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Adwords Account Strategists - why are they so dumb?

Discussion in 'Google AdWords' started by Jeffr2014, Dec 9, 2015.

  1. #1
    I honestly puzzled with Google's attitude towards AdWords. This is the line of business that pays the bills, the rest of the company doesn't bring much money in. Yet, AdWords is a foster baby for Google, the quality of AdWords algorithms is horrendous, and the people they hire as Adwords Account Strategists seem to have no technical background and very low IQ. Here are some examples to demonstrate my point here:
    Re algorithms:
    - In the past two months, when I run search term reports I see quite a few keywords with CTR of 200%. Typically, these are 1 impression with 2 clicks sets - I tried explaining to Google that 200% CTR doesn't make any logical sense and their algorithms should be adjusted to handle this... no effect whatsoever. They still charge me for double clicks (i.e. this scenario: user clicked on ad link then clicked on back arrow and clicked on ad link again). I paid over $50 for these last month.
    - Infamous "quality score". It is a joke and for the company that is building AI software not being able to recognize simple synonyms is a shame. When you get score=6 for "medical test", but score=1 for "medical testing" and "medical evaluation" you start wondering what kind of idiots designed these algorithms... Unfortunately, ad placement algorithms take these scores into account, so with low score you get 10x less impressions. Well, for these that were shown we got CTR over 10% (in target local area). The irony is that even CTR of 10% and decent user engagement on the site doesn't indicate to Google that there is a problem with calculating quality scores...
    - ad matching: any advanced matching methods work poorly. I have tons of negative keywords, but when I look at search term reports I see real wonders there. Seriously, how difficult is to implement proper semantic matching? Any new CS grad can write it in a week.

    Re people:
    - Few years ago we worked with a couple of good Account Strategists, but they are no longer there. The new breed (I assume Google is saving money here) that I dealt with in the last couple of years was just terrible. All of their "improvement suggestions" resulted in wasting money and lowering conversion rates. I basically had to revert everything they suggested. Some of these suggestions just made me laugh, when asked to substantiate their suggestions they were unable to answer. I guess they have a predefined set of "suggestions" and they just work of scripts.

    Google used to be known for selecting best among the best when hiring. I just wonder what happened to them...?
     
    Jeffr2014, Dec 9, 2015 IP
  2. LiamL

    LiamL Greenhorn

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    #2
    Hi Jeffr2014 I see you have had a bad experience with Google due to your tone. It is a shame you have had such a bad experience when there are so many people who see great results from their Adwords accounts and lets not forget the Adwords strategists who are experts in their fields, dedicated to delivering results for someone else's business. The way you have ridiculed all off the above has only highlighted how little you know. Do you really think you are superior to Googles algorithm? Behave sonny!

    If it helps, the mistakes you have made are very common and not as bad as you make out. Let me explain further:

    "Typically, these are 1 impression with 2 clicks sets - I tried explaining to Google that 200% CTR doesn't make any logical sense and their algorithms should be adjusted to handle this... no effect whatsoever. They still charge me for double clicks"

    - I would recommend using tracking software such as Google Analytics or any other poplatform out there to track clicks to your site to make sure that the clicks you are paying for reach your site. ( chances are the clicks you are paying for are genuine)
    - ***Adwords data is not live data.*** Clicks are often added on before Impressions are updated. Impressions, clicks, and conversions are updated periodically. - GO BACK NOW AND YOU WILL SEE IT IS UPDATED AND CORRECT. :)


    "Infamous "quality score". It is a joke and for the company that is building AI software not being able to recognize simple synonyms is a shame."

    - What is the match type of these keywords? If they are broad match type chances are the keyword being searched will be different. I would also place Medical test and testing in 1 ad group ( with an Ad that says Medical Test ) and then another ad group with "medical evalualtiuon" and the ad copy saying the same thing - dont be lazy and un-organised and expect Google to give you a high quality score!

    Part of quality score is also expected CTR - so basically other people have ads that are better than yours - again not Googles fault.
    Part of quality score is also landing page experience ( bounce rate in my view) so you should look at this.

    I agree with you in the sense that the Google strategists are not that great, they are normally low level university grads with one goal of getting you to spend more. So if you keep seeing bad results - why do you keep going back? Maybe you should speak to a marketing expert outside of Google.
     
    LiamL, Dec 31, 2015 IP
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  3. Jeffr2014

    Jeffr2014 Active Member

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    #3
    Sorry LiamL, no offence but your comments/recommendations above just don't make much sense... (1) I checked CTR rates a month later and they are still 200%, (2) Quality score should have nothing to do with search terms, otherwise it would be an algorithm dependent measure rather than landing page - ad match measure.

