AdWords Auto Match Revealed

( Continued from Page 4: Adwords Quality Score Changes ) ...

Automatic Match, another AdWords feature is more likely to be part of the changes. The AdWords Beta, that had been tested with a handful of selected advertisers back in February has now grown to be a big test with who knows how many advertisers.

Automatic Match is an AdWords feature that automatically will spend unused account budget dollars for advertising, that you haven't been spending on your own.

"Automatic Matching", as Google put it "will automatically extend your Adwords campaigns to reach a larger audience by spending unused budget to serve your ads on relevant search queries, that you have not yet listed in your list of keywords...".

Thats what "Automatic Match" is all about. It will use unused budget to automatically extend your campaigns on keyword searches you aren't actually bidding for. Google says, the system will automatically only look for relevant searches. But tests performed by KeyRelevance and other researchers tell the story a little different.

A test was run with Automatic Match enabled for the keyword phrase "wedding table decorations". It is to be noted, that only the exact phrase should match, means "Phrase Match" had been enabled. So all went fine, but of course the account was far from spending it's daily budget, as the exact phrase would not be searched for that often.

Then, when "Automatic Matching" or "Auto Match" as it is called interfered in the game, it automatically started to place ads for all sorts of (more or less) related keyword combinations.

Now every AdWords professional, such as Chris X is describing in his advanced Adwords Courses, knows that you should never have the system automize itself, but that it is much better for Adwords campaign profit-optimization, if you chose, or better select, all keywords and phrases manually.

In our example some phrases really suited the needs of the advertiser. Keyword phrases, such as "decorations for wedding tables", "wedding table decor" or "wedding table ideas". Means sometimes Auto Match may not be bad for bringing up new keywords or keyword combination ideas.

But many other combinations, were able to be driving the campaign into a deep red loss situation at lightning speed. Suddenly the "Wedding Decoration" ad was shown for searches like "wedding flowers", "chocolate wedding favors" or even "chocolate lollipops", "hersheys" and much more that was unlikely to bring laser-targeted traffic to our site.

With Auto Match being enabled, the costs for our ad had increased by roughly 600 (!!!) per cent, whilst sales had been increasing only a little. At the end, only 30 per cent of the traffic coming to the site had been targeted enough to be interested at all, whilst the other 70 per cent of traffic had been a complete waste of bandwidth and ad spending dollars.

To be honest. Some of the keywords and phrases automatically chosen by the Google bot had been excellent and accurat. But for the rest, it was a total desaster. The campaign, out of a profit turn-over point of view, ended as a complete debacle.

Now, don't you worry. Every advertiser can turn "Auto Match" off. BUT the dangerous thing is, it is turned ON by default! Means, all advertisers not being in the "know" will be left out in the dark, wondering why their campaigns make them losing so much money. The question is, will Google leave it as being activated as the default setting, or will they twist it as being an option only, that you can enable if you like to.

O.K. - Auto Match had still been a Beta at time of this writing. And we give credit to Google that they may probably improve on the system. But we believe, they should leave it to all advertisers choice if they want to turn it on. The final control should always be with the advertiser, not the adspace seller. It should not be the other way round, with Google wresting more control from advertisers whilst ensuring higher ad spendings.

Going back to the first page of this article, we remember Google's Sergey Brin saying that Google would expand ad coverage again soon, but he was not mentioning that it was intended to make them more cash. The reason he pointed out was, that web surfers should see more ads in order to have multiple choices.

But the truth seems to be a little different. Or what does the search term "chocolate lollipop" have to do with wedding table decorations...?