Why does Google make it so hard to compete with a new AdWords account and/or a new site? I just don't see how it benefits their business, their advertisers, or their users. Here's a specific example. I have 2 sites in the same niche. The sites are totally unrelated to each other, but target the exact same audience. I have an AdWords account for each site, with exactly the same structure and exactly the same keywords. The difference is that Account/Site 1 has a little over a year of history, and Account/Site 2 is just a few weeks old. Account/site 1: [specific keyword phrase] Over the past 7 days it has the following stats: Quality Score: Great Minimum Bid: $0.03 CTR: 3.04% Avg CPC: $0.91 Avg. Pos: 5.6 Account/site 2: [specific keyword phrase] Over the past 7 days it has the following stats: Quality Score: Great Minimum Bid: $0.04 CTR: 2.71% Avg CPC: $1.31 Avg. Pos: 5.7 In my extensive experience, a CTR of 3.04 vs. 2.71 does not make a huge difference so I can only assume that the 44% higher Avg. CPC for the exact same keyword in the new account is due to just that, the fact that it's a new account. The thing is, even in the new account this is based on 1000s of impressions and 100s of clicks, which is plenty of "history" based on my understanding of how that works. So what am I missing here? How does this benefit anyone? I operate on about 25% margins so I'm losing money right now, when I should be making plenty of money. I just don't know what to do at this point. At some point I need to pull the plug, and then both G and I will lose money unnecessarily. Is there anything I can/should do? I find it hard to believe that such a sophisticated system would just have a blanket penalty on new accounts across the board, so I'm hoping there is *something* I can do, and I just need to figure out what it is. (This situation is the same across all my keywords - everything in the new account is roughly 40-50% higher CPC). I just don't get it. I'm a semi-sophisticated AdWords user who has spent millions on AdWords over the past 5 years. I've also made a ton of money for myself. I know there are plenty of bigger fish out there, but surely I'm in the top 1 or 2% of AdWords spenders. Why is this so difficult? In any other type of vendor/client scenario, given this same type of situation I could simply call the company, let them know who I am, remind them of my track record and past performance, and they would press a few buttons and put a stop to this. Anyway, just frustrated. Does anyone have any input for me? Do I just wait this out and at some point my bids will just start dropping slowly over time? Any idea how long it takes? Why doesn't Google give us any clue what's happening in situations like this ... I just don't see any benefit to keeping serious advertisers in the dark and making it so hard for them to make money. I mean, I'm launching a few other sites in the next few months and I'm seriously considering just not even using AdWords because this is such a PITA and very frustrating.
what you have just mentioned is true and universal phenomenon... I read exactly the same thing on one of the "super affiliates" blog. Read this and you will understand that you are not the only one.
In my experience, new accounts are not penalised at all. I think it's true that an account's history has an impact on quality score, but the level of impact is minor compared to other factors. I recently transferred a campaign to a brand new account and secured better results immediately, simply because I better structured the campaign. The reason why you have a relatively higher average CPC on one account is that you are competing against yourself by bidding on the same keywords. With two identical accounts, you can't expect to pay the same amount on each one. Adwords doesn't permit one client to bid on the same keywords with two or more separate accounts. Are they aware of your doings? If not, once (or if) they find out, they will combine your accounts, thus preventing your ability to bid on the same keywords.
Huh? That's simply not true. All I did with my new account was push down one of the existing less savvy advertisers. Of course I'm not going to see the *exact* same CPCs in both accounts, but that is not the reason for a 40% higher avg CPC in the new account. It's not one client, it's 2 clients. They are 2 totally separate businesses with separate websites, separate addresses, and separate credit cards. I just happen to own both businesses.
I'm a little confused . . . Are you bidding on the same keywords with both accounts? If so, that means you are competing against yourself. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just that you said "That's simply not true." It sounds like you have accumulated a good quality score history with the old account, which has dropped its CPC and increased its ad's position. If you want to get similar results with the new account, you're going to have to compete against yourself a bit harder. Just don't get into any arguments! Just kidding with ya, man! Seriously, though, I think the large CPC discrepancy you are observing between the two accounts stems mostly from a difference in quality score than account history. The latter almost certainly is having an impact; having maintained a consistently high quality score with the old account will have made it difficult to compete against. However, I don't think account history alone is the sole factor behind the large difference in CPC. I've entered keyword auctions after watching competitor positions for months, only to knock them off their spots straight away, simply due to having a better-structured, more relevant campaign. And the same has happended to me on a number of occassions! Some newbie to the auction has popped out of nowhere and stolen my position! If I were you, I would work on the quality score of the new account. I wouldn't just write the problem off as being attributable to account history. As there is little difference between the CTRs of the accounts, the problem must lie elsewhere. You said that the sites are totally unrelated; maybe the problem lies therein? I think that, since both of your businesses have totally different identities, you shouldn't have any problems with bidding on the same keywords.
