Hi all, Would greatly appreciate some help on this. If I have, say 3 ad groups: 1) Widget - contains: +widget, "widget", [widget] 2) Blue Widget - contains: +blue +widget, "blue widget", [blue widget] 3) Green Widget - contains: +green +widget, "green widget", [green widget] Say I bid £2 on the broad match modified '+widget' or on the phrase "widget" And I only bid £1 on the Blue Widget and Green Widget ad group keywords... Will it likely make my Ads appearing for terms like: 'buy blue widgets', 'green widgets' etc. be bid on by the 'Widget' group KWs as they have higher bids (and let's assume, a similar QS) instead of the more relevant "blue widget", +blue +widget etc? Thanks very much for any help
It may well do, depending on how the algorithm determines which has the highest ad rank. I suggest adding in negative keywords for "blue widget" and "green widget" to your Widget adgroup, and that should solve the problem entirely.
Thanks for the reply. Would you go as far as adding the word(s) that make every ad group unique to each other? E.g. in 'Blue Widgets' put -green -red etc? Cheers
Adwords always first checks for the closest match. So if I search on "buy blue widget", it first looks for an exact match in your campaign. If it doesn't find one, it then looks for a phrase match and then a broad match (modified first if any). Since in your example the closest match is the phrase match "blue widget", an ad in that group would be used. The bid and QS have nothing to do with it. Those are used for the ranking of ads. The first step is finding the closest match in your campaign. The ranking is the second step. The only time the bid and QS would come into play is if you have two or more groups that can potentially fire ads (ie: using the same keyword with same match in both groups). One of the groups would get a higher percentage of the impressions because it would outrank the other. There's nothing wrong with that but best practice is to have only one instance of a keyword in one group only.
Is this stuff written down anywhere in the help materials? I don't remember coming across it. EDIT: I'm also fairly certain it's not correct, because I've seen ads come up for a related adgroup on a phrase match, despite the existence of an exact match in a different one. In fact I was just dealing with this yesterday. It can't hurt, especially if you're using regular broad matching anywhere.
That's the way it works. There's a document somewhere about it as I recall. Now, it may not always work correctly 100% of the time. It is a complicated algorithm not to mention many data centers which have to be synchronized for every little change you make in an account. I also believe that you have to help the system along and not leave it to it's own algo. If you make things more complicated, you might get unwanted results. If you are saying that you have different match types of the same keyword in different groups, I can see where this might confuse the system. I would recommend all match variations of a keyword be in the same group.
Its also a function of budgets. Google will serve the Ad group or campaign which is most likely to maximise its revenue.
Nope, it's a shorter version of the keyword on phrase match taking precedence over the exact match version of the actual search query (eg. "blue widgets" beating out [buy blue widgets]). It's almost certainly due to the fact that "blue widgets" is more competitive, so requires a higher bid, which then means it then takes precedence over [buy blue widgets]. This isn't an isolated bug, this happens with some regularity (we do a lot of long tail work so sometimes it is easy to overlook shorter versions of matches). I have even seen broad matches take precedence over "higher" matchtypes in the past. I genuinely don't think it works like you're describing, it looks like ad rank is taken into account when choosing which keyword to serve. I'd be interested in seeing this document if you can find it.
Trust me, the priority is exact, phrase, modified broad and finally plain broad. If I ever find that reference, I'll post it. This would mean that the system first calculates ad rank on all possible eligible keywords before deciding which of your keywords to use. This would take a lot more resources than picking the keywords first (and the ad). I highly doubt Google would do that. I know I wouldn't. It's basically a two-step process: the most appropriate keyword (exact, phrase or broad) is gathered. Then, the ranking formula is applied. Your method would add a level of complexity. The algo may be affected if you put each match type in its own group. That's why I recommend not to do that, although technically there should be no difference. However, other settings may affect what you observe. Negatives are one and I've seen whole campaigns not get any impressions because of this.
I understand why you're saying it would be more efficient that way, and I agree that it would probably be sensible if you were trying to conserve resources. It just doesn't tally with my experience with how this works in practice. I'm not lying when I say I've seen this happen. I'm not putting different match types in separate groups (beyond regular groupings of different keywords in different groups, as is standard practice), negatives weren't causing keywords not to show, and I know what my keywords are and how they relate to each other. I have genuinely seen truncated phrase-match keywords overrule full exact match keywords, and the only reason I can think of that explains why this might happen is that the phrase match bids were much higher. If this method of picking a keyword first before applying ad rank is truly the way that this works, how then would you explain my experience?
Here's the link in question called When several keywords match a search query, which one is used?. I finally found it by doing a search on "adwords match priority". The highlights: "If you have a keyword that is identical to the search query, the system will prefer to use this keyword to trigger an ad." "If you have multiple keywords that are the same, the system will prefer to use the keyword with the more restrictive keyword match type." (exact is the most restrictive, followed by phrase then broad) And yes, there is a rare exception taking into account ad rank. But the algo first takes the match of the query to your keywords first. If you consistently see the behavior you mention, that may be the reason. Note it's the adrank which is bid times QS, not your bid exclusively. If I observed this, I would try to undo this behavior in some way.
Ah, so I was right after all, it's not a hard rule. What they're listing there is that the system has preferences (which no doubt influences the choice based on relevancy), but it's not a "this always takes precedence". It looks like the way they have it set up is that each of those rules applies a modifier to the basic ad rank, albeit one that will cover the majority of similar keywords provided they have relatively similar ad ranks to start with. In which case the answer to the OP is technically yes - they will compete, but you'll have to see how it comes out in the wash.
No, not a hard rule but I would say 99% hard. Even Google says "on rare occasions". So for all practical purposes, the priority is exact, phrase, broad. Which means that, for all practical purposes, what Jason is doing will not make his ad groups compete with each other. As I said, if you observe this behavior, which is not desirable, take a good look at your campaign and make appropriate changes.