Yesterday, my min. bids were below .50. Today, I log on to see that they are up to $10 for some of them. How does Google justify this? Even when they were much cheaper, I wasn't getting many impressions. Obviously I am new to this. Any explanation would be appreciated.
Your minimum bids are based on something called your minimum bid quality score. This is a measure by Google of how relevant and useful they think your site will be to people searching. The main drivers of this are: Your website. Does it look trustworthy? Do you have a privacy policy? Is it covered with affiliate links? Your clickthrough rate. The higher your clickthrough rate is, the more likely it is that people are interested in your site. Position is accounted for in the calculation. Your advert text. Does it contain the word that the searcher was searching for, ideally in the title?
Does the "Left to Right" rule apply to your advert text, where the keyword being searched is best positioned as first word in title as opposed to further to the right? Same question for the descriptive advert text.
CustardMite is on target, but you may want more information about improving your quality score and all the factors that go into it. The bottom line is relevance, from your keyword to your ad copy to your landing page.
I've never noticed that to be significant myself, but it's not an easy thing to test. As long as I've got the keyword in there, ideally in the title, I focus on getting as high a clickthrough rate as I can, focussing only on people likely to convert...
Custard - so what do you advise when the answer to your questions is yes? Our site is quality (as ranked with numerous top 10 natural results for our best keywords) , yes we have a privacy policy, yes we have affiliate links in addition to adsense ads, but they only complement our system, and last yes, our text in our ads contains the word that the searcher was searching for. - I've just posted about this on this thread (http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=481267) , and as i mentioned - we have two almost exact matching sets of keywords (Denver Restaurants vs Denver Restaurant) yet they yield different CPC results($.50 cpc denver restaurants vs. 1.00 cpc to activate for denver restaurant). Your insight would be appreciated, even if it's just "well, it looks like Google has turned to the dark side."
$0.50 and $1 minimum bids sound very different, but in the UK at least, I think that they are consecutive. The minimum bids here (from memory) go £0.01, £0.02, £0.03, £0.05, £0.08, £0.10, £0.15, ... £0.50, £1.00, £2.50, £5.00 I'm not totally sure about the higher values since my keywords across all my campaigns are £0.10 or less - anyone who wants to fill in the gaps is welcome to do so. It's difficult to say for sure, but it sounds like your site's getting a bad rating (for whatever reason), but your minimum bids can vary a bit from having different clickthrough rates, or the same clickthrough rate from different positions. Google have guidelines on what it's looking for in a landing page - check out this link: http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=46675 Without seeing your site, it's impossible to tell what Google don't like about it... Regarding Google turning to the dark side, I'm actually a fan of the Quality Score - it's purpose is to reward adverts/sites that actually deliver what people are looking for, and penalising sites that don't. They are trying to deliver the best search results, which is their main advantage over the other search engines - you can't really blame them for that. Regarding you boycotting them, whose business will that damage more, do you think?
Hello I am signing up for adwords and have been looking through their site-targeting link - but to no avail. Anyone know where this link button is? thankyou
This happened to me. All have the same settings except for my keywords. So what I did, I tried to copy my previous keywords, but nothing happened, the minimum bid was still $10. So what I did, I deleted the ad group and created a new one. I think it will happen if you are bidding with a trademark terms.
Hi, We can look into your account and bell-out the problem. Fell free to contact if you prefer. Cheers,
I've assumed that was the whole point of the QS, too. But I consider Google to be very competent at what they do... and the QS doesn't do anything like this. Google seems to think it can automatically apprehend the quality of a page/site, but it seems so arbitrary and poorly done. Clearly, it would seem, they're up to something else... I'm an advocate of making the site look good and be useful, which often means you have to break AdWords' QS rules. AdWords' robots aren't as good at web design as actual web designers. And Google only has power because everyone gives it to them. We don't have to do that
It's called google slapping. search it in google and it'll show you a few ways to aviod it. I've researched it a fair bit, and it's as people were saying as a reply. It has to do with your landing page text aligning with your advert text. Google wants your ad to relate exactly as it appears on the ad. If it doesn't they'll put up your bids. another reason for this is improper structuring of your campaigns. it should be layered, with your ad group name reflecting a subject that's lexically related to your ad variation text. and your campaign name lexically related to your ad group.
In other words, "if their computers don't find an exact text match". Which is not the same as relevancy. I know web users like instant, clear information when they scan a newly loaded page, but there is still SOME room for creativity and cleverness. Not if you want to advertise with Google though. That's the whole problem with QS in my opinion - it tries to make all the web bland and similar. If I'm advertising a new cell phone with AdWords, my keywords, ad text, and landing page all have to have the same language (and, just for the hell of it, no affiliate links on the LP). But that's not the glorious answer to having "relevant" pages for Google's users. And the obviousness of that fact is why I think it seems that Google has another angle on all this they're not disclosing. Maybe just doing business with huge companies, not us? If that's the case, the smaller people aren't ever going to BE big, if Google has something to say about it. Google's defenders say they're trying to improve the web and the 'user experience'. If that were true, no problem, but if they were really doing that I don't think it would look like this.
sorry I implied something thats not correct. The landing page doesn't have to have exactly the text on it as the ad, but it does have to have a large percentage of lexically related words and phrases, generally enforcing the information in the ad. if your ad is about cell phones and your landing page has information about cell phone batteries you might get away with it. but your landing page should reflect your ad. if your doing this you shouldn't get the google slap unless google refines the algorithm and finds your site to be irrelevant after the update. refine what your landing page says or change your ad variations and google should put the bid price back down after it's spidered your site.
And if your landing page's header is "Talk and text anywhere for almost nothing!" and your body copy starts "Ever wanted to send a text from the subway? Ever wanted to chat while 8 miles high? "etc etc, Google won't understand what your page is about and slap you, even though visitors to the site can understand it's perfectly relevant. That's what I mean by taking the creativity out of the web. If users think my page is relevant, and keep coming, and I can afford the ad I want with Google, what business is it of theirs how the words match up?