Adwords: Brand ads appear bottom of SERPs
-
Hello,
I'm running a sale promotion on a brand only Adwords campaign (I have the only account with trademark authorization) and have noticed that my ads are appearing at the bottom of the first page on Google.
This happened last week so I split the campaign into three Adgroups and that fixed the problem but today I'm running brand only and there is no way to separate them.
CPC has also increased dramatically. Normally it's less than 10 cents and now it's sitting at between $2-$4.
Has anyone else seen this? Any ideas/advice on how to stop this happening? It's playing havoc with my CTR and conversions.
Much thanks,
Davinia -
Great, thanks for that!
-
The person from Twitter is @LisaSanner. She says:
"My rep noticed AD status was Eligible, not Approved & won't run at top, even if pos=1 (Unlike kw status which is Eligible)."
So, take a look at the ad status, not just the keyword status.
-
That's my question, too: how did this Twitter person determine the "purgatory" status - from their dashboard somehow, or by grilling AdWords rep?
-
Hi Keri,
Status of ads is 'eligible' with quality scores of 10/10 for brand terms (trademarked) and related brand terms (not trademarked).
Any idea how the twitter person established "stuck in eligible status purgatory"?
Thanks,Davinia
-
Hi Stephen,
Have tested using the Adwords 'ad preview and diagnosis' tool as well as logged in and out, removing cache and on different computers - no change, always at the bottom.
-
Someone on Twitter had this same issue, and discovered (after much investigating and initial overlooking by the AdWords staff) that their ads were "stuck in eligible status purgatory" and wouldn't run on top unless fully approved. You might look to see the status of your ads and make sure that's OK.
-
Just a thought - have you tried as both logged in and out? Clearing cache etc?
Maybe querying your own brand causes the ads to display differently - like when you do the same query over and over, Google will hide or change the ads you see
Stephen
-
Wish I had something more to add here, but this is the best answer I've seen. To me it sounds like Google is testing something and it is probably just with a handful of brands. I would be interested if this continues through to next week. But it really does sound like a test to see if people searching for branded terms really don't want to see ads and how hard they will work to get to the ads.
At least no one is beating you?
-
Hi Don,
I don't know what to say.... I can't stop giggling. There is NO WAY you get a better CTR with ads appearing at the bottom of the page. Like you I also have plenty of data to back that up.
This issue continues to occur for one of my clients.
Perhaps consider testing on smartphones only - I'd imagine more people would see the whole first page of results on a smartphone than they would on a desktop. I'd also recommend getting your SEO up to scratch so you are placing top of page for organic listings and Google Places.
Will let you know if I find anything new......but am still scratching my head as well.
Davinia
-
Davinia,
I just finished an AdWords chat session regarding the same thing: ads with no competition appearing at the page bottom, below all organic SERPs. To my utter amazement, the AdWords rep claimed that Google researched and found that - get this - ads placed at the bottom will have a "higher" response due to the "flow" of viewers' browsing. So, my no-competition ads are appearing at the bottom. Not surprisingly, they've received zero clicks in over 150 impressions.
A nearly identical campaign for this client, run exactly one year ago, garnered a 4.4% CTR with the no-competition ads appearing ABOVE the organic SERPs. I tried to get the rep to agree with me that his description of this algo change was counter-intuitive and - based on my results so far - will yield abysmal clickthroughs and profit for Google. He was unmoved.
I also asked him why - if the results of bottom-scraping ads are so good - don't they charge advertisers MORE for the bottom position, rather than the #1 position? He didn't really respond to that.
I finally asked him to ask his supervisor to override the algo and let my ads run at the top of SERPs, as an experiment in performance/profitability. He said that's impossible - "out of our control."
If anyone has any insights regarding this unbelievably bizarre claim that bottom-scraping ads will perform better than those at the top of the page, I'd like to hear them.
-
I just realized checking from here probably won't work unless you're targeting the U.S.
-
I appreciate your time, thanks.
Ads only display in New Zealand so you won't be able to see them, but thanks for the offer of PM anyways.
-
If you haven't upgraded I don't think it would make a difference. If you want to PM me the search query I can check from here and see if I get the same thing. I'm not sure what else to tell you though. Sorry I couldn't be more help.
-
Am using legacy but didn't think this would cause any problems as enhanced is geared towards mobile. But it could very well be the cause?
Keywords are position 1 for all and have viewed placement by 'ad preview and diagnosis' and it still appears at the bottom.
So, I'm stumped!
-
The only major change going on right now that I'm aware of is the move to enhanced campaigns. Did you upgrade your campaigns from legacy to enhanced by any chance? Are you still in position 1 and just appearing at the bottom? Another thing to consider is that it may not be appearing at the bottom for everyone.
-
Hi Zach,
Thanks for your reply.
Quality scores on all keywords are 10/10.
I've been running these campaigns for a year and only seen this twice (both in last 7 days). So am wondering if maybe something has changed with Adwords?
