We have 1 Adwords account with 2 campaigns (1 Local and 1 Regional) for our small, local service business. Each campaign pretty much has identical ad-groups, same ad copy and MOSTLY the same keywords. We set it up this way for 2 reasons 1. A couple seasoned experts here suggested it. 2. As I understand it, Google visitors HAVE to search the Local area to see any Local Ads, but either Local OR Regional Ads will show up in a "main page" Google search (which MOST people use). After careful monitoring over the last 6 mos., I've noticed that often the SAME Ad-Group, keyword and/or even identical ad is showing as "clicked" in the local AND regional, even though it may have been only clicked once (which means we are paying 2x's). I tried it myself using a keyword that's in both campaigns, doing a Local only search, seeing Ad and clicking it. But did NOT do it in a Google "main page" search. When I checked back in my campaign summary a couple hours later after it was recorded, sure enough, there's the ad-group and same exact Ad (or a similar Ad) that has same keyword attached to it. We do not get enough hits per day to say this could be purely co-incidental due to a large proportion of hits. I suppose if a visitor did BOTH a "main page" search AND a Local search, they could see and click a similar/same Ad, since they most likely would use the same keyword for search. But, it doesn't seem likely that a visitor would do a main page search, see and click an ad, then do a Local search and see and click the exact same ad again. Now, this doesn't happen EVERY time, but I would say it does happen at least 30-40% of the time. Also, the results sometimes do not show this during the very next update, but will at some point before the end of the day. My questions are, is this even possible? If so, why? Is it how I have my campaigns structured? Since we don't have "Conversion Tracking" activated yet, would it help when we turn it on to explain/confirm this? Thanks for any advice! Mark @ tclcorp.
