Adwords changed all my bids to 5$ and daily budget

Hi,

I submitted many new campaigns last Friday to Adwords (through a third party, it's a long story). I did all the research for keywords and bids using different tools, including Google's keyword suggestion. I set different daily budgets for every adgroup (50$-400$) and set different cpc max bid for my keywords, where necessary.

According to Google's keyword suggestion tool, my bids were high enough to be in the top 3, but not overly high (0.20$-1$). My keywords are not that competitive. (there are no ads for some of my keywords in the SERPs)

Got my first reports this morning and, surprise, the adwords reps changed everything!!!

I had no minimum cpc bids, now I do, between 0.23$ and 12$!!! My max CPC bids are now all at 5$ (even when my min cpc bids have been set to 12$). I end up paying 3$, 4 $ and 5$ per click! wtf??? Again, these are not very competitive keywords and we're not selling anything, only providing info.

Some of my keywords match settings were changed from phrase to broad. I don't want that since it's our company name and it would not make sense as broad. They even changed some "negative broad" keywords to "broad", very useful!

Also, my daily budget was changed to 133$ for every keyword. So if you add it all up, it quadrupled my total daily budget for all my campaigns.

We got an explanation from Google late today saying they thought our bids were too low and they thought it was a mistake, so they changed everything. They finally changed it to what we wanted but are now saying my campaigns are inactive because our bids are too low.

Have this ever happened to you? I know you should not trust the Google keyword suggestion tool blindly, but should it not give you an idea of how much you should bid for a keyword? I mean, when it say 0.35$ is enough to be in the top 3 for a kw not too competitive, should I understand set your max bid to 5$ instead of 0.50$ to be in the top 6???

My plan was to start with reasonably low max bids and increase them if necessary, not pay 4.58$ for a single click.

WTF???? Any advice?

 

Are you trying to promote something from places like cj/neverblue/clickbank?

 

That is totally Bizzare... I have never heard of Google going into anybody's campaign and making changes

Not only is it Bizzare but it's unethical and illegal... W T FU**

 

Nope, general government-related information only. The target site has a PR of 7 or 8.

 

You obviously signed up to allow them to 'help you' with your campaign. I suggest you remove this option as adwords 'helpers' are COMPLETE SHITE at managing adwords campaigns.

 

i think your account was hacked or someone changed the bids on you without your knowledge, or you simple don't know what your doing... Or a really strange situation would be you sleep optimize....

Either way, Google would never do that, they don't adjust things for you

 

Thanks guys,

Thanks to bureaucracy, managing this account is hell. There are too many people between us and Google. And I really got an email forwarded to me by the 3rd party from Google (@google.com) saying they thought my "low" bids were a mistake and that my originals bids are now "inactive". I don't believe this bs either. We'll see tomorrow how it's going.

Is is true it takes up to 1 week for G. to validate your ads and, in the meantime, they are live but only show up at ±50% of their normal impression rate? I really don't trust the 3rd party, but we have to work with/around them. ;o(

I had to step in and take over this project since I have an SEO background (and indirect adwords experience from 3yrs ago) even if were paying these guys to press "forward" and "import". Now it's my responsibility. (I know, I know...)

 

are you saying its a 3rd party automated program? What 3rd party is it?

 

Just started using adwords today, if they pull that on me I'll be bankrupt pretty quickly. Most of my ads are just non-competitive search terms for $.05 each

 

No, it's a advertising company.

 

oh ok... what agency? I work for an agency as well

 

So the agency you hired to run your campaigns changed everything you did and you're somehow surprised?