Adwords Difficulties -- Is it just me?

Slowing Ads without reason

[affnewbie]

Every 8-10 hours or so, one of my well performing ads appears less and stops appearing for the most well performing keyword. There is nothing in the account indicating any reasons/red flags. When I test the ad diagnostic tool, it says "Your ad is slowed..." and then goes into the CTR babble.

The CTR on this keyword has always been atleast .8% or higher. The bid is very high and the budget is very generous. And...sometimes it starts running again. So something is messed up..

I emailed google 3 times, but have no response yet.

Anyone else seeing these types of occurences? Any advice from senior members?

[wayne]

Are your ads showing on the search network also? You
say your ad is always at least .8% clickthru rate. But
the stats show the CTR for Google and the search
network combined, but you need to have at least a
.5% CTR on Google alone. So even though your stats are
showing .8% CTR, if you are advertising on the search
network also, it is possible that your CTR on Google
alone could be below .5% CTR, which would be causing
your ads to be slowed.

[affnewbie]

Wayne,

Do you mean to say content network? Just to clarify...mine are ONLY set up for Search which I belive is what Google really looks at. Correct?

[ned911]

If we increase the bid amount does that have any effect on slowed kw's. I've noticed this as well without Adwords marking any KWs as slowed (on trial, etc).

[affnewbie]

Increasing bids certainly hasn't done much for me.

[AdWordsAdvisor]

Do you mean to say content network? Just to clarify...mine are ONLY set up for Search which I belive is what Google really looks at. Correct?

Not quite correct, affnewbie. By way of clarification, here are the 'serving options'. Note that in each case, your ads always show on Google.

* Google only (This is where the CTR the relates to keywords status is measured.)

* Google plus Search partners

* Google plus Content partners

* Google plus Search and Content partners

The CTR on this keyword has always been atleast .8% or higher. The bid is very high and the budget is very generous. And...sometimes it starts running again. So something is messed up..

It sounds as if the keyword is on the borderline. A CTR of .8% is less than half of average, and may be still less on Google alone, as mentioned by wayne. And also, please note that 'slowed' does not mean that it is stopped entirely. So that keyword will still show your ad from time to time.

How to improve things? Well, you may want to consider making they keyword more specific to what you actually have to offer, by adding additional words. So if you sell left handed gizmos, and your keyword is 'gizmo', then 'left handed gizmo' will almost certainly get you a better CTR.

Also, you will probably want to 'protect' your keywords by creating a well chosen list of negative keywords.

AWA

[Karmatar]

I'd also look at your ad copy. I was able to double the click through rate on my campaign by reworking the ad text and titles.

[whoisgregg]

Could this simply be the campaign bumping against the daily budget causing the ads to be interspersed throughout the day?

[patient2all]

I emailed google 3 times, but have no response yet.

You need to be patient when you email Google. There's about a month lag time now between question and answer. A simple question asked Dec. 17th 2004 got a response today.

patient2all

[edit_g]

A CTR of .8% is less than half of average

So does that mean that the overall average CTR on Adwords is 1.7% or 1.8%?

[whoisgregg]

There's about a month lag time now between question and answer

This is actually not normal. I've corresponded with Google Adsense, Google Adwords, and Google QA in the last 30 days and each time received the actual personal responses in 24-36 hours. (And I always get an automated "We got your email" message within an hour or two.)