So, I am getting more confused by the day! I no longer have the faintest idea what Google are playing at. Can anyone explain the following; 1. What does "accelerated" display mean? I had assumed it meant that your ad would be entered for every auction triggered by one of your keywords. Since I am bidding to appear in the top 10 (on average) out of c.500 sponsored links why does my ad so rarely appear? 2. What is the point of "phrase match"? I have just had a click for the search term "dessigner(sic) 'widget' ". I do not bid for that term at all. The ad displayed is connected to a "phrase match" key-term "silver 'widget' " that I do bid on (N.B. I do not bid on broad match for this.) I understand that Google operate an expanded broad match policy but was not aware it extended to phrase match as well. 3. I was under the impression Google only showed one ad per query for any particular URL (unless there are so few competitors they will repeat them from page to page.) So, how do advertisers get their ads shown repeatedly (in one instance 19 pages in a row) when there are 400+ sponsored links? The sponsored link results that google are returning for queries are becoming more and more bizarre and chances of being shown for any of your keywords is becoming more of a lottery every day. e.g. I search google.co.uk for "pages from the UK" for the term 'silver jewellery'. In the first 3 pages Google showed an ad for "The Brooklyn Museum", an ad for a nature reserve in New Hampshire, an ad for a site selling woven table mats from East Africa, an ad for a site selling textile goods in aid of a charity in Somalia, an ad for an antique shop selling 'silver hollow-ware' and an ad for a gold bullion dealer in New York! So, please can someone tell me what the **** is going on?
hi Bjewelled, I've got a lot of experience using Adwords, but I still find things that are a bit of a mystery or shouldn't really be happening - the only thing I can say is don't stress about it and keep in contact with your google rep as generally they're quite helpful 1. Accelerated means Google shows your ads at an accelerated rate - it doesn't mean that it will show your ad every time, just more times than if the Campaign was set to Rotate... (your ad will pretty much never show for every search unless the search term is very uncompetitive). 2. I don't know why your KW was triggered in this instance for the phrase match, it would have triggered if the user had typed "dessigner silver widget" (but I'm guessing form your post that this isn't the case?). I'd speak to your Google rep about this as this shouldn't be happening - I haven't heard about any expanded phrase matching either, but it wouldn't surprise me. (Thanks for the heads up on this though - I'll check our account too) 3. I was under this impression too, but if you're seeing this then Google may well have tweaked their policies. [/quote]The sponsored link results that google are returning for queries are becoming more and more bizarre and chances of being shown for any of your keywords is becoming more of a lottery every day. e.g. I search google.co.uk for "pages from the UK" for the term 'silver jewellery'. In the first 3 pages Google showed an ad for "The Brooklyn Museum", an ad for a nature reserve in New Hampshire, an ad for a site selling woven table mats from East Africa, an ad for a site selling textile goods in aid of a charity in Somalia, an ad for an antique shop selling 'silver hollow-ware' and an ad for a gold bullion dealer in New York! [/quote] These are yet more examples of Google's expanded broad match - it's a complete con in my opinion, but they are able to justify it by saying it will get you more clicks (whether these are relevant or not doesn't seem to matter to Google at all these days) and by giving you the choice not to use it. I've seen my phrases come up under stupid, irrelevant search terms too and it just seems to be getting worse. I found this article: http://www.roirevolution.com/blog/2008/03/google_analytics_keyword_sleuth_vs_search_query_pe.html I've started using this to refine down my broad matches by getting the exact terms which trigger them and inserting these as exact matches (the ones I want anyway) - I'm then gradually going to start getting rid of my broad matches entirely. Have you separated your broad matches into a different ad group / campaign, or are they in the same ad group as your exact / phrase matches? Try taking your broads out and inserting them into their own campaigns, and then using your exact / phrase matches as negative keywords in these broad match campaigns - you'll get a better overall idea of how your broads are performing and if they're actually profitable or not without being triggered by your exact / phrases...
Great questions. I wish I understood the repeat results too. Maybe they get redirects? Accelerated, I believe is when they try to spend your budget as quickly as possible.
That is what I thought and assumed it meant they would show you for every search until your budget was exhausted. Hmm! I wonder what criteria they use to determine whether you are shown or not? Me neither but the good news is that 12 hours later I still have not been charged for the click! I suppose so. It kind of pisses me off, though, when Google make such a big deal about relevance and providing a better search experience and other such B/S and then go and do things like this. For the given example, silver jewellery, the "more sponsored links" tab lists 400+ ads the first 98 of which have the query term in the title of the ad so I really do not understand what Google are doing. (incidentally, the errant ads did not show in the "more sponsored links" - another mystery!) Yes, clicks you probably do not want but more revenue for G. Still, it does not really make much sense from that point of view, either. Thanks for the advice but, yes, my account is already set up that way.
