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serious Adword server problems!

no impressions what so ever

         

jamie_h

10:10 pm on Apr 7, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Hi All,

Just thought i'd pop in to ask AWA if he could explain a little about the recent server issues that have been happening!

Over the last week or so a number of my campaigns and competitors have vanished! (adds have a high daily budget, and are approved)

At present none of my campaigns are displaying! and the top 3 competitors have vanished too.

I have spoken to a US consultant who did mention that you have been having server issues.... any idea when things will be stable again?

Kind regards, and thanks in advance

Jamie

hobbnet

10:34 pm on Apr 7, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I called in today because my volume has been about 1/3 of the norm. I was told its being looked into and nothing more.

I'm sure they are working hard to fix the issue since every second they are down they lose money, not to mention me.

AdWordsAdvisor

1:17 am on Apr 8, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I have spoken to a US consultant who did mention that you have been having server issues.... any idea when things will be stable again?

jamie_h, you are correct - there has been an issue today, affecting what still appears to be a very small number of advertisers.

I'm sure they are working hard to fix the issue since every second they are down they lose money, not to mention me.

And hobbnet is so correct in posting this, although I wouldn't agree that revenue is the prime mover. A glitch is not good for our advertisers, and that is not good for us. Trust and confidence are pretty important in what we hope will be a long term relationship with our advertisers, and our millions of daily users.

I heard from engineering about 2 1/2 hours ago that the issue has been pinned down and fixed - and the next few hours will help to confirm this.

However, if you're still seeing out of the ordinary behavior in your account, I hope you'll write or call with specifics.

Thanks to all who have had problems with AdWords today, for their patience. I'm taking the small number of post to this thread as a good sign that the numbers are hopefully very low.

AWA

jamie_h

9:04 am on Apr 8, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Thanks AWA,

I suppose everyone gets bugs now and the ;)

Just make sure the techies dont go home till its fixed....lol

regards

Jamie

Thom_C

10:52 am on Apr 8, 2004 (gmt 0)


Thanks to AWA for letting us know what is happening. I mailed support as Adwords yesterday, and was given advice on improving my CTR! Bit difficult when you're making no impression at all!

Shak

10:57 am on Apr 8, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



anyone have an update to whats happening across the adwords network?

shak

golfer1975

2:11 pm on Apr 8, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



well I called yesterday since my clicks and Impressions were WAY WAY down. They said it was the server problem. However I am still down about 40% Today. Anyone else still having problems?

eWhisper

2:20 pm on Apr 8, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Only checked a handful of accounts so far today, but so far, everything looks about normal (within the usual impression flucutations from day-to-day).

sem4u

2:25 pm on Apr 8, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Impressions do seem to be down again today :(

realmike

2:54 pm on Apr 8, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



My clicks have also been down about 40% for the last two days and still appear to be down this morning.

engine

3:27 pm on Apr 8, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Administrator 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Nope, still getting problems on a number of accounts.

So far, no support replies from Adwords support - nothing.

This is not good that the problem is going on so long.

golfer1975

5:32 pm on Apr 8, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



still having issues, impressions and clicks down 50% or more over normal....seems it may be a bigger problem than I thought

joestern

5:51 pm on Apr 8, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



This is a MAJOR problem and it has been driving us NUTS. NO ONE at Google will acknowledge the problem. We have spent countless calls and hours trying to deal with it. Our major keyword, which has historically been at 3% CTR (for a year+), dropped down to AT RISK and then was disabled in a span of 24 hours.

ALL of our competitors' ads have also disappeared. Google is claiming that the new CTR rates are right and that it's not their fault.

We are losing a huge amount of business and none of our Google reps know what the heck they are talking about.

