Yet another interesting AdWords Issue that I have run into…
I have been re-working an account recently brought to me and encountered an issue which has me deeply concerned.
I have come to notice that many keywords, really great, relevant, exact match keywords are not being served with the following message.
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“This particular search term is already associated with an ad from one of your other campaigns or ad groups. Only one ad per advertiser may appear on a given page per search term. When two or more of your ads are eligible for a single search term, we show the one with the highest ranking at the moment.”
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As you can see the keywords shown in the screenshot above are “phrase” and [exact match]. The keywords DO NOT appear anywhere else in this account – no other campaigns or ad groups.
I started the troubleshooting process by adding negative keywords to ad groups. For example in the DUI defense Attorney ad group I added negatives for -lawyer – dwi, etc. It had no effect. I then added many exact match negative keywords i.e. -[dui defense lawyer], etc. still no effect. I next went with only [exact match] keywords in the two adgroups that gave me the most trouble, the problem persisted.
I contacted Google and bounced it off a couple of people and received a reply referencing this page in the help center.http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66292
This page explains how keywords will be treated when they fall into three different types of criteria:
1. the same keywords in multiple adgroups
2. Similar keywords to the search query within the same adgroup
3. Similar keywords to the search query within multiple adgroups.
I am fine with the details on #1. I am concerned about details on #2 and #3.
Here is a screenshot of details on #2
Within the same ad group, multiple keywords are similar to the search query.
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So now an [exact match] keyword can be trumped by another ‘similar, better performing or cheaper’ keyword? According to Google, Yes.
Then it keeps gets better…..
Here is a screenshot of details on #2
Keywords within multiple ad groups are similar to the search query
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I am concerned about what I am reading. If Google feels that the keyword is close enough, cheaper, or has a higher ad rank they will trump an exact match keyword to serve a different keyword from a different adgrop they deem better? That takes my control away.
How can I accrue CTR data to improve the account performance if Google will not serve keywords that exactly match a query because they like a price or adrank of another keyword? This also allows for the potential of the wrong ad text being served. What if I have specific landing pages set per keyword? How does that effect CTR? Ultimately, what if Iwas OK with spending more on the keyword because it converted better? Quality Score and CTR are not everything when it comes to PPC advertising. Sometimes keywords that are not your best ‘quality score’ performers are your best converting keywords what provide the best ROI.
Even with adding negatives and going with exact match only in specific groups I ultimately was never able to identify the ‘other keyword’ that was trumping my exact match keyword. I had to pause the campaign and slowly add back adgroups and keywords, watching all the time for the dreaded message. The account is a smaller version of its previous self which is fine because I am in the process of recovering the account CTR but I do get a little nervous anytime I add a new keyword.
Is there a ‘fix’ for this? Not that I am aware of…
Is this something that is being tested on limited accounts or is there the potential for this to happen on any account? I am currently seeking a comment from Google and will post here if/when I get a reply.
For the record I have only seen this happen in one client account. However I am starting to hear some talk in other places such as the AdWords Help Forum on the topic so I feel the blog post is warranted.
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 Article by: +Kim Clinkunbroomer Clinks Web Service a Google AdWords Partner Company Subscribe: RSS Feeds | Follow me on Twitter |
Kim, if you can’t solve this client’s AdWorse, I’m convinced nobody can — except Google..I believe the AdWords team should go out of its way to support its clients as needed — esp. for those that have spent mucho bucks with them.
Fantastic post and research. The problem you’ve documented is AdWords apply algorithmic logic (AdRank trumps all) above advertiser logic (I want to match this query to this keyword and show this ad and direct to this landing page). It’s machine determined relevance above human directed relevance – crazy choice.
There should be an AdWords preference for the advertiser to choose to favor match exactness or ad rank. Choosing the former may increase costs, or decrease positions, but it takes control. Each keyword would have to stand on it’s own quality score. Many casual advertisers would be better to go with the AdRank preference – but serious advertisers would not. Right now we don’t have that choice.
Thanks for raising and clarifying the issue.
This doesn’t surprise me at all (though I haven’t seen this yet). Google does a lot of things to help beginner and intermediate PPC users spend their money. However, while this may help the unsophisticated account it frustrates advanced users who prefer control over the “black box”. Keep making a fuss and hopefully Google will provide an opt-out for the feature.
Yup, great post detailing the issues.
In the same way, if your keyword is in a campaign that is not at 100% IS (budget). If say, your campaign stopped displaying ads at 1pm, then the system *might* (and I use might here because not even the Google employees seem to know) display one of your ads from a completely different campaign.
This means the only way to have control (this is a Google rep solution) would be to add every keyword as a negative in all the other campaigns. Needless to say, a hefty process to setup, but also when you restructure or simply just add a new keyword. And don’t even get me started on negative keyword limits !
Anyways, I can feel from the forum you linked that advertisers around the world are increasingly frustrated at not having control over their ads, and them just being displayed in the same wacky way a naughty affiliate could. (I said naughty ! You’re not all like that, some of you are perfect!!)
Regards,
Eloi
The ratio of 1)people in the world who know enough to opt to have their logic trump AdRank logic; to 2)customers they can help in our lifetimes is approximately 1:5000.
