hi, everyone. what determines a keyword's status of "Normal", "On Hold", "In Trial"? Is there some way to influence that as an advertiser? thanks!!
It's out of your hands, Adsense puts them "On Hold" or "In Trial" depending on the click through rate of the keyword.
What system do you use? Google Adwords? They place ads on hold or in trial when they expect that they wont make enough money with it. You can make sure to get it working again, by getting the CTR higher for it. That you can do by following the suggestions Google gives with it: - Make sure you only have related keywords (remove very bad ones to increase your general CTR, as that influences your total account) - Make sure your ads are getting clicked on (same reason) - Make sure you pay enough, as higher ranked ads, usually get more clicked on, than the bottom ones. Especially those 2 that are right above normal results. And.. Well, Google gives more feedback I think. Usually you better just drop the trial or hold ones, as they are trial or on hold for a reason! Their CTR is low?
cyclops and dirkjan, thanks for your comments and advice. Really appreciate them! I had an exact match phrase disabled with 6 clicks out of 1184 impressions, that's 0.5%. and another one was downgraded from normal to on hold with 8 clicks out of 410 impressions, 1.9%!! so i don't get it. i thought meeting 0.5% was enough to qualify as normal. then, i had one that didn't even get to try out, they put it on hold with like 50 impressions but no CTR. well, it's gotta have a chance to prove itself first, right? how can 50 impressions be enough?? i sent email to them asking for clarifications for both situations, and am just waiting for their reply. i'd appreciate any comments and/or advice. thanks!!
Google have another little trick up their sleeve which is not well known. It's not only Google that shows the ads, other search engines affiliated with Google also show them and the CTR or % that you see is from all the search engines combined. What Google do though is calculate the 0.5% on the Google search engine only. You see 1% and sleep easy but Google may only account for 0.4% so your keyword or term is deleted. When your keyword is disabled you can never get it back so keep a close eye on them, if they look like going pull them out so you can bring them back when you have it worked out. It's Googles way of ensuring everybody keeps their bids high, people drop out but their is always someone else stepping up with higher bids to keep the money flowing into Googles coffers. My advice is to cut out Content ads, use [exact match] for your keywords and use some terms up to 4/5 words long. This should improve your CTR%. People generally are putting more words into the search box as they get more comfortable searching so longer terms can do quite well. They are more focused so the conversion rate can be very high. Another idea, although it involves a bit more work is to keep the number of terms in each ad group down to around five to seven. Google seems to let them slip through when it is a small group. Another advantage to doing this is that you can write more focused ads to those keywords, and try and include the keyword in the title as well as the body text. You can use as many Ad Groups as you like in your Campaign, so 50 Ad Groups can hold over 250 keywords or terms and is much more focused than 1 Ad Group with 250 terms. I also write three ads for each Group so I can see which one does best, even changing one word can make a difference. It's a game of constantly tweaking. Bold the first letter of each word in your URL, it does make a difference. example www. OneSizeFitsAll.com is way better than www. onesizefitsall.com The eye automatically goes to the ad that is most readable especially if it contains a term they are searching for. Don't try for number one position, three to five are just as good if not better and a whole lot cheaper. Three to ten are all good, just try and get on the first page but it's not necessary to be on the top. Hope this is of some help to you.
Id disagree with you on that one. For a lot of keywords, #1 can be 10 times better than #3 because your ad is ABOVE normal results if you score right. The ones above the normal results, have often WAY better CTRates, and therefore in a while, in Adwords, might become even cheaper than #3, just because your history is good. For some keywords, #1 is just worth it. For some others, #3 is fine. But there is a huge difference between being above normal results. In a lot of partner websites, you are shown first and its not so clear that its a paid ranking... So ppl click. Also there are still many people that know that the sidelinks are paid, but dont know that the first 2 above are paid, and like to click on normal (the first 2 paid) results. Really it can be even cheaper if it has a lot of effect on CTR.
i really have made a mess of my starter account! not only do i have some important keywords disabled. i.e. i can no longer activate them even if i'm willing to pay more for a higher placement, i have another question that begs for answers: they've put me on "slow".....i think for the 2nd time now. i've already reactivated once. now all my keywords are at normal. (excluding some 2 word KWs that i really think is relevant, and should be included, but disabled.) it's being served at 96-98%, depending on when i check. is it necessary to "restore to full serve"? though when i test out the KW with my browser, (i have about 9 KW mostly in exact match), they turn up quite rarely. Separate question: my content clicks are like 4x the search clicks, should i be happy about that? how do they decide where to place my content? (i.e. how does Google determine the relevance of my web's content to whose website they place the ads? then, i suppose the logical next question is: how do they determine how much per click to charge for those?) thanks guys!!
hi cyclops, your answer to the following thread partly answers my question in the above posting. Ad Campaign For Content Network T0PS3O thanks