They will eventually (if not already) get to big, and hopefully a body like the US Department of Justice and/or the European Union will break this up.
Doesn't this start to look more and more how Microsoft was back in the 1980's? This is very scary. I do not like companies (no matter how they perceive themselves on the outside) to get to big; and Google is starting to get to big on the Internet.
- CompWorld
I think it saves us money in the long run by not wasting clicks on people who are not interested in what we sell.
Quality clicks are better than the quantity of clicks.
We are done with Google AdWords. I looked forward to spend $4-$5K monthly with Google AdWords but now I've seen it is too of much of a hassle to get the ads advertised how they want them. Worse than a depressed wife. NOTHING MAKES THEM HAPPY! I knew this AdWords deal advertised in the Times was too good to be true.
Even if you get the ads right (lots of clicks), will work fine for hours, then will get cancelled again if they underperform (98% of the time), and you will be charged a reactivation fee again and again. Jesus Christ Google, get rid of those stupid rules!
We spend a lot of time editing those ads. Hours and hours everyday and nothing, valuable time wasted for nothing. Then the money wasted for reactivations.
Advice for the one who wants to take it: Don't waste your time or money at least 'till they change those stupid rules! Also careful and don't believe many posts around here. There are many google employees undercover here.
NEVER AGAIN GOOGLE ADWORDS!
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REALLY HATED THIS:
Account Alert: Your last 1,000 ad impressions on Google did not generate enough clicks to meet our required minimum clickthrough rate (CTR). In response, the system has slowed your account; all ads containing keywords with low CTRs are showing only occasionally. Please follow the directions for improving keyword targeting, then click 'Restore Full Delivery' to reactivate your account.
Please note that the AdWords automated performance monitor will continue to watch the clickthrough of your keywords, so if your targeting improvements don't work out, you will receive another email. If you need to restore full delivery a third time, you will be charged a $5.00 re-activation fee.
[edited by: Shak at 9:27 pm (utc) on Oct. 10, 2003]
I find it kind of obnoxious for Google to implement stricter advertiser requirements for us advertisers.
Why? It's their network, and their site?
I just think we as advertisers are giving up to much control to Google.
LOL. Then don't advertise on their network!
Also careful and don't believe many posts around here. There are many google employees undercover here.
I know, I was just arrested last week for speaking out against them.
Sorry, I couldn't resist. I'm in a very silly mood today.
If all the ads were irrelevant, then searchers would cease to click on ads, and AdWords would cease to be a viable advertising tool.
Exactly! As long as Google keeps the relevance up, we won't have to worry about banner blindness w/ Adwords. Not to mention, why would you WANT to show your ad to non-relevant queries?
I love almost everything w/ Adwords. Of course they're are going to be problems every once and a while, but where else can I compete w/ the big boys on a $12K monthly budget? Minus the actual SERPS of course ;)
Also careful and don't believe many posts around here. There are many google employees undercover here.
I would say to not believe that post. Of course, there are going to be Google employees here. WW is only the largest SEM forum on the face of the planet. However, do you really think GoogleGuy, AdwordsAdivisor and their "undercover minions" could diminish the value of thousands of opinions?
there are 3 types of people in this industry:
1, The 1s who GET it!
2, The 1s who DONT get it!
3, and the totally lost.
speak to anyone, and I mean anyone who GETS it, and they will have Google adwords as a traffic driver.
Shak
However, it does appear that they've implemented stricter checking that doesn't seem quite fair. (I know, "fair" is relative. :-))
For example, let's say I have a widget that is in a tiny niche market. It doesn't get very many searches for any particular keyword, but over time, the CTR tends to be quite high.
Let's say I have 500 different keywords regarding this widget, and each keyword is only searched on twice a day. Previously, I could get many impressions on each keyword with no problems. Now, my account will be suspended after each keyword shows only twice since that's 1000 impressions and no clicks.
It doesn't matter that these keywords tend to have an overall CTR of 25% if they don't get to be shown 4 times before the account is suspended.
It appears that this is new because I've been advertising the same keywords for months only to all of a sudden have my account suspended three times in three days. CTR's on keywords that have been shown, say, 20 or more times are pretty high, but there are a lot of keywords that have only gotten 2 or 3 impressions per day. If these add up to 1000, then the account is suspended.
Obviously, I've now gone in and ripped out a lot of keywords and ad groups that work like this in order to try to stay unsuspended. :-)
Maybe it was always supposed to be this way, and they just now fixed the bug. If so, I just think it would be a courtesy to the advertisers to drop a note to that effect. Ditto if this is a purposeful change.
I think that's all Compworld is trying to say.
How has this changed?
Thanks for the insite.
After reading the above post again I think I now understand but is this really true? Is the 1000 impressions a combination of all your words and not for each word?
One point I'd like to jump in on though, concerning the '1000 impressions' debate. I'll be brief, as this has been discussed in detail in past threads if I am not mistaken
Each account is looked at in two ways. Please note that this has always been the case, and is not new.
1. The entire account is looked at, at 1000 impressions, inclusive of all keywords (but also taking into account past performance, so one bad day will not sink you). So if the CTR standard has not been met for that 1000 impressions, the entire account will be slowed. Words which are a part of that pattern of low performance will be double starred. (**)
(By the way, this is why you want to avoid really general keywords. How many times do you imagine the keyword 'software' is included as part of a search string? Thousands per day, for certain. So one really bad keyword like 'software', with it's low CTR can get 1000 impressions, and slow your entire account down in a very short time indeed.)
2. Secondly, each keyword is looked at, at 1000 impressions (but also taking into account past performance, so one bad day will not sink you). If the CTR standard has not been met after 1000 impressions, the keyword will be disabled. You will see one red star (*).
If this is not clear, let me know, and I'll keep at it.
Was there a bug that was not disabling campaigns when it should have that has been fixed in the last week or so?
Also, if you wouldn't mind, could you confirm that a campaign with 500 keywords, each of which only get 2 searches in a day, (to total 1000 impressions overall) would result in the account being disabled due to low performance?
I think where I'm having the problem understanding how it works is that how it's said to work doesn't seem to jibe with how it actually works. Sometimes, I'll see several thousand impressions do pretty lousy with no effect, and other times, I'll see less than a thousand impressions and get my account disabled.
I don't necessarily have a problem with how it works, it's just that it sometimes doesn't seem to work the way I would expect it to from the documentation.
So ... I'm just trying to narrow down why this is. Also, a Google employee said something like "When we say your campaign is judged on CTR, we take a lot of things into consideration other than CTR." I didn't quite get that either, but unfortunately the three times I asked for clarification I got the same snippet of the FAQ emailed back. :-)
Btw, it's totally cool that you're posting in here!
JK
