Sphinn - Funniest Pay Per Click Mistake of All Time!

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Funniest Pay Per Click Mistake of All Time!

Went Hot: September 14, 2007 - 8:58 am
Posted By: lorenbaker 659 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.billhartzer.com)
Category: Paid Search

Here's one of the most common PPC mistakes : actually bidding for the term 'keyword'! This oversight is costing companies lots of money. Make sure you're not making this mistake yourself. (Screenshots available)

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from Mel66 659 days ago #

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I (ahem) did this once, by accident. I had exported a campaign from AW Editor to Excel, then copied and pasted the entire column of keywords back into Editor - including the column header, which is "Keyword." Caught it the next day. It *was* pretty funny - but could have been disastrous if I hadn't noticed it as soon as I did.

This is why it's critical to look at your PPC results every single day, folks! I saw referrals in our analytics on the keyword "keyword" and knew something was amiss.

Melissa

from TimDineen 658 days ago #

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Its actually a pretty easy mistake to make. If you use AdWords Editor (or Yahoo bulk edit) and paste in a bulk edit from a .csv sheet often the first line could be headings Campaign|Ad Group|Keyword .

But it's also easy to notice when you've done this because AWE tells you "creating 1 new campaign" etc. Unless you ignore that, and/or don't check your campaigns closely online, this mistake should be easy to catch before it goes live.

I bet a lot of people are searching their campaigns today. Nice post Bill, you just saved some money for some I'm sure.

from bhartzer 658 days ago #

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What's interesting, though, is that I've been tracking these search results over time and it's not just one company making this mistake. Some of the ads go on for a long time before it's noticed--which is something that puts up a red flag (i.e., the person taking care of that PPC campaign isn't watching it very closely).

from MattMcGee 658 days ago #

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OMG, that is hysterical! That's the equivalent of having a title element that says "Page Title." Actually, it's worse because it's costing them directly on the PPC side!

from bhartzer 658 days ago #

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You're right, Matt, it's definitely worse--and to get top positions you'd better believe that they're bidding pretty high, especially given the fact that I'm sure the Quality Score (on Google AdWords) is probably going to be pretty poor if you bid on the word "keyword" and the landing page is an auto dealership or even a law firm.

from flyingrose 657 days ago #

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Maybe they're branding. LOL.

from g1smd 657 days ago #

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I wonder if there are any other words that people paste in from any other software they use, thereby making a similar mistake.

from bhartzer 655 days ago #

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g1smd, there are a bunch of others--most of them, though, are tough to come across, though.

from MattC 655 days ago #

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For any of you PPC peeps out there, looks like there are a lot of potential customers if you just call up and say, look how you are messing up your ads.