Now I know that it's not my budget - because my budget is way way over what I really use. I've contacted a rep about it, but the only answer I've received is that it may be a server pause. What does this mean? Would it cause only MY ads to stop running?
Is anyone else running into these type of problems?
Sometimes some of my campaigns suddenly seem to be coming to a standstill; no impressions for a day and sometimes longer. After I while I get impressions again. It is annoying but it appears to be just the way Adwords works. Of course there could be "logical" explanations. Imagine you offer a rather low cpc. When your competitors change their cpc to a level much higher than yours, it should be possible that your ads are not served anymore, I guess. An other possibility is that you are using "unwanted" keywords. I was trying to run a certain campaign about a week ago and noticed it didn't generate any impressions on the first day. When I looked at my list of keywords I saw the keyword tool had suggested a couple of rather explicit keywords that I accidentally included on the keyword list. After removing those keywords the ads started showing up in 15 minutes. Just trying to say, there could be many reasons for campaigns not running, besides all kinds of errors at the Google-plex of course...
None of them are showing up - even when I go to google.uk
The "Inactive for Search" I can deal with. I have no way of knowing which of these "Active" words are not showing.
I can't even find a correlation between historical CTR and this message. Some affected words never got an impression ever, others have CTRs above 5%.
Fortunately it's not a big problem for me, but it is still annoying. I preferred the old "Hold" status over this mystery.
Israel
My long-established accounts are behaving fine (which is a good thing because the daily spend is four figures lately), but a new account, opened earlier this month, is behaving abnormally. Over the last ten days it has been on and off intermittently, and on seven out of the last ten days delivered zero impressions even though everything is active, nothing is paused, and the daily budget is hundreds of dollars.
I've received charming but useless answers from Adwords support, and the account remains stalled. I haven't had ANY answers since last week. Twice they said it had been paused "for review", but I flatly don't believe that anymore.
The diagnostic tool returns answers that are clearly false, including one that says the daily budget has been used up (even though we're unable to spend a cent!) and another that ads aren't showing because of a non-familysafe filter. Adwords support assures me there's nothing to flag the account as adult content, yet that error comes and goes.
This is a client with deep pockets who would be prepared to spend thousands per day if Adwords proved productive, but something is clearly wrong, we can't get answers, and we can't get any ads to show on either the search or the content network.
Adwords, I dislike Overture but you're driving me into their arms.
I hope they clear this up soon - it would be in their best interest. I've already spent well over 5 figures this month alone - This is what they are loosing by not fixing this problem. And I know that I'm not the only one. I've been on many other boards where others are running into the same problem.
Another day of profits down the drain.
I am NOT a happy camper.
"Ad not shown ¦ Reason: The clickthrough rate (CTR) for this keyword does not meet the minimum performance requirement."
All keywords are showing as active.
You no doubt share my question: How do these differ from "Inactive for Search"?
Are the bids too low to be on Content as well? Which many of us avoid anyway.
Some clearer distinction needs to be made. These keywords that you only learn about through the 'Diagnostics Tool' are especially irksome being that their problem is hidden.
Plus many of them were good performers and don't appear to deserve any limitations.
Some portions of AdWords don't appear to be working as intended. I often wonder how we'd fare if everything did work as Google planned, better or worse!
Israel
Some portions of AdWords don't appear to be working as intended
You're certainly right about that.
The problems I'm experiencing are only happening to a new account (set up on January 8). Other, older accounts are ticking along just fine but the new account has days and days of zero impressions.
The client is not impressed.
Note to self - don't make any changes on the weekend.
I think that I've read that here before, but I guess I'm one to learn the hard way.
My client's ads started running again this afternoon. I got a phone call from Google and the gal said there had been "a technical issue". She wouldn't give any details when I asked, but said she's confident that the problem was fixed.
That makes the third time in just a few days I've been assured that all is well ... I hope it holds this time!
I notice things are going to be down for "system maintenance" later in the week. Hmmm ...
I just pulled a campaign out of moth balls which has around 700 keywords of which 11 are OK and the remaining get a:
"Ad not shown ¦ Reason: The clickthrough rate (CTR) for this keyword does not meet the minimum performance requirement."All keywords are showing as active.
Still no change
This change flagged your account for review.
This is why your ads were not showing. In the future, if possible, you may want to make edits to your account during the week"
Uh, uh, Venrooy.
I make plenty of weekend changes and add AdGroups, etc. I know they won't show anywhere except Google.com until review and see that happen. In some cases, if the keywords are of a sensitive nature (which encompasses a lot), the ad won't show at all until review.
However, I've never seen my campaign stop because of a change.
In your case, was the change something that could be taken as extremely controversial (white supremacy!) or a violation of TOS?
Israel
I do have some keywords that have copyright problems if used outside of the U.S. but I have created seperate campaigns for those.
I personally think there are some other problems going on here that google is not letting on about. Because every explanation they have given so far has not made sense. And after every explanation they say that my account is fixed - only to have it go down again the next day or later in the same day.
I strongly suspect that the service reps on the front line aren't being told enough that they can distinguish between ordinary problems and what's happening in cases like this that are clearly NOT ordinary.
Sigh ...
