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
-
"Duplicate without user-selected canonical” - impact to Google Ads costs
Hello, we are facing some issues on our project and we would like to get some advice. Scenario
Paid Search Marketing | | Alex_Pisa
We run several websites (www.brandName.com, www.brandName.be, www.brandName.ch, etc..) all in French language . All sites have nearly the same content & structure, only minor text (some headings and phone numbers due to different countries are different). There are many good quality pages, but again they are the same over all domains. Current solution
Currently we don’t use canonicals, instead we use rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default": <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-BE" href="https://www.brandName.be/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-CA" href="https://www.brandName.ca/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-CH" href="https://www.brandName.ch/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-FR" href="https://www.brandName.fr/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-LU" href="https://www.brandName.lu/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://www.brandName.com/" /> Naturally this si reflected in ""Duplicate without user-selected canonical” . Issue
We create the same ad in Google Ads for 2 domains. So the content is mostly identical, ads are identical, target URLs differ only in domain. Yet Google Ads “Quality score” is different (10/10 vs. 6/10) and “Landing page experience” is very different (Above average vs. Average). Some members of our team think lower “Landing page experience” increases the Google Ads costs, which I personally don't believe, but I want to double check. Question: Can “Duplicate without user-selected canonical” issue decrease the “Landing page experience” rating and as result can it cause higher Google ads costs? Any suggestions/ideas appreciated, thanks. Regards.0 -
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 -
How to track in Google Analytics 2 different subdomains (one for website, the other for PPC landing pages)
Hello Mozers! I have a website with organic visits/goals on www.site.com and a few AdWords Campaign landing pages on lp.site.com whose goals are tracked with both adwords conversion monitoring AND analytics (not imported from analytics into Adword). The landing pages of the campaign have nothing to do with the web site (different cms, they don't link each other, totally isolated) and viceversa. Given that, what would it be the best practice to configure Google Analytics to track the website (www.site.com) AND a PPC campagin (lp.site.com)? I have been told to set up different views of the same property, but do I really need that? Please let me know what are you thinking. Thank you very much. DoMiSoL Rossini
Paid Search Marketing | | DoMiSoL0 -
Using the same landing page for seo and ppc
When does it make sense to create one landing page for both seo and ppc?
Paid Search Marketing | | melen0 -
Negative Keywords
This will end up being a two part question: We have been running a search marketing campaign for about 45 days. It seems no matter how many negative keywords we add (over 300 right now), we still are receiving borderline relevant traffic to the broad match ad group. We are in the printing industry and I think this in itself presents a challenge since there are thousands of competitors in our market, national & local. People also search for a variety of items, most of which end up having nothing to do with our business (i.e. animal prints, zebra prints etc.) We are running several different ad groups: one exact match, one broad and one phrase match. Does anyone have a resource or links they are willing to share that has general negative terms they use before creating any new campaign? I have ones I have found, but wondering if there is a very good master resource out there. How many key phrases do you typically add to an 'Exact Match' ad group? Thank you!
Paid Search Marketing | | SEOSponge0 -
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 -
Keyword Domains for PPC
I have a client who wants to buy a lot of long domains with keywords in them, for example, thesandiegopetstore.com (this is fictional) and then set up a PPC landing page for each. They think that when someone types in "san diego pet store" that their domain will be listed high and then they will get a lot of traffic. My concern is that they will own a lot of domains for their company and I thought Google is getting pretty adamant about companies not having a lot of domains, and I thought that keyword domains are not as effective as they used to be -- that branding is more important now. Also, I think the domains they've picked target very competitive keywords and that perhaps they will get a lot unqualified traffic and will still have to pay for the clicks. What do you think? What is the best way to set up PPC landing pages?
Paid Search Marketing | | klkirby0