    Re "why do you keep going back?", I don't, I now switched my entire advertising budget to Facebook and see much better results (in terms of conversion rates) for local/demographics targeting.
     
    Jeffr2014, Dec 31, 2015 IP
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  4. LiamL

    LiamL Greenhorn

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    #4
    Thank you for your apology, your comments have been most unfair and I promise you Its just a bad individual experience rather than "horrendous algorhytm" and people with "a low IQ". I have had lots of success and help with Google so from my own past experience non of what you say makes sense.

    RE: 2 impressions 1 click


    Imagine this, Google receives millions of impressions EACH DAY. So you will understand that if it is tracking 1 impression out - then this is not bad at at all considering the amount of data Google handles every second. Its not perfect, but its the best search engine algorithm on the planet.

    When you look at it like that there technology is very good.

    Also I would not optimise towards 1 impressions and 1 click - you need a bigger data set before you can gain analysis. What keyword are you using that only has 1 impression in several months? Maybe you should look at other keywords....

    I think you accused Google of charging you double for the clicks? ( with no evidence ! ) My point was to use click tracking to see if this is the case as this is what you are paying for - not impressions.

    RE; Quality Score should have nothing to do with search terms.

    I can see half of your frustrations is from Google not doing what you want it to do, and knowing only half the story - but to get better results you need to start playing their rules and not assume things!

    Quality score is calculated by factors on Googles search result page and your website A search term affects quality score in 2 ways (maybe more!) firstly a search = 1 impression. So every search will affect your CTR which is part of quality score.

    Also, keywords should be used in the ad copy ( you have listed DIFFERENT keywords - even though they mean the same) if you split out as I have instructed you will see a higher quality score. I know what Googles likes to see and play to their rules, this gives me a high QS. You are working in how you think things should be. Which is why.

    You have also completely missunderstood the Google adwords algorithm. They dont want it to pick up on synonyms ( although you wish it did to save you time).

    Do you look at different match types - Broad, Phrase and Exact? If not this is a glarring error and will explain 99% of your problem.

    The different match types help with allowing adveritsiers to use exact match keywords too bid directly on the keyword they would like. This is to give smaller business more of a chance. Those smaller businesses, who have well organised accounts, can receive a higher quality score and can compete against bigger companies with huge budgets (THANK YOU GOOGLE!) - so it is not about bidding on one keyword and expecting the highest budget to win on all keywords. Its about organisation and quality which makes adwords accounts work.

    Quality score is also dependent on about 7 or 8 different factors so you should look these up against each keyword to see if you can improve any specific areas.

    Facebook does work well too for a PPC model. If you are using Facebook - have you looked into custom audiences / facebook remarketing? They are two non standard strategies that have worked well for me in the past.
     
    LiamL, Jan 1, 2016 IP
  5. Jeffr2014

    Jeffr2014 Active Member

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    #5
    LiamL, please stop spamming this thread. I don't know what's your problem and where you come from (clearly not from Leeds :)), but DP is a wrong place to practice your English writing and post purely written nonsense.
     
    Jeffr2014, Jan 2, 2016 IP
  6. LiamL

    LiamL Greenhorn

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    #6
    Ahh daily entertainment from the DigitalPoint clown !

    Hardley spammy when I have taken the time to reply to your un-founded comments with backed up information! Your troll like comments are not welcome. What part am I wrong about? I look forward to a third viewpoint on this thread!

    You clearly don't even know what a match type is on keywords! So don't have a go at me for trying to help you out and show you what you are doing wrong / have said that is wrong.

    My problem was your original comments that were hugely offensive - lets put this simply - you lost money and blamed it on Google and its employees - some I know to be very honest and hard working and clever people. I called you out on this and all you have to say is "you cant spell Liam!" I am also slightly dyslexic so please lay off my typing skills please.

    You lost money on Adwords and decided to vent your frustration at the marketing experts. This is the wrong way around as marketing experts make money from Adwords - you just waste it - they clearly know more than you ( in terms of marketing anyway, I am sure you are a dab hand at other things) - That's why I take offence to your comments.

    Can you explain why you think you are better than them when you cant even make money from an account?

    P.S The list of things you are wrong about is growing - I am from Leeds.

    You are not a nice person and I will no longer reply to your comments, I have raised many points which you should consider if you ever try Adwords again, take my advice and it will be a better experience.

    Thank you and good night.
     
