Adwords Confusion - Where are these clicks coming from?
-
Ok, I posted two images showing that my Google Adwords search settings are to receive clicks only from google's search engine, as we are doing testing on keyword behavior with a few specific keywords.
The second image will show that we have somehow 7 total search clicks, but not for any of our specific keywords.
I'm confused. . . and hungry. . . I'm 'confungry'. jk any thoughts are welcomed.
-
Thanks for all the help everyone! It appears that those supposed 'phantom clicks' are a result of our product listings being added to the campaigns, and those don't get tracked as individual keyword clicks. Here is the exact response I got back from Google for future reference:
"Having reviewed your account, we can see that you have successfully setup
product listing ads for your campaigns. So, the missing clicks are from
the product listing ads. Please note that the keywords do not record any
clicks for product listing ads.Instead, to view the statistics of the product listing ads, please select
desired campaign and click on 'Auto Targets' tab found beside Ad
Extensions in the central menu bar. This will give you performance
statistics for your product ads." -
Just another thought, have you tried seeing what your search term report tells you in Adwords as this might show you search terms that have clicks against them that are not showing on the main overiew panel.
Go to the Dimensions tab and change the view to Search Terms and drag that out to Excel.
The other possiblity is that Google has just gone crazy....... had to happen some time
-
We get that sometimes also -it shows up as "other keywords" i just go into analytics and find them that way.
-
Yeah, it could be. Thanks for the response. We are now up to 32 phantom clicks for a total cost of $26
-
This test campaign is for all states outside of the one we reside in, so we have not attached this specific campaign to our places account.
-
Also another possibility is that they have been free clicks. I think I have seen this mentioned somewhere in adwords reports, I think it has something to do with when linking your google places account with your campaign - have you done this?
-
I find that sometimes there can be a lag in how things are reported in Adwords. So, perhaps by tomorrow you will see the data as to where those clicks came from?
-
Thanks Mark, good thoughts. However, I haven't made any changes to the keywords, match types or the ads of this campaign. I did edit the campaign settings late last night, which if tracked by East coast time, it may have been search results from Google's search network maybe, but I still think the keywords would have been identified regarding which ones brought in the clicks.
The clicks are now up to 9 clicks, but still no credited clicks to the keyword phrases. However, I don't know how new this is, but I just noticed that the clicks are now 'accredited by the Media Rating Council', which could mean clicks are coming through, they are just not being considered legitimate and 'chargeable', so maybe that's why they are not being shown or deducted from ad spend. Article is here: https://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ctx=tltp&answer=153707
-
A couple of thoughts. 1) these are unlikely to have come from the display network as they would not show Under the search total, so safe to say your campaign settings are fine. 2) have you deleted any keywords or edited the keywords in any way (even the match type)? If so adwords won't show the clicks against the original keyword, it will clear the stats for the updated keyword and just keep them in the total at the bottom. E.g you had 2 clicks on "blue widget" and you edited the keyword to [blue widget], adwords will clear the 2 clicks alongside the keyword but keep them in the total below. Mark
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
-
Setting a total monthly spend limit for the Adwords account
Hi, I manage a number of campaigns and even though I keep an eye on daily budget based on our monthly budget, I freak out thinking we would waste a lot more money accidentally. Is there a way how I can set a cap for the whole Adwords account so I will not go over, even if I leave daily campaign budgets on crazy amounts? Thanks. Regards, Katarina
Paid Search Marketing | | Katarina-Borovska0 -
Will google consider it as one click for adwords?
Hi All, Many times I want to check actual page of competitors they are targeting in google adwords. Like when I search for any keywords and my competitors page comes on top ads in google, then I copy url from search result and paste in any other browser will it be consider as click and google will charge to my competitor? Example url - https://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/aclk?------------------------------------------------------------------------&adurl= Thanks!
Paid Search Marketing | | pragnesh96390 -
Impressions - AdWords vs Analytics
Given AdWords is a paid service, you'd hope the figures are accurate. For an example (exact match) keyword last month, AdWords says there were 14,253 impressions on Google search (i.e. not search partners or display network). However, going over to Analytics, for the same month it suggests 4,500 impressions for the same keyword. Google AdWords says the following about impressions: "An impression is counted each time your ad is served on Google's ad networks, such as on Google.com or other publisher websites and apps." "...How often your ad is shown. An impression is counted each time your ad is shown on a search result page or other site on the Google Network." Google Analytics explains impressions as: "The number of times any URL from your site appeared in search results viewed by a user, not including paid AdWords search impressions." Can anyone help clarify what is an accurate way of attaining monthly search figures, i.e. what is my overall potential Google customer base? I've also tried the Keyword Planner - which averages monthly searches - and it gives me 18,100 impressions for the same keyword (almost the two above figures added). Thanks! Rob
Paid Search Marketing | | englebert0 -
Question regarding Google Adwords?
