Hi Folks, Just joined the forum and thanks in advance for any help you can provide. Here is the deal: Been using adwords for about 6 months with moderate success. Last thursday I started a new campaign that was very successful. Thursday the min bid for the keyword was 5 cents and there were only 3 other advertisers appearing when I searched for the keyword. Got a click through rate of 1.9 Friday, Min bid went from 5 cents to 10 cents by midday. Friday night it went to 20 cents. My quality score was "Great" at the time. Saturday morning my keyword min bid went to $5.00! And my quality score was Poor! Still, there are only 3 other advertisers so it cant be a competition issue. I sent an email to Google this morning asking for an explanation but was wondering all your thoughts. I hate to say adwords is trying to scam me because I have had moderate success in the past, but it sure looks fishy. Any advice? Thanks Gary
The quality score is evaluated periodically and if it's determined that your ad or the site you are sending people to is not relevant to the keyword then the quality score goes to Poor and the min. bid goes up. It's possible that the keyword(s) you are targeting are too general. You can try bidding on more specific multiple word keywords or try bidding on [keyword] and "keyword" instead as that may filter out some of the other unrelated searches and result in a higher quality score.
Thanks, Just FYI to all, The keyword is very specific - a product line. Is it against the rules or not wise to post the actual word here? Anyway, other variations of the keyword including a common misspelling are still listed as Great or OK. The landing page is my own and highly relevant - it's a product review. Thanks
OK, If I understand "Google Slapped" something in either my ad or landing page told the Google algorithm that the content was probably not relevant or of high enough quality to warrant a low CPC. Fine. Why was everything fine for the first 2 days though? And more importantly what am I missing? My keyword in in the title of the ad. My keyword appears in the body of the ad It appears in the URL of the ad It appears over 20 times in a text article on the landing page It's in the page title, and description The page is not overly filled with affiliate links and variations and extensions (the keyword + an additional word)of the keyword are still rated as "Great" And by the way, I deleted the keyword and tried to reinstate it. The Min CPC went from $5.00 to $1.00 I tried starting a new campaign with just the keyword, Min bid was at .40 - still way above where it was before. So, is there still something I am missing? Thanks.
Because Google bot takes some time to visit your page. Care to share your page and keywords? You can PM me.
This is beautiful and I am certainly starting to think Google Adwords is running a scam. Here's the deal: I redid my ad on the keyword in question and removed the word "Online" in the heading from "Keyword Online Review" and changed it to "Keyword review" The ad cost went to 5 cents again and over the last 24 hours I had over 14,000 impressions and 150 clicks. So I go to write the results in this forum to say it was my fault and maybe the word "Online" was causing the problem, but first I decide to check my adwords account and..what do ya know. Since 2 hours ago my ad went from "Great to Poor and my min bid now is back up to a dollar! This is BS! can this be anything other than Google thinking they can try and coax more cash out of me. I would love to be wrong about this and figure out that I was making some kind of mistake but it sure looks like Google is just trying to rip people off. Seriously folks, and any Google people out there, what's the deal? Gary
There are many factors that affect quality score. Affiliate links and CTR are a couple. If your ad isn't getting a good CTR compared to others bidding on the same keyword, it can cause a poor quality score. Google is also cracking down on affiliate sites and pages filled with ads. You'll find a lot more information by searching these forums as this topic has been covered many times before.
Thanks Jewel, I understand. But the thing is my landing page is a review of a particular children's toy filled with tons of copy containing the keyword. There is an affiliate link to a store that sells the toys and to Amazon as well as Google AdSense. There is only one other advertiser bidding on the keyword and I am getting a click through of almost 2% when the ad runs. And if google is cracking down as many say on affiliate links, then why does bizrate, shop.com, pricegrabber, etc always seem to be at the top of the adwords list on so many searches - other than the obvious answer - money. Are there any other factors that we have not discussed in this thread that I am missing. I am continuing to try other variations to see if I get the same results. I hate to dis google because I have had success with adwords in the past but this particular campaign is far more than successful than my others when the ads are running. The others I typically get a dozen or so impressions a day and 1 - 2 clicks for 25 cents. This one I'm getting, well, from last night to this afternoon when they raised the bid from 5 cents to $1, I had over 14,000 impressions and 150 clicks. Could it be that the Google algorithm sees the impressions and has a minimum dollar amount for x number of impressions? Regardless of the keyword.
My guess is that is has something to do with the number of adsense (or other ads) and the affiliate links. Google has been pretty harsh on affiliate sites in particular. Having original content, privacy policy & about-us page are also thought to help. There isn't a dollar figure for number of impressions, but of course that affects your CTR which is directly related to quality score. 2% may be very low compared others. I've noticed a better quality score when the CTR gets into the 5% or 6% range. If there is only one other advertiser, 2% CTR seems extremely low.
Interesting. I hadn't thought about the Adsense screwing it up but that could make sense. So people can't buy an adword to get a click through on the adsense ads. I'll take out the adsense and see if that helps. By the way, I just set up 4 separate ads with 4 different landing pages all with different variables to see which get flagged. So far all 4 are running at at under 10 cent per click with a "Great" rating.
