Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
PPC: how to get rid of an ad appearing on a keyword we don't want?
-
Hi,
Our ad on Google Ads is appearing for a search we don't want. it isn't in our search keywords and when i try and ad it to our negative ones, we get the error " You cannot exclude keywords that are targeted " which i assume means that google thinks we are bidding on it?
We have a selection of broad phrase matches so i can only think that this is where it's coming from?
Do you have any tips on tracking down which keyword is generating this ad and how we can turn it off?
(we don't want to pay for clicks on this search if possible!)
Btw - i have turned off each keyword in turn to test it = nothing. have then paused the whole campaign = gets rid of the ad (but this is our most successful campaign so i can't just turn it off).
Any advice super super welcome. thank you!
-
Hi Fubra,
First thing that I can recommend that you do is to go into your AdWords account, then into the campaigns, then into the tab titled 'Keywords'. Once there, click into the tab titled 'Search Terms'.
Once in the 'Search Terms' tab, you should see all the keywords that triggered your ad to show. In this tab, look for the specific keyword that is unwanted. Select this keyword by clicking on the selection box on the left and you should see a bar pop up that allows you to select what you want to do with this keyword. Select the option 'Add as Negative Keyword' and that should stop the ad from triggering each time someone searches for the unwanted keywords.
Pro-tip: As part of your PPC optimization process, you should also be looking in the 'Search Terms' section of your campaigns/ad groups on a regular basis to see exactly what search terms are triggering your ads to show. There's bound to be search terms that are non-converters and also irrelevant search terms. By continually adding those to your list of negative keywords, you make your PPC campaigns more cost-effective.
Good luck!
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
-
Unsolved Google Ads Subdomain in sitelinks & Composition Change for Strategy Status
I have a basic query but could not find a definite answer on the internet. I am currently running a campaign for the main website of a big education brand and they also have a secondary learning website on subdomain, and I want to add sitelinks of subdomain to the campaign, but I am not sure whether it is allowed or not. The brand I am running ads for is https://www.rauias.com/ and the secondary website is https://compass.rauias.com/ branded slightly different in a subdomain, so should I add the sitelinks of Compass to the main campaign? Also one more silly question My Max Conversion search campaign gave me this status today. "Learning (composition change): Campaigns have been added to or removed from the bid strategy. Google Ads is now adjusting to optimize bids. 5 days left for learning" What does this mean exactly? And Why does it reenter the learning phase whenever I make a small change?
Paid Search Marketing | | rauoff0 -
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 -
Can Google Shopping Ads Lower Ranking due to Bounce?
I am noticing Google Shopping Ads are showing up for really irrelevant keywords on some of my products. This quite predictably causes a high bounce rate when a user comes from these ads. There is very little control over what Google Ads seems to decide are relevant keywords from what I can see. Only control is by viewing search terms and setting as negative keywords, but his doesn't help much. Negative keywords are often ignored or they come up with some other really irrelevant new keyword. Seems this high bounce rate could hurt ranking? Any experiences shared with Google Shopping ads appreciated!
Paid Search Marketing | | Chris6611 -
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 -
Will pausing my AdWords PPC campaigns impact my organic rankings?
Over 95% of my revenue comes from organic search; less than 5% comes from AdWords PPC (all other sources account for about 1-2%). My ROI on AdWords is roughly zero. It's negative if you include opportunity costs. My question is: if I pause all of my AdWords campaigns, is there ANY chance that my organic rankings (and organic click-through rates) will suffer? This is really two questions. First, could Google retaliate to my reduced ad spending by dropping my rankings? Second, will searchers think differently about my organic link if they don't also see the accompanying paid link on the SERP?
Paid Search Marketing | | ahirai2 -
What to do against competitor PPC sabotage?
This morning a competitor of ours decided to go on a PPC rampage against us. Basically our budgeting money was spent within the first hour of going live on bing. Its pretty obvious whats going on as we had a tremendous amount of clicks all from the exact same keyword within a short period of time. Obviously first step was to contact bing and they are going to refund me a credit once they go through their process, but they didnt really give me confidence about the future. It seems they may not be able to prevent this from continually happening.. ? The attacker used some sort of IP spoofing as the clicks were all from different IP's which is probably why it snuck pasted Bing. Wondering what have you guys done in the past to prevent this or combat it? Thankfully it didnt happen on google
Paid Search Marketing | | DemiGR0 -
Negative Keywords
This will end up being a two part question: We have been running a search marketing campaign for about 45 days. It seems no matter how many negative keywords we add (over 300 right now), we still are receiving borderline relevant traffic to the broad match ad group. We are in the printing industry and I think this in itself presents a challenge since there are thousands of competitors in our market, national & local. People also search for a variety of items, most of which end up having nothing to do with our business (i.e. animal prints, zebra prints etc.) We are running several different ad groups: one exact match, one broad and one phrase match. Does anyone have a resource or links they are willing to share that has general negative terms they use before creating any new campaign? I have ones I have found, but wondering if there is a very good master resource out there. How many key phrases do you typically add to an 'Exact Match' ad group? Thank you!
Paid Search Marketing | | SEOSponge0 -
Keyword Domains for PPC
I have a client who wants to buy a lot of long domains with keywords in them, for example, thesandiegopetstore.com (this is fictional) and then set up a PPC landing page for each. They think that when someone types in "san diego pet store" that their domain will be listed high and then they will get a lot of traffic. My concern is that they will own a lot of domains for their company and I thought Google is getting pretty adamant about companies not having a lot of domains, and I thought that keyword domains are not as effective as they used to be -- that branding is more important now. Also, I think the domains they've picked target very competitive keywords and that perhaps they will get a lot unqualified traffic and will still have to pay for the clicks. What do you think? What is the best way to set up PPC landing pages?
Paid Search Marketing | | klkirby0