If you have adsense on your landing page, you might want to read this recent blog post. http://adsense.blogspot.com/2007/06/policy-updates-and-its-not-even.html I know many product landing pages have very little content outside the 2 or 3 sentence product description.
I just got slapped too... I relaunched a campaign that had been paused for a few days (Great quality score with $0.05-$0.10 minimum bids), got a 20% CTR for about 2 hours, and then got slapped with a $10 min bid. I also got slapped on a campaign that I had been running since December with min bids for most keywords under $0.05. I checked my logs, and Google's adbot hasn't even checked my site for hours before the slap. I hope this is just a technical issue...
Thanks, I have no clickbank links mostly CJ. I got off the phone. I pretty much got the "newbie speach" about the importance of the landing page repeated to me multiple times. I told her I was programmer and perfectly understood the concept of keyword density (title, alt, etc...) ...etc.... So she said she would see with a "landing page specialist" and get back to me by email. I'm surprised how nochalant they take these issues...Google better start leveling with its customers...this is not right... I'm starting to hate google... I do not have adsense or any ads on my landing pages.
Is anybody else using .info domains for their ads? The 2 campaigns I got slapped on are both on .info domains. (edit: looks like people on webmastersworld say that it's not just .info domains... so nevermind there)
That's EXACTLY what I just started last night.. I have 2 campaigns running.. One is my sales page (as a vendor) and it's running perfectly fine.. and I have keywords on there that are SO not relevant to my landing page but it's still averaging .10-.30 for clicks. Now on my affiliate campaigns, where I have different landing pages for each set of keywords which hyper-target it and make sure it's staying relevant for the best CPC.. It got hit HARD... What the heck happened.. It makes no sense to me.
Well lets get to the bottom of this.. According to SEroundTable the hit we are taking is on the landing page. Those of us who got hit hard.. Let's figure out what we got in common, and lets find a solution. Here's what I got.. My pages are fairly short.. Fairly high keyword density for the amount of words I got. I have about 9 outbound links to my affiliate pages (for the pages I have 2x products) and about 2-4 links on ones that I'm just promoting one product. The keywords I use are always in my links.. and in the heading, the domain name like www.yourdomain.com/targetedkeywordhere.html I'm guessing that maybe it's just like the content sites got hit hard with lack of content for the users... Do you think we got hit hard for lack of "content" for the users? Let's put our minds together and get this fixed instead of complaining.
I got the same problem today in one of my best performing accounts. I got in touch with my account manager in Google and apparently there was an update on the quality scoring system yesterday. Which caused this issue. Apparently some accounts got a Poor QS by accident! So check your accounts and if there is something wrong get in touch with them.
I only noticed a few increases (1 ad group out of 300 for example in one account) where the min bid jumped. How was this ad group different than the rest - it pointed to a page that was primarily affiliate related content. That's just a get you off the phone tactic - don't buy it.
A fix to this then... At the bottom of my page could I link out to 5-6 other "related" sites.. or even some of my OTHER landing pages for my campaigns.. Do you think that would help?
I don't think so they said this just for not bothering him, he is my account mager for some time . They said that they raised a bug for this particular account! I am now checking the rest of them.
Not necessarily - last time this happened, the problem lasted for about 2 days & then all bids went back to normal. See http://adwords.blogspot.com/2007/02/unexpected-minimum-bid-increases.html for the problem that happened back in February.
Very familiar with that. I just don't buy that almost everytime they apply a new landing page qs that "it's broken". Seriously, don't you think they test this stuff before they roll it out to every account? It's not like they are strapped for resources. How does an alogorithm "accidently" impact certain accounts?
there we go. did they already correct it in your case? i would expect them to correct it across the board, without each account owner having to contact them first! my sites have no adsense or other ppc, they do have reviews with affiliate links (none from clickbank, all with rel="nofollow"). do you believe that google wants to eliminate all affiliate sites from adwords?!
Just got an email from my AM, saying that my site has been penalised with increased bids. This certainly looks to be a mistake, as the site does adhere to our guidelines......... I agree with guyfromchicago though they must be testing this staff before the launch it!!
yes you would expect that, but isn't it quite obvious that they don't test it properly?! it has happened last time with a huge bug and back then you also said at first that it must be the stupid advertisers who don't understand the qs and got slapped correctly. why do you refuse to believe us again this time around?
I like your approach but frankly on my best performing campaign my main competition (another affiliate site) is still running today (in my spot!) and his/her landing pages are shorter then mine. I probably had one of the best CTR in the group since I could move my ad from 3 to 2 anytime with minimum bid changes. The only diff I can see is that his/her site is older and has some PR3. Mine is new (6 months old but domain is registered since years) PR blank. Right now I leaning towards what tvmatt is saying a Google Error. Lets keep the thinking going just in case...we might find something. My domain is a .com.
I believe that every LP QS update they have done has been aimed at thinning affiliates from the space.
yeah but so far it has consistently been aimed at forcing affiliates to create relevant quality sites, not at penalizing affiliate links across the board!
According to the last time error: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2007/02/unexpected-minimum-bid-increases.html So I 've not paused my ads but I seeing some of my ads show (just a fraction 1-5% of where they would be at this time) and when clicked it's costing me the FULL bid! WTF! example for keyword with $1.92 bid: Clicks Impr. CTR Avg. CPC Cost Avg. Pos 1 1 100.00% $1.92 $1.92 2.0 This is really not cool since I don't want to pause my campaigns. It looks like now I'm at 95% of all none paused keyword have the $10 minimum bid. ...