Rankings Drop and No Site Links for Brand After Paused Adwords Campaign

[MichelangeSEO]

Something interested happened recently after my company paused their Branded Adwords Campaign.

We've been in the top 4 for a very targeted commercial term for months (in a very competitive industry). We saw that no one was bidding on our Brand name in Adwords, so we paused a campaign for branded search that was costing us around $1k a month.

Now, a few weeks later, we don't always have site links showing for branded search (which we've had for years) and saw some drops in rankings for commercial terms.

We're reactivating the campaign to see if that is what actually caused these, but wanted to know if any one else has experience something similar...

 

[eliquid]

I manage a lot of PPC in Adwords and I see this all the time ( people not doing PPC on branded, or taking it down )

Why did you stop the branded PPC just because no one else was bidding on your name and it spent $1K? Were you making a profit from that 1k?

Are you worried that someone might bid on your name in the future?

 

[MichelangeSEO]

The boss just thought it was not a great investment because we had such a good organic presence. We've started it back up again now. There were some competitors bidding, but they seemed to stop.

So you've seen changes in rankings when people have stopped PPC branded campaigns?

 

[Future State]

I see this all the time

Do you have any opinion on why this happens? People have screamed "conspiracy" at Google for almost a decade over things like this, trying to hold PPC spenders hostage.