How to Manage Losing Keywords

The Losing Keywords Menu includes Auto, Broad and Phrase keywords which are generating losses and do not have a dominant search term.  

When a search term generates loses above our threshold it will appear under the active search terms section. In this case there isn’t a single search term in the keyword which is generating loses above the threshold and each search term is generating a small loss. In these cases the losses add up and require our attention.

For example, a Loose-Match campaign which has generate 19 clicks without sales and a loss of $13.2

Clicking on the keyword will allow us to view additional details. We can see next to the Match Type there are 19 search terms related to this Loose-Match campaign

Once we click on the Match Type will will see a breakdown of all search terms related to this Loose Match campaign

Looking at the list of search terms we can see they are all receiving 1 click and generating a small loss but their sum can be substantial.

At this point we should evaluate the relevancy of the keyword to our product/s and can decide which action to take:

• Pause the keyword – if all search terms have generated losses and there’s a low CTR this might suggest the keyword is not relevant.
• Reduce the keyword bid – instead of pausing it we might consider reducing the bid.
• Increasing the bid – if the search terms are relevant we might decide to increase the bid and try to generate more impressions and clicks and evaluate the CTR and performance on more clicks