The client is a publisher and the account has been running since April last year. Many keywords are landing on the wrong articles, articles are mixed up with other articles, some articles are missing from the promotion, which require keywords from existing adgroups...so on and so on, a right mess.
My question is would it be best to start a fresh or soldier on to maintain the adgroups that already exist to protect their history.
Google would have you believe that the history of an adgroup carries a lot of weight in ranking but in the battlefield is this really true.
What is everyone's experience.
Do I go for a fresh start or work out how to adapt the current adgroups and add new adgroups where required.
It's definitely the case that adgroup CTR history exists, and if you move keywords around you destroy that history in part if not in entirety. That said, whether or not you go ahead with the extent of the changes you're contemplating, IMO, depends on whether the adgroup history in question is good or bad history. Those are very subjective terms, but you have to ask yourself if you're happy or unhappy with to-date CTR.
-Shorebreak
but in the battlefield is this really true
in my experience yes. If you start again in a new campaign you will have to pay more upfront to recover your previous position. But that may be worthwhile if its going to bring benefits in terms of organisation and maintenance.
I split some keywords out of a long-standing ad group today, into a brand new ad group in the same campaign. My initial cpc doubled for roughly the same ad position, in a competitive market. Im just accepting the hit to organise my keywords and tracking better.
My experience has been that it only takes a few days for an ad with a cheapskate bid but a strong CTR to start moving up in the ranks, so if your ads and your targeting are better with the new ad groups it won't take long for them to start taking over from the old ads. You'll be better off from then on.
