AWA provides a lengthy explanation about how Google evaluates the performance of AdWords campaigns and advertiser accounts, and how and when heywords are disabled.
AdWordsAdvisor Says: [
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This is a great question Roel, and the subject of a fair amount of confusion. I may have to go into it in more detail after the 23rd, but I hope the following will give you the idea.
Basically, your account is looked at by our performance monitor in two distinct ways.
* First, each keyword is looked at individually after it has had 1000 impressions. It hasn't met the CTR standard it will get one red asterisk, and is 'disabled'.
* Secondly, (and here is the real answer to your question) your entire account is looked at for its most recent 1000 impressions inclusive of all campaigns, Ad Groups, and keywords. If the entire account taken as a whole has not met the standard, then the double yellow asterisks are applied to those keywords which are a part of the pattern of overall low performance. Think of these as 'slowed' rather than disabled.
Many of these double starred keywords will actually work well, once allowed to run again. But you will want to evaluate them on a word-by-word basis and get rid of the clinkers.
Your plan of action here should be to delete all the disabled keywords, and then delete any double starred keywords which are getting impressions very quickly, while having a low CTR.
It doesn't take long for an account with a lot of marginal keywords to get 1000 impressions. It can literally happen in minutes. (Just remember, there are a minimum of 200 million searches per day on Google. They add up fast.)
So, the basic idea: avoid general keywords because they get impressions too fast. Focus on targeted keywords, because they get impressions at a rate that allows you to monitor, plus they give you a better CTR (and pre-qualified customers IMO).
Also, take heart: the CTR standard is actually quite low compared to the average CTR system-wide, which is roughly 2%. So, if you seek to be targeted rather than general, you should be in good shape.
A brief answer to your second question: there is no real negative effect (from deleted campaigns) to a healthy account, other than if you have disabled keywords in those deleted campaigns that have not been deleted - as discussed elsewhere in this thread.
Well guys and gals, I seem to have written a novel here. Sorry about that.
See you all on the 23rd!
AWA
