Should you pause keywords that are not getting impressions?

I'm seeing conflicting advice…

Does having a lot of low search volume words harm campaigns?

The short answer is no. When a keyword gets no impressions, it has no effect on the campaign. However, if the keyword is served a few times and gets no clicks, AdWords may decrease the Quality Score which will affect the campaign. You need to closely monitor low search volume (well, really all) keywords for Quality Score and either try to get the Quality Score up through optimization or delete any from your campaign that are not generating revenue/leads/etc.

http://www.thewebsqueeze.com/web-design-articles/adwords-tips-7-adwords-quality-score-questions-answered.html

…but then on other blogs I read otherwise:

Zero impressions lower your Quality Score at the account level

How can it be possible that a keyword with no impressions can lower your Quality Score? There are several factors used by Google to determine how a keyword performs, and also the potential performance of the keyword. This is the main reason how a keyword that has no impressions at all can affect an account. Zero impressions keywords can also cause confusion, since even though the more the better, you should also keep the ad groups small, clean, and tight-knit.

http://www.thewebsqueeze.com/web-design-articles/adwords-tips-7-adwords-quality-score-questions-answered.html

There is some really helpful advice from AdwordsPro Sarah found on the google blog here http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/AdWords/thread?tid=2690240db0a09a8d&hl=en which discuss classic adwords beginner’s mistakes, but does not address keywords that do not get impressions.

Hmm – Some of my keywords with no impressions are right on topic with those that receive a lot.

What do you think?  

Posted via email from ntho: anthony cerreta