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Are Your Keywords Not Showing Due to “Low Search Volume”?Posted by Amber on July 16, 2008 in Advanced PPC Strategies, Google AdWords |
The other day I had an ad group that hadn’t received any impressions, clicks or leads in a month. When I scrolled over the ad diagnostics tool it said:
Ad showing? No
The keyword phrase you’ve entered has a low search volume and isn’t showing any of your ads. If more users start searching for your keyword, your ad will begin to show. You don’t need to do anything.
However, when I did a search for my keyword a ton of other ads were showing. Plus, my quality score for that keyword was ‘great’ and the minimum bid required was only $.04 when I was bidding $.65! So what’s the deal I asked?! How could other advertisers be showing ads for that keyword but I’m not?
This is what my Google rep had to say:
To answer your question, many of the keywords in your ad groups are not triggering your ads because they are low volume keywords. This means that historically, these terms have registered very few searches on Google for long periods of time. Our system temporarily removes low volume keywords from the auction until they begin to accrue more traffic.
I understand that you’re concerned about other ads that appear to be triggered by your keywords on Google. Please keep in mind that these ads are not showing for your exact keyword, such as ’small press websites’, but are being matched to other variations of the term due to our expanded broad match feature.
Moving forward, you can either:
- wait until your keywords begin to drive more traffic, as this will cause your terms to reactivate automatically
- edit your keyword list to include terms that are less specific (higher volume keywords)
So okay, this makes sense that other ads are showing for this keywords broad match. However, if the keyword that is showing the ad is the broad match version, it should be identical to my keyword. So I find it hard to believe with two identical keywords one would show ads and the other wouldn’t.
My advice if you’re getting this error is to first be sure you have your keywords in broad match and not just exact or phrase. Second is try adding some variations of less specific keywords. If you’re keyword is too long-tail, then shorten it to reach a broader audience.
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July 16th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
I’ve experienced this several times with some of my SEM clients, particularly when keywords involve both a brand name and general keyword (ie John’s moving truck). Often my exact match keyword wont be used for that auction, but instead broad matched ads to the general keyword will be used. The convenient excuse Google uses is that holding an auction for a very low volume term like this one would put too much strain on their servers, and its probably true. But what is also true is now Google can hold an auction for the more expensive broad matched general keyword. Revenue if they used your exact match keyword- $0.05, revenue when using the broad matched general keyword- $4.00. I wonder which one they will pick every time?
July 16th, 2008 at 10:58 pm
I think you slightly misunderstood the response.
The other bidders aren’t bidding on ’small press websites’ (broad match) but rather other similar keywords in the Expanded Broad Match, which could be anything!
For example, the expanded broad match keywords that would trigger a result for [small press websites] could be something like the following:
press websites
independent publishing
small websites
etc…
Or, someone could be bidding high for “press websites” in phrase match.
Yeah, it seems the days of having thousands of long tails is in the dust… It’s kind of a sad irony how Google preaches relevancy with their QS, etc. but then pushes advertisers to show ads for irrelevant search terms.
July 17th, 2008 at 6:13 am
Hi Jason, thanks for the response. If keywords like press websites and small websites are getting picked up from expanded broad match, they’re still very identical to my original keyword. So it’s still hard for me to understand why those keywords are showing but not mine. But yes, Google says to be specific and target the long tail, but unfortunately that doesn’t always work!
July 17th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
[...] Are Your Keywords Not Showing Due to "Low Search Volume"?, PPC Hero [...]
July 19th, 2008 at 8:51 am
[...] make some long-tail keyword phrases pay enough to put the time into it. That’s what Amber at PPC Hero recently [...]
September 1st, 2008 at 1:42 pm
A way around the “not displaying ads due to low search volume” takes a bit of work, but well worth it to the growth of a company.
1. Move broader, more popular keywords into a campaign of their own.
2. Increase the bids of the low search volume phrases to about $2 or $3. Don’t worry, you may pay close to this amount a few times, but after establishing placement you can reduce the bid and still have the ads displayed.
3. By implementing the above, you’ll raise the daily to about $100. Again, don’t worry! These are very specific phrases that will not get hundreds of clicks, but are specific enough to generate some great conversions.
4. You may want to add some of the specific modifiers as negatives in the broader campaign to give the specific campaign more of an opportunity to have ads displayed.
Again, you won’t have an influx of traffic, it is gradual, but definitely worth it!
September 2nd, 2008 at 8:51 am
Anita, these are great tips, thanks!
October 3rd, 2008 at 6:06 am
This is what we have been worrying about for years.
Google becoming so dominant that they can dictate the way things are done.
They should not be able to discriminate against the keywords you choose just
because their is low search volume. What is the problem to them having a low volume ad getting hardly any views?
They just want to pump more money out of us as per usual. This forced people to have to use the more competitive and more expensive broader versions of the keywords. This should not be allowed by Google. If I want to target a very specific phrase on the off chance it may get a few searches per year, then I should be allowed to considering I am paying for it.
October 3rd, 2008 at 6:07 am
Anita,
I didn’t quite understand what you were trying to say in your post?
It didn’t really make sense to me….
October 3rd, 2008 at 11:14 am
Will, I agree with your comments about Google dominating how we advertise for our keywords and run our adwords account. I think Anita was giving us her tips on how to achieve more traffic so Google will begin showing certain keywords.