuzzy purple widgets in winnipeg
buy cheap fuzzy purple widgets in winnipeg manitoba
buy cheap fuzzy purple widgets in winnipeg manitoba canada
buy cheap fuzzy purple widgets in winnipeg manitoba canada north america
buy cheap fuzzy purple widgets in winnipeg manitoba canada north america earth

At what point does it become reasonable for Google to say "Enough already?"

[netmeg]

At what point does it become reasonable for Google to say "Enough already?"

Exactly.

I take the low search volume stuff and separate it off into its own ad group. Leave my regular bid on it. If a few people start people are searching on it, it'll go live, right? If nobody's searching on it, it's not doing me any good in with my regular performers anyway, and it's off in its own little space. No harm no foul.

You may think "what's the big deal" when you have a half a dozen terms that are low search volume. But times that times every AdWords advertiser (I have several thousand myself over many client accounts) and it gets to be a pretty big number.

[paladin]

I see people on both sides of the fence here. I'll give an exmaple of a campiagn I ran a few years ago:

Let's say I sell a unique battery that only works for widget ABC with a barcode of 65465465564165.

It makes sence for me to bid both on:
the product name "widget ABC", "battery for widget ABC",
its barcode "65465465564165" and may be for "battery for 65465465564165".

However, with these new rules the two bids with the barcode will be disabled due to low search volme even though they are super targeted.

[PayMePerClick]

Netmeg has a point.

But will telling a client that you don't know exactly what keyword was searched that led to this conversion or that conversion suffice? "It could have been '#*$!yyy' but we had it in broad match so it really could have been any number of searches". This won't work for me. What's a good workaround?

[netmeg]

AdWords doesn't give you that information anyway.

Are you running the search query report? Do you have the filter running in Analytics that matches traffic sources to transactions?

However, with these new rules the two bids with the barcode will be disabled due to low search volme even though they are super targeted.

I'd be willing to bet these aren't "new" rules - it's just that with the new UI we're actually *seeing* them for the first time. I'm quite sure I was told at least two years ago that low search volume keywords go inactive until the search volume increases.

[netmeg]

By the way, these LSM terms do seem to bounce around. I'm looking at an ad group I created a couple weeks ago for 275 low search volume keywords, and as of right now, only 37 of 'em are still listed as low search volume. The rest are getting impressions and clicks (although some of the quality scores need improvement; probably because they're lumped in with a kind of 'catch all' ad)

[lucky]

in some of our ads, "purple widgets" is a low volume keyword.

i think "cheap fuzzy purple widgets" could be the limit for google to say "enough" because of the character limits in the ads.

[Sujan]

I am all with buckworks for keywords with >10 words.

But paladin has a good point too: This also happens with one or two words keywords. And then it just doesn't make sense and can not be triggered by other, shorter phrases.

And that's the problem I and lots of others are complaining (and wondering) about.

- Jan