Reality is AdRank *must* trump human logic for Google to continue to be that place we can all spend tons of ad budget knowing [more or less] it’ll have a positive outcome.
Kim, this is an excellent post!
I have come across the same issue more than once.
I got the same answer by our Google reps as Eloi.
It is high time that Google balances its algorithmic way of doing business with the needs and wants of its advertisers.
I have observed this issue in a german account in November 2009 and asked the Google AdWords support for an explanation.
Someone from Google AdWords expert team gave me basically the same answer as in Kim’s post.
BUT, and this is really bad news, I noticed this issue for keyword ad text combinations that hadn’t had a history! No impressions at all!
And I agree with Kim that this issue is control taking and even disagrees with AdWords’ call for optimizing you campaigns because how can you optimize under that condition?
Good call Kim,
Been wrestling with this and related issues most the week.
I am seeing QS jump around too, both up and down, but more down than up.
Also I am seeing more SERP’s with zero or fewer ads. Indication of a shift towards brands. high ctr, etc?
Means to me there has been a shift, started a few weeks ago maybe? Sent up a flare in the forum but didn’t get any real like-stories.
Having account management decisions and settings overridden by click-centric algorithms is indeed frustrating.
I am having ads of zero ads showing because of this issue.
Try explaining that to a client:
Problem: Zero ads are showing for a keyword.
Reason given by diagnostics: Because there is an ad with higher QS.
So sometimes the ad you do not want to show, will show – and sometimes no ad at all.
Glad you are puzzling on this too Kim – this shift looks like a real bugger.
-T
I’ve been having problems with this for months and eventually had to go through and ad negatives to nearly all other campaigns or adgroups that werent related in some way to specific keywords, as we were having totally irrelevant ads being matched incorrectly to searches.. which really doesn’t help ones CTR and/or QS or being able to effectively monitor how certain ads would perform if the correct ones were shown to begin with.
Hi Kim,
Thanks for link in forum.
Just to add to the other comments. We have started seeing this with our ad groups over the last few weeks. (We are not adwords specialists but are the website owner and product supplier and run our own adwords campaigns.)
Seems nonsensical that Google think’s its’ algorithms are better able to determine ad relevance than the actual product owners themselves.
This is not a good result for anyone and does not present value at any stage of the chain. The user is dissatisfied / unable to find the right result for their search and the supplier has missed out on a potential customer. (And our CTR is falling off the scale).
We will be doing what Bronwyn has been doing and adding negatives to all the offending adgroups.
Thanks for the investigation and detail.
S.
I found this exact issue started happening yesterday, and I posted about it in the google help forums. I am glad that I’m not the only one affected and it is driving me nuts!!!
This is quite simply, crazy! How are you supposed to optimise an account when keywords from any ad group or campaign can trigger an ad?
It appears the use of negative keywords is the only way…
Hi Joe,
Thanks for the comment. It is crazy isn’t it? to trump an exact match keyword for another – even if it has better ad rank and is less expensive. I would be happy to pay a premium for certain keywords. It is crazy to go through the months search query report and scan the CTR column for low CTR on search network. I scan and see a .26% CTR and stop dead in my tracks to see a keyword that belongs with another adgroup being served incorrectly. The low CTR is evidence that the adcopy is not in sync with the keyword and the conversions that were once pouring in are not there any more!
Yes, negatives are the way to go. It is not so bad in smaller accounts but in larger accounts it is a nightmare. One of my clients has 3400 products and the only way to go was to hit the account with negatives and actually do some restructuring to get things under control.
I wish this feature was optional.
Hey Kim,
Just witnessed something as an addition.
work for a company that is very niche and therefore rely on broad matched keywords to bring in traffic.
In relation to this keyword duplicity issue, this makes things really diffucult and I think there is no way to overcome it.
For example, if I have “business voip” (broad) in one ad group and “hosted business voip” (broad) in another, I can’t put these keywords as negatives in corresponding ad groups because they both contain “business” and “voip”.
What’s your thoughts on this. I can’t see a way around it?
J
Actually, we do something similar for clients.
In “hosted broadband voip” (Broad) we’d use modified broad match “+hosted broadband voip”.
In “broadband voip” (Broad), we’d use “-hosted”
That way you force the AdGroup that is looking for hosting related searches to take the impressions, and you’d remove those from the straight broad match for the keyword stem.
Cheers, JeremyC.
Hi Joe,
I hear your pain. I have a client with 3,500+ unique products and I run into this exact issue all the time!
I started implementing this approach for some of his products that I had the overlap issue with…
broaden groups up a little bit by combining some of the very similar themes, in your case “business voip” (broad) & “hosted business voip” (broad) into the same adgruop.
While Google always said have small tightly knit groups in this case we have a problem with it. So I have experimented by broadening up the groups and testing dynamic keyword insertion in ad text. I am then setting the destination URL per keyword instead of only at the adgroup level to get visitors to the best landing page.
It has caused the need to create a new LP here an there for some adgroups to accommodate the broader terms but so far it has been worth it.
Kim