Today in the AdWords Help Forum AdWords Pro Stephen shared a great tip for advertisers who see the wrong ad groups ad text appearing for search queries.
Stephen explained that Google uses what he referred to an an “advanced form of expanded matching“, Googles documentation refers to it as an “enhancement of broad match”. Stephen explained this feature as an ad being triggered based on a related previous search query.
Stephen explained the feature… “[snip]…in this instance, the advertiser had a single AdWords Campaign with two different Ad Groups. Let’s say that one ad used the keyword ‘spacely sprockets’ and the other ad used the keyword ‘cogswell cogs.’ When the advertiser searched on the term ‘cogs,’ the ad for ‘spacely sprockets’ showed rather than the ‘cogswell cogs’ ad that they expected to see.
We knew that it wasn’t an issue of targeting or Daily Budget because both Ad Groups were in a single campaign and shared the same settings and budget. Likewise, the Ads Diagnostic tool indicated that the keyword ‘cogswell cogs’ was showing, as did the Ads Preview page. Finally, we ran a Search Query report and found that searches for ‘cogs’ were triggering the keyword ‘spacely sprockets’ based on previous queries.
The AdWords system had determined that ‘cogs’ was a valid expanded match for ‘spacely sprockets’, and because the keyword ‘spacely sprockets’ had a higher Ad Rank than ‘cogswell cogs,’ it was eligible to show.
This seems a little backward, but its really no different than any other expanded match. Had the ‘cogswell cogs’ Ad Group contained the keyword ‘cogs,’ it would have matched the query more closely and that ad would have triggered, but from the system’s point of view an expansion is an expansion, and neither ‘cogswell cogs’ nor ‘spacely sprockets’ matched the query exactly.”
What does this mean for advertisers? it means that advertisers should closely watch their search query reports. Set your reports to show the ad variation that appears with the query.
Show Ad Variation with Search Query
Advertisers may find that the wrong ads are appearing for search queries.
Search Query Performance Report – Check queries against ad text shown
Can advertisers do anything to prevent this?
Stephen recommends:
“[snip]… Because the advertiser had specific landing pages for each Ad Group, it was important to them that the query “cogs” trigger the “cogswell cogs” Ad Group, so I recommended that they add the specific term ‘cogs’ as a keyword. Another option would have been to add it as a negative keyword in the ‘spacely sprockets’ Ad Group, but it’s not guaranteed that the keyword ‘cogswell cogs’ would have expanded to match the query ‘cogs.’ Of course, changing the matching option of the existing keyword to exact match would have kept the ad from showing for the previous query, but it would also have prevented it from showing in other circumstances.”
So, there is a ‘fix’ for this but I still see a potential problem for many advertisers who can barely keep up with the basic features of adwords. This feature makes the search query report more important than ever to make sure advertisers are getting the best possible performance for their accounts.
Due to the increase in unemployment I have seen an increasing trend in customers accounts. Although many of my clients are not hiring they are receiving traffic from people desperately looking for employment. It seems that this desperation had taken people from searching employment sites such as Monster, Career Builder, etc. to pounding the internet pavement going ”door to door” or “website to website” so to speak. If you are not hiring then it is necessary to add negative keywords to your ad groups to prevent your ads from appearing when people are looking for employment.
Say you are a plumber using broad or phrase match keywords. Your broad match keyword ’plumber’ can allow your ads to appear for ‘plumber jobs’,’ plumber employment’, ‘jobs for plumbers’. Your phrase match “Las Vegas plumber” can allow your ads to appear for “Las Vegas plumber jobs”.
To avoid this, add negative keywords such as -job, -jobs, -employment, -career, -careers, etc. Simply adding a (-) before a keyword makes it negative. Why pay for people to visit your website looking for employment?
Refer to the following sources to identify negative keywords to add to your account.
Pleeeeaaasssee. Does Google really think they are doing advertisers a “favor” with this one? If so, Google please stop doing me favors ;) Concentrate on problems like noting accounts under review, or getting the customer service department to reply to people in a timely manner. Don’t ‘help’ us with expanding broad match to what I would call irrelevant search queries. Does this expanded broad match reflect Google’s love of relevance and quality score? Very questionable to say the least.
Let it be known that I am not a fan of broad match keywords. They have their place when extensive use of -negative keywords are implemented but in general I never use them and here is why.
A web design client asked me to look over her AdWords account for her because it was not producing any inquiries.
In looking at her keywords list (mostly broad match) I immediately was concerned so headed to the report center to run a Search Query Performance Report.
Below is a *sampling* of the key keyword list. I have provided a sampling but rest assured I did not remove any keywords like “aerosmith” or “at t” or “italian stuffed peppers”. There were variations on the below keywords that were removed.
Sample of Keywords
Guided tour italy, guided tour of umbria, italian guided tour, italian tour, italian tours, italian vacation tuscany, italian vacation umbria, italy guided tours, italy holiday, italy travel package, italy travel tours, “holiday tours to italy”, “italian guided tours”, “italy tour vacations”, “vacation tours to italy”
Not the greatest list but pretty much exactly what I expect to see from most new AdWords advertisers.
