This is nuts! 25% CTR and need to increase bid?

I have a 25% CTR on a keyword and it was just disabled saying "Increase quality or bid $X.XX to activate"

 

Does the content of the site and the ad match well? I do have some keywords that are closely related but one might have a min of $0.0x and the other is $xx.xx. I dont' know if there is flaw in the system or if there is a something that really discourages advertisers from using a certain keyword.

 

the Google algorithm uses a long history to take this decision.

Your 25% probably is based on a "today" basis and you had luck (something like 4 impressions 1 click).

 

What's your definition of 'long history'? I've had a 100% click through rate, from one click since I added the keyword, and it wasn't good enough.

 

There are other factors that affect min bid: like the quality of the landing page and the bid values of your competitors for that same keyword.

 

So, you're saying Google has a human being evaluating landing page quality? For what criteria?

 

The min bid is inverse to the quality score: a low quality score has a high min bid.

This is the formula for the Quality score that tells about the landing page:

https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=10215

Regarding if is evaluated by a human being or not: Sorry I don't know - this is a good question that I ask my self every day - maybe it is based on page rank - I really don't known the criteria.

but I'm sure that the landing page quality has an influence in the minimal bid.

 

Good link! Thanks.

 

I'm not sure about the human editorial either, but I question the consistency and subjective judgement of individual editors. Sometimes something innocent gets flagged by one editor, like a trademarked term or a misspelling, that was previously approved and is only noticed after an edit to the url, for example. So it could be that they are all edited and different editors notice different things, or they are done by some system of selected audit. If anyone has any information about this, let me know

 

I know the landing page is scanned with a robot to find relevent keywords. That's why when you add a new ad group, Google gives you suggested keywords based on the landing page.

 

This is wrong.

The correct is that the keyword tool has a feature that you can point an arbitrary page to the robot spider it and it indicate keywords for you.

This feature or the keyword tool has no relation with Landing page quality score system.

 

Google is a money making machine. Forget all the sentimental hogwash about "do no evil". The link above is just smoke and mirrors.

In the world of profits Quality = likelihood of making profits. CTR * Bid value is what counts.

A 50 cent bid with a 20% CTR yields an average of 10 cents.
A $1 bid with a 9% CTR is worth 9 cents.

The 50 cent bid prevails.

 

That doesn't really make sense to me, but I'll take your word for it. If Google doesn't scan your landing page, how do they give you keywords relevent to your page?

I'm sure you know what you are talking about, but I don't understand what you are saying here.

I have an example from today. I was sending visitors to an affiliate page about widgets. When I tried to bid on blue widgets, I had to put in a higher bid because my page didn't have anything to do with blue.

I made a new page about blue widgets with a link to the affiliate program. Google gave me active keywords with half the bid amount from before. The only thing that changed was the landing page - ad text was exactly the same. Plus my ad is showing at a much higher position for a smaller bid.

edit: The keyword tool may not directly affect the quality score, but I do feel it is a similar technology of finding relevent keywords.

Of course I could be clueless....

 

Yes MattEvers, probably you're right - sorry.

I thought that you were talking about the quality of the landing page.

But the Quality score is also about the relevancy of the landing page - so yes probably it spider the landing page.

very nice conclusion - thanks!