    LiamL, Jan 2, 2016 IP
  7. LiamL

    LiamL Greenhorn

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    #7
    Quote me what I am wrong about
     
    LiamL, Jan 2, 2016 IP
  8. Jeffr2014

    Jeffr2014 Active Member

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    #8
    My apology LiamL, the last thing I wanted is to offend a dyslexic person... As for your points, it may have not been clear from my initial post (hence your "recommendations") that I have been using AdWords for over 7 years and obviously well aware of match types (I don't use broad match at all), factors affecting quality score, etc.
     
    Jeffr2014, Jan 2, 2016 IP
  9. jerdei

    jerdei Well-Known Member

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    #9
    they hire interns now to cover Adwords. This is why the quality has gone down hill. On your next call ask the person if they are an intern. My last 4 reps have been. I 100% agree that they tend to hurt you far more then they help.
     
    jerdei, Feb 2, 2016 IP
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  10. Jeffr2014

    Jeffr2014 Active Member

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    #10
    What is surprising to me (interns or no interns) is how these people made it to Google. Google in well known for crazy interviews, I have few friends working for Google, they are the brightest people I know and they went through ridiculously difficult interviews before they got in. Typically Google hires only crème de la crème. The same is true for intern and coop positions... It almost looks like Google AdWords division has their own policies/practices, and as a result the quality of both developers and support people there is very low - I just couldn't believe some software bugs I noticed while using AdWords in the past 7 years.
     
    Jeffr2014, Feb 3, 2016 IP
  11. Lucid Web Marketing

    Lucid Web Marketing Well-Known Member

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    #11
    The problem is not the algorithm, it's the data. When you see a CTR of 200%, the algo is working correctly, it's just using the information it was given. It's not a bug.

    The question is more why there is 1 impression and 2 clicks. The answer is very likely become someone did a search, clicked your ad, when back to the result page and clicked your ad again.

    That happens about 3% of the time in search campaigns. The system does determine these things and you get your money back. Check your billing records and also check the invalid clicks report.

    The issue that I have is that it appears that even if the system has determined there is an invalid click, it's not removed from the stats. This skews things a bit but luckily, as I said, it happens only a small percentage of the time, at least for search campaigns.

    Another reason may be lost impressions. It would be hard to expect such a big and complex system to be 100% accurate. That's the goal of course but it's not realistic. I know for example that some systems do just one thing. For instance, one computer only gathers and disseminates information about impressions. Another handles clicks and yet another conversions. They are not necessarily in one data center. All this information has to be passed back and forth so sometimes things could get lost. Not making excuses for Google, just reality.

    Quality Score also works the way the designers mean it to work. You are assuming that a 10% CTR will get a high QS. It doesn't work that way.

    QS is indeed based primarily on CTR. But what you need to understand is not your absolute CTR. It's your CTR relative to that of competitors. It also takes position into account since as we all know, you'll get a higher CTR for the same ad in first position compared to lower positions.

    If you have a 10% CTR, which you may think is very good, if the historical average at that position is higher, your QS will reflect that. CTR and QS are not directly corrolated. A 10% CTR in any position does not equate a QS of 10. In fact, I've seen QS of 10 for 2% CTR in first position.

    QS is shown at the keyword level but it's really a calculation of the keyword-ad. There's no reason to expect the same QS even on synonyms (dog vs pooch), close matches (test vs testing) and laterals (test vs evaluation).

    As for Adwords CSRs, I think the problem is that few of them seem to have any experience. Not sure what kind of training they have, may be minimal and of course, they probably are paid close to minimum wage. And yes, they have a script. I've seen very poorly designed campaigns from them after taking over client campaigns. I also had interesting conversations with a couple about what I should do in a campaign. For instance, I was told to use remarketing for one client and spent minutes trying to explain why it didn't make sense with a particular client. He insisted I should. Another was on my use of display campaigns which I don't think he understood. So don't take their recommendations blindly. Use your judgement.

    Adwords is not perfect and there's always room for improvement. But it does work and works very well.
     
    Lucid Web Marketing, Feb 19, 2016 IP
  12. Jeffr2014

    Jeffr2014 Active Member

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    #12
    As somebody who spent 20+ years in IT field, I can tell you that your statement above doesn't make much sense, this data IS PRODUCED by AdWords algorithms :)

    Regarding your comments, no I didn't receive any refund (why would Google bother?) and no, for my niche, the CTR of 10% is extremely high and it is very very unlikely any competitor has even close to this for target keywords. What's more, similar keywords have CTR of only 2-3% but their QS is much higher. That's why I call the QS algorithm poorly designed. And yes, I expect Google developers to be smart enough to combine "medical test" and "medical testing" into the same semantic group, they already do it with Hummingbird search algorithm but neglected to implement such a simple logic in AdWords.