Now this is why I am so miffed. Expanded Broad Match allowed her to come up (and get clicks) on the following queries. Note: that only a fraction of the bogus traffic is noted here.
Search Query Performance Report
Search Query Performance Report
Bogus Traffic: aerosmith concert, at t, france, italian stuffed peppers, justin timberlake concert ticket, porno italy, florence italy car rentals, curtains tuscany, arabian jasmine plant grand duke of tuscany.
Great Huh? I know *how* this happened. Expand ‘tours’ to ‘concert’, expand ‘europe’ to ‘France’, expand ‘italian vacations’ to ‘italian stuffed peppers’. Make sense? Of course not! Remember these are not just impressions – she paid money to Google for clicks on these search queries. Good to know if you market ‘italian tours’ that Google thinks ‘justin timberlake concert tickets’ is relevant. Truly frightening! What I do not know is *why* would Google do this? Considering they are all about relevance and quality. This seems to degrade the quality to me if I see a Advertisement that reads “Group Tours to Italy” when I am looking for tickets to the “aerosmith concert”… Right? My real concern is broad match is the default option for AdWords. Most advertisers are just following along.
One of these clicks (curtains tuscany) cost her $4.30, another (arabian jasmine plant grand duke of tuscany) $3.27.
How to you fix that?
Stop using broad match. Take control over your account. Run regular reports on search queries. Switch your keywords over to “phrase” and [exact match] now. It may take a little time to come up with all the variables of *guided italian tour* in phrase match but the results will be better CTR, lower costs and higher conversions. Really, what is there to loose?…besides more of your money.
A very common complaint by new advertisers in the AdWords Help Forum is that their newly placed adverts will run well, typically for a few days, and then stop running. Often, the advertiser will notice that Google is complaining of a low “Quality Score”. This video blog with supporting notes is a consequence of a charity posting their problems, together with sample adverts and keywords. This unusual openness makes them a great candidate for a case study.
Google Video – lower quality, faster to display, click the “Play” button at lower left:
Click on the link at the end of this sentence for a higher quality, large QuickTime Movie – where you can see the detail of the slides and screens, showing precisely which links to click to setup a new AdWords account, as a new AdWords user.
The video shows choosing a Standard Edition rather than Starter Edition AdWords Account. I’ve picked “Standard Edition” because the best use of AdWords usually comes from the additional power of the Standard Edition account. The Starter Edition limits you to a single campaign – and you need at least two campaigns to fully manage performance.
In the video I warn that users should not use a publicly known email address, especially if they have given other people access to their normal email account; perhaps a family member or an office colleague. Since the AdWords account controls the spending of money, make sure that everyone who has access to the Google AdWords Account, uses their own account name; that way you can trace decisions and actions. Especially make sure that the account names that are used, are not published anywhere. My standard practice is that I have public email addresses and private email email addresses. The private email addresses are used for receiving email from AdWords only, so no one knows their identities, other than AdWords. If you know an email address to send me email, then that’s one email address you can be sure I won’t be using for AdWords management!
AdWords Account Activation Email
Note the addresses that Google uses in the confirmation eMail. Especially notice that the right URL to sign in to AdWords is “h t t p s : / / a d w o r d s . g o o g l e . c o m /” If you see anything else at the beginning of the URL, then you may be visiting a spoof site that will try to steal from you.
Campaign Setup
The video steps through the process. Key points:
Name this first campaign “Keyword targeted” – because that’s what we’re doing
Target one language and one country per campaign – this is usually the most effective
If your budget is high enough, then select “Accelerated Spending” to maximise your impression volume
If your budget is too low to spend all day, use the default budget method – this spreads spending through the day
Deselect the “Content Network”, despite the popup window that warns you about losing traffic; we’ll set up the content network in a later video.
Select “Rotate” adverts, rather than allowing Google to optmise; it is easy to manage advert performance and rotation allows you to optimise better than the default.
Schizophrenia Charity
You can guess at the most likely keywords that a Schizophrenia information charity should offer. As it happens, the advertiser decided to appeal to a particular symptom, hearing voices. So the advert didn’t include any of the keywords. That’s almost certainly why he has a poor quality score… Psychological factors.
User Psychology
If someone types in “schizophrenia”, then they probably are looking for information about it. If they type “red leather shoes” then they probably want information and possibly sales sites featuring read leather shoes. Advertisements that mention the keyword help to assure the user that the right advert is showing. By coming back to them with what they said, you show you are listening and that you address their interests. The difference in Click Through Rate (the percentage of impressions that result in clicks) between using and not-using the Keyword in the advert can be more than 50% – you can double click rates by using the keyword in the copy.
We’re going to use that technique of “mirroring” to help get a good quality score in the adverts.
