I have several ads for different makes of widgets and I've pausing some ad groups.
But I noticed something strange happening (fictitious keywords):
I paused my used hp laptops ad group but if I search for used hp laptops I get ads for used compaq laptops
The amazing thing is that these are related because hp is or was related to compaq.
This is happening to a number of makes and models of widgets.
Anyway I don't want the ads to be served! Any ideas about this?
It sounds like you are a victim of expanded broad matching. This can happen to any broad keyword, like it or not!
Google decides the 2 brands are likely synomyms and will show on either.
There are 2 ways around this:
1) use no broad match keywords (which isn't really practical, IMHO)
2) use negative keywords at the Adgroup level:
-hp
etc, as part of your keyword list. You may have to include some additional variations to ensure you don't show for all the possibilities you don't sell
-hewlett
etc.
Israel
And I must disagree with Google on this one. How come they know better than me what keywords to bid?....
We've found in real estate, if you advertise on state real estate, your ad may show for a whole bunch of specific regions where you don't have real estate for sale.
If you advertise for city real estate, your ad may show when someone searches for a nearby city where you don't have any real estate.
The old broad match was soooooooooooo much better where all the words in the phase on which you were advertising had to be in the phrase the person typed in.
Broad matching out to far just makes more ads show, brings down CTR and cost advertisers more money. If you have business in a bunch of different states, it gets rediculous trying to get your ads to show only where you actually have businesses operating but it's also an opportunity since everyone has to deal with it and if you can, you'll probably do better than your competitors.
Going to work on those negative keywords now.
Thks everyone!
Looking at my logs, I couldn't begin to put in all the needed negative keywords to exclude what people search on. Half the stuff I never dreamed existed, let alone anyone wanting to search for it!
And I thought I had "been around the block".
Israel
