Has anyone had any experience with this??

We run a campaign for car roof racks and accessories. Its not a massive part of our business and we tend to find that people will click our advert to check price and then go somewhere cheaper! We are lucky enough that we don't have to work for nothing and really, these types of sales are just an added bonus to an otherwise busy day.

Recently, we ran a campaign with just one key word - "Thule" which is a the brand of product we sell.

All was fine for a day or 2 until we ran a search query report when all our daily spend had been used up.

Now what surprised us was that, yes, lots of people had searched for our (only) keyword - but we also spent lots of money on other keywords - roof racks, roof boxes, bike racks and there was also an entry for "18 other unique queries" - All the things that we were trying to stop people using our daily spend on!

After an (expensive) call to Google UK - we were told that this is the new
AdWords Automatic Matching whereby Google will "guess" keywords by analyzing our site....

Well this just doesn't seem right to me... Almost seems like a way of using up all the daily budget remaining at the end of the day?

If we'd wanted people to click through when searching for "roof boxes" we'd have put them in the campaign in the fist place!

Also, what ARE my 18 other unique queries???

Your thoughts please...

http://www.webmaster-talk.com/google...ur-wallet.html

Thanks Chris, I did come accross the HighRankings link earlier today, but glad to see were not the only ones who have been hit by this.

We were told that it will "enhance the users search results" which is all good for them but why charge us for keywords that we didn't want in the first place?! Those clicks should have been free...

What a scam on the part of Google. Basically they're saying since you didn't use the entirety of your budget they're going to make you pay for keywords they think are relevant.

Exactly,

The one thing thats still grating my gears though is the "18 other unique queries" part in our report - why wont they let us see what they actually are?!

It's completely pointless for them not to show what those "other" queries were. So they forced you to pay for something, but won't tell you what that something is.

If Google wanted to present something like as an option for people I'd have no problem with it. I wouldn't use it, but I wouldn't have a problem with it. I'd even imagine that some people will like it. But to have it set as the default is ridiculous.

I think the adwords automatic matching did a thing that hurted you. Actually i heared that adword brings in more click for a keyword that your site is optimised for. I hope this might give you a little clue....

Regards