Has Google misunderstood my content?

[James Taylor]

I started an Adwords campaign for a particular service our company offers which ran over Christmas. Having reviewed it this week, the ads haven't performed quite as well as we predicted (actually at all).

Checking the Auction Insights report doesn't show our competitors (as expected) but a list of companies that offer a service which is a homonym of our main keyword. It is (hopefully) very obvious from our landing page the service we offer (B2B, nothing remotely shady). This would make sense why the bounce rate and average time on page for Adwords traffic is so poor (especially when compared to organic traffic).

For most of our keywords the quality score, ad relevance and landing page experience are low/below average.

I added negative keywords (including for the unwanted homonyn) at the start of the campaign.

Could Google have misunderstood my content? (I appreciate that the opposite is quite possibly true and that my ad copy and landing page really are just poor.)

[JonathanEdmonton]

Google by default runs your campaign using "broad match" keywords. Which lets your ads to show for a big range of "related" keywords or "similar" keywords. Check your "search term" report to see what searches are showing your ad. Use "modified broad match" keywords. It allows to get less clicks but to get more targeted traffic. Good luck.

[wordstream.com...]

[James Taylor]

Thanks, I've added a few modified broad match keywords, keeping the original broad match keyword but reducing the bid. But, what if the keywords that are used are *exactly* the same but have different meaning in different industries? It's difficult to illustrate without giving the exact keyword (which I understand is against forum T&C's?).