Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Call Me Crazy, but is something not working on Google Adwords or being Tested?

Ok today, I typed in a popular keyword on Google to see who was competing on the terms, only to be presented with a google search result with no Adwords on it! I took a double look at the page and pressed search again to see to the result reappear. Then I started out again and pressed search a few times sure enough every 4th or 5th refresh no adword results. I asked a colleague to do the same and on the 3rd refresh no adword results. I tried a few keywords with similar results.


I flagged this up to our agencies and to Google themselves with associated screen shots. So far only explanation was maybe some click fraud feature etc....Which to be honest I can quite believe. By the way no one got the same view on the computers, maybe a data centre thing?. I am still waiting to hear back any official confirmation that it is in fact just me being stupid. But then I come home and within two clicks I get the same results, and again on another keyword I get the same. See screen shots below for evidence.




The first response I did get from Google is the recommendation to use the adword preview tool to see my ads, to which I responded, it not my ads I was asking about it was everyone's ads.! My concern was the fact that when i first came across this it was my first SERP rotation...one for the X files?

I will post if there is indeed something spooky going on!



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