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Google CPC Issues

by Newton Marketer
6 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hoping I could get some input/discussion about some Google Adwords CPC issues I have been having for the past year. I'll lay out the scenario and would appreciate any creative solutions, similar stories, etc. anyone can share.

One of my clients is in the educational services industry. They provide a financial aid service for college students. There are no competitors, hence no competition for Google PPC advertising.

In early January 2012, my client's CPC on the primary industry term started to increase. According to our Google team, this was the impact seen from an algorithm change in Nov. 2011. To combat the CPC rise, someone internally manually adjusted the CPC bids down which pushed them out of the top position. Their ads were now showing at the bottom of the page. CTR dropped, and hence so did quality score. This lasted about 5 days.

The bids were brought back up, but the damage appears to be irreversible. Quality score and CTR is actually better than it had been, but since March 2012, this company's Google CPCs have increased 190%. They are getting 18-20% CTRs and there literally is no competition for this industry niche (nor has there been all year). They are the only ad that appears. Yet, the CPC continues to rise.

So, my questions:

- Has anyone experienced anything like this (I personally have not)?
- How does this happen?
- Any suggestions on tactics to test to drive CPC back down?
- Is this Google price gauging?
- I have been trying to escalate this internally above my account team, does it help to be vocal within Google?


Thanks for your thoughts in advance
#adwords #cpc #google #issues #ppc
  • Profile picture of the author paulgl
    Originally Posted by Newton Marketer View Post


    One of my clients is in the educational services industry. They provide a financial aid service for college students. There are no competitors, hence no competition for Google PPC advertising.
    That is a huge niche and a huge player in adwords. There is very
    stiff competition. That is, unless you are bidding on worthless
    keywords.

    There is just no way financial aid for college students would have no
    competition.

    Anyway, one thing that people forget, is that everyone
    has a different minimum bid.

    I should also mention that your overall QS may be different than
    an individual QS for each keywword. If those are what you are
    bidding on, and your QS is lower, your CPC goes up.

    Your minimum bid can have nothing to do with how many are bidding.

    You don't have to use adwords.

    If the company's ROI is still worth it, it makes no difference.

    Paul
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    If you were disappointed in your results today, lower your standards tomorrow.

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    • Profile picture of the author Newton Marketer
      Thanks for the reply. I am not referring to the generic phrase "financial aid for college students"...agreed that would have more competition. This is for a very specific niche that has no competitors. We are the only advertiser bidding.

      My issue is that as the CPCs have gone up, the ROI no longer makes sense. I know that using adwords is voluntary, but this is where this company's customers start their research.

      My question was more about whether anyone else has seen anything like this. No competitors, great CTR, good quality score (at least at the keyword level), and a CPC that continues to rise despite no other market forces.
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    • Profile picture of the author dburk
      Hi Newton,

      Where did you get the idea that there is no competition? Even though it may appear that you are the only advertiser, that may not be true. You left out a lot of details that would be needed to give you an accurate answer.

      Are you using broad match keywords? That could be an issue that causes your QS to drop.

      Have you produced a Search Terms Report and verified all of the keywords that trigger ads? It is probably an issue of targeting keywords that you did not intend to target.

      It could be other things related to your overall account structure, or how you have organized ad groups, or which network(s) you are targeting, or your ad text, or landing page issues. We need specifics from you to get you a definitive answer.

      Google has indeed made significant changes to the AdWords system that require changes on your part to maintain performance, if you just set and forget it going to cost you a lot.
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      * Get Results - Outsource Your PPC Management |
      *       Don Burk Advertising & Marketing - www.donburk.com

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      • Profile picture of the author Newton Marketer
        Hi dburk,

        Thanks for the reply and for pushing me on the details. Sometimes you get so close to an issue, you lose sight of important information needed to relay a challenge.

        This is a complex account with almost 100 campaigns. There is one specific keyword that drives 75% of all traffic from these campaigns. It is set up in a separate campaign and is only exact match. As you can see, when the performance of this ad changes, it changes the total account performance. The other campaigns are misspellings, long tail words, and some more generic industry terms that do include broad match elements.

        The lack of competition comes from two sources: 1) the average ad position over time which has remained at 1 for that specific keyword; and 2) the Google account team for this company confirmed that there has been no competition. This company offers a service that is not offered by anyone else.

        This hasn't been a set it and forget it account. They have tested numerous landing pages, ad creatives, etc. They also have a sound account structure. If CTR was falling, I would tend to agree that there is something wrong with the set up. However, it has remained steady and even increased (+15% rise in CTR this month alone).

        Everything has remained constant for the better part of this year, except for the CPC. I was just curious if anyone had heard of something similar happening and what one would do to combat the CPC rise.

        Thanks again.
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        • Profile picture of the author dburk
          Originally Posted by Newton Marketer View Post

          This is a complex account with almost 100 campaigns.
          Hi Newton,

          Based on what you have reported, I would look at what I quoted above as a likely cause. Your keywords' Quality Scores are based, in part, on your overall account Quality Score. If any of those other campaigns have lower QS, and it is likely they do, those other campaigns may be dragging down the overall account QS which in turn lowers your QS for your specific keyword that has no competition.


          Another thing to consider is that Google changed significantly the ad triggering algorithm a while back, so while you are using exact keywords, they are still likely to trigger ads for keywords that are not exact match. Sadly, the change that AdWords made a while back tends to trigger related keywords that are not always relevant. You can confirm this by running a Search Terms report for the past 90 days.

          To correct the issue of triggering ads for irrelevant (or less than extremely relevant) keywords you can go into your campaign settings and disable the option to "Include plurals, misspellings, and other close variants" under the "Keyword matching options", section.
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          * Get Results - Outsource Your PPC Management |
          *           Don Burk Advertising & Marketing - www.donburk.com

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  • Profile picture of the author Lucid
    Originally Posted by Newton Marketer View Post

    They provide a financial aid service for college students. There are no competitors
    I find that very hard to believe. Just because you don't see any ads doesn't mean there's no competition there. Being in first position doesn't mean there isn't competition. In fact, your competition would be whoever comes in second at the time your ad is shown. There's a new report called Auction Insights that will show you who they are.

    Originally Posted by Newton Marketer View Post

    CTR dropped, and hence so did quality score.
    That's not how it works. You make the same mistake many others do: you look at absolute CTR. Of course, it will drop when you position is down. We all know that click rate is lower at lower positions. That's why everyone is saying they are trying to be first in the rankings, it's to maximize the clicks.

    But QS is calculated taking position into account. It's a relative measure. If your QS has dropped, there's something else in play. That's why when you increased the bid, the QS stayed the same even though your absolute CTR increased as expected. You'd expect CPC to increase as well which is what you are experiencing.

    You need to rethink your ads and bring the relative CTR up. Google will tell you the same thing. They are not there to build your campaign themselves. It's a self-serve service.

    You say you have great CTR. You don't know that. It may look great to you. What you really should look at is the QS. You are complaining about it so it means your CTR is not that great when compared to competitors past and present and I believe world-wide. That's what QS is telling you. IMO, if it's 7 and above, you are good. Of course, always try to improve it.
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