Hopefully they get their act together soon.

decaff

6:05 pm on Apr 8, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Looks like Google has pulled down the "contact us" link from within the Adwords Management pages..
We lost all traffic yesterday and still zero today and we even received a "Welcome to Google AdWords" email today...what gives...we have been using AdWords since inception...
They must be having some serious problems with backend servers...hope they correct it soon....we are losing a definite percentage of our traffic and sales...and have a nice CTR going..
Will have to start from scratch again...

Robino

6:16 pm on Apr 8, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



This is funny!

I got a response today for a support ticket I opened on March 14th! And the response basically told me to take a hike because the problem must be on my end.

Fortunately I haven't been experiencing any major problems. Just slow response times and "the document contains no data" errors while navigating through campaigns.

AdWordsAdvisor

6:50 pm on Apr 8, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Just getting to WebmasterWorld for the first time today.

I'll get touch with engineering and see what I can learn about issues still at work today. In the meantime, if you are still having problems with your account, having specifics to follow up on would be very helpful.

The information the engineers need to work with will be much more specific than can be provided in this forum, however. So, I hope you'll write AdWords support with a detailed summary of what has occurred in your account. It is extremely difficult to troubleshoot an issue effecting a very small number of advertisers without having specific examples to work with.

Looks like Google has pulled down the "contact us" link from within the Adwords Management pages.

Actually, this is not the case. I've just logged in to my personal account to check, and see the link at the top and bottom of every page. It is possible that, depending on your screen settings, you may need to scroll over all the way to the right to see the link.

If the 'Contact Us' link is truly gone from your account, decaff, please write adwords-support@google.com with that information. Please be sure to include info that will allow us to identify your account - either the email address of record for the account, or the ten digit customer ID.

Again, thanks to all for your patience.

AWA

decaff

7:24 pm on Apr 8, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



The "Contact Us" link is visually available but not active...sorry for the confusion...

decaff

7:28 pm on Apr 8, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Dear AWA...

Specifics:
AdWords running fine through Tuesday, April 6, 2004..
Wednesday April 7 and today Thursday April 8 ... big fat zero...no ads being served, no impressions...nada...
I will sticky you the account info...
Thanks for looking into this....we really enjoy the targeted traffic our ads generate..would love to see it back up again...

NOTE: We do not run our ads on the weekends..only during weekdays and very strong...perhaps this influences something?

andrewhime

7:29 pm on Apr 8, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



What kind of response do you have in regards to EXTREME slowness of updates for clicks?

In other words, if I look at campaign level, it will tell me I have received clicks. I can then drill down to the specific ad and it says I don't even have any impressions (depends on what time of day). I can then refresh over the course of the next few hours and the clicks take FOREVER to show up.

decaff

7:29 pm on Apr 8, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Guess I can't go that route...I have already set several support tickets on this matter through the adwords support email address...

AdWordsAdvisor

7:31 pm on Apr 8, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



The "Contact Us" link is visually available but not active...sorry for the confusion...

Hmmmm. Too weird.

Worked for me, testing from within my own account, from both links.

I'll ping some tech folks, and ask if this could be a browser issue of some sort.

Thanks for pointing it out!

AWA

AdWordsAdvisor

7:47 pm on Apr 8, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



OK, got lucky and had a quick IM conversation with the tech folks, which I'll pass on - then I'll likely be gone for a few hours.

The "Contact Us" link is visually available but not active...

Likely causes:

* Possible server error in the moment you clicked on the link (So would you please try again?)

* You may have ad blocking software, preventing the opening of a new window when clicking on a link

* Outdated browser version (What is your browser, and rev level?)

Hope these tips will help. Back later. ;)

AWA

decaff

7:47 pm on Apr 8, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



The "Contact Us" link within the AdWords Management Program...at least from my view... is now active again...

Still we are not seeing any impressions for the multiple ads we run daily...I don't think it wise to post our account info here...and I have set several support tickets on this..is there a phone number I can call...?

Thanks for you help AWA...

decaff

7:54 pm on Apr 8, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Thanks AWA...

