Adwords PPC suddenly doubled when I inserted 1 affiliate ad

[Ti]

Hello there,

A very, very strange thing happened recently. Out of nowhere, my Adwords CPC suddenly doubled (exactly 200%) after making a single change.

Some history

I use Adwords to sell a piece of software I make which has a pretty typical webpage of a software developer. Nothing fancy, but my webpage has content, is #1 SERP, gets a lot of natural traffic, etc. I've been using Adwords for about 6 months and the keywords I use are very steady, the price doesn't fluxuate much at all.

Recently I found a product that cators to the exact same market that I have been doing business in for half a year with the software mentioned above. The keywords are exactly the same. So I figure, why not, I'll create an Adwords text ad that is the proper affiliate domain/url (100% in line with Adwords TOS) and pop that in as an ad in my Adwords account.

As normal, the ad took about 1 hour to get approved.

Low and behold, the moment the ad was approved, every single one of my 153 keywords had their PPC suddenly double. These keywords remained the exact or near-exact same for 6 (close to 8) months. Then, the very moment the affiliate advertisement I added was approved, BAM, 200% charge for all PPC on my entire account.

Does anybody know what happened? I am at a complete loss for why this happened OTHER than it was 100% intentional by Google.

[tryinhere]

so you now have 153 duplicate keywords in your account ? from memory this is not a good thng but not sure where i have read that.

regardless if you set the max cpc how does that double ? or do you have auto bidding set on these ?

How can I find duplicate keywords in my account? - AdWords Help

It's good practice to avoid having duplicate keywords in your account. Identical keywords will actually compete against each other in the auction which might drive up your own bids. So make sure that you use a keyword only once throughout your whole account, including variations on the same broad-match keyword

[Lee Wilson]

What happens when you disable that ad? Did you put it in it's own campaign or ad group?

[Ti]

Originally Posted by tryinhere

so you now have 153 duplicate keywords in your account ? from memory this is not a good thng but not sure where i have read that.

I'm not sure how you conveyed from my post that I have duplicate keywords, I do not. Instead, what I was mentioning is that I created a new ad to an affiliate site, due to that ad using the exact same keywords that my software that I sell uses.

[Ti]

Originally Posted by L Wilson

What happens when you disable that ad? Did you put it in it's own campaign or ad group?

I have the ad inside the same campaign that I use for my gaming software, this way it uses all the same settings/keywords/etc since the traffic for the affiliate uses the same everything that my gaming software uses.

This is why I know 100% without a doubt that the PPC rate doubled because I simply added an advertisement to an affiliated product, which is very, very weird. It seems that google is charging PPC 200% when the end result is an affiliated site?

I have not tried disabling the ad or putting it in its own ad group yet, good idea.

[tryinhere]

Originally Posted by Ti

I'm not sure how you conveyed from my post that I have duplicate keywords, I do not. Instead, what I was mentioning is that I created a new ad to an affiliate site, due to that ad using the exact same keywords that my software that I sell uses.

The keywords are exactly the same

sorry my mistake ? so you created a new add in the same adgroup to a new page / product ? or did you create this in a new ad group with the same keywords in that ad group ?

anyway sorry i was mixed up and hope you sort it

[Ti]

It is a new ad in the same campaign and adgroup that I'm already have dozens of ads on. Very strange, I know.

[tryinhere]

Originally Posted by Ti

It is a new ad in the same campaign and adgroup that I'm already have dozens of ads on. Very strange, I know.

? so all you done was wrote a new ad ? that goes to the same place as before ? but this sounds like you wrote a new ad in a new ad group because its for an affiliate product with an affiliate direct link ?

because is it not a new destination would use a new adgroup ? and if so then a new add group would in a sense be using some duplicate keywords if your using the same ones.

very confused on exactly what has happened here , so i hope you get it sorted

[Ti]

All I did was ad another advertisement to my existing dozen+ advertisements. That is it. Nothing else. It just so happened that the advertisement was to an affiliated website. That alone caused my PPC rates to go up 200%.

That is the mystery. Did Google decided to increase my PPC 200% because I created an ad to a known affiliate site?

[Lee Wilson]

Originally Posted by Ti

I have the ad inside the same campaign that I use for my gaming software, this way it uses all the same settings/keywords/etc since the traffic for the affiliate uses the same everything that my gaming software uses.

This is why I know 100% without a doubt that the PPC rate doubled because I simply added an advertisement to an affiliated product, which is very, very weird. It seems that google is charging PPC 200% when the end result is an affiliated site?

I have not tried disabling the ad or putting it in its own ad group yet, good idea.

Are all your keywords in one adgroup sharing a few ads? I could be reading you wrong but something like this would change the QS on the entire adgroup.

[tryinhere]

I have not tried disabling the ad or putting it in its own ad group yet, good idea

champ from what i know and i may be wrong you can not have that ad in the same ad group as the others because you have a different destination url.

an ad group only allows one that i know of so what your saying is impossible ?

? i may be wrong on this and end up with egg on my face ?

[Lee Wilson]

Originally Posted by tryinhere

champ from what i know and i may be wrong you can not have that ad in the same ad group as the others because you have a different destination url.

an ad group only allows one that i know of so what your saying is impossible ?

? i may be wrong on this and end up with egg on my face ?

You can, but it would be like throwing money in the bin. What you can't have is the same keywords showing different urls, or ads, at the same time. The ad landing page is a big factor in quality score, so if you have one landing page that's got a good qs and then share it with one that hasn't, it will bring down the qs for the whole adgroup.

Edit: Sorry, that's not right. You can have different landing pages but you were correct about the main domain itself can't be shared in an adgroup.

[tryinhere]

Other Display URL rules:
The Display URLs within each ad group must have the same domain

because it is stated an affiliate product / link i very much dubt it has the same display url ? because the display and destination must match ?

any way very strange for sure

[Lucid]

As mentioned earlier, you can't promote two different domains from the same ad group. Your ads are likely to all be disapproved during the next system check.

Now, as to why your cost doubled when you did so, it's very simple. It's a different landing page. Everything got reset. What happened to your QS? I'll bet it dropped. This new QS is now being calculated in relation to that page and you started from scratch when you used this new domain. And since QS is changed, now lower, your costs went up.

You did a silly thing and it's hurting you. Before going further, I suggest you delete those new ads pointing to that other site. I'm surprised your whole group is not disabled but delete them before that happens. Otherwise, you'll have to start from scratch again with your own site, you'll lose that positive history you built up.

[busting]

Just a quick question here. If I limit my daily budget to 50 dolars a day and I am paying like 2 dollars a click. Now if all of a sudden my clicks cost 10 dolars a click because of some QS stuff it will only go to 50 dollars and then stop right?

[Lucid]

Yes, you limit how much you spend with your budget. Note that it is an average over one month. You may spend $52 today but over the course of 30 days, it will average $50.