    I disagree with your comment "Adwords ... it does work and works very well.", while you seem to be an expert in AdWords (at least according to your website), your position here is clearly biased as you make living thanks to people seeking your services to get better results with AdWords.

    At least we agree WRT the title of this thread :) that it's better to keep away from these "strategists" because they clearly do more damage than good.
     
    Jeffr2014, Feb 19, 2016 IP
  13. Lucid Web Marketing

    Lucid Web Marketing Well-Known Member

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    #13
    The data is not produced by Adwords algorithms. The data is produced by the interaction of users with the Google search engine. An impression or a clicks is not generated by Adwords. The reporting that Adwords provides only acts on the data provided. That is true of any system.

    Yes, I'm an expert in PPC and this is how I earn my living. While you can say I'm biased in some way, it is based on results, not only for myself but many clients as well.

    I'm also an experienced database developer of more than 20 years. I've put much thought into how I would design such a system in order to learn how it works. I understand the issues of such a system. I stand behind my understanding of how Adwords works as well as my practical experience with it and other PPC systems.

    >> for my niche, the CTR of 10% is extremely high

    How do you know this? Seems that Google based on the QS you get disagrees.

    Yes, the developers can surely do what you suggest about semantic keywords being treated the same. But that's not how it's designed. They have a bunch of smart people over there, smarter than you and I, so they have good reason to have designed it this way. By the way, it seems Bing and Yahoo are thinking along the same lines. So if Google has idiot developers, I guess Bing and Yahoo do as well.

    Look, I'm not here to insult people. I'm here to provide information and help others. As a 20-year IT guy, you should be a smart person. Instead of complaining, put your brain cells to work and figure out how to take advantage. That's what I did. I understood what was needed and now am very successful at it. There's no shame in not knowing some things. Heck, I still learn things even after a decade of doing PPC.
     
    Lucid Web Marketing, Feb 19, 2016 IP
  14. leesin

    leesin Greenhorn

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    #14
    Don't spam and read
     
    leesin, Feb 20, 2016 IP
  15. qwikad.com

    qwikad.com Illustrious Member Affiliate Manager

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    #15
    Sooner or later they'll switch to an interest / best category / best sub-category type of advertising. Works for FB or Ebay. The whole idea of basing your advertising results on keywords is complicated, complex and, at times, downright dumb. Needing experts in something that should be intuitive and common sense is ridiculous. I run a campaign as we speak with over 1k keywords in it. Guess how many keywords are actually being used on any given day? 1-50. That's pretty much it. However, you never know which 50 keywords they are going to be the next day and the next day, etc. So I have to have 1K+ to cover all the bases. And I firmly believe that optimizing keywords and ads to lower your bid is total bullshit. Maybe it was the case when they first started today, however, it goes like this: Pay more - you'll get results. Pay less you'll see nothing.
     
    qwikad.com, Feb 20, 2016 IP
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  16. Jeffr2014

    Jeffr2014 Active Member

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    #16
    I agree with all the above, but this is the big problem for Google, it is much easier for FB to derive this information from user activities than for Google. That's exactly why they started Google+... but people are not using it the way they use FB, so Google has no choice but stick to keywords. Though, as mentioned above, they use them poorly (from the algorithmic POV), plus they augment this with sh*tty interface and ignorant support, and, as a result, they feed the whole army of AdWords consultants. The good ones are very expensive (at least for a local business), the cheap ones are as bad as Google's account strategists :(
     
    Jeffr2014, Mar 1, 2016 IP
  17. rnaderpo

    rnaderpo Member

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    #17
    I 100% agree with you about the people they hire to be the so called "advisers". I have been using Adwords for years and I may have had one adviser that actually new what he was doing and actually knew more than me about Adwords. Just this last week, I had a new adviser (the change every time they call me) and he didn't even know the difference between a paid search and organic search.

    After years of using Adwords and my experience with their poor support, I have come the the conclusion that they really don't care about training high level support personnel to answer the real questions and resolve the real problems. It seems that they really don't want to help and leave it up the advertiser to figure out the complex problems. They will only answer only the very basic questions and that is because they read off the typical instruction paper in front of them.
     
    rnaderpo, May 11, 2016 IP
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  18. Aaron111

    Aaron111 Well-Known Member

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    #18
    i agree with this, words matter
     
    Aaron111, May 29, 2016 IP