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Google ads scam, or am I overreacting ?
Throwaway account, English not my first language, chronically incoherent, etc
I look after the PPC for a small e-commerce, in-house, so obviously not an expert, would appreciate someone enlightening me.
We are running a phrase match campaign for one of our products, let’s call it **running shoes.** Associated with the campaign are some negative keyword lists. In these keywords lists, we have a broad negative keyword **competitorA.**
My understanding from Google’s own help section is that it should prevent the ads from showing on any search term containing **competitorA.** I’ve just come across, in Search Terms numerous instances of keywords such as **competitorA running.**
I’ve contacted Google Support over the phone, in the first instance they suggested that I don’t understand how negative keywords work and that we should use exact instead. After some debate, they wanted to know the exact date when it happened(was looking at a 30 days report), as they were unable to push it further without a specific date and could not find it themselves. After finding the date they said that no compensation(at no point did I ask for compensation) is available as the search term incurred no costs and unceremoniously terminated the call.
My understanding is that having the ad show for terms that are not clicked, lowers the quality score and increases the cost per click, so it does, in fact, increase the costs.
I suppose my question is – does it actually cost something, or I should just ignore it; if it does, what can be done?
Any suggestions are appreciated.
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1 Reply
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Copy your whole list, add CompetitorA to all of the keywords. Add to negative list
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If the competitor name is one word, for example Adidas, Puma, Nike then you’re right in making it broad match negative. If it’s made up of two or more words, use phrase match instead.
I didn’t understand the whole thing so I am afraid that’s all I can help with.
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99% of the times I’ve seen this come up, it’s that the negative keyword was added *after* the search term triggered the ad. That is why they were asking for a specific date. It’s not clear to me whether you or they confirmed the order of events. Only if the negative was added before the term showed up, was added to the correct level (to the campaign, and not to an ad group, for example), would it warrant further investigation.
I say 99% to err on the safe side; i can’t actually recall an instance where these 2 checks didn’t resolve the issue.
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