← The Paid Search Podcast | A Weekly Podcast About Google Ads and Online Marketing
The Paid Search Podcast | A Weekly Podcast About Google Ads and Online Marketing
Report Finds 80% Do Not Use Negative Keywords (Episode 453)
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Chris Schaefer
Foreign hello and welcome to the Paid Search Podcast. My name is Chris Schaefer and today I'm going to talk about a report using tens of thousands of Performance max campaigns finds 80% of those campaigns do not use negative keywords. This is a amazing study brought to us from my friends at Optio. They've dropped this bombshell on me and I want to talk about it in today's show. That's going to be the main topic of the show. I'm going to bring you the facts of what they found is happening and we're going to talk about how it affects you and how you should rethink how you're using Performance Max. So as I said, my name is Chris. Thank you for being here. Every week I talk about Google Ads and this week is no different. I'm able to do this because of my wonderful sponsor optio.com PSP where you can try out this amazing tool for 28 days for free. Now you say, Kris, why should I try it? Well, I'm about to discuss one of the critical aspects of PPC management is using negative keywords. And if you want to better utilize negative keywords, particularly in Performance Max, you can use the Engram Finder tool brought to you by Opteo. That is a tool within Optio which identifies wasteful spend on search terms and simplifies the negative keyword process across all of Google Ads from search shopping, Performance Max and they even support Microsoft ads as well. So this is amazing. I highly recommend that you try it out. You can try it for free@opteo.com PSP this is an exclusive offer. If you go to optio.com PSP try it for 28 days for free. And I know you're going to like it because as I mentioned, there's a lot you don't know about Performance Max and we're going to talk about it today. So before we do, I always love taking questions from listeners. I believe I had skipped questions last week and I am going to bring a question in this week. If you'd like to reach out to me about a question question about your Google Ads, please do so. Paid search podcast Gmail.com is the show email if you'd like to reach me for professional help services within Google Ads, you can do that@chris schaefer.com go to my website there. Okay, so this week's question comes to us from Carlin who is fellow Texan, heard from Colin Carlin multiple times on the show and he brings together a point that I want to Bring up now, Carlin says you read excerpts, you read excerpts from a Google help document a while back in which Google admitted that top is no longer necessarily quote unquote top, but may indicate a showing of the ad elsewhere on the first page. In light of that announcement, do you think that it would be safer to assume true top as is more like 60% of whatever the top percentage is? Thank you, Carlin for the question. And I, I don't, I do not think that you should calculate or, or, or, or, or to put it this way, I don't think you should recalculate Google's calculations. I don't think there's any reason to second guess things that we do not have control of in Google Ads. This is a core principle that I follow for anything that is opaque in Google Ads, anything that is confusing, mysterious, non transparent in Google Ads. You cannot make assumptions based on data we do not have. Because I don't do that because I touch so many different accounts. There's no way that anything is universally true for everyone. Perhaps there are some people and you know, you can look at one particular company, one industry, one situation, one campaign perhaps, and make some conclusions. But in no way do I think that you should take any kind of percentage or calculation and calculate what Google's telling you. So here's why. Let's go back to the beginning. Okay, so way back when we had what was called average position, okay, average position was a number. It was not a percentage, it was a number. And Google would tell us your ads are at 1.3 position or your ads are at 3.4 position. Okay, this was a situation where we did not necessarily know, you know, what percentage of the ads were in first position, second position, or you know, or I should say it this way, which one was in first position and how many we, how many times we were not in first position. It would give us a average number of all those kind of positions. So you would, you would look at the average and say, okay, I'm mostly in first position. I'm at 1.5 or wow, I'm at 4.66. I'm definitely over on the right hand side. What, what the ads used to show over on the right hand side. So you know, you're not even above organic, you're over on the right hand side of Google. So we don't have that anymore. Now we have percentages. And it is a very binary discussion of position. Now you're either absolute top or you are top percentage. So each of those are either on or off. Either you are absolute top, meaning you are in the absolute top attainable position for a paid ad, or you are in the above organic positions of the paid ads. So either one of those are binary to either yes or no. Either you're in the absolute top attainable position for paid ads. So let's talk about that because that's what Carlin's question is really about. He wants to know, since absolute top and top don't necessarily mean what we think, should we rethink this? No. And again, the answer is still no. But this is not something we can control. The reason you could be