Massive PPC Headache

[JonathanR]

For months I have been paying about 10 cents a click for my top two keywords with adwords. Now out of nowhere the keywords are paused by google and I'm told to bid 35 cents minimum. This conincides with these same two keywords going from number 20 to 150 in the organic rankings.

How can anyone rely on adwords as an advertising medium when at any time your advertising costs can triple without warning?

[JonathanR]

Anyone? I didn't change anything, but a title meta tag to INCLUDE one of the keywords in questions. My quality scores fell from 7 to 4 and from 7 to 5. What's funny is that these are the keywords that get me sales. But out of nowhere google suggests that I stop running them and increased the price by 300%.

I am one of two people advertising on these. They are hardly competitive.

On my high quality keywords, I never get sales and google is more than happy to let me keep running them at ultra cheap prices...

Anything I can do or do I and my ad campaign live by the whim of some engineer at Google?

[nzdealer]

Its called google trying to make money. They manual review things at times. Also google can track a lot of your data and can see which convert etc. Always use third party traccking. also try using same keyword on other campaigns and see what happens

[IM Headlines]

Google is so unpredictable, not just with adwords but with anything. Maybe you should try another ppc company?

[dburk]

Hi JonathanR,

Your Quality Score is constantly adjusted based on your CTR. If you CTR is low then you can expect your QS to drop which causes your minimum bid to increase.

Focus on improving your CTR and it should hep your QS. Better ad text is generally what it takes. Just to eliminate other possibilities, check the Keyword Analysis Page to verify you don't have other issues like a slow loading landing page.

[JonathanR]

Thanks for the suggestions. All google tells me is that the keywords in question are not relevant enough for my site. (But they were fine for the last 3 months). Since google forced me to pay 300% more I have had two sales. Both came from these two 'low relevant' keywords!

Sometimes I really hate google. It's like some kind of mafia cartel. You're doing well and making money and they come along and decide you need to kick a little extra to them. I know their are other PPC networks, but I have by far the best results with google, which is why of course they can do things like raise the bid on a profitable keyword for me by 300% without losing me as a customer.

The big G really needs a competent competitor. They have gotten too powerful for their own good IMHO.

[askloz]

in part, that's total crap... (google needing more money)....

They ALWAYS manually review listings...

There are tonns and tonns of pages / domains being adding every day on the 'Net

This goes towards how much you pay / how many competitors there are / how their CTR is performing, amongst several other algorithms to presume what the price per click will be.

Two words:


Seasonal Trend.

Seasonal Trend: Seasonal Trend has many different variables attached to it.

Pages being built, consistency, visits to prove user experience amongst others.

Take "Soccer" for instance.

Outside of season, cost per click is cheap. in season, cost is more. More ppl add more pages, more pages there are out there, more competitive it will be for PPC, and SEO.

Originally Posted by nzdealer

Its called google trying to make money. They manual review things at times. Also google can track a lot of your data and can see which convert etc. Always use third party traccking. also try using same keyword on other campaigns and see what happens

[dburk]

Originally Posted by JonathanR

Thanks for the suggestions. All google tells me is that the keywords in question are not relevant enough for my site. (But they were fine for the last 3 months). Since google forced me to pay 300% more I have had two sales. Both came from these two 'low relevant' keywords!

Sometimes I really hate google. It's like some kind of mafia cartel. You're doing well and making money and they come along and decide you need to kick a little extra to them. I know their are other PPC networks, but I have by far the best results with google, which is why of course they can do things like raise the bid on a profitable keyword for me by 300% without losing me as a customer.

The big G really needs a competent competitor. They have gotten too powerful for their own good IMHO.

Hi JonathanR,

I see it differently, if Google left it up to advertisers, a few bad apples would ruin it for the rest of us. Google introduced Quality Scores so that they could provide a better experience for users. This better experience has increased user confidence in Google's Sponsored Results and has a direct impact on the success of our advertising campaigns.

Google has plenty of competitors, though most are nowhere near as competent.

If you focus on optimizing your campaigns you can lower your costs and increase your profits. The Quality Score issue you are having points to a problem that needs to be addressed. You should be thanking AdWords instead complaining.

[JonathanR]

Originally Posted by dburk

Hi JonathanR,

I see it differently, if Google left it up to advertisers, a few bad apples would ruin it for the rest of us. Google introduced Quality Scores so that they could provide a better experience for users. This better experience has increased user confidence in Google's Sponsored Results and has a direct impact on the success of our advertising campaigns.

Google has plenty of competitors, though most are nowhere near as competent.

If you focus on optimizing your campaigns you can lower your costs and increase your profits. The Quality Score issue you are having points to a problem that needs to be addressed. You should be thanking AdWords instead complaining.

Thanks for the thoughts, but when adwords forces me to pay 300% for the keywords that drive the most sales because they are not 'relevant', then adwords is wrong. And when adwords lets me run a campaign for 3 months at 10 cents a click and then out of nowhere decides I need to pay 30, when I have changed nothing, then something is seriously amiss and I can not thank them.

[lakshaybehl]

Originally Posted by JonathanR

Thanks for the thoughts, but when adwords forces me to pay 300% for the keywords that drive the most sales because they are not 'relevant', then adwords is wrong. And when adwords lets me run a campaign for 3 months at 10 cents a click and then out of nowhere decides I need to pay 30, when I have changed nothing, then something is seriously amiss and I can not thank them.

Its not that they are not clear about what they like... Its about the fact that they are not upfront.

The best way to find a solution is to go through their giant troubleshooting question bank / info bank they have.

Now, these guys are not fair at all times analyzing IN THE SHORT RUN. In the LONG run, they are always right. The only people they owe anything are their customers... People who search. If you think you are their customer, you are wrong.Your relationship with them is that of synergy, and they do NOT thrive because of you.

At one point of time I was told people have to scroll a lot before they see my CTA, hence my quality score went from 9 to 3 overnight. This was after a manual review. Now I am no small fish according to myself.. Just that campaign alone cost me above $3000 that month in Adwords. But they basically told me to shove it. The solution:- Look at everything from the eyes of Google. Fair or not-- they are the GIANT 800 pound gorrilla out there... not you!

Maybe your CTA is too low on the screen... Maybe you are using the word eBook. I have read in their knowledge bank somewhere that eBooks are not really respectable as far as Google is concerned. Maybe your Keyword is NOT targeted enough... You might just be feeling that way. The only way out is to either hire an expert consultant who may or may not solve it for you... or to test various things- In and out. Both work... it depends upon which way you want to choose right now.

-Lakshay