AdWords Broad Match Reaching Across Languages

Reaching too far IMHO

[buckworks]

This morning I was on patrol in AdWords and spotted an instance of broad match where the search term wasn't even in English. It was an Asian language I can't read so i can't even guess whether it was an on-target match.

It was an expensive click. I was not amused, considering that the campaign was set to operate only in English. If broad match is going to reach across languages, all my strategies for using broad match with negative keywords go out the window.

Has anyone else seen this?

[keyplyr]

No and I assume it's (one of the many) glitches in Adwords, like putting my ad 3x on a page (grrr...)

[ppc_uk]

This does happen from time to time. I suspect that it occurs when the user is using a duel language configuration.

You can also try putting the foreign language keyword into Google into Google translate. Maybe it will relevant and that would at least alleviate some concerns.

[buckworks]

Good idea about Translate.

I saw this again yesterday. This time the foreign query was in French which I could at least read. It was relevant, although I wouldn't call it tightly targeted.

[RhinoFish]

From the Halls of Montezuma,
To the Shores of Broadmatchland;
We will fight our country's click battles,
In the air, on land, and sea;

[ogletree]

I never use broad match. Modified is the way to go. Broad is just a huge waste of money. Don't even get me started about Bing. Broad match in Bing is straight up robbery.

[buckworks]

>> Modified is the way to go.

I agree with that. I use modified broad match a lot, and also phrase match, but sometimes straight broad match is part of my mix too.

Either way, I depend on having a strong set of negative keywords. But I don't have negatives for any language other than English. I'll be working on that!

[RhinoFish]

Mod Broad, she's my best friend.
Very cool chick.
Sometimes, I'll let her be a little wild, like...
+Blue +Cotton +Candy Store (No + on the word store)
You know, let her let her hair down a bit.

[ogletree]

I have been hammered by Bing a few times when I moved an account over from AW. Sometimes I create a single word that is normal borad match that is the root of my domain without www or .com. The term brings in almost no traffic with AW but Bing went nuts with it and in one case cost me a few thousand. I got them to give me back some of it but in my opinion that was criminal.

Be very careful moving over to Bing.

[buckworks]

Ogletree, thank you for that cautionary note. Your hard-won wisdom may save someone else's bacon, maybe starting with mine!

It has been a while since I moved an AdWords campaign to Bing but I have one right now that I want to start in Bing. Your comments have me thinking it might be wiser to build from scratch in Bing rather than just importing from AdWords. Any thoughts on that?

Rhinofish, I especially like using mod broad in conjunction with dynamic keyword insertion. It's easier than phrase match to make sure that DKI ads hang together grammatically.

[ogletree]

Other than the broad match thing I have had no problems moving stuff over.

One small thing I ran into was I had an AdWords campaign that was set to CPA bid and Bing converted it to manual bidding.