I have a new pet peeve with Google AdWords. Back in the summer (I think) Google stopped providing complete data on your broad match campaigns when it discontinued certain reports. It annoyed me then and I asked some of my Google Account Reps to dig into it, but nothing changed. Confused? Well here's what's going on in Google's ongoing effort to dumb down advertising...
- Broad match is the defaulted match type that Google gives you for keywords. The data they publish is almost always broad match too. Broad match is the process by which Google determines which search queries your ads appear on. It's the reason why early on people saw McCain for President ads on people searching for french fries.
- Google determines a Quality Score for each keyword you are looking to have your ads appear on. It's a score between 1-10; 10 means you are awesome and theoretically pay less per click and a 1 means your ad won't get served very often if at all. Google also defaults to NOT showing you your Quality Score (another pet peeve)
- Click thru rate is a factor in Quality Score
- So here's what happens. Google shows your ads on additional search queries for broad match keywords. If those ads don't get clicked on, Google's rationale is that well they'll eventually stop serving those ads on those queries and you aren't paying for them anyway, so what's the harm? Well see this screen shot for why I think this is a problem
Notice how my ads were shown on 18,760 search queries and received zero clicks? Sure I didn't pay for those ad impressions but what did they appear on? Were they impacting my brand awareness? Are there new terms that I didn't know before and haven't put a negative in that my ads are appearing on? Plus, are they session based searches?
In Google's drive to simplify their platform they have hidden data from their users. Sure I didn't pay for them, but that's not the point. I want control. I want to see these terms especially for a branding or a political client. I want my data back so I can make better decisions. Come on Google you can do better and you have...
PardonMyFrench,
Eric
P.S. Here's what Google says about the "other search terms"
- The search term resulted in an ad impression but didn't receive any clicks in the last 30 days.
- The search term didn't receive a significant number of impressions.
- The search term triggered your ad within the past 24 hours.
- The search term contains private or personally identifying information such as a phone number.
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