I am running IE 5.5 SP2...this is a very stable version that has very few problems..
I don't run any type of ad blocker software...(though I occassionally get pestered from a couple of notorious sources...)
Perhaps your first explanation is the one...some sort of temporary outage...the "Contact Us" link is operational again..

Thank you for your help AWA...and I just received a very encouraging email from Google Support...so I am hoping the issues with our ads not serving at all will be resolved soon..

Good day to you..
decaff

joestern

11:42 pm on Apr 8, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Adwords Advisor: We would be happy to provide you with all of the specifics you need/want--especially if you have a level of competence that exceeds the people we have been dealing with to date at Google.

We spend a veritable fortune on Adwords and we are astounded that the CSRs are so incompetent. Our ads are down, our sales are down, our competitors' ads are also all down. This is NOT a problem on our end.

If you would like details, perhaps you can tell us how we can contact you? I have no faith in 866-2-GOOGLE (or whatever other "special" numbers we have been given to call).

AdWordsAdvisor

1:20 am on Apr 9, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Adwords Advisor: We would be happy to provide you with all of the specifics you need/want--especially if you have a level of competence that exceeds the people we have been dealing with to date at Google.

While I regret that you've not been happy with the responses you've gotten from our customer service team, I was not suggesting that you send details directly to me. I can't really be in a position to resolve individual issues through the forum of WebmasterWorld, and I strongly suspect that Brett and the moderators would heartily agree on this point.

In my earlier post I'd hoped to convey that in this case, or in any case in which you are having account issues, I suggest using the 'Contact Us' link from within your account. If the issues you describe in your email are related to a current technical issue, then your details will be forwarded to the teams working on the issue, and will help those teams to pinpoint the problem. It is always easier to solve a problem once it has been identified. And it is much easier to identify a problem if one has an actual working example or two.

In any case, I'm sorry for your frustration joestern - and truly, I hope that AdWords will be able to win back your trust at some point.

AWA

decaff

4:36 pm on Apr 9, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



AWA..

Any indications on when the AdWords technicians will have the backend problems solved.? We are still zeroed out today...that's 3 days of no Adwords from our perspective..
I checked on another account I have been running strong through March (the client wanted me to put it on hold for the first 2 weeks of April)...cranked it up this am and it is showing the same thing...zero activity..

I have access to a third AdWords account and it shows activity...I don't understand...

Thanks,
Decaff

XtendScott

4:57 pm on Apr 9, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I have same problem: Tried restarting campaign is says active but no impressions/clicks. Sent email to support Last Week recieved the autorespond email but not Tech Response.

Sent a second email recently. Hope to get it resolved.

joestern

5:12 pm on Apr 9, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



AWA,

As we said, we have tried - on several occassions now - to go through the details with your customer service reps. This is what you asked us to do again. We're pretty frustrated with the service there.

If Google AdWords knows there is a problem, why don't you tell your customer service reps so that they don't deny it on the phone? They are like a brick wall when it comes to suggestions that Google may be at fault here. They repeatedly tell us that our ad simply has a clickthrough rate below 0.5% now and that this is why it's been taken down. We ask them to explain why a) we might have gone from a 4.0% CTR to a 0.5% CTR in one day, and b) why this might have happened to all of our competitors also at exactly the same time. Their only response is that the AdWords system is operating normally.

For a company like us spending well into the six figures yearly on AdWords, I'd expect a better level of customer support. In addition, GoogleGuy does seem to be able to work with problems here and we aren't sure why you are so reluctant. No more than a small handful of people have shown that they have problems here, and this is a self-selecting group of very focused advertisers. In addition, our input could be helping you and AdWords to be able to fix a problem which is certainly depressing revenues at Google (in an important time for Google) and we'd think you'd, in turn, want our help if rectifying this issue.

golfer1975

5:17 pm on Apr 9, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



still seriou sissues here, 1/4 of the imp and clicks of normal!
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