Please, please Google just straighten things out.
We promise to keep spending on AdWords just like we have since the program started and keep increasing our spend like we historically have. Just return reasonable serps and put the "white hats" back where they belong.
You guys want LESS new advertisers to come on board, reason being that price per keyword is being raised?
hmmmmm, isn't this what Supply and Demand creates, fair open market value.
new advertisers can do what they like, there are 100s if not 1000s of keywords which can be used, along with phrase and exact match etc.
its gonna take quite sometime for the new boys/girls to figure this out, furthermore being #1 is not required in PPC in any shape or form, look at ur ROI and work from there.
I know a number of top quality SEO netwoirks who have just been blown this last week, they have NO intention of doing adwords or overture, instead they are busy 24/7 building new SEO networks to achieve high rankings for themself and their clients.
Its always easy to blame others, lets look in our own front gardens first.
Shak
2) Regarding 1000's of keywords - I also use Mirago ppc (very good value for money at around 10p click) - I can see the max bid for each kw, I can see my position. I have about 100 keywords on there, but it is only the two top kw's that bring the clicks. I can't expect using 1000's of keywords to bring more customers if they only click on two very very broad terms. I can't expect the conversion rate to improve, when people only ever search using those broad terms, even though the products are of a very wide variety, with a very very wide range of terms used.
3) I am a one man business which I started to get off income support - I cannot sustain many weeks of loss of income, and don't have time to site here 24/7 tweaking my site and waiting for results, and more to the point, I would not want to tweak my site until I know if any se factors have changed, and I don't yet.
4) I am not blaming anybody - my comment was simply that I do not think that PPC is useful once too many people use it to promote their website because there are so few useful positions. It would be a better system IMV to have a rotating index of sites that ppc, and it would put an end to the bidding war, but then the ppc providers might not make so much money.
5) G has a responsibility to its users - I wonder how people would feel if a big high street chain suddenly decided to alter what it sold or to close at random times? Would they still use it if they could not predict what they would be able to use it for?
The least they could do is let people know when the update is likely to be finished - that would reduce the panicking that seems to be going on at the moment.
I am not panicking, but I cannot afford to sit here with my site unexposed, when it is my only form of income and I am not going to mess about with the site yet -what if I come nack at number 1 position? :)
You raise some interesting points, however all I can say is:
If you cant stand the heat, get outta the kitchen...
If the conversion rate is low, improve on it.
If PPC isn't working, find another traffic source.
PPC is a level playing field (imo), you just gotta be a bit smarter than SEO.
5) G has a responsibility to its users - I wonder how people would feel if a big high street chain suddenly decided to alter what it sold or to close at random times? Would they still use it if they could not predict what they would be able to use it for?
The least they could do is let people know when the update is likely to be finished - that would reduce the panicking that seems to be going on at the moment.
I am not panicking, but I cannot afford to sit here with my site unexposed, when it is my only form of income and I am not going to mess about with the site yet -what if I come nack at number 1 position? :)
no comment :)
good luck and hope it all works out for you!
Shak
Buy yourself a *Type In* Domain Name .. solves all problems and in the long term costs less .. as you still have the asset at the end of the day.
In one of the markets I dabble in, the top spots go for anywhere up to $5.00/click. Most advertisers buy all the obvious keywords and pay top dollar for them. It is simply not possible for me to compete at a CPC that high.
If you can make a little money from lots of different places, eventually it ads up and turns into a lot of money. Same with keywords. People often go to the second or third page where keywords are cheaper. Ranking in the ads is definitely heavily influenced by the bid price but the ad copy also makes a HUGE difference. Low bids and overlooked keywords can lead to success in competitive markets.
It takes lots of time, trial and error but anyone determined to succeed with AdWords can do it. It just takes time, sometimes too much.:)
It's hard not to be cynical - Short term, bad Search Results = Increased Adwords Revenue, but long term?
Now, why would Google want to see a short term increase in revenue?
An interesting side note, is that my Overture daily costs are a third of Google's and seem to be dropping. Most of it is stuff from MSN. I'm a bit scared to see what my Google spends would be in a day, since I have all my campaigns maxing out their daily budgets. In fact they are regurally in the 15 to 20% over range that Google is allowed. I might bump them up for a couple days just to see what the results are.
I don't use broad match at all and only foucs on middle to low traffic keywords.
By obsessively tweaking my ad copy I've managed to get a higher position while paying less than my competitors.
PPC is in my opinion harder than SEO and it has taken a long time for me to get a grasp on this stuff.
Over time it may be too crowded in many markets but how bad can it get? Most people say Adwords is a waste of money and give up and I'm sure this trend will continue for some time.
Someone mentioned a PPC engine that rotates ads. I know of one if you want to Sticky Mail me.
Jeremy
