Google Adwords advice

[annethedonn]

Hi, I've been advertising my site on Google Adwords since end of Feb and have had over 5000 hits since then. I was averaging around 150-200/day. However, since yesterday my hits have gone down dramatically and the only thing I can think of that might have affected it was changing the description tag in the source code. I was advised by an optimisation entrepreneur to put around 6 words but through Lycos they have advised me to put 20-30 words, so I upped it. Is this a mistake? Do you think this is what has caused my hits to reduce or does it look ok as Lycos optimisation testing tool seems to think that it is right.

thanks for your advice.

Anne (again!!)

[Ozzy]

By source code I assume you mean the HTML on your website. If that is the case then that does not affect your adwords campaign.
First you need to find out where yoru traffic has been coming from, and then work out if the drop has come from your Adwords listings OR your natural listings. Without knowing that you wont know where to look to get the answer to your question.

[annethedonn]

Thanks Richard, yes I do mean html code. I have noticed that the content targeting in Google is where the problem lies as it was where the majority was coming from and only a few from my ad campaign keywords. Most of my hits are through the google syndication whatever that is and funnily enough this forum! So that's a good sign!

[Webstuff]

In reply to the other part of the question though, the "description" meta tag is generally recommended as being "anywhere below 200 characters" in length. I know I'm going to make some other SEO's, etc, unhappy by saying that, but six words is far too few for a description.

[annethedonn]

Well I have about 20 now I think. But since changing them the hits have dropped so there much be a gremlin! Maybe Google haven't updated their info yet.

[Webstuff]

your adwords campaign will rely on the words that you've set up for it specifically, nothing to do with your site content. Has your adwords campaign run out of money?

[annethedonn]

no it's on account - very peculiar.

[clickprofits]

Most of my hits are through the google syndication whatever that is

From Google:
"On these sites, your ads are displayed alongside content relevant to your keywords. Your ads may appear on news sites, personal web pages, emails or many other types of content sites and products."

If your clickthroughs from syndication (adsense on content sites) are way down, one possibility is that your content clicks were mainly coming from one particular site and this site is either getting a lot less traffic for some reason (eg: a drop in search engine rankings for their site) or perhaps they have either removed their adsense code for some reason or they have changed their content on the pages where your ad was showing to such an extent that different ads are now showing (ie: yours isn't).

You can get lots of free info, help and a faq in the Google Adwords support section for advertisers: http://adwords.google.com/support

Hope this makes sense and helps in some way.

Mark.

[annethedonn]

thanks Mark, that might explain it! doesn't help my profits though!