Question About Google Adwords

8 replies
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I have a campaign that has been doing alright using Google Adwords. I was bidding $0.15 per click and had an average position of about 2.9. It was costing me $0.13 per click.

I would like to be in first or second position. I raised my bid to $0.23 per bid last night. Today I am averaging position 3.0 and it is costing me $0.17 per click.

How do the bids and positions work?
#adwords #google #question
  • Profile picture of the author Kim Davis
    If you raise your bid then Google will raise the price you pay it seems... I do know people have done this... drop it a penny for a few days and then drop another penny a few days later. They drop until it affects their placement, when you find what price drops your placement then you find out what bid price you need to have to maintain a specific position. Don't take such steep hikes either way...
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  • Profile picture of the author zoulkifl
    How long have you been running your campaign?
    Adwords takes many things in account. If your quality score is great and your click through rate is high then your bids get lower.

    Now i think it's too early to make any conclusions here but there isn't much a difference with your stats. You still average a number 3 position and your cost per click went up 4 cents. I don't think 4 cents is going to stick because the change has only been in effect for a few hours.

    The people occupying position 1 and 2 may well be paying more per click (upwards 50 cents or more) they could also be paying far less. Your ctr and conversion rates are major factors to determining your average position and cost per click.
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    • Profile picture of the author imon32red
      Originally Posted by zoulkifl View Post

      How long have you been running your campaign?
      I started this campaign about 3 months ago. However, this last month I have made several adjustments to the price. I have been raising the price of my bid on the keywords that convert.
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  • Profile picture of the author patadeperro
    That is the strategy most of people do, and it is not the best one, because
    you are into a deep pocket war, the most misunderstood metric in Adwords is the
    CTR, if you have a better CTR than the competition you can get the first place even
    if you are paying less per click.

    The right way to do this is to make an A/B testing with different adds and try to
    put the best add each time, after you have a winner, test with another add, this
    is an ongoing process and if you have a higher CTR than the current number one position
    you will get the 1 Google spot even if you are paying less per click than them.
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    • Profile picture of the author imon32red
      Originally Posted by patadeperro View Post

      The right way to do this is to make an A/B testing with different adds and try to
      put the best add each time, after you have a winner, test with another add, this
      is an ongoing process and if you have a higher CTR than the current number one position
      you will get the 1 Google spot even if you are paying less per click than them.

      The keyword that I am working on has a click through rate of 3.30%. Is that good or bad?
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      I'm not selling anything.
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      • Profile picture of the author patadeperro
        Originally Posted by imon32red View Post

        The keyword that I am working on has a click through rate of 3.30%. Is that good or bad?
        If you are in the first place of the advertisers, then it is good, if you are not, then it is not good enough yet, keep making split testings until you beat them, obviously you need to keep your performance
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        • Profile picture of the author tryinhere
          Originally Posted by patadeperro View Post

          If you are in the first place of the advertisers, then it is good, if you are not, then it is not good enough yet, keep making split testings until you beat them, obviously you need to keep your performance
          ctr alone is not going to determine position as much as the max cpc will determine position @ the op, please do not confuse max cpc with the amount you have bid.

          you mentioned your average position was 2.9 (keep in mind you said average) and your max bid was set at .15 with an average bid of .13

          You max bid is the most you can pay / not what you will pay, next you have re set your max bid to .23 (the most you will pay) and now have an average bid of .17 / position 3

          what you are not seeing here is the other settings of every other player, for example i may be in that exact market and have a max cpc set @ .50c for that key, so in effect you can raise your max cpc all you like but until you reach the .50 max bid i have set, I will simply out bid you regardless and retain top spot / being all other factors such as q score are equal.

          A whole new bag of metrics bringing in q score so we will leave that alone, so adjusting by small amounts is good as suggested, but no one metric stands alone you have a rubrics cube of maths all happening at once / back to your position and new changes must factor in past performance to give a new average, so set your time display in very short if you want to read changes over a short term.

          the very best thing to do is yes worry about position if you want but only after factoring in your profit margins, having position one at xyz $ is pointless if you are not making any money. / anyone can say they have position 1 in adwords, it does not make them the sharpest tool in the shed though.
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          • Profile picture of the author imon32red
            Originally Posted by tryinhere View Post

            ctr alone is not going to determine position as much as the max cpc will determine position @ the op, please do not confuse max cpc with the amount you have bid.

            you mentioned your average position was 2.9 (keep in mind you said average) and your max bid was set at .15 with an average bid of .13

            You max bid is the most you can pay / not what you will pay, next you have re set your max bid to .23 (the most you will pay) and now have an average bid of .17 / position 3

            what you are not seeing here is the other settings of every other player, for example i may be in that exact market and have a max cpc set @ .50c for that key, so in effect you can raise your max cpc all you like but until you reach the .50 max bid i have set, I will simply out bid you regardless and retain top spot / being all other factors such as q score are equal.

            A whole new bag of metrics bringing in q score so we will leave that alone, so adjusting by small amounts is good as suggested, but no one metric stands alone you have a rubrics cube of maths all happening at once / back to your position and new changes must factor in past performance to give a new average, so set your time display in very short if you want to read changes over a short term.
            Thank you for your explanation.

            Originally Posted by tryinhere View Post

            the very best thing to do is yes worry about position if you want but only after factoring in your profit margins, having position one at xyz $ is pointless if you are not making any money. / anyone can say they have position 1 in adwords, it does not make them the sharpest tool in the shed though.
            I have worked with ebooks for the Amazon Kindle for about a year and a half. It was the first success that I have seen in IM. It is pretty much passive income. I don't do hardly anything with it these days and it pays my living expenses.

            As far as being profitable with PPC, I have been from the start. I received one of those free $100 credits for Google Adwords and decided to promote some clickbank products. I set up 5 campaigns in June, which took me about a week to research and setup. I had a sale about every other week.

            I left it alone until about 4 or 5 weeks ago when I noticed that I had 2 sales one day. I raised my max bid and saw more sales. I have 2 products that consistently see sales and I have been slowly tweaking my ads for the last month. My results have been stellar. After my initial results for the first month, I didn't anticipate making very much with this method. However, I think that I will average $100 a day this week. If I can maintain it I will be extremely happy.
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