absolute top and still not actually be number one is because there's other elements that Google has been adding to their search engine results that complicate this fact. And you know, there's AI answers that show up, there's Google Maps that can show up. There's the Google guarantee that can show up. There might be shopping results that can show up there. There might be hotel listings. There might be a lot of dynamic things that can pop up. Sometimes there might be image results or video results that can show up. A lot of things can make your quote unquote absolute top position. Actually not truly at the number one position. Now, when we see top percentage, that's actually the most concrete thing that you can know. That's actually my most based estimate of knowing how these ads are performing. I can not look at absolute top and be sure of what that number says because it could say 100% absolute top and I would not know for sure if I'm actually 100% all the time truly at the very top, because it might be an industry where a lot of the times it's localized searches. So Google guarantee is showing, Google Maps is showing. Or it might be another industry where it's a lot of how to kind of stuff, maybe advertising at a, at a very high funnel kind of thing. So it's a lot of question symptom searches out there. So lots of AI stuff is popping up. So my absolute top does not give me solid answers. So if there's anything to really question, it's definitely the absolute top. But top tells us one thing and it is either yes or no. Are my ads above the organic search results or are they below those organic search results? Now we are way past June 2024, which was when Google started doing away with the infinite scroll, the continuous scroll system. Thank goodness I did not like that. And all of America and the world agreed with me because Google reversed their decision on that, which is Great. I did not enjoy it. I do not think it contributed value in the same way that the continuous Instagram scroll and Twitter scroll stuff is daunting and frustrating and feels inconclusive often. So I think Google was finding that that was very true. When people started scrolling, there was no additional clicks that were happening. There was no added value. So they got rid of that, which is great. So now we know it is just a singular, singular, solitary page. There is a first page and then the person clicks next and then there's another first page. Okay, there is no second page Google. Just to be clear, there can be a second page for the organic search results, but there is no second ad page. Your ads can possibly show up again on that same page. But there's no, there is, there's no reduced rate to be able to show up on second page. That does not happen. A lot of people get confused about that because there is a warning in Google that says your bid is below first page bid. That is a legacy warning in Google Ads. It has no relevance now because every time there is a new page shown, there is a new auction that takes place in that moment. So there's no second page results for, for ads. Either they show on the page or they don't show on the page. So anyway, diverting from that, that rabbit trail there, getting back to the topic, when the ads show top percentage, you know, one thing for sure, they showed above organic. Organic ads. Remember those, Remember organic ads? Remember those things? Before we had AI's answers and we had Google guarantee and a whole map listing of all kinds of stuff. And, and all those distractions that are not necessarily organic, you know, they're still actually within the Google sphere. They don't actually ever take you outside of the Google universe. You click on any one of those, you're still on Google. You're still within Google's bounds. Yeah, I'm talking about the organic results that are actually other websites. Right. Where you're not contained within the Google Web, you actually leave the Google Web, which Google doesn't want you to do. So that is what top percentage means. So you can be sure when you look at top percentage, yes, you are above organic. And this is an important number to pay attention to because I was, I was just looking at somebody's account earlier this week in a Google Ads coaching session I was doing, which you can sign up for@chris shaffer.com by the way, when I, when I looked at this account, I saw top percentage. The impression top percentage was, I think below 50. I think it was 40%, 30%, something like that. And this person was suffering from massively low click through rates. So when you see very low top percentage and you see and you have very, you're having trouble spending your budget, you're having extremely low click through rates. Maybe your conversion rates are awful. It's an indication that no one sees your ads. You're getting kind of the trickle down traffic, right? The traffic that scrolls down to the bottom, usually very poorly converting traffic, usually traffic that has extremely low click through rates. So there's some strategies which you could do something like that. But most of the time you're going to want to be visible. If you're going to advertise on Google, you're going to want to be visible, you're going to want to be there. So it's an important fact to understand with top percentage. So that's the end of that question there. We're going to move on now to the big news. This is, this is huge. And I'm going to run through a couple key points of this report. This was something that was sent to me from Optio. I mean, they sponsor the show, but this is legit information. They actually, I've done this kind of stuff before. They've dropped bombshell reports before. And what they do is they use the, the data that they have within their giant warehouse of accounts that their system is looking at and processing. Right? Their system's cranking through all kinds of optimization suggestions and stuff and they use that data to help find things like this, that 8 in 10 performance max campaigns. For those of you that like the term, it's also called pmax. I said it once, I'm not going to say it again. It's performance max from now on. I don't say that other term. It's weird. Performance max campaigns run with less than 10 negative keywords. 