Google Please Show People The Ads I Tell You To Show

This is too funny and unsettling not to share with every marketer out there who has had experience buying PPC advertising from the Big G.

While managing one of our many ppc accounts with Google we noticed that they were displaying the wrong ad to a searcher who was looking for what our client offers. Instead of an, “it was just a one time bug” or, “CRAP! We’ll fix this right away!” they sent an apology email with an explanation and a work-around.

A work around?

This wouldn’t be a big deal if it were bug in a new product that’s in beta or if it were an issue that simply hasn’t been addressed by technology yet. But that is not the case here. Google informs us that due to “query parsing” they simply “chose” an ad from a GEO targeted campaign because the searcher put the keyword “MI” (Michigan) into the keyword phrase, when it *should* have displayed the non-GEO ad because *the search originated in Illinois!*

Here at PositionTech we manage quite a few search marketing campaigns. The things we see happen in our industry can get quite interesting, humorous, upsetting - or all of the above. First of all, Google does a pretty good job helping advertisers display ads to people searching for keywords they are targeting, and a pretty good job showing searchers relevant ads. For the most part, they let advertisers choose what ads are displayed when someone searches for something, and they try to help teach advertisers how to write ads and create landing pages that work. With that said, I feel like they let us down here.

The real issue is that after we pointed this out to Google, and basically asked, “Why are you displaying the wrong ad?” They came up with an excuse and a work around instead of saying “OMG, we’ll fix this right away we can’t believe this hasn’t been corrected yet!”

Here’s what they had to say:

The reason that you saw the ad from this regionally-targeted campaign even though you are located in Chicago is because of a feature called ‘query parsing’. When possible, Google analyzes users’ search queries for location-specific information in order to show regionally targeted ads.

Therefore, users may see your ad when they use location-specific search terms on Google, even if they’re located outside your targeted area. In this case, you’re located in Chicago, but you used the location-specific term ‘keyword michigan’, which is why you were still able to see your regionally-targeted ad.

Are you serious? Query parsing? “Users may see your ad when they use location-specific search terms on Google, even if they’re located outside your targeted area.” What?! I want them to see the ad I chose.

And the work-around:

In order to prevent this from occurring in the future, you can simply add the term ‘keyword michigan’ as a negative keyword in your ad group. As you may know, you will enter the keyword with a minus sign before it (i.e. -keyword michigan). This will prevent our system from matching that query to related keywords in the ad group. You can also put the keywords in this ad group into phrase match so that they are unable to be expanded upon.

Thank you for your patience while I followed up with our technical team. If you would like me to clarify any of the information I provided above, please reply to this email and I will be happy to assist you.

I don’t want clarification, I want you to show the ads I told you to show. Google, we all know you rock, and this is precisely why this issue should have been resolved soon after you launched GEO targeting in October of 2003 (over 3 years ago).

Please resolve this issue, I’m sure we aren’t the only advertising who have suffered from the wrong ad being displayed (surely many advertisers are unaware). I hope you will consider this request.