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Adwords PPC suddenly doubled when I inserted 1 affiliate ad

by Ti
15 replies
  • SEO
    • |
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.
#adwords #affiliate #doubled #inserted #ppc #suddenly
  • Profile picture of the author 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
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    | > Choosing to go off the grid for a while to focus on family, work and life in general. Have a great 2020 < |
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    • Profile picture of the author Ti
      Originally Posted by tryinhere View Post

      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.
      Signature

      Affiliates Wanted --> http://Pwnboxer.com <-- Promote to your MMORPG/World of Warcraft Niche
      Insanely Popular Software Lets You Play 5x WoW+ On 1 PC - 100% Legit Bliz Approves Multiboxing
      Current Affiliate Stats: June 4th 2011: EPC = $3.50, Conversions = 10.2%, $23.50/sale

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      • Profile picture of the author tryinhere
        Originally Posted by Ti View Post

        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
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        | > Choosing to go off the grid for a while to focus on family, work and life in general. Have a great 2020 < |
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  • Profile picture of the author Lee Wilson
    What happens when you disable that ad? Did you put it in it's own campaign or ad group?
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    • Profile picture of the author Ti
      Originally Posted by L Wilson View Post

      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.
      Signature

      Affiliates Wanted --> http://Pwnboxer.com <-- Promote to your MMORPG/World of Warcraft Niche
      Insanely Popular Software Lets You Play 5x WoW+ On 1 PC - 100% Legit Bliz Approves Multiboxing
      Current Affiliate Stats: June 4th 2011: EPC = $3.50, Conversions = 10.2%, $23.50/sale

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      • Profile picture of the author Lee Wilson
        Originally Posted by Ti View Post

        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.
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  • Profile picture of the author 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.
    Signature

    Affiliates Wanted --> http://Pwnboxer.com <-- Promote to your MMORPG/World of Warcraft Niche
    Insanely Popular Software Lets You Play 5x WoW+ On 1 PC - 100% Legit Bliz Approves Multiboxing
    Current Affiliate Stats: June 4th 2011: EPC = $3.50, Conversions = 10.2%, $23.50/sale

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    • Profile picture of the author tryinhere
      Originally Posted by Ti View Post

      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
      Signature
      | > Choosing to go off the grid for a while to focus on family, work and life in general. Have a great 2020 < |
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  • Profile picture of the author 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?
    Signature

    Affiliates Wanted --> http://Pwnboxer.com <-- Promote to your MMORPG/World of Warcraft Niche
    Insanely Popular Software Lets You Play 5x WoW+ On 1 PC - 100% Legit Bliz Approves Multiboxing
    Current Affiliate Stats: June 4th 2011: EPC = $3.50, Conversions = 10.2%, $23.50/sale

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  • Profile picture of the author 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 ?
    Signature
    | > Choosing to go off the grid for a while to focus on family, work and life in general. Have a great 2020 < |
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    • Profile picture of the author Lee Wilson
      Originally Posted by tryinhere View Post

      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.
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  • Profile picture of the author 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
    Signature
    | > Choosing to go off the grid for a while to focus on family, work and life in general. Have a great 2020 < |
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  • Profile picture of the author 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.
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  • Profile picture of the author 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?
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    Damn I should have taken a screenshot of that PPC ad. DAMN !!!!!!!

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  • Profile picture of the author 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.
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