We had previously been running a few national campaigns for our product. After tracking the data for a few months, we decided that the conversion rate in several states was just too low to be wasting any money on. We decided to focus on states that accounted for about 60% of our traffic and had strong conversion. After splitting the campaigns into several geo-targetted campaigns that target only those states, we're seeing a massive drop in traffic. I expected that geo-targeting would miss some traffic, so maybe instead of 60% of our original traffic we'd be getting 50-55%, but we're getting maybe half that amount. Does geo-targeting really miss that much traffic or are we doing something wrong? Is there a way to exclude states from a national campaign rather than target specific states? Most of our keywords don't include a state or city term in them, so negative keywords wouldn't be sufficient.
Let me make sure I am understanding you. You've modified your current campaign so that you've un-checked United States and then selected the individual states you want traffic from, yes? In doing so, your over-all traffic has decreased. Over what span of time did the decrease occur, and is it still decreasing, or has it leveled off? I cannot see in Adwords how to not have either the US chosen or to choose individual states, so I don't believe there's a way to select the states you want only, without un-selecting the US as a whole first.
You've pretty much got it. On our end we were tracking which states were converting the best. These states also accounted for about 60% of our traffic from adwords. This was all tracked on our end, not through adwords. You are correct in that I unchecked the US as a whole, then re-selected those states we wanted to pursue. I would expect then, in a perfect system, to get about 60% as much traffic as we were getting with the whole US selected, correct? Of course, I expected to lose a little, perhaps down to 50-55% However, we're getting maybe 25-30% the amount of impressions. We've even bid up significantly in these states, and we're still seeming to miss a lot of traffic. The decrease was instant and we're not seeing it rise or fall now, it seems to be fairly steady.
How were you tracking the traffic from the individual states? Did you increase your bid amount at the same time as the change in geo-targeting, or after the decrease began?
geo targeting has many flaws in it. Mainly the fact that many companies route there IP out to different locations. Especially AOL where all the ips are routed out of virginia I believe. Also comcast and adelphia also have central hubs located in several parts of the US. So states like new york may be routed out of new jersey, leaving a potential market excluded. This all can be contributing to your traffic loss, but without examining your traffic logs myself, I cannot be certain