Just had a question regarding Google Adwords. I have an e-commerce store (kiwimodfurniture.com) in the furniture niche and I originally was planning to create a different ad group for each product. Since I have 1300 products I would have 1300 ad groups. However a lot of the products don't have enough search volume and Google won't display my ads. Then I decided to get a bit more broad. I plan on having an ad group for each sub category on my website. For example, modern lounge chairs, modern arm chairs, modern sofas, etc. Question: Is this too broad? Will the ROI be terrible because of this? Thanks!
Paid Search Marketing | | The_Kiwi_Man0 -
Locate Poorly Trending Keywords in AdWords
At the campaign level I see my CTR has been suffering for the last week or two relative to the past few months. It could be a few bad actors casing the downward trend. How can I quickly and easily locate specific keywords that are trending in the wrong direction? Why filters will not work... They don't take change into account. I want to identify Keywords that were once doing well are now doing poorly. Filters will yield all keywords that are doing poorly which is not what I'm looking for. Obviously I could be missing something with filters but this is my understanding. A few other points to note... I have search partners turned on. I do not want to take this traffic into account in my analysis. I'd also like to determine if it might be an ad that's not performing as well as it once was. I assume the same method used to find poorly trending keywords can be applied to ads as well but if not, is there a solution for this?
Paid Search Marketing | | tatermarketing0 -
Yahoo Showing Adwords URLS in Organic Results
a client is getting adwords campaign url's showing up high in the SERPs, like 2 spots under the original page. The actual unique page is number one, and number three is the same page except the url is pulled from and adwords click My guess is that yahoo is crawling adsense and mistakenly following it as a link. It's crazy that it ranks on the 3rd page though... At the same time I have recently seen 25 pages deindexed in Google! How could this happen - could these two be related. I read this forum post about similar things happening in yahoo to their site Could this be a duplicate content issue (copyscape is showing no duplicate content) or are my pages getting indexed for some other reason?
Paid Search Marketing | | imageworks-2612900 -
Downtrodden Adwords Quality Scores -- Really?
Wow! 93% of our Adword keywords in our new campaign received a Quality Score of 4 or less. That means most of the keywords aren't showing. I received the quick answer from our Adwords advisor that, "Quality score is created from a variety of factors ... etc." Yes, I know that by reading Google's documentation. I dug deeper into the data. When I looked at keywords dashboard for this campaign, what vexes me is that it's all about "Keyword relevance: poor". That is repeated time and again in the keywords hover, bubble pop-up in Adwords. "Landing page quality: no problems". "Landing page load time: no problems". 63% of keywords have quality score = 3 29% of keywords have quality score = 4 We have thousands of keywords that are electronic part numbers. All keywords use phrase matching. We use dynamic keyword matching in the ads. I dug deeper. I chose random keywords (and corresponding landing pages) from lower quality scores (1,2,3,4) and higher scores (5,6,7,8,9,10). What is the difference? Examples: Quality score 1 = http://www.usbid.com/parts/LM2901 2 = http://www.usbid.com/parts/BZX84-A20 3 = http://www.usbid.com/parts/MAX4796 4 = http://www.usbid.com/parts/TMP302A 5 = http://www.usbid.com/parts/LTC4267-3 6 = http://www.usbid.com/parts/CAT1161LI-28-G 7 = http://www.usbid.com/parts/DS1216C 8 = http://www.usbid.com/parts/R10S-E1Y1-J5.0K 9 = http://www.usbid.com/parts/208M822-19B11 145785-000 10 = http://www.usbid.com/parts/TP3-PNEU-0.250 243362-000 Notice URLs with score 9 and 10 have url-encoded space (%20) -- just pointing it out. What is the difference between these pages that have such different quality score? And, interestingly enough, the majority of example keywords in the Urls above (LM2901, BZX84-A20, etc) have zero impressions and zero clicks thus far. Yes, the keywords have low traffic because this is exactly what people search for an purchase when making a B2B component buy. It's all about the exact part number. **I'd love specific suggestions of how to improve quality score of pages with a 3 or lower! ** Thanks kindly, Loren
Paid Search Marketing | | groovykarma0 -
Adwords budget for different days of the week
We operate a Google Adwords campaign that clearly performs better conversion wise on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesdays ... What is the best way to stack a higher daily budget on specifc days in Adwords - There doesn't appear to be any formal way of doing this and the advice online is mixed...
Paid Search Marketing | | digitalarts0