If I have a low CTR for a campaign, does that adversely affect site quality, or something like that? I read on DP that you should carefully craft your keywords and ads so you can maximize the CTR. But if you have 500 keywords for an ad, even very vaguely related searches will show your ad. If nobody clicks it, fine. But if they do, they go to your site. Of course, your CTR would be very low, but so what? Traffic is traffic. Isn't it? Does Google penalize you somehow if your CTR is low? If so, what sense does that make?
High CTR is very important for adwords. Adwords work on CTR. Higher CTR, Higher the Ads will be placed. If you have not so relevant keywords, u will get unwanted impressions and no clicks and this will lower down your CTR. CTR- A CTR is obtained by dividing the number of users who clicked on an ad on a web page by the number of times the ad was delivered (impressions). For example, if your banner ad was delivered 100 times (impressions delivered) and 1 person clicked on it (clicks recorded), then the resulting CTR would be 1%.
If your CTR is too low Google can remove your ad's but the main reason people work on increasing their CTR is because it will reduce the overall CPC. If your ad is highly clicked then it's likely to be relevant to the search query which is an important factor to increasing your quality score and reducing your CPC or improving the ad's positioning.
OK, but I wasn't getting many clicks for one of my campaigns. So I went to the keyword tool (Google's keyword tool) and did a query. Then I clicked "Add all �", about 200 words (to go with the 12 or so I'd typed manually). They are all related, but some more than others. Why do they offer this feature if it would, as far as i can see, lower CTR so much for just about any campaign? The campaign is at less than 1% CTR for today. Is Google's idea that instead of adding keywords, I would work on ad and site quality?
They make more $ if you bid on more keywords, that's why. CTR is important because it's an element used to calculate your keyword's quality score.
CTR is important because that means people are clicking on your ads. What does this do? 1) Generates more revenue for Google (in most cases) 2) Let's Google know that your Ad is pretty relevant and people want to visit it. This means your keywords with high CTR are very relevant and people are clicking through quite often. This is a good thing! More business for you!
Hm, that's another thing I don't understand. Evey day, some of my good keywords suddenly become "Inactive for clicks." Google doesn't say this, mind you: I have to go use their keyword search tool, click Inactive For Click ads, then get the results page, the manually go in and decide whether to up my bid or delete the keyword. I often decide to up the bid. That's more money for Google. So why don't they have a little flag on the main page that says Warning! Some of your keywords turned shitty! It's these simple features that aren't integrated that I don't understand. I'm bending over backwards to give Google more of my money by raising my click bids; most probably don't, and probably don't realize they have bad keywords. After all, Tuesday, 100 keywords spread across several groups is ok. Wednesday, 20 of them have turned bad (which is the same as Google saying "Give us more money"). How would we know though, unless we were super-conscientous? In fact I had to ask here how to even find that list I mentioned above. It's like it's a secret! But why? It makes Google more money. OK enough ranting. I'm new to this, and I can see how quality score and CTR benefit Google (and us) ultimately, thanks. Just reshaping my brain to understand other details
Google wishes for you to achieve a CTR of 100% in an ideal world - however, that will not happen. Google make money when people click on your ads - and therefore the higher the CTR the better for them (as it means they are providing a more efficient advertising model). Although you may actually be paying less per click, with a higher CTR your total revenue spend will almost certainly be increased overall... therefore Google make more money. From a business point of view, it makes sense to 'remove' the low CTR adverts because they appear to not be of interest to visitors using Google... and they aim to provide 'relevant' results.
I've often wondered that same thing - don't be surprised to see it rolled out as a feature in the future. It could be something in the account, or, an option to get e-mailed when a certain event (like keyword deactivation) took place.
Don't get hung up on average ctr. It's a pointless number that won't help you. CTR varies from market to market and keyword to keyword. Benchmark and improve - that's the name of the game.