Last few weeks has been so negative about adwords, that i almost think Google has been taken over by some lunatics hell bent on destroying the model which made me, others and Google so much money.
I have no problem with algo tweaks etc etc, but when every 2nd post is about a problem, something just aint right.
So without being rude folks, here is your chance to tell the world and Google what is wrong with Adwords at present...
Shak
We have very little problems with Adwords lately. If anything the system seems to be more stable than a few months ago, albeit slow.
I think Google may start to become a victim of its own sucess, like Microsoft and it seems to be ever more fashionable on this forum to bash Google.
Clearly I do not agree, although there are many areas of improvement as always.
Keep up the good work Google, Shak and Skibum!
Although at the campaign level we can get an idea on the clicks received, when you are trying to adjust prices at the keyword level it is not good enough for the stats to update so late in the day.
I appreciate that Overture don't tell you what has been spent until the following day, but at least if you are trying to compete for position and price then you stand half a chance, you want to pay a quid you pay a quid.
- The first problem I had with adwords was when all my campaigns suddenly stopped showing for the first time without any reason and I had to send them day after day emails telling them that my ads aren't running, and they always replied with some pre-build sentences that my campaigns are running fine and all is ok, but this was not the case. It took 10 days till one of my emails finally (and luckily) reached one of the support team who must have thought "hmmm, maybe this dumb client has a serious issue if he still sends these inquiries straight for ten days. OK, today I'm the loser and have to look into this clients account". And he found out that there was a bug in my account which prevented my ads from showing. It took me 10 days till the support believed me that there was really something wrong with my account.
- 5 campaigns from me are now disapproved since 7 days but the reason why they have disapproved them is just wrong. I've sent them email after email telling them that they made a mistake but they're simply not replying, they don't care at all.
And there are also other things, like that all reviewers have a different knowledge of the editorial guidelines and policies, so you might get disapproved for things that hundreds of other advertisers can still do for months.
Most of the things that I'm really frustrated about were going down to the part that the reviewers are not taking any time for the issues of their clients, the most important thing for the support seem to be to take as little time as possible for any issue instead of offering real help to try to solve a problem. They always send these reply emails build of text phrases but in all my cases this has never fixed an issue. I always had to send several more emails to them to get an issue finally solved (if ever). And this takes a lot of time, each reply from them take 1 or 2 days (if you're lucky), within 10 minutes I email them back that it is not correct what they just have emailed me but their reply will take another day or 2 or more. Thats really frustrating. Other PPC engines are handling this differently, for them each case is an open case till its really fixed and if you send them additional questions or concerns they'll reply within a few hours because open cases are handled before they will open new cases.
I think the communication from adwords to their customers and the way they are handling support issues is something they really have to work on.
Your problems sound almost identical to mine. I signed up for adwords last week and it's been nothing but trouble ever since.
Google UK support is terrible, half the time I think they don't even want my money it's that bad.
1 reviewer approves my ad, 10 minutes later another reject virtually the same one. Poor show all round, but who to complain to? I don't think they'd listen.
I signed up for adwords last week and it's been nothing but trouble ever since.
Actually, thinking about it, they could lower my CPA a bit... ;)
1. not knowing your "real" CTR if you're on content targetting
2. very slowwww update of clicks
3. not being able to move adgroups from one campaign to another without losing CTR
4. not being able to move keywords from one adgroup to another without losing CTR
5. not being able to opt solely for content targetting (useful for testing)
Other than that, Adwords is still the best way to go for getting targetted visitors.
No convincing method to prevent click fraud :(
Above all..
Adwords is up, no wait it's down, oh wait some pages are working, damnit did those changes just go through? Ok they did, no wait-now it sais they didn't, let me edit again, oh wait the whole things offline for XY hours now.
edited to add something of EXTREME importance:
A working system to check fraudulent clicks. No offence AW, but your methods of checking fraudulent click is horrible. How do I know? I setup and tested your abilites 2 times. You seriously need to learn how to look into fraudulent clicks.
Ad which was previously OK was then now pulled, no reason given and no reply to my request for info.
Not good
Even with click-fraud, poor reporting, inconsistent editorial and slow acct mgmt response I'd still bet almost all of you would take the bad with the good a hundreds times over before you'd ever consider reallocating your spend to ...
... that's just the point; besides Overture and FindWhat, there's no one else.
But AdWords still does many things better than the rest. Some of the Tier 3 interfaces are shocking.
The big problem is that as of Thursday last week my campaigns are currently not showing for no apparent reason. I am not being given a response other than 'technical difficulties'.
I don't normally google bash the SERPS in the news forum, because, hey, that's free.
But this is different. I have paid google over £30k in the last year and they have cost me over 1,000 paying customers in the last week.
I hope their new shareholders get them to pull their finger out, afterall it's their money they are wasting too.
There has been no reply from support.
No service & no support - What could be worse than that?
Thanks for the feedback, both positive and negative.
Sometimes, it's not easy to hear - but it certainly forwards the process of making AdWords the program you, as our advertisers, want it to be.
AWA
As I said i have not had problems but feel concerned that a company I am spending some $20,000 per year with consistently see reports like many that have been posted on this board RE: support and communication .
Google must do something re: communication back even if sometimes the advertiser does not like the answer e.g. ( This advertising does not conform to the standards we have in place etc. )
currently as an advertiser I can not tell if the problems that are reported on this board are due to advertisers copy not being within TOS or due to poor customer support when there are technical issues
due to the falure of communication from Google
steve
PS reading between the lines I suspect some of the reported issues are due to non compliance to TOS but I believe some are not
But as Steve says, it's the total lack of communication that drives you really crazy. Even a one liner to say they know I exist would calm me down a lot.
No communication = We don't care a **** about you
I used to get pretty frustrated at the slowness of response from the email support, but since being assigned an account manager I've got nothing but praise for Adwords support. All my problems are sorted within the hour which is brilliant (compared to waiting 3 days in the past).
Perhaps Google could improve the 2nd tier support slightly?
The reporting is slow, granted. A desktop App would be much appreciated - somthing that lets you upload spreadsheets.
Sorry, was this a moan thread!
SDani
Here in Denmark it's even worse when it comes to getting proper support if any.
I do not believe they know the solution to my issue, but they won't tell me that.
1 week down and counting. What is really worrying is we have just spent a quite a bit of time R&D for a new product (a new site, paperwork, design, etc.) We want to launch the campaign end of May for the summer and, of course, adwords is a big part of this.
If it isn't back soon it will cost my company £ thousands. Can I sue google (only HALF joking)? Is it part of their T&C to provide a certain level of service?
