A major clicks decline . all else equal

[Mark_A]

Hi just hunting for ideas, a couple of months ago I hacked our bids down on the thinking that I no longer wanted to rank #1 for my keywords but was quite happy to rank #2 #3 or #4.

Things progressed ok for some weeks / month or two, but in the last 3 weeks my clicks have declined significantly. I have experimented with raising some bid amounts again but to no avail.

It is of course also half term at the moment in the UK which will have some effect. But my clicks have fallen off a cliff so I don't think school holidays can have caused such a dramatic decline.

What do you think?

[RhinoFish]

Check your quality score. Run an Auction Insights report.

[Mark_A]

Hi RhinoFish, Thanks for your thoughts, I haven't run an Auction Insights report before, will have a play with it.

[RhinoFish]

Also, if your searches are Google Shopping centric, your Search Ads can be squeezed out. Check avg position, and if it's near 3, know that you at the cliff right there. And consider if half of you theoretical clicks were above 3 and half were below 3, the ones below 3 often don't even exist, so if you avg pos is 2.8, and you're traffic is way off, IF your traffic that would be at pos 3.2 (for example) were showing there, it's stats would pull your avg pos down to 3.1. Just making the point that 2.8 can also mean that half your soldiers have fallen off the 3.00 cliff already. :-)

[Mark_A]

Hi RhinoFish, our quality scores are certainly an issue, both the quality of the ad and the landing page, I need to get more specific in both and focus the keywords in the Ads and landing pages to reflect the search terms. It seems a lot of work at the moment and I need to get more of a grip of which keywords trigger which ads, which seems less straightforward at the moment. Our adwords account has grown like topsy and it is quite hard to manage because of its size and complexity. I much prefer my bing ads account, which I set up from scratch, and I have kept much simpler.

[RhinoFish]

"I need to get more of a grip of which keywords trigger which ads"
Segmented Ad Groups are important.
:-)

Preferring Bing Ads, ha!
Go pull data for mobile and adjust the offsets, and tell me how doing that at Bing compares to AdWords.
Putting the data where the bids are, makes a huge difference in managing things.

[Mark_A]

Some of my ad relevance is less than ideal, I think because once one or a couple of ads were established we just added more keywords without realising that they diverged a little from the text on the ad.

And then there is landing page relevance, our ads are for green or brown or orange widgets and they all point to a combined widgets page. I am guessing it is a pretty simple algo - i.e. if Orange isn't strong on the page relevance is reduced.

So a bit of work to do to improve that. Some of my clicks are returning a little but it still isn't like it was.

[Mark_A]

To update the thread. I created some more focused ad groups and moved the relevant keywords over, then I investigated more broad match modifier key words and the account is back to doing what it is supposed to.

[RhinoFish]

Tighter is better.

[Mark_A]

Hi Rhinofish, I agree tight is good, I over exact matched it so we were getting hardly any impressions so I have relaxed a little. I check every morning so I can usually catch if things are too slack.

[RhinoFish]

I like to use an array of [Exact], "Phrase", and +Mod +Broad, sometimes tiering the bids, and always using a lot of Negs.
Every great once in a while, on the Positive Keyword side, I'll have the occasion to use regular Broad, but I'm not very attracted to regular broads, I prefer mine to be more selective.

[Mark_A]

Yes, I have gone slightly too far with broad match modifier, it is netting some search terms which are not desirable.

[RhinoFish]

(to the tune of Michael Jackson's Beat It...)
Just neg it, neg it, neg it, neg it
No one wants to be defeated
Showin' how funky and strong is your fight
It doesn't matter who's wrong or right
Just neg it, neg it
Just neg it, neg it
Just neg it, neg it
Just neg it, neg it

[tangor]

Groan! (you should be proud of yourself!)