Beating Google's Adwords Rotation System

-Advanced Technique

I admit this is a little geeky and more of a pro level thing for people
that have NO LIFE and are WAY too into adwords, but the potential
is pretty huge, so here it goes:

I have been noticing the same pattern over and over again in the last
several months with almost every new ad group started, in many
different industries.

Google's Adwords rotation system, while I do not know the
exact algorithm, works something like this:

When you load all your keywords and ads and launch your ad group for the first time,
Google assumes a 1% CTR until proven otherwise in the beginning, then tries out your
first few keywords. How many it tries out depends on a few factors, like your overall
account performance, your daily ad spend, your industry, and a few other factors,
but in a typical small account maybe your first 4 or 5 keywords just go right in, with
normal delivery, just enough so Google can determine if you know what you are doing.

Those first few keywords either do well, or they don't.

If they do well, Google moves on and rotates new keywords in, one at a time.
If those keywords also do well, everything is great. If they don't do well,
or there aren't a lot of impressions, the ad group starts having the delivery slowed.

As each new word that has 0 impressions or does poorly, the position of your ads
goes lower, the clicks get more expensive, and the whole ad group is slowed in its
number of impressions overall.

If you delete the poorly performing keywords, it takes a while, but then
that ad group "builds up steam" again.

Lets look at a typical scenario. Here you start your ad group and it starts out fine:

Next, you add in another keyword, but it doesn't go as well. Notice that the
delivery is still ok though:

It is at this point that google starts rotating in the next keyword that you are getting
into trouble, because according to Google, the CTR is ZERO. So, google still rotates in
the next keyword giving you the benefit of the doubt, but then look what happens:

Even though you tried to pay 5 cents MORE, your position goes down quite a bit.

There could be a lot of theories as to why this is, but a good guess is that the
algorithm has calculated the CTR from all the keywords so far, and the ZERO you
just got, hurt you a bit.

Regardless, I have seen this pattern over and over again. If you have a loser
keyword in there, or several, Google starts slowing you down and making it
even harder to get clicks. Notice what happens now:

As you add more loser keywords, or keywords that don't get a lot of impressions,
your whole ad group starts losing steam, and your delivery and impressions just
keep slowing down.

Now in this case I am assuming that you are using relevant keywords and these
keywords are related in concept, and you are targeting correctly, and you have some
decent ads.

So what do you do about this?

There are a few options:

1. Rotate your keywords putting your best foot forward, and once you have some
   data about the performance, arrange them so that the first 5 or 6 in the ad group
   are good performing keywords. You can always chose "edit keywords" and change
   the order in which your keywords appear
2. Nuke keywords that don't get any impressions or clicks for 30 days.
3. Nuke keywords fast that aren't performing, and target your ads better.

Hope this helps, remember you're only as good as your last ad group!

-Steve

Steve Blom
Certified Google Adwords Professional

Adwords Training Video Author:

Blog:
http://marketingnewsblog.adwordstraining.org

Free Adwords video:
http://www.adwordstraining.org/video/free_adwords_tutorial_video.htm

Contact: steve@adwordstraining.org