I promote many websites using Adwords but this is the first time this is happening to me. I just started to promote a Games tournament for a game called "Battlefield 2" - I selected my keywords as usual - obviously including "Battlefield 2" in the list. To start with the max click cost was £0.10 Google said I had to increase it to £0.15 for it to become active I did this and sure enough my ad is displayed HOWEVER -- Its the ONLY ad to be displayed for that Keyword? Then the NEXT DAY it asked me to increase it to £0.25 and there are NO OTHER ADS RUNNING? What the hell is this about? Does Google just keep upping the price to get more money? Anyone else had a similar experience?
It always happen with AdWords..... I tried it once, and then the price just keeps on rising.... eventually I gave up.
actually your ads have quality score. there are several factors. one of them is if your ad copy is related to your landing page. keywords in your landing page. if you manage to increase your quality score, the bidding price will actually reduce.
i setup a new adwords campaign and bid on "ebay" as a keyword i got about 50 clicks at .05p then it got deactivated but it was ok if i wanted to then i could reactivate by moving the minimum bid price up to £5.00 i said no in a roundabout way
Sigh. Why do people advertise on Adwords without bothering to find out how it works??? Might I suggest that you work your way through the following before spending any more money: http://adwords.google.com/support/ In summary, Google determines how relevant your advert is to the searcher by looking at your advert text, your landing page and website, your keyword matching type and your clickthrough rate (and some other stuff). It uses this to set your minimum bid - Google doesn't want to serve up irrelevant links as people will use Yahoo! instead. What has happened to you is that Google doesn't initially know what your clickthrough rate is (since you don't have one) but after a few days it does. Since you have the only PPC advert, it should get a high percentage of the clicks. If your minimum bid is increasing, it's because you aren't getting as many clicks as you should be. I'd strongly suggest trying some new advert text, to try to get people to click onto your website. Also, make sure that your keyword is in the advert text, ideally in the title. This is not Google ripping people off - it's Google looking after its users, without which it wouldn't have a business.
Good advice, CustardMite. Also read the article in CustardMite's signature. I will be reading more of it soon as it looks astonishingly informative.
Seriously, I have given up on answering this. You are dead right. People still see AdWords as a "10 minutes and making profit" machine.
Yea ok, assume that I don't know what im talking about - but I do. Its pretty relevant ad + I have variations of the ad content. Its one bloody keyword - that no-one else uses (by the looks of it) I'm not using content ads just search. So can you get down off your high bloody horse. It wouldn't make a difference on my price as im the ONLY advert!! - read p r o p e r l y
You make it sound like they are doing this manually. They aren't. The Minimum Bid Quality Score is just a calculation. It's designed for the single purpose of promoting relevant websites and penalising irrelevant websites. It's probably not perfect - I'm sure that there are plenty of bad websites getting good scores, and good websites getting bad scores. But it's almost entirely within your control - you can improve your Quality Score if you understand how it works. If you want to make money on Adwords, learn how the QS works. Either way, don't complain if you don't like the way that the system works - it's the same for everyone. Regarding the number of clicks, I meant as a percentage of the number of impressions. If 10% of the people searching for your keyword click on your advert, Google assumes that it must be what they were searching for. If 1% click on your advert, Google assumes that it wasn't.
right ok, I have used Adwords for years but have never come across this before, I guess ive been lucky in the past. I bet if I don't increase it eventually it would be displayed again, im going to test it
If you've never had this problem and have been using Adwords for years on OTHER campaigns, understand that they've become a lot more picky and strict from a few years ago. This is probably due to the big market of buying and selling traffic using phrases few competed for even if the site and ad wasn't really related. Here's what you do: 1) Delete the phrase that was jacked up from your Adwords account. 2) Use the phrase on the landing page. 3) Create a new campaign using the phrase your bidding on in the ad. and re-ad it not using broad match. 4) Start your bids 50-100% higher than the minimum bid required until you get the status of "great" and you can bring it down. 5) Look @ Keyword Tracker or a like program, search for your phrase and pick out search results that aren't related but use the same phrase within. Add those specific (not general) words to your negative keyword list. If you can't get your price down on phrases nobody else is bidding on with doing the above, Google is either flagging your campaign and site for spam, made for Adsense, or just flat out hate you and you should give up on that site Of course Google is looking out for Google and their profits, but a little extra work in complying to what they're wanting you'll be fine.
maybe you should improve your quality score,as i know the price is getting cheaper day by day if the quality score is good