Why would they do this when most of them hold the #1 position for all their keywords, and have a 5-14% CTR across their entire campaigns?
They sick of the #2, #3, and #4 bidders being the exact same company. (and sometimes 5,6,and 7 are still only one more company, so the top 7 bids are 3 companies...).
Google doesn't seem to care that this revenue is gone, it only makes up around $50-150/day/client from these small to medium companies.
They have written to Google, handed them detailed reports, and tried to get in touch with someone who can handle these problems via phone. A technical issue seems to have a response time of hours, a question less than a day or two, behavior like this, well, it's been over two months since the first reports were filed, and only one email from Google saying someone might look into it...
It seems while Google search is still relevant, at least you usually get 8-10 different companies on the first page of search results, AdWords just don't have the same relevancy factor anymore.
but let others share their experience
Shak
For example: 1 company operating 3 very similar web sites, but being very careful to not have any of the contact info the same across the sites, and different whois info. They've got 3 different Adwords accounts, and are regularly in the top 3 spots. I haven't dealt with Google on this myself, but one of the other girls in the office spent hours and hours trying to get something done, and never had any success.
Google strongly believes that one advertiser should take up only one spot for a given keyword, and works very hard to prevent the practice of 'double serving'.
If you see a example of double-serving (or worse), then by all means let us know. Probably it is best to let us know via email, as this creates a written record of the situation. It also gives you a chance to go into some detail. It probably goes without saying that the more specific you are, the better.
I can assure you that these cases are taken seriously, and acted upon with as much speed as possible.
I will happily forward your comments here to the Policy team lead, so that they will be aware of the perception that Google is not concerned with this issue.
I have a similar problem. The kw(s) that generate the most traffic keep getting banned. I cannot even see how many times these kw(s) are being used for the system is too slow to report. I pause my ads for several days, and then put the kw(s) back into a different ad, and they get red stared with 0 impressions. How could that be?
I had a lot of problems when I first started. With one day topping out at my max per day dollar amount. Which is 100% higher than the typical. And I have enough data to have a 99% convenience level that this day was an outlying marker for some reason. In the beginning most of the good kw(s) were being gold stared. I have not changed anything, I just kept moving kw(s) around from one ad to another and the gold stars have stopped, totally without putting quotes or brackets around them. Since I am in a highly competitive arena, I can only assume that it is my competitor(s) doing it and at some point they get tired of spending time doing it. But till then (G) was getting $10 bucks from me each day to get the kw(s) back into a list.
I’m NOT convinced that (G)’s rules for kw(s) are applicable for every business and therefore, they may not be the best vehicle to get the job done.
the same keywords are assigned to many different listings causing extensive double serving. I had to delete the same keywords over and over again from different ads to prevent it.
Relevancy doesnt matter anymore.
For example when you select the keyword
"sell" the broad match will show your ad for the keyword "buy" too.
is this relevancy?
sebans
the perception that Google is not concerned with this issue.
I don't have that perception at all - I think in the particular case that I noted, the offending company had done too good a job of covering their tracks (using domainsbyproxy for example) - and the AdWords team seemed to not want to act on circumstantial evidence (which makes sense).