8 out of 10, 80% of Performance Max campaigns run with less than 10 negative keywords. This data was analyzed using 20 over 24,000 Performance Max campaigns, okay, totaling like $26 million a month in spend. This is a large sample size. This is no small thing. These are performance max exclusive. 26 million per month, 24,000 different campaigns analyzed. And 80% have less than eight negative keywords. Now here's some other startling facts. 68% of those have zero negative keywords. 68% have. So the vast majority of these have nothing at all. So, you know, I said 8 out of 10, these have less than 8, but a big percentage. If this was a pie chart a big percentage, 68% of all of these had no keywords at all. Okay. So I'm sorry, no negative keywords at all. So what does this mean? You know, why, why am I bringing this up? Why is this, why is this important? Well, I think it tells us several things. And you know, thank you so much for Optio to bring this forward because this is a great reminder about a, a key thing about AI and this set it and forget it kind of thing. Right? Too many people look at this performance max and because of the opaqueness, the, the non transparency, the, the lack of reporting that we get from these performance max campaigns, because of this, they just take the data that is shown and don't ask questions and don't manage. You know, it's on cruise control. It's, it's automatically driving itself. You know, we just look at the numbers and we don't necessarily add negative keywords. We don't make adjustments. I'm guilty of this as well. I'm talking to myself here. It is very easy to run these campaigns and just give it some direction and not do management within the campaign. So is it because it's too difficult? Is it because the process to do this is too difficult? And you say, well, Kris, I didn't even know. You may not even know that negative keywords can be applied to performance max campaigns. And I'm sure you're not alone because obviously there's 68% out of over 24,000 campaigns that have no implementation of negative keywords. Okay? So to be clear, there are ways to add more negative keywords to your account. So one way is to use the Google Ads form. There's actually a form out there where you can actually add and have the Google support add a set of keywords for you. Right? You can have them add a list to your performance max campaign. Now this is not going to be something that stays this way forever, but I believe that there are, there's going to be a point when we can start doing this on our own. Because we all know Google doesn't like a manual process. They don't. They don't. They like things for us to do it or the computer to do it. They don't like manually entered stuff. So I, you know, stuff like that never sticks around for very long. If they can automate it, they're going to. So I imagine that's going to be coming. So right now, you know, you're spending a lot of money. Are you making use of it in another route other than contacting Google? You can also use account level negative keywords. Okay, so when you apply account level negative keywords, this applies to everything. So this is completely ineffective. If you're running a performance Max campaign, a non brand search campaign, and a brand search campaign, you're running three different kind of campaigns. And then you're maybe, maybe you want to block brand from showing up in your performance max. So it is exclusively non brand. Well, account level negative keywords will not work in that instance because they will block the brand campaign as well. Your brand campaign will stop working because it applies to every single campaign, regardless of type in that entire account. So this is critical, I think. Let's go back to the report and look at some more things that we learned from this. This Performance Max Campaign Modification Request Form. If you want to know what this form is called, look up the Performance Max Campaign Modification Request Form. That's a technical term of it. And only 2.6. Use these shared negative keyword lists which are created by submitting this form to Google. So out of 24,000, only 653 have some number or some form of a shared negative keyword list. Okay, so you guys listen to this podcast because you want to get a hit. You want to know how to outperform your competitors. Get more. You know, some of you listen to this because you don't want to lose your job. You just want at least once your, your boss to see improvement. You know, whether you're a freelancer out there in house management or you're a business owner who's managing your own campaigns, you're listening for tips. Here's your takeaway tip for today. If you want to be in the top 2.6%, the top 2% of performance max campaigns, use a couple negative keywords. Add a few negative keywords. Use that Performance Max Campaign Modification Request Form. Tell Google to add a few things. And you're now in a very, very