Pause Duplicate Broad Keywords Script
The name kind of speaks for itself, but this is all about broad match bidding – which is great but can lead to some misleading account performance data. The same words in a different order don’t produce the same performance. Our script embraces this fact, and does something about it.
What’s included?
How does the script work?
The script will go through your account and determine which keywords are equivalents of each other and together form equivalent keyword groups.
For each equivalent keyword group, one broad match keyword will be selected based on performance — the “best of the bunch” — and will be given a label. All other broad match keywords in the equivalent keyword group will be given a different label.
Once all your keywords have been labeled up, you can simply keep your best-of-the-bunch broad keywords enabled and pause the rest.
How do I use it?
You’ll need to configure a few options, and then you’ll be set. Select these options depending on your preferences and account setup:
- ACCOUNT_WIDE will determine whether your equivalent keyword groups can be made from keywords taken from a single campaign or from many campaigns. Set to false if you want the equivalent keyword groups to be made from keywords within the same campaign only.
- METRIC is the AdWords performance metric that determines which broad match keyword from the equivalent keyword group is going to be kept. The broad match keyword with the best metric will be kept. The metrics you can choose from are CTR, Quality Score,* impressions, average CPC and converted clicks.
- CAMPAIGN_INCLUDE_FILTER is a list of terms that will filter which campaigns you want to look at. A campaign must have one of the terms in this list contained in its name.
- CAMPAIGN_EXCLUDE_FILTER is a list of terms that will filter which campaigns you want to look at. A campaign cannot have any of the terms in the list contained in its name.
- DATE_RANGE is the date range over which to compare the metric you have chosen above.
- KEEP_LABEL is the name of the label you will use to label the broad match keywords that have the best metric stat (e.g., the highest Quality Score).
- PAUSE_LABEL is the name of the label to give to all the keywords in the equivalent keyword group that haven’t got the best metric stat.
If you find the script keeps timing out, it may be that your account is too big. Try running the script multiple times using CAMPAIGN_INCLUDE_FILTER and CAMPAIGN_EXCLUDE_FILTER to look at different campaigns each time.
*This is reported Quality Score (QS). Reported QS is the QS of searches that exactly match the keyword, rather than an aggregate of QS of searches the keyword has served ads for. This is not that useful for broad match keywords.