Google Vs Google's Partner Network

[losloslos]

Last weekend one my companies core keywords CTR exploded. So what usually averaged a CTR of 4% jumped up to over 14% with no significant change in impressions or position change. There was also a significant decrease in the conversion of this word. I contacted my google rep and explained my concern.

But what it boiled down all of the increase in clicks were coming from one of their partner sites. Our rep is in the process of removing us from this partner.

I know that there are some quality google partners out there, but in the end are they worth the same max bid as an actual google search?

With all of the arbitradge I wish google would allow us to bid a seperate amount on their partner sites.

Comparing it to TV, Googles ads are like prime time superbowl ads, and the most of the partners are late night rerun ads. All are important but they don't all have the same value.

[Chris_D]

Yes - Google allows advertisers the ability to 'opt out' of search partners - i.e. disable them - but not bid a different amount.

You are right - that would be a great feature.

Overture/ YSM is actually more of a concern in this regard than Google - at least you can disable the search partner sites easily in Google.

i.e.

To disable them, in Google Adwords interface:

Select the campaign.

Edit campaign settings.

On the right hand side, there is a heading networks:

Show my ads on:

Google Search
When users search for my keywords on Google

Search network
When users search for my keywords on Google's search partners

Just turn 'search partners' off.

What would be good is the same options for search partners as Google provides for content i.e.

You can decide on separate bids for content partners:

Content network
When users visit sites that match my ad on Google's content network

Content bids
Let me set separate prices for content clicks

This gives you the ability to make separate content bids to search bids, for the same ads, same keywords, all in the same campaign.

I suspect that Googles commercial search partner agreements don't allow this.....


<aside>Of course - if you want to run e.g. different negative match keywords for search than content (which we do in most cases) - then its harder to set up.

In that case - you need to actually duplicate the campaign, and totally separate search from content (i.e .2 different campaigns, with e.g. different keywords, different ad text, or more negative keywords in e.g. search) - in which case you can run different bids in each campaign anyway.</aside>