Finding Session-Based Ad Clicks

Last year I mentioned that I ran across some Google ads that were not what I searched for right then, but what I had previously searched for. Basically Google was attempting to show ads for your last search in your current search because they are sometimes largely related. You can read the post at Search and Social which references mention of the original issue over at SEORoundtable.

My main issue after Google answered some questions was that these searches are not the keywords that the advertiser specified. How were we to know when our ads were showing?

I came across something recently that makes things a little better. After some research, others (cough Brian Cater cough) have noticed the same thing. Read more on this topic by Brian over at Search Engine Journal.

When running a search query report (that’s your how to right there, pull a search query report) for a client (sorry I had to fuzz out the keywords), I noticed some really weird entries. Sure enough, it noted that they queries were session-based. The person had changed their search, and when they did, the ad showed for their next query … in this case (the one that doesn’t identify my client) “richard session austin texas”. This had nothing to do with my client!

Sure enough, right after that it shows (Session-Based) in the query type column. I see these for only broad matched keywords across my clients, but I am not saying that this is all that happens. I am hoping that this is the only match type this happens in, but we’ll see.

Now for my wishlist. Google … can we get the option to filter for session-based searches? We can filter the Search Query report for a number of things but not match type. It would be awesome to be able to pull a report of just these keywords. It would be an interesting insight to what our searchers are looking for after they put in a key phrase we target. Thanks.