Just curious what causes adwords QS scores to get slapped or is it just something they do periodically? Also when they do get slapped how long does it take to build the account history back up do I have to put a ton of money back into it to build it back up?
QS gets slapped for many reasons, here are the commons bad landing pages bad campaign setups underbidding illegal offers non allowed products not following the rules The biggest factors under bidding bad display URL crappy landing pages
I assume for the purpose of this thread "slap" means the $5 or $10 min bids. Rest of the list is good - those two just aren't true.
I respect your opinion, but I'm not sure if you have handled as many slaps as I have. Those two variables also play a factor, and I will explain under bidding - If you underbid in a market that is heavily flooding and CPC are not in the range of 0.10. Lets assume "mortgage" as your keyword. If you enter the market with a 0.10 bid, you will most likely be slap in time due to low volume. I have seen this happen with many clients who simply enter the market by bidding the minimal and later get slapped even though everything else is setup fine. bad display URL - I have found instances of certain clients getting slapped for improper usage of display URL, being the display URL lands on a 404 error page. I have pulled several clients out of a slap be redirecting 404 error pages to the home page. Although it does not work all the time, and usually requires jumping back into the market by overbidding until the campaign gains traction. I do not know your background or know how many slaps you have resolved, but I have found this situations to be common.
Very rarely do my Display URL's resolve to a real page. I've never had a minimum bid of more than £0.50 on any of my campaigns. Perhaps the rules are different in different countries...
So you bid .10, get hit with a $5 min then what? Up your bid to a $1.00 and then your min drops back to a reasonable level? I bid on lower positions all the time in a number of different markets - some would call it under bidding - and I've never seen that happen. Ever. I have also specifically asked this question to a a number of different folks at Google and have been told time and time again that "under bidding" does not lead to a $5 - $10 min bid. Of course I take everything I'm told with the right level of skepticism and test it for myself. I have quite a few live campaigns now that might be considered to be under biding with no problems, especially not $5/$10 mins. That said, if you see it work in certain situations run with it - can't argue with what you see with your own 2 eyes. I know we've discussed this issue before...we'll just have to continue to disagree. I have thousands of live ads right at this moment that would fall into this category and I've never had issue with any of them. I would think that if the display url in any way influenced the likelihood of getting "slapped", at some point something I work with would have been hit. Same as above - if you see it work in certain situations run with it - can't argue with what you see with your own 2 eyes. You have likely worked on far more accounts that have been hit with high mins than I have. It seems far more common in the affiliate space and that represents a small portion of what I work with.
honestly, I cant explain it myself... This seems to be a touchy subject, and one I would love to get a concrete resolution of results on. I agree and disagree with you guys. I too have campaigns with 404 error pages. I too also have campaigns with underbids and they are running, just fine. However, it seems when Google picks on someone, slaps are easily over come when these problems are addressed. What do you guys do when you are faced with an account with slaps? What are your steps and measure? How many accounts have you successfully pulled out of a slap without changing accounts or URL?
Honestly, if I even take the work, I just start over with a new account. For me it's far more efficient to build from scratch than to try and decipher what someone has been doing with their account that got them in that spot in the first place. Of course that's not universally true...if the account has one campaign and two ad groups I'll just use it and set it up properly. I'm referring more to the accounts that have hundreds of ad groups, lots of campaigns and naming conventions that make no sense. I don't often with deal with accounts in that bad of shape, it's just not my target market. As I stated earlier I'm sure there are many here that have far more experience with this type of situation than I do.
A new domain is the only way... I still don't believe you can bring someone out of a slap, through your methods... and GuyfromChicago and CustardMite usually know exactly what they are talking about.
It isn't. I've brought clients out of slaps through both new accounts and extensive "repair work", let's call it. I recently discovered two words in one ad group with a $12.00 slap had recovered to an OK $0.15 min CPC after I played with the account. It's still scored OK to this point with no changes in the min CPC and a great CTR.