In response to your previous thread and some of the matters you brought up here, you have to realise that although Google ranks ads by relevance, they are also driven by money. If my budget is only $10.00 per day and I spend my full budget then my ad will no longer show on that day. If the other 390/400 ads have spent their budget, then of course some ads will show 2, 3, 4 times etc. I don't think that the algorithm is necessarily the issue. Google is capable of estimating search traffic for particular terms and the chances of you getting a click. Therefore if you choose to spend your budget evenly over the day, they will not always show, as Google is trying to make your ad last the entire day. Thus if you want to ensure you spend your full budget (or at least try to) you would select accelerated. As for "phrase match", your ad would show if someone typed your phrase in that order with other words around it. Eg the phrase "red football" would show your ad if someone typed 'buy red football' but would not show if someone typed 'buy football that is red'. For a broad match that second example would work. For an exact match, neither would work, but only if someone typed the query exactly as you did. As for one ad per query, I think that means that they will only show one of your ads per query, as opposed to showing a few of your ads. That means that your one ad may repeat across pages, but you won't find three different variations of your ad across pages or even on the same page. Lastly, you have the choice to advertise to different regions. Even though I'm in Australia, I can advertise to people in the UK. The only way to prevent that is if you type in 'UK' into your search, as the Brooklyn Museum is probably not going to be relevant to the term UK unless they have embedded it somewhere into their landing page...
Just to add to the OP's point about phrase match not being phrase match, I would also like to add another issue into the mix. I have noticed that adwords ignores some of my negative keywords. Try it, have a look at the search queries from your server logs and compare with your negative keywords - you might be shocked.
Good idea. Otherwise I think there would be no way to expect to figure out the triggers. Some of those are pretty far fetched. !
Yes, but that still does not explain how often! If it is not every time your keyword is searched then what criteria are Google using to decide when to show your ad? If you have no say over it then it is a lottery. Grumio, True, but if that were the case why would all 400+ show when you search only "sponsored links"? All my campaigns are "accelerated" and all were within budget when I did the tests. I understand perfectly well how phrase matching is supposed to work. The point is that Google matched a search query to a completely different phrase match keyword - the advert shown should only be triggered by certain phrase or exact match keywords. If they had matched it to one of my many, related, (cheaper!!!) broad match keywords that would, with "expanded broad match", have made some sense; but, they did not! Once again, the implication is that when and why your ads get shown is a complete lottery. I searched specifically on "pages from the UK". Normally this returns a set of results very tightly focused on the UK market irrespective of where they originate (i.e. they can be hosted on servers anywhere in the world) In the past it was very unusual to get such extraneous results. Furthermore, although I only search for pages in English I am now starting to see adverts in other languages creeping into the results! So, what have Google changed? I have no problem agreeing with you there! Still, accepting that makes some of the results even more unfathomable.
Interesting! In what view were you seeing these results - i.e. just through the normal SERPs or via the "more sponsored links" link under the first set of sponsored results? If it was the more sponsored links section this has completely different behaviour to the normal AdWords search results - and you don't get charged for clicks on them (this may well change in the future). Check out More sponsored links explained for the full picture - just so you know that is my blog posting. These adverts can be shown even if a daily budget is completed and may show seemingly irrelevant adverts.
Also - my thoughts on accelerated/standard delivery options: Basically if you choose accelerated your advert will be shown for every relevant search until your daily budget is depleted. If you choose standard Google will try to space out your advert delivery across the whole day (while also trying to spend your full budget). If you're on a low budget then standard can be useful but the best option would be to identify the best performing times of the day and use day parting to manually show adverts at those times rather than relying on Google to space the adverts out. https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=37611&ctx=tltp
Squarecat, Thanks, that is very interesting info about the "more sponsored links". Helps explain what is going on there to some extent. Something I had not researched just assumed - that they were linked to budget, etc. The erratic results were in the SERPs pages and did not show up in the "more sponsored links". My experience of the "more sponsored links" listings is that they are generally very stable - seem to be usually the same ads in the same order. Re. accelerated, see the article linked in my new thread "Eyes wide shut!" It seems, unless you are one of 'the chosen', there is nothing you can do to get shown for all searches.
@bjewelled Yea - I read the article you mentioned. Would like to see a little more of the data that backs the article up but an interesting point anyway.