If the keyword is “schizophrenia”, then we should use that word in the title of the advertisement.
If the keyword was “luxury red shoes”, then we should use that.
User Psychology – Continue The Dialog
Apart from using the keyword, what else needs to be said? Classic marketing – a Call to Action. Obviously you want people to click and come to your site, but what will make them come? A low selling price? A wider range? A free delivery service? Free extended warranty? What is *your* unique appeal that will have a segment of the audience click on your advert more than they will click on other advertisements?
In the case of the Schizophrenia advice charity, they probably have three audiences. The person who is hearing voices – who probably won’t be inquiring about Schizophrenia. The friends and family – the social network – of the schizophrenic, who may want support and advice and might be searching for “Schizophrenia”, or “hearing voices”, or “psychosis”, or looking up side effects of prescribed medication, or a bunch of other search queries. And finally medical professionals – the care network – who probably have specific terms and may be considering the use of specific drugs for treatments.
When you have three segments, and overlapping keywords, you should probably offer three different web sites. The types of people going to each should be different, will need different language in the landing page and think about the problems they are trying to solve in different ways. That also means that potentially you might *need* to advertise three times on the same keyword – expecting different segments to click on different adverts and go to three different websites.
We’ll look at that, a very advanced concept in advertising, later. For now, let’s focus on reaching the main groups in the obvious ways. As you learn the techniques, you can start to apply some subtlety!
Google Video about improving advertising with AdWords
Since publishing this article, Google has produced a short video that emphasises many similar points:
Summary
This technique is about focus for new advertisers. Instead of spreading widely and becoming confused, pick a keyword that is the essence of what you do. Whether that is “lawn mower repair”, “luxury teas”, or a charitable operation. Pick that one word and write the best advert you can, that will bring people to the best page on your site that addresses the implicit question. If you have to, create a new page to make sure you address the search query.
Restrict the campaign to avoid the content network. The content network has its uses, but you need to target in a different way, and the adverts often should be different. Budgeting – is tricky. Generally, for a first campaign, keep the bid lower in order to get more clicks from the budget. There are reasons to worry about position, but you’ve enough to learn getting just one AdGroup working properly.
Before looking at anything else, this would be a good time for you to explore the rest of the user interface, and especially look at the reporting and web analytics. Future steps in performance improvement will require web analytics on your web site, or AdWords Conversion Tracking… But that’s still a few steps away!
Updates
2009-06-06 – Added Google video about optimising adverts – it echoes many of the same points made here.
I have looked at numerous accounts this week and am so surprised to see keywords that just don’t belong in their accounts, with a poor Quality Score (QS) and horribly low Click Through Rate (CTR). Not only does this drag their accounts down, it also wreaks havoc on the keywords’ CTR performance for every advertiser that should be using the keyword.
For instance, I recently looked at an account for a personal trainer. The account held keywords like ‘beach’, ‘weight watchers’, ‘excercise equipment’, none of which he offers, but are somewhat related. Of course you want a good body to go to the beach; “weight watchers” is another option to a personal trainer and when you visit this personal trainer you will use excercise equipment. Now, all of these keywords have a poor quality score and terrible CTR, and of course they should! This account has been running these keywords for months accruing a terrible historical CTR. Eventually this account may grind to a complete halt due to these keywords’ low CTR alone. Before that happens though, he will damage these keywords for other advertisers who do sell ‘excercise equipment’. This is why Google considers quality score important. A poor quality score is a deterrent. An indicator that something is wrong, that perhaps the keyword should be seriously re-evaluated and possibly removed all together. Google want’s you to stay relevant. It is the building block of adwords. It keeps things in check. It also keeps advertisers happy and ultimately keeps the end users of Google happy when they are provided with search results that are relevant to their query. If I wanted to find a weight watchers meeting in my area I would not expect to see ‘personal trainers’ in the search results. If Google can not keep their end users happy by presenting them with relevant search results then people will stop using Google and the end result will be the advertisers using AdWords not reaching the largest audience available on the internet.
How this effects you.
When an advertisers sets up an account and selects their keywords they receive an initial quality score based on the historical performance of the keyword on the AdWords system. Advertisers that have misused keywords have lowered that historical performance for other advertisers.
Can You Fix it?
Yes, If you find a newly added keyword that is truly relevant to your product or service has a poor score work on the CTR. Once you add a keyword to your account you can increase it’s quality if it is relevant to your ad text and landing page and achieves a good CTR. It make take time to accrue positive CTR history.
Notes:
Don’t use keywords that are not directly related to your product or service.
If you see a Poor Quaity Score or very low CTR (aside from the content network) something is wrong and needs to be addressed immediately.
Don’t freak outwhen you see a low Quality Score on a keyword that you know is very relevant, it is just that the keyword did not get a good performance history on the system, likely due to other advertisers misusing the keyword. If you are getting a good CTR with the keyword it’s Quality Score will improve.
Article by: +Kim Clinkunbroomer