When it comes to quality score, who knows. In the example I gave above, both keywords have a quality score of Great. Honestly the 2nd and newer website is of higher quality than the original established site, but Google doesn't seem to have figured that out yet. What else can I do ... ? I have established a good quality score history with both accounts, one is just a lot newer than the other and has less of a history overall. So that's kind of what I was getting at in my original post ... the length of the history seems to have a huge impact on things. For example, in my new account I have a few keywords where the CTRs are insanely high in the 10% range after 100s of clicks. In the old established account, my average CTR for these same keywords is a lot lower in the 3-5% range. Even with a CTR 2X higher in the new account, I still have to bid about 40-50% higher to reach roughly the same position compared to the old, established account. So again it seems like the length of the history has a huge impact on things. As far as competing with myself, yes I am. This is a very competitive niche, and the way I see it one of my sites is just another competitor to the other site. I was just saying that I don't see how this is really relevant to the issue in my original post.
Limitup, I think we can safely say that account history and site age is probably playing a part in your CPC problem. However, as I said, I'm pretty sure that the impact of these factors is minimal compared to other factors. In my experience, the three most important factors to affect quality score are (1) CTR (2) Relevancy between keywords, ads and landing page content (3) The amount of relevant content on the landing page Since your new account's CTR is fine, maybe you should check factors 2 and 3. You must have different content on your new site, in which case each site's scores for these two factors will be different. You should also consider working on your new site's organic rank. I am guessing that your old site has more backlinks, a higher PR and a better organic placement for the keywords than your new site. If so, work on building backlinks to your new site, using the keywords being bid on as anchor texts. I don't know how much of an impact relevant backlinks and organic rank have on quality score, but I think there is a slight impact there. I would also suggest working on your new account's CTR. You said that the CTRs are similar for both accounts, although the new account beats the old one on some keywords. I'm assuming that the overall similarity between the CTRs is as a result of similar ad copy. Try something new with the new account's ads. Just my suggestions . . . I hope they help.
Yes that's true, but that wasn't the case when the old site was new, and I didn't have this problem then. Again, this just leads right back to the theory that as of today Google is making it hard for new sites to compete. Right? Otherwise I would have had this problem when I launched the old site a year ago. It also doesn't make much sense that a site would have to have a good organic rank etc. because if so then again, all new sites are automatically "penalized". This just doesn't make sense from a business standpoint if you are Google, does it? Believe it or not this new site actually has more relevant content on the landing page than the old site does. Thanks for your replies!
I think you may be missing a critical point here. 'Great' refers to your Minimum Bid Quality Score. Your bids to appear in position 5-6 are determined by your Ranking Quality Score. Whilst most of the inputs used to calculate them are the same, they may have different weightings. And the weightings may be different depending on the age of the account. Consider your clickthrough rate. Google can't rely on it too much after one day, but after a week, it may be more relevant. And after a month it'll be more relevant still. When the account was set up, you didn't have a clickthrough rate, so (I believe) Google estimated one based on various things. Over time, the estimate will be replaced by the actual figures. Also, various factors like bounce rate will be more reliable over time...
I agree with custardmite. I will also add that a difference of $.01 between a minimum bid of $.03 and $.04 represents a 33% increase. If the Ranking score is based on similar factors to the minimum bid, and other unknown factors, then it is not unreasonable to assume the knock on effect could be a 45% increase in CPC.
A decent contribution, CustardMite. But what do you mean by "bounce rate"? Do you mean the advertiser's ability to regain a high CTR? Limitup: "It also doesn't make much sense that a site would have to have a good organic rank etc. because if so then again, all new sites are automatically "penalized". This just doesn't make sense from a business standpoint if you are Google, does it?" You're probably right . . . I don't know if organic rank impacts quality score. It might do; then again, it might not. If it does, I'm sure that the impact is minimal, otherwise new sites would be being penalised. Not that long ago, I set up a direct linking campaign to a page which did not have much content. I would never have done so usually, because I knew that I would receive a low quality score due to the lack of content on the page. However, in this instance, the page ranked very high in the organic results for the keywords which I was going to bid on. And I was quite surprised to see Great keyword quality scores all-round. This, at the time, was kind of like confirmation for me that organic rank might have an effect on quality score. However, I may have been mistaken; maybe the Great quality scores resulted from something else. What I do know is, it definitely wasn't due to loads of high-quality and relevant content.
I could easily see a site with a high organic rank receiving some kind of boost, as opposed to a site without a good rank receiving a penalty (which doesn't make sense). Well, the new account has several weeks of history now with all the top keywords having at least 1000+ clicks. If that isn't enough history I don't know what is. Again, we are back to my point in the original thread ... new accounts seem to be at a severe disadvantage in terms of being able to compete in the auction.