Am I Thick or What?

[bernie4253]

I am computer literate and reasonably intelligent. Have been using adwords but wanted to increase my frequency and position. Now, searching on Google, NO sponsored links come up for the keywords I am using about eight times out of ten.

I have read all the help pages, my CPC is above the recommended minimum, my daily budget is fine but suddenly all sponsored links for my keywords seem to have disappeared.

Am I thick or what?

[AussieWebmaster]

With the new system you would be inactivated and asked to pay more... though there could be a high search number for the term and your daily budget is low enough to limit how often they will show you... try increasing the budget to 10 times what it is now and see what happens.

[abbottsys]

I am computer literate and reasonably intelligent. Have been using adwords but wanted to increase my frequency and position. Now, searching on Google, NO sponsored links come up for the keywords I am using about eight times out of ten.

I have read all the help pages, my CPC is above the recommended minimum, my daily budget is fine but suddenly all sponsored links for my keywords seem to have disappeared.

Am I thick or what?
Where are you searching from? Do you have a geo-targeting problem?

[Shmuel]

And just be sure your ads aren't paused. I've unfortunately done that before. Wanted to kick my own arse. :)

[ExposureTim]

Sorry to say it, but sometimes hiring a good consultant is more useful than trying to figure out such a problem on your own.

Asking this question in a forum may sometimes yield ideas to solve your problem, but really a good consultant should be able to look at your direct data and figure out what's going on pretty quickly.

[abbottsys]

.... Now, searching on Google, NO sponsored links come up for the keywords I am using about eight times out of ten.

You mean it's not just your ad, there are *no* ads showing?

[woodmann]

I am computer literate and reasonably intelligent. Have been using adwords but wanted to increase my frequency and position. Now, searching on Google, NO sponsored links come up for the keywords I am using about eight times out of ten.

I have read all the help pages, my CPC is above the recommended minimum, my daily budget is fine but suddenly all sponsored links for my keywords seem to have disappeared.

Am I thick or what?

Hi bernie4253,

Although I am not 100% certain but to me this sounds more like a relevancy issue than anything else. I would check my landing pages rather than raising my daily spend straight away and see if that brings in new results. Good luck with everything :)

[AussieWebmaster]

We have terms like that where we have a decent CTR when it does show our ad.... very appropriate content at the landing page (could not be better really)... and we still do not get all impressions... the only way we get more is by outrageous raising the Max Bid.... it is some inherent flaw for terms that have huge amounts of traffic.

[bernie4253]

Many thanks for all the replies.

No the ad is not suspended. Yes, there are NO paid for ads. Not a regional problem as I am targetting UK, Australia and US and am searching from Google.co.uk. Can' afford to hire a consultant; ha; but if adwords worked the way I had hoped, then I could afford to do so.

Have had some help from Google, but could not really understand their replies.

I'll just keep trying and thanks again

[uchet]

Google replies are mostly standard 'cut and paste' fare and mean very little.

In my experience, when cornered, Google refer to 'quality score', which is their get-out clause for anything they don't want to explain.

I had this recently with the phrase 'air conditioning'. Worked fine for months and is part of numerous other similar phrases and yet suddenly 'air conditioning' had no impressions from having thousands, but yet 'air-conditioning' and others such as 'air conditioning companies' were fine.

Initially Google said 'quality score' until I pointed out that nothing could be affecting that. Then they said it was a technical fault and eventually came back saying that the budget wasn't adequate. The budget has been adequate for months, the other keyword phrases are all still running and yet one particular phrase is penalised when it gets good positioning, CTR etc.

What does the client think of all this? They think "Google is a flawed system" and so they look at other search systems. I've lost count of the number of times I've told Google that my clients (albeit 'only' spending about £1M a year on clicks) are going elsewhere if they can't start giving better reasons for why they're penalising advertisers so much.

In my humble opinion Google are on a very slippery path downwards and they have no intention of listening to how they should be improving their system.

[ghoti]

The best way to figure out why your ads aren't showing is to use Google's Ads Diagnostic Tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/DiagnosticTool).