CPC jump from £0.26 to min of £5.00 in 24 hours!

[lollipop]

Hi there,

I've been using adwords to drive traffic to my betting information website. For the last month it's been working well at about 26p per click on average. However, for some reason today all my campaigns ground to a halt saying I need to increase my minimum bid to £5.00. I did so tentatively to see what would happen and I was getting clicks at stupidly high amounts - £3 plus.

Could anyone tell me why the minimum CPC has jumped so much in such a short time?

Is it google intervening and trying to price betting sites off adwords?

Thanks

Louise

[Sjorritsma]

Same here. I Called my Adwords contact and he said that he heared the same complain today. I should get a email explaining what's going on.

I think it has something to do with http://adwords.blogspot.com/2007/02/...tes.html#links.

[cornetto]

I've had about 20 keywords go to the £5.00 minimum today, all others stayed the same. These keywords were ok at 15p yesterday.

[lollipop]

Hmm I'm not really sure what to do. I was getting 100 clicks per day and now obviously none because I am not prepared to pay £5.00 a click. Surely adwords is committing suicide by pricing people out of the market like this?

I'd be really grateful if you could let me know what you hear back.

Thanks

Lolli

[Rapesco]

Google doesn't allow gambling web sites to be advertised using Adwords. The reason that your cost per click has been increased is because google have updated the algo. Look at your new quality score column (you'll have to use customise column option to show it) It will display "poor" This can be because of a number of factors including the quality of your advert, the quality and relevance of your keywords, the quality of your landing page. Make these better and you wont have the shocking £5 minimum bid

[Rapesco]

Take a look at the Google guide lines, also have a look at the thread i started on this:
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=245633

[lollipop]

Just to clarify my site isn't a gambling site - it gives info not bets! It's been working absolutely fine for the last few months so I don't know why the change now all of a sudden.

What do you mean by algo?

I'm not sure it is down to the quality of ads because I deleted the whole lot and tried to start a new campaign and this also demanded £5 per keyword...

[Rapesco]

algo = algorithm.
Its related so im not sure if they will like it, are your competitors still appearing?? if no then its prob to do with the gambling thing. If you dont think its your ad it could be your landing page. What is the landing page and surrounding pages quality like?

[sarathy]

Read this:
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=2337166

They did some changes on adwords QS

[lollipop]

It's not the site content as my competitor ads were still appearing. Rapesco and Sarathy you were spot on about the Quality Rating. I've changed the landing page on my site and am having great success again. Thanks for your help.

[Rapesco]

Glad your sorted out now