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These articles may give you some insights: CTR by Industry (a useful consideration) https://www.searchenginejournal.com/highest-lowest-average-ctrs-google-adwords-industry/159351/? A quick overview: http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2013/02/22/click-through-rate-by-ad-position A more in-depth article: https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/study/2345638/ppc-click-through-rate-by-position-does-rank-matter-data and: http://www.smartinsights.com/search-engine-optimisation-seo/seo-analytics/comparison-of-google-clickthrough-rates-by-position/ I hope they help.

I don't see an ad for "Key Industrial" - I'd look at the settings and budget. Are you targeting a different geography now? Cut the budget at all?

Thanks Alick300, It's interesting to hear a mix of view points. In my industry (cloud software) it's more commonplace, and as @Robert Cairns states above, it can work well. As with most areas of digital marketing, I think I'll tread carefully with a test and learn approach

I normally don't bid on ads, especially if I hold the #1 position and no ads are showing above me.  Why? The price of the ads is subtracted from my profits. The real cost of your advertising is how much you must pay for each sale that is made.  In some SERPs the competition (bidding) for ads is so strong that only those competitors with highly converting websites, lowest cost of goods, cheapest shipping and cheapest labor costs are able to make a profit.  Small competitors who do not enjoy these economies of scale are unable to sell through ads at a profit. If you are able to sell through ads at a profit then the ultimate measure of "if you should do it" is the amount of profit that you can make in a day.  Running ads should increase your sales.  Does that cost produce a greater profit per day than not running the ads.  If you are able to measure this, then you have your answer.

Hi Becky, Impression drop is really huge in your case. If you have access of paid campaign dashboard you can check keywords list whose impression goes down. There could be few reasons Advertisers were using broad match types initially and now they have either removed those keywords or targeting more restrictive match types e.g exact match or phrase match. Second reason could be huge drop in Ads position due to reducing the bid or competitors starts bidding very high on your brand terms, You can check live results by searching brand terms in Ad preview tool. you will find whether your Ads is displaying or not or if displaying at what position.* If you have any other query please let us know Hope this helps. Thanks

No problemo

I suppose it all depends on who set up the account in the first place, if they did all the ground work and set up the campaigns, and ad groups then they probably don't have to let you see it. I would rather have my account set up in house initially then grant access to third parties who then get tagged as an editor etc, that way you remain as the account holder. I do not think it unreasonable that you have asked for evidence of what they are bidding on, negatived keywords, search terms, ad trials, optimisation etc. It is all basic data that can be shared. Like Egol said, look into your contract and see what they should be divulging via their reports etc. Finally.... Are they proving their worth? If not consider outsourcing to someone/ some agency that can or is willing to share, build a relationship and improve.

Thanks Guys! Much Appreciated!

Hi, First of all I assume auto tagging is enabled and your Adwords & analytics accounts linked. Now click on Colums>>Modify Columns>>Google Analytics>>Avg.session duration Hope this helps. Thanks

Yeah, that's what i thought. Basically, it would be splitting campaigns into two/several. Well, thanks for the advise!

I have heard from Google in the meanwhile who neither confirmed, nor denied that the sessions came from their AdWords team in India and Dublin, but told me several times to activate the Bot-blocking feature in Google Analytics. I still believe that this is strange behaviour for a bot, but I will activate this feature and will see if the issue comes up in the future again.

surf easy worked, thanks

Hi, You'll likely be charging them for the click, however Google does have tools in place to identify invalid clicks - i.e. multiple PPC clicks from one IP address. They'll likely be picking up on the number of clicks you're making in a short period of time and it's likely that your competitor may not be charged. There's more information you can find here: https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/42995?hl=en-GB I hope this helps, Sean

Hi Charles! I would love to help but I need a little more details to provide an answer that will really help you improve your campaign! To get a jumpstart on improving your rankings in the SERPs, I recommend asking yourself the following questions about your website: What is the domain age? What is the domain authority? Are there optimized title tags for all of the webpages? Are the website's meta descriptions optimized? Are there high quality backlinks linking to the website? What is the website speed (on both desktop AND mobile)? Is the website mobile friendly? Is the website secure? All of these factors could be reasons why you might not be performing as well as some of your competitors. Then, take this same this of questions and run it by the top competitors ranking for the keywords you want to rank for. This will give you a better idea of where you stand, where they stand, and how to outperform them.

Hi, There are numerous guide available online and I would like to suggest you two guides/tutorial that I find useful. https://klientboost.com/ppc/facebook-ad-targeting/ https://klientboost.com/ppc/facebook-ads/ Video Tutorial 1>https://www.lynda.com/Facebook-tutorials/Facebook-Advertising-Fundamentals-2016/466185-2.html 2>https://www.lynda.com/Facebook-tutorials/Advanced-Facebook-Advertising-2016/466186-2.html Thanks

I'm using semrush so I would also suggest you to go for semrush. thanks

Hi bmayer09, How's this going? Any luck with Luke's suggestion?

Still the same for me. The expanded text ads are converting at half the rate of the regular.

It used to get a fair amount of organic traffic a few years ago to generate around 30 leads a day, and back then that was from just one keyword. A lot of people are seeing a strong decline of the amount of traffic that they get from the organic SERPs over the past few years. In that time Google started adding image results and news results in informational SERPs.  In the transactional SERPs they now place up to four paid ads at the top of the SERPs and often have shopping results within, above, or beside the SERPs.  And in local results they now have maps and local listings. Google is becoming a better webmaster and is trying to make more money from their SERPs.  Shareholders want growth and the folks at Google know that the best way to do that is to make more money from current traffic.  So they go heavier on the ads, in stronger positions and push the organic rankings down the page. Google isn't the only ones working. Most of our competitors have become experts and writing more effective Adwords ads and more effective at converting visitors into customers.  That is also taking the sales from above the organic rankings.  Over that time, if a webmaster has not upped his game in earning clicks and converting visitors and becoming a much more competitive and aggressive seller then his sales have fallen dramatically. Plenty of webmasters have worked really hard the past ten years and have not made massive big gains in their sales.  That's because their competitors are spending billions, google is skimming the best traffic, and everyone on the web has become a lot smarter.  So if those hard-working webmasters have held even in their revenue and profits that is the equivalent of being an awesomeasskicker of the past.