I'm a big player, I need to clarify this, compared to most Adwords customers, or in my personal view now, victims, I spend more than $20,000 a month in a single account. I noticed that sales are if not the same, worst when we add more money to the accounts, clicks go from 90 cents to almost 2.50 in a single day. Bounce rate is huge and at first I was thinking it was click fraud and then after contacting the adwords team and even meeting with them, they started to credit our accounts 4 cents here, 7 cents there, as if that covers even a click, there are not even 4 cents or 7 cents in my clicks, I wonder how can they give that back to us for suspicions clicks credit? perhaps a single click can contain 16% click fraud??? Then, I started to notice that the bid system is like the Bush elections, not true and don't work. I saw that many of the ads all of the sudden go to $2.50 per click, so I decided to play in several accounts the same move, I lowered some of those, to less than 1 dollar, to my surprise, from being number 1/2, I went to number 1 solid. Not in one but in several so called bids. I decided to cut the expenses 80% and also to my surprise, I was getting about the same number of real visitors and buyers. I know what many will say, I was doing it wrong. With my size and my team, believe me, we make mistakes, but no like that, I know for a fact that Google does not respect bids and makes people believe that someone is bidding higher and that is the reason why your ads are going up on price. Now, I also started other new accounts, for new sites and new companies, I notice, that if I put 1 penny bid, the ads were active, but don't show, it said, you must put 4 cents to show in first page. Now, guess what happened here? Some accounts, for same keywords, changed minimum price from 4 cents to 5, to 10, to 25 and to 50 cents, in all instances, after a little while, they showed, but after a few hours, each one was asking for different price in order to keep showing. Now, that is crap!!. I been a loyal very good customer, I had the feeling to come and share this with everyone because even if I'm not supposed to let my competitors know what is making them go out of business, that is just not right at all. You can say and think whatever, until you try it for yourself, you will see what I mean about all this. Google is a scam, in this difficult time, they should be not being more helpful but at least to stop being such a rat. Keep doing what creditors and others did, squeeze all the juice, until there is nothing else to squeeze and you will die of starvation, perhaps, you may qualify for bailout google, just like the bank of America crooks. I hope people verify what I just say with their own accounts so they can start saying something, I can tell you, if you lower your bids and do something about it, at least for a day or two, you will see the difference, start a new account, before closing the other one, test and you will see, perhaps you will see that you do better with 30 cents clicks than with the old one taking 1.40 per click out of your pocket, I'm moving most of my stuff to offline and also to emails and msn and yahoo which give very few leads but higher quality. Is a shame that they are just as expensive. Anyway, I hope you help yourself to save some money, you are going to need it
With regards to reducing bids causing you to go solid 1: Have you considered that Google gives you a quality score for each keyword based on it's clickthrough rate, and position in the results. Which means if you bid massive amounts to be top, but are getting a clickthrough rate that Google deems to be low for position 1, then your quality score will fall. If you then reduce your bids (as you did) your advert will fall down the results page. Lets say you fall to position 4 - then Google reassesses your QS based on your CTR in that position. Now, maybe you get a good CTR in Google's opinion in position 4 - then your QS improves and you move back up the results without having to increase your bid. Possibly this is the answer?? With regards Google Credits: Being Credited back 4 and 7 cents etc. is sometimes as a result of going slightly over the +20% Google says is the upper limit on daily spend. These amounts usually have nothing to do with click fraud. Maybe thats what has happened? With Regards Bounce Rate: Perhaps you have a high bounce rate because you appear top (ie happy clicks). Its not unusual to have a 60/70% bounce rate from pos 1. With Regards First page Bids increasing: Have you considered the landing page you are using, the relevance of keywords, CTR etc. Google could be penalising you more and more for each search on your keyword. I have many accounts that spend similar per month and its not easy, but with care and know-how profits can be made. And I know THAT for a fact!
I am pretty new to AdWords, but have very quickly gained the impression that the various "bid estimate" hints and things AdWords provides as you are collecting a set of keywords seem to start off unrealistically low - you think you have a fairly low-priced keyword, then you realise it's just not displaying at that price and you have to gradually up it. Maybe it's just conspiracy theory, but with many of my campaigns, if I was told what the probable bid would REALLY be once it got going, I would probably never have bothered...
