How to battle inactive keywords
A short video on how to create an Inactive Keyword Report.
Internet Marketing 2.0
The Who What When and Where of Internet MarketingArchive for PPC Campaigns
Whooaa I have not posted since April.
I have been really busy friends. I hate that I have not been able to post since April but my clients are keeping me extremely busy. I am going to make up for it though. I’m going to start posting PPC tips, tricks and technique video tutorials. Some really time saving, cost effective PPC management tips that I know will help you out because I use them everyday.
With that being said my next post will be my first tip for you. Enjoy 
Google introduces automatic matching
I was just thinking yesterday that it would be nice to automatically generate new terms based on your existing terms. These new terms would be suggested and incorporated into your existing campaigns automatically as the campaign is running. It is a feature I have been wishing for years for.
Well I log into one of the accounts I manage and guess what, I see the following message:
New! You’ve been selected to try Automatic Matching.
Your campaigns will now have access to a new beta feature: Automatic Matching. This feature shows your ads on relevant search queries not already captured by your keywords.
What is the automatic matching beta? (from Adwords Support)
Automatic matching is an optional feature that helps your ads reach targeted traffic missed by your keyword lists. It works by analyzing the ads, keywords, and landing pages in your ad group. It then shows your ads on search queries relevant to this information.
When automatic matching is first enabled, it dedicates a short period of time to gather information about your campaign. During this period, you won’t see any change to your traffic levels. Once automatic matching has evaluated your campaign, your ads will start to show on additional relevant search queries.
The system will continually monitor your performance on these queries and adjust its matches accordingly. Automatic matching aims to show your ads only on queries that yield a high clickthrough rate (CTR) and a cost-per-click (CPC) comparable to or better than your ad group’s current average CPC. This way, your ads receive additional targeted traffic at a similar cost to your current traffic.
Automatic matching won’t allow your spend to exceed your budget, and it also won’t affect the traffic you’re currently receiving. For example, say your campaign’s daily budget is $10, and on average you accrue $8 in traffic in a day. The automatic matching system may add $1 of relevant traffic per day, meaning it will not prevent your ads from accruing the traffic it normally does. Note also that automatic matching will not affect your campaigns if they already capture the majority of relevant traffic.
Here are a few more details about the feature:
- Opting in and out: Automatic matching is applied at the campaign level. You can opt your campaign in and out of automatic matching on your Campaign Settings page.
- Google Network: Automatic matching does not affect your ad delivery on the content network. It does affect your ad delivery on Google and the search network.
- Quality Score: The traffic accrued by automatic matching won’t affect your keywords’ Quality Scores or minimum bids.
- Ad position: When ranking your ads on search queries acquired through automatic matching, the cost-per-click (CPC) bid will approximate the current average CPC of your ad group. Learn more about ad rank for automatic matching.
- Performance statistics: Aggregated performance statistics for automatic matching will appear in each ad group’s Keywords tab, in a line item labeled Automatic Matching Total.
- Search Query Performance report: You can see the search queries that triggered your ads due to automatic matching by running a Search Query Performance report. The queries will be labeled Automatic in the Search Query Match Type column.
I will update as performance data starts coming in.
Adowrds Quality Score Algorithm update happening now. Otherwise known as a Google Slap.
One of my clients notified me this morning that when he logged in this morning all his minimum bids were raised to 10.00 per click. The sad part is that this is one of the best performing campaigns I have ever managed. It does excellent day in and day out. He has more competition now than what he had 6 months ago but we have been able to keep out performing the competition 2 to 1. My point is don’t always assume that it is something that you are doing incorrectly on your end. A lot of the time there are reasons for the bids to be raised while at the same time there are times when the rasied bid is unjustifiable and this is one of those times. Hopefully they will readjust the score ASAP so that the client doesn’t see that much down time.
This has to be one of the most critical areas that Google needs to pay very close attention too. Because in their war against made for adsense websites a lot of innocent advertisers get caught in the crossfire. Below is the chat I had with an Adwords rep after discovering the account had been slapped. Please overlook the Grammer mistakes as this was just a chat.
Chat InformationThank you for contacting Google AdWords. Please hold a moment while we route your chat to a specialist who will help you with your question: “My client xxx-xxx-xxxx just alerted me that all his terms had become inactive and a 10 min bid slapped on all his terms. This is very discouraging as it is one of the MOST SUCCESSFUL accounts I manage. It has been doing phenomenal, excellent. The ads are directly related to the terms, and the landing pages directly correlate to what the ads are saying so why in the heck has this happened? We created a new campaign called Detox that seems to have triggered this and if it is because of that campaign we will delete it to get back to where we were. I have paused the ad groups just a few minutes ago in order to get a chat prompt but that didn’t work so I would imagine that you have a quality score algorithm change in the works. My client just called and confirmed that others are experiencing the same slap as well. My question to you now is: Is he going to have to take a hit on the 10.00 min “.
Chat InformationAlec S has received your message and will be right with you.
Alec S: Hi Craig. Thanks for contacting Google AdWords. I understand you are concerned about your client’s keywords becoming inactive for search. Is that correct?
Craig: I’m concerned that his account has been unfairly hit with the most recent quality score algorithm changes
Alec S: I am pulling up the account right now to have a look.
Craig: it is the best campaign I manage…
Alec S: You wanted to look at the Detox campaign specifically?
Craig: no the other campaigns.
Craig: xxxx
Craig: xxxx ad group
Craig: look at the terms, ad and landing page
Alec S: I am looking at this ad group right now.
Alec S: All of the keywords for this ad group have a poor Quality Score. It looks like that was caused by a landing page quality issue.
Craig: there is no reason why his score should have been moved to poor
Craig: look at the landing page!
Alec S: I am looking at the landing page right now. Did this client make any recent changes to the website?
Craig: there is nothing wrong with it. It is not misleading it is selling the product that was being advertised
Craig: no, this is the same landing page we have been using for the last three months or longer
Alec S: I understand and apologize for your frustration. I am going to escalate this to our Specialist Team so that we can investigate the issue.
Craig: actually I think the page goes back way longer than that.
Craig: Thank you. Please email me when you find something out.
Alec S: There is a chance that it took our system a bit longer than normal to analyze the content on the website. But I will escalate the issue of the landing page quality with our specialists.
Alec S: What is the best email address to reach you at?
Craig: or when it has been reaccessed, he doesn’t deserve to have to pay 10.00 per click for ? how many clicks before it is lowered back to normal, xxxxxx@gmail.com
Alec S: I would not recommend raising the max cpc bid to as high as $10.00 as that is a lot of money to pay per click. We are not asking you to pay that much, it is our system’s way of telling you to change something in order to improve your quality score.
Alec S: I will discuss the landing page with our specialists and figure out exactly what is going on.
Craig: Believe me I know this. Thank you
Alec S: Thank you for chatting in and have a great day!
Craig: will do
If you have an Adwords campaign check and make sure you min bids have not been raised. Google does not send you an email to notify that this has happened.
