Google AdWords Advertisers are a worried lot thanks to the way AdWords has an all-powerful way of handling keywords, a thread at Webmaster World reports.
For some unknown reason, an advertiser was served with common denominator keywords when the advertiser did not even seek/bid for it. When the advertiser bid on a keyword -in which case he used “widget”, widget became a keyword for which Google started to serve ads (the word “widget” had some 3,500 impressions and 140 clicks). Eg:-
widget advice
widget assistance
widget classes
widget guidance
widget questions
“widget advice”
“widget assistance”
“widget classes”
“widget guidance”
[widget advice]
[widget assistance]
[widget classes]
[widget guidance]
[widget guide]
After complaining to AdWords, they replied saying:
“It is possible for two-word keywords to expand to one-word keywords if that one word is highly relevant. In my case, they said “widget” had a 4% CTR and therefor Google judged this to be highly relevant to its users. They also suggested I use the negative
exact match -[widget]”
This is scary for reasons such as:
1, Since when did a xpanding a 2 word keyword change it to 1 single word.
2, Why do advertisers now have to find negatives for broad matches that they’re not even bidding on.
3, How can Google opt to ignore certain words within broad matches, and change them to single words.
4, Why does Google never make an announcement or make public anything, as if advertisers had not looked into their logs, they would have never noticed.
Some of the suggestions, in the words of justshelley, include:
1, Search for methods to expand the “broad term gone wild” then we add those keywords and negatives and remove the broad term or change it to a phrase match. With Google’s keyword tool one can find out what google is “thinking” when someone types in that broad keyword.
2. We also use negatives in our other adgroups for our keyword themes to force Google to distribute our ads matched with the appropriate keywords.
Examples:
Categories:
widget advice – add negatives for assistance, classes, guidance, questions
widget assistance – add negatives for advice, classes, guidance, questions
widget classes – add negatives for assistance, advice, guidance, questions
widget guidance – add negatives for assistance, classes, advice, questions
widget questions – add negatives for assistance, classes, guidance, advice
Probable reasons for why it happened are
1, An error in thinking while creating the algorithm for AdWords as a process to garner more moolah from advertisers or both.
2, There are quality scores that affect websites which would not be marketing/ advertising if they were not garnering any money. Besides, if they were then it must be important to the person searching, scraper sites aside.
3, A liberal broad matching where it looks to snatch any advertisement which has a high Click Through Rate to increase click revenue for Google while also showing advertisements for non-essential searches.
4, Business owners can understand the relevancy more than what a pc’s algorithm in maximum scenarios but while running search campaigns one essentially allows the engine to do as they please with your ad.
5, For the aforementioned cases, negative broad match would fix the problem.
According to eWhisper, the best option is to” pick back up about ‘expanded broad match’. It seems the best course of action is to add a 4th matching option and bring back ‘original broad match’. In addition, while the new search query report is useful, the old keyword tool would show advertisers possible broad matches so advertisers understood what a keyword could match to before advertising on a word. Bringing back this visibility would also be useful so the above issues can be researched before they happen.”
