A client recently contacted me about her Adwords campaign. The campaign had been running for over two years with no adjustments to bids, keywords or settings. She was concerned because her monthly spend had gone through the roof while the number of conversions remained static. Content Network advertising had already been disabled so we didn't immediately suspect any click fraud.

Search Query Report

I immediately ran a Search Query Report to see what could have caused this sharp increase in clicks. The report showed that over a six-week period there were 69,340 impressions for the query “media sales media publishing digital jobs”. These impressions had resulted in a large number of clicks to her website, used up most of her daily budget and hadn't resulted in a single conversion.

My client doesn't run a recruitment website but she did have a phrase match bid on "media sales". The word “jobs” and other employment-related terms had been added to her negative keyword list so her ad should not have even appeared for this phrase.

Why would 69,340 people over a six-week period search for such an odd query as “media sales media publishing digital jobs”? Even if there was a valid explanation, why would 69,340 people suddenly start using this query when they had never used it in the past? A Search Query report prior to this date showed not a single person using this phrase in the previous two years!

Contacting Google

I wrote to Google to ask them for an explanation. After three canned responses, here came their reply:

"We have received your request for an invalid clicks investigation. Thank you for your patience while we reviewed your account. I apologize for the inordinate delay in responding to your email. I understand you are concerned about the rather well formatted query 'media sales media publishing digital jobs' you have received clicks on.

We reviewed your account and can confirm this. We noticed that these clicks were accrued on www.MediaWeekJobs.co.uk, a high-traffic and popular site in our search partner network. It appears that this site uses the relevant links users click on to generate associated search queries. Ads are then shown based on these queries.

For instance, the URL www.mediaweekjobs.co.uk/jobs/digital-online/ is available under the browse hierarchy "Sector > Digital/Online ," thus generating the query 'Media Sales Digital jobs.' Note that you can use the query in such instances to guess the pages your ads are showed on.

Please be assured that the clicks are valid. The clicks charged fit a pattern of normal user behaviour. As part of our review, the team looked through dozens of data points--including IP addresses, IP blocks, geographic concentrations, network activity, browser patterns, click timings, and any proprietary signals. However, none of those suggest an automated attack, nor collusion from unethical users. The clicks accrued reflect normal user traffic. Sincerely, Kartik - The Ad Traffic Quality Team"

What We Found

By visiting the www.MediaWeekJobs.co.uk website mentioned in the email I quickly realised that the search facility on this site is designed for internal site search only. My (mistaken) understanding of Search Partners were of sites allowing users to search the whole Internet.

I believe there is a big difference between a user entering a search query into a text box and someone who builds an unseen search query by drilling down through a list of category links. A user manually entering a phrase has thought through exactly what they want to find. A user selecting categories from a list is often clicking the closest match available and could be unknowingly building a query that has no relevance at all to your target keywords. It could even be considered misleading to describe a website offering filtered results of their own content via navigational links as a "Search Partner" as no real search query may have ever been made!

Advertisers Should be Made Aware

Google must make advertisers more aware of the implications of bidding on the Content network and the Search Partner network. The use of these services needs to be explained clearly and in plain, simple terms that non-techie SMEs can understand. These networks should also be disabled by default when anyone creates a new Adwords campaign. How many small business owners do you know who started using Adwords and then ran away six months later when the bills got out of control and the extra traffic generated few extra sales? Google's churn rate must be huge!

So, if you are seeing strange results in your Adwords campaigns or a sudden drop in conversion rates, check to see what's happening on the Search Partner Network. The answer could be staring you straight in the face.