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
-
Top of funnel google ads campaign not hardly converting, why?
Hi, I really hope someone can help me with this. I'm running two search ad campaigns and a google shopping campaign in google ads. The search campaigns are targeting top-of-funnel keywords as the business doesn't have universally known collections which everyone would search for so they are just unique to my business. So the campaigns are driving traffic but really converting whereas google shopping is converting because searchers are looking for particular products so they're lower down the funnel closer to aking a purchase decision. I feel I've optimised the campaign well and for the most part, most keywords have 7/10 quality score. The landing page seems fine. However, our offering wasn't as strong as competitors so we've offered a discount the same as them to compete. Since I started google ads we have nearly doubled our monthly revenue and the product types targeted in campaigns have increased in quantity sold so it seems it's having an effect but the campaigns aren't showing a good performance. Does anyone have any suggestions or input that could help me? I looked at first interaction attribution model and even there it's not performing well which makes this even more difficult to resolve. I'm thinking I should enable USER id feature in Google analytics so i can track signed in users across devices which may then help attribute sales to paid search channel as I saw in search console that the keyword that generates the most traffic to the site is our brand name and we're not a well-known brand so makes me think they may be starting their buyer's journey on a work computer on their mobile and finishing on their computer at home as an example. However, I don't believe this will be the main cause or solution as I would only have data for signed in users which still won't give me the full picture. Also if the campaign is optimised effectively but conversions are minimal could not having many conversions affect quality score? If someone can help or provide me with a different perspective it would be much appreciated. Please let me know if I need to clarify or explain further. I hope I've made myself clear. Thanks, T
Paid Search Marketing | | TZ19820 -
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 is the best way to update Adwords final URLs if I'm moving to a new CMS?
Hi there - One of my clients is redeveloping its website. That means, the domain is remaining the same, but the whole site is being rebuilt in wordpress so all the adwords final URLs need to change OR be redirected. There are 550 live adgroups and 3400 ads. We haven't set up tracking. I can't find anywhere what the best thing to do is in this case. The key issues seem to be: 1. 301 redirects - given we have to do these anyway as part of migration, this seems to be the easiest path as Google is ok about redirects as long as they don't go to a different domain. From what I'm hearing, you don't get adversely impacted in terms of quality score etc. This has the huge advantage that you don't have to edit the ad therefore no loss of statistical history or risk of downtime whilst you wait for approval. HOWEVER, there is some concern that if you then redirected again IN THE FUTURE, the redirect might not work (in some browsers) or cause a loop. I'm also concerned that it's messy to leave it like that (ie: with the wrong URLs throughout). 2. Buik updating ads - I don't think this is an option as if you bulk download and then reupload, Google will see this as a new ad, and delete all the statistical history - I'm also concerned that that WOULD impact quality score as you'd be starting from scratch! 3. Changing each ad individually - as far as I understand you'd have to create copies of all the ads (so that you keep the history of the old ones) and effectively create new ones with the correct URL - one by one. You end up with a messy account (a lot of paused ads) but you keep the history? This is obviously the most time consuming and I can't see a way of avoiding ads having to go in for approval again, given the urls are all different, so you'd have to do this a an ad level, not an adgroup/campaign level etc. People redevelop their websites (without changing domains) all the time. It seems strange that no one is mentioning this problem! Any ideas?! Many thanks
Paid Search Marketing | | catalystmdc0 -
PPC for Luxury Goods Website
Hi Mozzers, I am starting a PPC campaign for a website that sells high-end products. The search volume for the generics is very high but I think the conversion rate on those will be quite low given the price of the products. Does anyone have any experience in doing PPC for high-end retailers and what type of keyword I should be bidding on? Thanks!
Paid Search Marketing | | KarlBantleman0 -
Why does my google analytics show a massive discrepancy from facebook's reported website clicks?
We're running a Facebook news feed ad that is pointing at our homepage. Facebook says that for yesterday there were 47 website clicks. Google analytics shows 15 total visitors from facebook with 3 of them landing on the homepage. I understand that there is likely going to be some discrepancy with users accidentally clicking and clicking back before the page loads, but this seems a little insane. I tested the ad using a page that pulls the Analytics cookie data using php and it is working properly so I don't understand what's happening. The url isn't tagged with utm parameters, which is going to be fixed. Anyone experience this or have any insight as to what could be this issue? Is this click fraud? Edit: For more clarification I was checking on my completely unfiltered google analytics profile/view.
Paid Search Marketing | | spencerhjustice0 -
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 -
Google Analytics CPC and PPC not Matching
Hi Why do our CPC in Google Analytic not match our PPC in Adword, surely they should be identical? We have Auto-tagging switched on and data in our history is wrong so it is not a timing issue. Thanks
Paid Search Marketing | | Studio330 -
Index or Noindex PPC Landing Pages?
Hi all, We have thousands of PPC landing pages for our products. Usually, these pages are very similar and may differ only slightly for the keyword in question. The landing pages are sitting in a sub-domain of our site. From SEO perspective, assuming we don't want to get hit by Panda, Penguin and other animals Google stuffed into its ranking algorithm...Is it a good idea not to index these landing pages at all (i.e. add meta robots - noindex, nofollow to these pages)? What say you? Thanks!
Paid Search Marketing | | ShivaS0