Thanks,
Davinia -
Hi Davinia,
Maybe check the Quality Scores for your keywords and see if you can improve them. I think the quality score column is hidden by default so you might have to go to the keywords tab click on Columns->Customize Columns and it's under Attributes. That's quite a jump so I'm not sure this is the issue but quality scores do affect ad position and how much you pay per click. Better performing ads are more likely to appear at the top but there's no real way to absolutely control whether the ad appears at the top/side/bottom but generally better performing ads get better positioning.
Hope this helps!
Zach
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to know competitors keywords for adwords
I want to run google campaign for adwords and I want to target keywords that my competitor is ranking for. How can I know what are the keywords that are helping my competitors the most. Is there some way so that I can know what my competitor is bidding for those keywords. I heard it also depends on the landing page quality. Please suggest the best strategy to run adwords at lower cost and yet perform well. I am willing to run campaign for this website . It is basically meant to connect manufacturers representatives and independent sales reps to businesses. Any suggestions are welcome.
Paid Search Marketing | | HelloWorld20200 -
Adwords Duplicate Keywords with Different Match Types - Good or Bad?
If you have the following keywords in an Ad Group advertising for a product, let's for example call it "target" product [target product] "target product" +target +product I've found that the exact match keyword has the highest conversion rate in almost all circumstances. So it would make sense to have a higher max bid on the exact match then phrase or broad batch. Even with lots of negative search terms to maximize conversion on the broader matches, if the bid is the same as exact match, the cost per conversion will be much higher (too high.) However in chatting with an Adwords Support Rep (on a different matter) they stated after looking through my account at the end of the chat: " duplicate keywords will impact on quality score. your all keywords will compete with each other" However many of the ad groups in question these duplicate keywords have quality score of 9 and 10. So obviously if there is an effect it seems it may be minimal. I thought it was pretty common for people to bid higher on more exact match and lower on more broad match. What's the real story here? Was this support rep not seeing the big picture?
Paid Search Marketing | | JCCMoz1 -
Do only paid adwords appear in google shopping
Does anyone know if we have to have a paid addwords campain for our products to appear in google shopping. We have a feed set up for google shopping. We have addwords campaigns running for google. But our products do not seem to appear in google shopping. Any advise on how to get them there?
Paid Search Marketing | | CostumeD0 -
Using + in Adwords URL
Hi. I am using keywords in my Destination URL in Adwords. So http://example.com/?football+boots+supplier This was done by someone else and I am trying to understand the full meaning behind this. If I go to the page it links to, it is just the homepage of the website but obviously shows up in Analytics as a landing page that stills out from the general landing page of homepage / Is that the reason so its easier to track the data? I would have though using the Paid referral in Analytics does this better? Any help be great. Thanks
Paid Search Marketing | | YNWA0 -
How to manage AdWords accounts for two business units
Hello! I need some insight with a problem I'm struggling with. First, some background... Our company has two business units: (1) our dental practice and (2) our insurance business. In 2013, we started using AdWords to promote our insurance business. In 2013, we also used an agency to manage our SEM efforts for the dental practice. In 2014, we plan to bring our dental practice SEM campaign in-house and manage both AdWords account internally. That leads to my question... Is it possible with the one AdWords login that we've used for our insurance business to add a second, completely separate account? And by completely separate, I mean separate reporting, separate Campaigns tab, etc. If it's not possible, whats a guy to do? Set up a completely separate AdWords account with a different email address and login? Any insights from those who have managed a similar situation would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!
Paid Search Marketing | | SmileMoreSEO
Erik0 -
Good Adwords resources/ Guides
I'm going to be taking over the PPC for my company. A 3rd party currently does it but I have done a review and they have not been doing a great job ( I spotted a few very basic mistakes), so we want to switch it to in house I have experience with PPC, and I'm confident on the basic of it, but I was looking for a good (recent) PPC resource or guide so I can make sure I'm doing it right, basicly a ppcmoz 😉 For example current the campaigns are set to accelerated, but I have been told that is very wasteful, but the 3rd party explanation is:"We set the campaigns to be accelerated to avoid missing out on potential sales. These can be set to standard if you wish however there is a higher chance that sales could be missed." Which is correct?
Paid Search Marketing | | PaddyDisplays0 -
Which landing page is used to calculate "Landing Page Experience" of a keyword in Adwords?
In Google Adwords, one ad group can have multiple landing pages, yet keywords are shared. So when I look at the keywords, they use one of the landing pages from ads, but which one? Shall we create separate ad groups and set only one landing page per group to avoid this problem? If this is the way then how come landing page is not a shared property like the keywords in ad groups? I hope someone with enough Google Adwords experience can help me here. Thanks,
Paid Search Marketing | | fguru0 -
Curious about Adwords keyword tool results.
Why the Google Adwords Keywords tool says there are 0 local monthly searches for a keyword or shows a dash, but in spite of this there's competition for those keywords (up to 0.42 in some cases) ? Thanks!!
Paid Search Marketing | | gerardoH0