Massive PPC Headache

by 9 replies
10
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?
#search engine optimization #headache #massive #ppc
  • 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?
  • 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
    • [1] reply
    • 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.

  • Google is so unpredictable, not just with adwords but with anything. Maybe you should try another ppc company?
    • [1] reply
    • 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.
  • 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.
    • [1] reply
    • 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.
      • [1] reply
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    Massive PPC Headache

    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?