Does it hurt your campaign to create a bunch of different ad groups for that campaign or does it help the campaign.
Welcome to WebmasterWorld, rlbybee!
The answer to your question, really, is "It depends". ;)
Ad Groups have a particular purpose, and the number of Ad Groups that is 'right' for a campaign depends entirely on what you are advertising in the campaign.
An 'Ad Group' consists of a keyword list, and the ad that appears when one of the keywords is searched on. Ideally, you will create very targeted Ad Groups which consist of a list of keywords which are all about one thing that you have to offer, and an ad about exactly that same thing.
So, if you are selling exactly one thing, then maybe you'll only need one Ad Group.
On the other hand, if you're selling a wide range of things, then you'd probably benefit from creating a unique Ad Group for each of these things.
Let's say, for example, you are selling 'widgets', and that you offer quite a variety. You have used widgets, new widgets at retail, new widgets at wholesale, off-the-shelf widgets, custom made widgets, widgets for humans, widgets for dogs, and widgets for birds.
You could advertise all of these different widgets in one Ad Group in one Campaign, but this would give you moderate success at best. This is because someone looking for 'bird widgets' might see an ad more about 'wholesale widgets', and would think you don't have what they're looking for.
You'd almost certainly get better results if you were to create a unique Ad Group or each type of widget. This allows you to show an ad about bird widgets to the person who is looking for 'bird widgets' - and an ad about wholesale widgets to the person who is looking for 'wholesale widgets'.
I hope that clarifies things a bit.
AWA
