Google AdWords and Relevancy of Impressions from Keyword-Targeted Campaigns

2007-03-03T23:32:00.000-08:00

By MICHAEL HORNAK

"...and sponsoring your search for wall hardware: the printing industry."

That's basically what Google just told me as I searched for one of those wall-mounting brackets for porcelain plates (gifts for my mother). I briefly scanned my brain for descriptors and began typing in the search field. Note: my Saturday nights are typically more exciting.

Google Search #1: plate mounter
Search results: Not quite what I'm looking for. I'll have to be more specific.
Sponsored links: Flexo Plate Mounters, Plaque Mounts & Frames, Plate Mounters & Proofers, Image Plates.
My comment: Flexo plates are used in the printing industry to transfer an image from plate to drum to paper.

Google Search #2: plate mounter wall
Search results: Still not quite what I'm looking for, and now I'm getting annoyed seeing all these results for printing plates.
Sponsored links: 160,000 Wall Switch Plates, Plasma TV Wall Mount, Flexo Plate Mounters, Speaker Wall Plates, Electrical Wall Plates, Low Prices on Wall Plates, TV Wall Mounts, Wall Faceplates, Plate Mounters & Proofers.
My comment: Plasma TV? I want to mount plates, not televisions.

Google Search #3: plate mounter wall -printing
Search results: Still not what I'm looking for and now I notice that some of the ads are still related to the printing industry.
Sponsored links: Wallplates, 160,000 Wall Switch Plates, Flexo Plate Mounters, Speaker Wall Plates, Wall Plate, TV Wall Mounts, Wall Faceplates, Plate Mounters & Proofers.
My comment: How is it I'm still seeing ads for Flexo Plate Mounters even though I excluded the word printing? The #1 sponsored link on the right hand column reads: "Flexo Plate Mounters: Mounting & proofing machines for flexo printing plates - www.stconverting.com"

To Google's credit, maybe I should have started my search with something like porcelain plate wall bracket, but nevertheless.

I'm familiar with Google AdWords, so I understand that these textual ads are displaying because the advertisers chose to have them display when someone typed in one of the keywords assigned to the ads. In this case it likely was plate and mounter. What Google apparently does not do well is to eliminate significant risk that a person will see an ad that is not relevant to that person's current search objective.

Of course it's impossible to prevent all irrelevant ad impressions, but what about in the case where I excluded search results containing the word printing? A very simple (and rather obvious) enhancement Google could easily implement is to exclude ads that contain the word(s) I asked to exclude from my search results.

I haven't mentioned yet that, when I peformed the searches, I was logged into my Google Account which, as some of us may know, activates Google's "Personalized Search" feature that tries to predict what search results are most relevant to me based on my entire search history. I currently work in the printing industry and I even worked with flexo printing plates many years ago. Could this be why Google insisted on showing me these search results and sponsored links? How could they know this about me? Eerie.

Side note: search engine optimization (SEO) and search ad gurus seem to be quite upset in recent weeks since Google decided to make it harder for people to turn off this Personalized Search feature. They claim it throws a big monkey wrench in their search marketing efforts.

Next, I have a more complicated suggestion for improving the AdWords service. What Google can do is to let advertisers list sets of keywords (separate from the keywords they are paying for) which describe the subject of each ad or campaign in more detail, as well as a list that describes what is not the subject of each ad/campaign. Google could then build-in better algorithms to its search engine and ad server to enhance relevancy of the ad impressions themselves. It would also heighten awareness about ad impression relevancy and place some extra responsibility on the advertiser to better plan their search ad campaigns.

To suggest how much focus is currently placed on AdWords impression relevancy and ad impression relevancy in general, the following are current results from Google searches (including quotation marks).

"adwords impression relevancy" - 0 results
"ad impression relevancy" - 0 results
"impression relevancy" - 0 results
"relevant ad impressions" - 3 results.
"relevancy of impressions" - 0 results.

Now I'll present a hypothetical scenario involving me as advertiser and "Person A," with Personalized Search turned off, as searcher. If I'm selling pest control products I might want my AdWords campaign to display whenever someone's search terms include pest mouse, mouse trap, or mouse poison. I would not want to pay for click-throughs from Person A if they search for mouse trap havahart if I don't offer any humane mouse traps. In today's AdWords system, Google seems to have covered this base with its "campaign negative keywords" feature. However, if I'm a low-budget advertiser who wants high click-through rates (CTR) and high conversion rates, I would also not want to pay for a click by Person A if they search for mouse trap -poison, especially if my ad were to read: "Pest Control Solutions: Mouse traps, poison and more! - www.pestcontrolsolutions.com".

Chances are Person A specifically excluded the word poison from their search because they're looking for a humane pest control solution. I, as advertiser, would never add poison to my campaign negative keyword list because with this campaign I will be trying to attract the people looking for the poison product as well. Person A might even decide to click on my ad thinking there's a possibility I offer humane mouse traps. I would have to pay Google the click fee without converting Person A, and Person A would have wasted their time. It's a lose-lose-lose situation, that could over time cause people like Person A to ignore the sponsored links altogether.

Even more difficult to prevent is search terms from unrelated industries summoning my ads. What if there was a popular night club called The Mouse Trap? I could innocently start my campaign on a Friday and by Monday I would have hundreds of impressions and maybe even a couple of costly clicks that had no chance of converting. This would then earn me a low CTR which, if I'm not mistaken, tells Google to serve my ad less often among my competitors' ads and to charge me a higher cost per click (CPC) because mine is not as relevant.

Google addresses an ad relevancy issue with the new "Quality Score" ratings they place on each ad. The Quality Score does raise awareness about relevancy of ads, but what seems to be overlooked is Google's responsibility to serve up relevant impressions based on data they may already have from Personalized Search and data they can get from advertisers.

The point is that search advertisers can't predict every possible search scenario and proactively build or split-up their ads into separate campaigns in order to prevent irrelevant impressions. Irrelevant search ad impressions lead to low CTRs and worse, eroded advertising budgets and failed campaigns.

http://michaelhornak.com

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Google AdWords and Relevancy of Impressions from Keyword-Targeted Campaigns