small percentage of accounts that's utilizing a tool that's available to everyone. Okay. It is, it is very rare for people to have this. So obviously it's not something people are going to use because this, this, this form is not. There's no button to click in Google Ads to just submit this form. It's something you have to go and submit the form in the support area. So, you know, and it is a form. It's not just a button. It's not just a little thing that you fill out and it just does it right then it requires human interaction here. So, you know, is it too difficult? Is that why? I think it's because, I honestly think it's because people have the set it and forget it mindset and you know, people complain that it's not working and yet the tools are available to use to be able to stop that. So perhaps, perhaps the biggest issue here is that people, people don't know what to pick. You know, you say, well, Chris, I don't know what negative keywords to pick. Well, let me give you one tip. As I mentioned at the top of the show, Optio's in gram finder tool, which comes with many of the other tools that Optio provides. This is the way to find information in your performance max campaigns. It instantly finds new negative keywords to reduce your wasted spend. It works across search shopping, Performance max. You can filter by your dates, different search terms. So it's a, it's a dashboard outside of Google Ads to be able to get that critical account information, deep search term data and keyword breakdowns that are not available in your Performance Max campaign the way it is now. So you can try that, as I said for free, 28 days. An amazing opportunity to try something new there. See what you can find. That's optio.com PSP so in conclusion, I want to, I want to say this. Negative keywords are the absolute core of quality control in Google Ads. I've always said this and if you don't understand the importance of it, I really think once you have keywords in place, once you have a budget, once you have your ad copy and all of that, there's really only two levers that account managers have to be able to control their campaigns. I only see really two. And I'm going to talk about the other things that you say, well, what about this? What about this I'll talk about in just a second. The only two that really matter is one lever bids. You can adjust your bidding, adjust your bids up and down. That's why it's critically important that you don't just run campaigns on max conversions or run them on max clicks without any kind of control for quality at all. There are ways to control for quality. So bids are the threshold of max and slow. You can push things to the max, you can slow them down. You have an ability to do that. Target CPA manual bids, maximize clicks, target roas. There are a lot of ways to do it. The other control, the other lever that we have, the most finite granular method is negative keywords. Now Google doesn't give us in Performance max the lever of bidding. There's not Really a real finite control of bidding and performance max. It doesn't really work very well in any kind of conclusive way that it does in standard search display. YouTube. It doesn't really work as conclusively as it does in those. So when you're looking at ways to control and perform better in your performance max, you're really only left with one efficient way and that is that's your negative keywords, your quality of traffic. That's the other lever, right? You can pick keywords, you can pick things to target and stuff like that, but you have to guide and control the traffic quality that you're getting. And if you don't do that, you're missing basically both levers of your performance max campaign. Critically important to remember. And you say, well Chris, there's more levers. Yes there is. But how does changing your ad copy directly affect your conversion rate? It doesn't. It might bring up your click through rate does not affect your conversion rate. How does changing your keyword match type change the integrity of your campaign performance? It can slow it down, it can shrink the variation of your search terms that are coming through. But that's essentially it. If you really want to control the granular aspect of how those keywords work in the performance, true optimization happens at the search term level, at the negative keyword level. Optimization and performance boosts happen with negative keywords. And I tell you that because I can run broad match campaigns and do better than I can with a campaign that's using all exact match. A broad match campaign that's performing well will outperform and far outscale exact match campaigns. And you say, kris, how can you do that? How can that possibly be the case? It's because of the granular manipulation with the search terms, the quality of traffic, it's that lever, the search term quality manipulation, the quality of traffic lever is critically important. So I hope you go check out Optio. Thank them so much for this amazing report and I think it is eye opening and it certainly helps give me inspiration to be a part of that elite group of people who are utilizing negative keywords in performance max. If you would like to speak with me about your Google Ads campaign, I offer management services on a monthly basis or I offer coaching services per hour. If you'd like to hire me to go through your account with you, answer questions, teach you how to do something, you can do all of those things at chrishaeffer. Com. Not interested. No problem. I'll be here next week to talk about more about Google Ads. See you then.