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What the hell is adwords doing??

by mdunn123
15 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Anybody else every have this problem?

I launched a new campaign about 5 days ago. Sent plenty of traffic through adwords, my quality score was at "great" for most keywords and "ok" for only a handful. Today I log into my account and notice that my impressions and click throughs are drastically lower.

hmmmm.....this is very strange. So I start poking around, look at my keywords and all of a sudden almost all my keywords have a "poor" quality score next to them with the whole "ads rarely show due to low quality score".

I'm shocked...nothing on the site or in the ads was changed. Obviously I'm thinking...What the hell is going on!!??

Did they start rating sites differently all of a sudden? Anyone ever have this happen to them?

Any idea what the heck might be going on?
#adwords #hell
  • Profile picture of the author Scott Murdaugh
    It's called "Google slap"...

    They use more than on site factors to calculate quality score... After you get some history, your click through rates and bounce rates on the site start to play a role.

    If your site isn't optimized for quality score start there. If it's a problem with a low CTR tweak your ads.
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    • Profile picture of the author lansing
      Is this a site new to Adwords?

      If so, your site may have been checked by a human Googler who gave your site a low quality rating. If this is the case, there is not much you can do to improve your quality scores.
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      • Profile picture of the author mdunn123
        Originally Posted by scottspfd82 View Post

        It's called "Google slap"...

        They use more than on site factors to calculate quality score... After you get some history, your click through rates and bounce rates on the site start to play a role.

        If your site isn't optimized for quality score start there. If it's a problem with a low CTR tweak your ads.
        Thanks for all the response so far guys! When I first built the site, I had the intention of optimizing it for a high quality score. Everything on the site is properly done for that. The only thing that I can think of is the ad itself. I've been able to get a few hundred visitors a day to my site from adwords, but my ctr is dismal. About .47% on average. The impressions are massive, but grabbing a high amount of those visitors is very hard to do. I've tried a ton to increase ctr.

        Originally Posted by lansing View Post

        Is this a site new to Adwords?

        If so, your site may have been checked by a human Googler who gave your site a low quality rating. If this is the case, there is not much you can do to improve your quality scores.
        Yes this site in particular is new to adwords. About 5 days old.
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  • Profile picture of the author matthewd
    I had a campaign running for 6 months that got slapped last month and I haven't been able to get it unslapped yet.

    I immediately changed everything that they suggested and still have not gotten it fixed.

    I talked to someone a few times on the phone and they would never give me any info at all, just tell me to make sure my site followed their guidelines... which I said I had changed everything to fit perfectly into their guidelines and there must be something that I don't know about, but just kept getting the same line.

    I finally got someone the other day that said their optimization team would analyze my campaign and site and let me know what I should do, but I haven't heard from them in a few days, so we will see if that follows through.
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  • Profile picture of the author koolwarrior
    Banned
    Google Adwords is just straight robbery and tyranny if you ask me.

    If I were the OP, I'd ditch Adwords, and work on some SEO. It's the only way you can work with Google and get traffic nowadays without burning a hole in your pocket or getting 'slapped'
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  • Profile picture of the author mdunn123
    This is REALLY REALLY a hard hit. I don't know what the hell else to do with the site other than sit there and write out the keywords all over the place (I know it doesn't work of course).

    It's a content site too with about 25 different pages. I have 15 different adgroups and each adgroups is sending traffic to the page that's designed for those keywords. In addition to that each ad is tailored to it.

    I'm not saying this because I'm upset or defensive, but the site really is good, and I other than a minor tweak here and there I have no idea what the hell else can be done with the site to drastically improve it other than add a large amount of good content to it over a long period of time.

    Some really needs to create some serious competition to google...any math genius here?
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  • Profile picture of the author mdunn123
    Hey guys....

    Wanted to give you some interesting developments here that might or might not mean that we're in another google slap phase...I don't know.

    Two of my marketing buddies both good friends just called me up...same exact problems that I've been having they're now having too. QS shot to hell, cpc up very high and ads not showing. All of this happening today just as mine did.

    Have no idea whats going on....
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  • Profile picture of the author ebizza
    They have probably monitored visitor bounce times as times passed. It's counted.
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    • Profile picture of the author dburk
      Hi mdunn123,

      From the little bit of information you posted I would guess that your issue is with the CTR. This has always been the most important factor in Quality Scores and since yours is very low the problem seems obvious.

      There is no need for you to guess, you can verify where the problem lies by using the Keyword Analysis Page or the Ads Diagnostic Tool.

      Google Adwords campaigns for the Search Network demand "extreme" relevance and anything that falls short of this will not work. The most common problem I see, when consulting a client, is the use of keywords that are too ambiguous.

      The relevancy thing can be hard to get for many folks. Many terms can be generally relevant to a lot of topics that are unrelated to each other. This ambiguity makes these keywords poor choices for an AdWords campaigns.

      I recommend that you immeadiately pause any keywords with poor quality scores and focus on identifying the exact cause and address each issue.

      Use the above mentioned tools in you AdWords account and post the information returned to this forum and I will try to assist you in correcting the problem.

      Alternatively you can PM me your problem keyword along with the ad text and landing page URL and I will help you resolve the issue for one of you keywords. What you learn from that may help you resolve the rest of your problem keywords.
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      • Profile picture of the author rogershepard
        thanks for the tip - great post - Roger
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  • Profile picture of the author mdunn123
    Don,

    Thank you so much for your response, and sorry for my late response. This makes a lot of sense, and boy I hope that it's what's going on. I shall PM you soon after I tweak some ads and test them.

    Thanks so much once more!
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  • Profile picture of the author thomashoi
    Turn off your content network and you will see your ctr drastically shoot up.

    Ensure the keyword phrase have at least 3 or more keywords and make sure they appear in the headline, description line and display url of the text ad.

    The keyword phrase should also appear in the landing page as title of the page, page name, etc...
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    • Profile picture of the author dburk
      Originally Posted by thomashoi View Post

      Turn off your content network and you will see your ctr drastically shoot up.

      Ensure the keyword phrase have at least 3 or more keywords and make sure they appear in the headline, description line and display url of the text ad.

      The keyword phrase should also appear in the landing page as title of the page, page name, etc...
      Hi thomashoi,

      The Quality Score for the Search Network is not effected by the Content Network CTR. They separate these networks for all calculations. Turning off the Content Network will have no impact on your Search Network scores.
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  • Profile picture of the author sivaok
    sometimes google gonna be crazy ...
    my adword account delays for 5 days til it runs !
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