Adwords is breaking merchant PPC terms!

[Bud]

Just had an email from a merchant to say I'm bidding on their brand name (misspell). Not something I do, but I checked my adwords just in case. Nothing.

However, Google does show my ad!

I am bidding on say, 'camera' but not 'companycamera' - the brand name they say I am.

Has anyone else come across this behaviour from G and what can I do about it? It would seem a shame to cancel the whole campaign because of this.

[Bud]

I have now negatively matched the offending term (and some) but this doesn't explain why G has dropped me in it!

[mrbishi]

What I would imagine is happening is that you are using broad or phrase match in your keyword lists, which means that when ever someone searches for some combination of brandname +your keywords your advert shows up.

It seems that some merchants are a bit draconian and don't like it when this happens, so adding their brand name to your negative keywords like you did is the way forward!

Hope this helps.

[Shane]

yup phrase matched term plus the company as suggested above..

or if you are using broad match .. it could be google's expanded broad match algo..

We had a client bidding on vibrators and it had them showing for vibrating alarm clocks and vibrating toothbrushes too !

run a search query report.. you'll probably find a few :scared keywords that you don't want to be appearing for

[djbarker]

indeed - their broad match is very sneaky. eg, you can advertise against broad match volvo cars & have your ad appear against vw vans.

[thai_king]

How would the Volvo cars & VW vans work? They do not contain any of each others keywords therefore how would they appear for each other?

[djbarker]

hiya, thai king. the vw/volvo thing: they can show against phrases you're not targeting. here's the description from google:

With broad match, the Google AdWords system automatically runs your ads on relevant variations of your keywords, even if these terms aren't in your keyword lists. Keyword variations can include synonyms, singular/plural forms, relevant variants of your keywords, and phrases containing your keywords.