You will find many today explain this away: ~"Adwords starts/assumes/defaults to a 'good' quality score & then 'works from there" re: degrade quality/score & increase price As apposed to: Analyzing (properly) first & giving a reasonable score that can be reliable within a reasonable amount of time forward. (we'll say a ~month maybe more) Google saying your quality is decent & then ditching it in a ~month (or less+) clearly represents (likely non-coincidental) fault of the original quality determination -> "Wow traffic is cheap!" *cough* The 'start off good quality score' seems more smoke & mirrors, and by all means fully works 'for them' (bait -> switch) Of course in the time between your 'good' quality score & your (now) 'bad' quality score it makes perfect explain-away-sense to make up, speculate or blame some type of change on the website (+/-possibly) being the cause (of you now paying double, triple etc.) Those pesky 'competitors' too, sure they didn't exist then (10min-1month ago) & even if they did they are surely now (suddenly) paying 2x+ as much as you are. (apparently) With all these factors you might as well throw in the towel! But wait there's hope! It's called increasing your quality score. It's an excellent circle-around way to conclude (in the end) that regardless of quality (+CTR) you'll still never get that position (because of money, not quality) over that ghostly (+/- crappy, no content, spam, juggernaut) competitor. It's all about the user experience! Sure google declares & has the right to simply give the position to the highest bidder, which by all means they do. However the 'quality score' (black-box) instills an amazing amount of false hope that (to their advantage) fails people who start paying more. -
@JKE, HeHe! And I thought I was cynical! Actually, my experience is pretty much the opposite. Close. They appear to start with an average QS of 5 and work from there. I don't see how they could do that unless they pause your keyword until analysis is complete. But, having started with the average QS they seem to make a major adjustment after 24-48 hours that I assume is a result of analysing your landing page, assessing relevance, etc. If you did your keyword research properly and optimized everything as advised the QS should go up and stay up. After that, there may be an occasional change up or down by a point but otherwise the QS seems fairly stable. In my niche the number of competitors has fallen sharply in the last few months (30-40% !!!) but bids for higher placements, i.e. top 20, have certainly gone up. Personally, I feel this was almost entirely down to the introduction of the 1st Page Estimate (appallingly unreliable when introduced and still wrong most of the time!), although latterly the economy has also had an influence. It may not get you ahead of the big money advertisers but it will definitely reduce your CPC ( or place you higher for the same money.) I don't see there is anything false or hopeful about it, you just have to be pragmatic - the market is at it is. So, first off you have to accept that most of the estimated info Google give you (positions, CPC, 1st page bids, etc.) is crap and ignore it. After that, you just have to watch your own results - QS, average postion, CPC, etc - and learn how to maximize your returns; improving your QS is an important factor in that. Finally, unfortunately, in many markets there simply are no cheap clicks (okay, you might pick up 1 or 2 a year down on page 50 but it is not a strategy many would advise). So, at the end of the day, it is a classic case of "if you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen!"
Hey guys, I'm in charge of a budget of around £20k pm (although it's pretty much unlimited as long as it makes money- just the average spend is around £20k pm) - so around $40k pm. We've got just under 500,000 phrases across I can't remember how many ad groups, so I have a lot of experience in this - and I have to say I don't agree with the thread starter - Google don't con you this way. However, bejewelled made some good points: [/QUOTE]Close. They appear to start with an average QS of 5 and work from there.[/QUOTE] I dunno on this one, mine tend to start around 6 - my opinion is that they might base this around your existing account [/QUOTE]I don't see how they could do that unless they pause your keyword until analysis is complete. But, having started with the average QS they seem to make a major adjustment after 24-48 hours that I assume is a result of analysing your landing page, assessing relevance, etc. If you did your keyword research properly and optimized everything as advised the QS should go up and stay up. After that, there may be an occasional change up or down by a point but otherwise the QS seems fairly stable. [/QUOTE] I agree - unless I've made a major change which affects CTR massively or something changes on a landing page for the worse QS has never gone down for me, and any changes are usually visible after 2 days [/QUOTE] I feel this was almost entirely down to the introduction of the 1st Page Estimate (appallingly unreliable when introduced and still wrong most of the time!)[/QUOTE] Totally agree - I think this is probably the one way that Google does try to 'con' you - they usually say it is far higher than it actually is, which encourages the inexperienced to bid higher, which raises the bar anyway. (Incidentally, I don't think they're really try con us here either - they don't say which QS would have to pay that amount to get to the top - they'll probably take it as a base line of 4 or maybe even 0 in which case more would have to be paid)
My Latest update, lowered 80%, sales went down about 10% so far but I think it was just a slow day, I have found many many more things Google does to advertisers, I simply don't like. I will invest more in other type of ads. Thanks for all advice, be careful with Google!
Close. They appear to start with an average QS of 5 and work from there.[/QUOTE] I dunno on this one, mine tend to start around 6 - my opinion is that they might base this around your existing account [/QUOTE]I don't see how they could do that unless they pause your keyword until analysis is complete. But, having started with the average QS they seem to make a major adjustment after 24-48 hours that I assume is a result of analysing your landing page, assessing relevance, etc. If you did your keyword research properly and optimized everything as advised the QS should go up and stay up. After that, there may be an occasional change up or down by a point but otherwise the QS seems fairly stable. [/QUOTE] I agree - unless I've made a major change which affects CTR massively or something changes on a landing page for the worse QS has never gone down for me, and any changes are usually visible after 2 days [/QUOTE] I feel this was almost entirely down to the introduction of the 1st Page Estimate (appallingly unreliable when introduced and still wrong most of the time!)[/QUOTE] Totally agree - I think this is probably the one way that Google does try to 'con' you - they usually say it is far higher than it actually is, which encourages the inexperienced to bid higher, which raises the bar anyway. (Incidentally, I don't think they're really try con us here either - they don't say which QS would have to pay that amount to get to the top - they'll probably take it as a base line of 4 or maybe even 0 in which case more would have to be paid)[/QUOTE] Well, it is not the same being in charge of a big budget that actually paying for it, I can say that I been following this for days and if you compare multiple accounts, the QS makes no sense many times, mine is an average of 8 and it is still not working they way Google tells me it does. I can't wait to meet again with them, my rep was switched to another department I was told, in any case, I'm cutting my budget 70% at least, I'm adding some facebook ads and msn and are working much better with less than 20% of my cut.