We initially noticed the drop in CTR after making changes to the copy for the ads in question. While I expect there to be some minor fluctuations after tweaking the copy, I don't expect to see CTR to fall off a cliff (no other changes were made).
Generally, if your pricing, position, and competition remain steady, one would expect CTR to hold (give or take a few percentage points). In this case, though, CTR has fallen by over half (in a few cases from 20% to 5%) without any change to max bid or position. In a few cases, the position actually improved marginally.
My gut tells me that one of two things occurred around Sept 14th:
1) Google made a change to their Adwords algorithm
2) All of the history on these ads was lost which means we've had to start over
Your thoughts are appreciated.
In my case, I think it's also the fact that competitors' ads have been running using trademarks they're not supposed to be using, and I can't get Google to do anything about it. ("We'll investigate"..."we're investigating"... but two weeks later, still no action.)
I think we need an Adwords Customers' Bill of Rights and an ombudsman (although he'd be flooded with complaints).
Never change ad text. Create a new ad and wait for it to get into proper position. Make sure it is approved (check Ask.com, AOL, etc. to see if it is showing up there). Then delete your old ad if the new one is considerably better.
Creating new ads on an established campaign is rarely a pleasant process. Best to get all that testing out of the way as early as possible.
When I first noticed it I was thinking it had to do with the present state of affairs. My product is closely tied to the petrolium industry in the US and we've been seeing crazy fluctuations across the board. :-(
-Dr.X
I'm dyin over here!
I can't figure it out!
I've seen a drop from 8% CTR to 0.8% CTR!
-Dr.X
Sorry but I don't subscribe to the "Never Change" theory. Experience tells me otherwise.
To illustrate my point, we made similar changes to ad copy back in March. After the changes CTR dropped slightly by a few percent and then picked up over the coming weeks.
Before changes to ad copy in March:
CTR: 9.30%
CPC: $0.38
Position 2.8
After changes in March:
CTR: 7.40%
CPC: $0.37
Position 2.8
As you can see there is nothing really to get too worried about.
Now compare these with silimar changes to ad copy for the same ads this month.
Before changes in ad copy (prior to Sept 14):
CTR: 13.80%
CPC: $0.43
Position 3.0
After changes (Sept 15 to present):
CTR: 5.40%
CPC: $0.48
Position 2.7
Note: Only one line of the ad copy was changed. There were no changes to bid price, position, Title or URL.
This is not the worst example. We saw the CTR for one ad with only a handful of advertisers drop from 21.8% to 2.9%.
Before changes:
CTR: 21.80%
CPC: $0.09
Position 1.7
After changes:
CTR: 2.90%
CPC: $0.26
Position 1.5
Note: In this case the bid price was also increased to increase the CTR.
Now even if we lost all our history for these ads, drops in CTR of this magnitude are bewildering, especially when you consider that the average position did not change.
Now that the ads have been reviewed CTR is already improving.
AWA, it would have been nice to recieve an email that the review period was taking longer than normal (Yahoo Search has this done this in the past when they've experienced heavy volume). It would have saved more than a few hours of research and allowed us to keep the client up to date.
This is the second major issue we've had with a client's account in the past week with little or no communication from Google until we contacted them (even then we had to work to prove there was an issue).
Communication is vital.... Tom