Just an update to anyone following this thread, Yesterday (Sunday) I set up 4 variations of my ad with a new landing page that had no affiliate links, no Adsense ads, nothing but a simple product review. Yes there were links to another page that had affiliate links, but there were none on the landing page. I got 273 clicks from 23775 impressions at an average cost of .07. and my quality score was "Great" This morning, my campaign is inactive with a min bid of .40 required and my quality score is "poor" The only thing I can conclude at this point is that the good people at Google are running up the cost of the ad to try an maximize their profit trying to figure what is the maximum I will pay for this ad word. I suppose it makes for good business for them but it sure seems a bit shady to me. So anyone using adwords just beware. Of course, anyone who can tell me what if anything I'm doing wrong here, I listening. Thanks All.
Try to add, About us page, disclaimer/privacy policy/terms of service and add at least 3 links to similar web sites. Do have the keywords in the domain name?
I can assure you that google does not run up the minimum bid on all campaigns. I really think your CTR is a big factor in what you are experiencing. Google is saying "We're showing your ad to a lot of people and in our opinion, a low percentage of people are clicking the ad, so your ad copy needs work or you need to refine your keyword(s). It might be that you are choosing too broad of a keyword(s) and need to try and find keywords and/or ad copy that are going to give you a higher CTR.
Hmmm. That makes sense jewel. I just started another campaign on a different key word this morning. So far in the last hour I've got 51 clicks on 571 impressions or almost 9% with a CPC of .05. At this point I am the only advertiser other than the generic eBay Spam. Lets see if my min. CPC goes through the roof by this afternoon. By the way, I do have, all the disclaimers, privacy, terms of use, about us, etc. on the site.
You might try putting links to the top 1-5 organic sites for the keywords you are advertising, and just make them the same color as the background so the bot will see them, but not people. Also, part of QS is based on CTR, but also, part of it is based on account history and standing. If you are somewhat new to adwords, and don't have a good account standing yet, that might be part of it.
Actually the good Google people got back to me about this but didn't really answer the questions. After playing around with this I suspect it does in fact have to do with the click through rate. On the keyword in question I was averaging about 1.9%. On the other one yesterday I got over 8% and the CPC stayed in the 6 cent range. It's still a little fishy in that you see so many crappy ads that are always there and my legit ad gets zapped. If anyone has anything to ad it would be appreciated. There are a lot of posts on this topic if you search so it would be nice to have a definitive answer. Also, I found that the Google explanation on QS was really quite helpful. By the way, JKE what 's up with the above post and warning thing? Gary
I've seen this many times & i agree there is obviously a very serious amount of crappy ads floating around (note my sig) Back a few months ago i posted a notable amount of screen shots & non-screen shot examples of very high-ranking ads on the google engine (major search phrases) - i looked at the sites very closely (html/code etc.) i would say at least 80% of the ads displayed with high ranking had: 1. No content or very little content. 2. Barely any relevance (in many cases, none) 3. Directly linked to a one-page sign-up/pay for service or product. I would say they all had something in common. A very obvious ROI. In some cases, ringtone sites were #1/#2 when the search phrase (user) clearly would have benifited from an informative quality content-based site, or one that just plain had content at all. One thing i repeatedly said in the face of one well known user (in denial) here: It's not like no one in the world is trying to advertise their legitimate, informative quality content-based website(s) Out of around 40-60 different (major) search phrases, i believe i only came up with 3-4 legitimate sites that were not directly selling something. The conclusion i've come up with is basically 2 things. 1. Quality or content means less than some would care to admit. 2. How much an advertiser is willing to pay (-> ROI) is really what drives the top ads - not quality. (hardly quality in fact) In a particular situation with a site that i run, i believe the majority of the return visitors for at least one page, are .gov divisions from a multitude of different countries. (i have gov links) There is no question i have and provide the best/updated content for many subjects. Yet my cost remains high. I've changed around the page internally & externally & ads a few times & tried a decent amount of things to try & drag in more traffic from adwords. My investment is for return visitors & some days up to a quarter of my traffic is return visitors. I remain confident at least 10-25% of all visitors will return. This website is very unique, and i've yet to see anything really even close to it. End to end completely custom coded. Regarding CTR of ads on adwords. Many of my ad groups (& ads) will have at least a continual 1% CTR. Many times a group will fire off with a 30-50% CTR but the amount of impressions (& traffic) it recieves (in the end) somehow remains lower then (in many cases) an ad group that has a decimal point CTR. This really goes back to who's paying what, for what & how much. Again, nothing to do with content or quality, web-page or ad wise. Per ad group, i'm only putting in 5-15 phrases in each & they all have at least 8 dead-on ad variations per group. (the CTR for all of the ads is damn near split equally, but they are different) I know what users are looking for in this niche. Even based on the amount of returners. The question is, does google know &/or care what users are looking for anymore. The answer: Nada - The bait & switch - I'm not sure if it's just that google (at the start) doesn't have the cpu time to make a decision on 'quality' or what. But i don't think i've ever seen a new account or campaign not have the bids go up compared to the initial reflected cost. Usually within 1-2 days, maybe 3. Yes definately at the beginning the costs may seem reasonable. But not long after the beginning your costs are deemed otherwise.
In case anyone is interested the thread referenced is here: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=186143 A lot of tie ins to this thread, although the QS factors and methodology have changed slightly since that thread.