I am now being outbid on my keywords by advertisers who are trying to sell crap that has nothing whatsover to do with the keywords in question.
Imagine you are selling widgets via Adwords and start to see your "widgets"-triggered ads being outbid by hotdog vendors, Caribbean resort hotels, and electric dog polisher manufacturers. Would you be ticked off?
Not only am I pissed as a webmaster, but I'm also pissed as a searcher.
Has Google abandoned the principle of delivering contextually relevant ads through Adwords?
[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 6:38 pm (utc) on Oct. 3, 2004]
[edit reason] no keywords please. [/edit]
I used to be in the middle of the first page but now my ads have slid to the middle of the second page because I can only afford a certain price per click.
Unfortunately, my sales have declined as well.
(Someday, I'll have to sit down and actually read the Adwords TOS. Maybe in 2005?)
Some of these advertisers have been outbidding me for over 6 months now with no end in sight.
These are likely to be "old economy" firms with big budgets and low common sense - they might get clicks, but often they don't track sales so they don't realise their ROI is poor, so they (or more likely some agency on their behalf) keep bidding for irrelevant worsd that drive some traffic, but do not convert.
Might the issue be one of something that can be interpreted in multiple contexts - for instance to build on your palmpilot example if the search is "palm" and they advertise say, tarot cards, that might not be such a stretch.
It could also be broad match picking up on stuff in the wrong context - preserved by a decent CTR in other contexts.
Quite frankly if its irrelevant as you say you may want to inform the advertisers and perhaps even ask they add a handful of -keywords, certainly if I were in their shoes I would appreciate it being brought to my attention and act on it.
Lokutus. You and a few others are right, these big/small companies don't go away based on low CTR's or ROI's. And the old CTRxBid=Rank formula isn't given a chance to work if your ad is buried on the second page. If G&O REALLY want to improve user experience and deliver the best possible results, they need to give added weight to those advertisers bidding on the actual term.
It could also be broad match picking up on stuff in the wrong context - preserved by a decent CTR in other contexts.
It's not broad based matching.
Let's just say that some people are fishing for sales by going after keywords they think the wealthy will be searching on.
Here's an example. One of my sites sells a financial service. A few months ago, an LA limousine service starts running Adwords based on my key search word, which is a financial term. There is no connection between it and limo services at all. But I suppose someone at the limo service thought that people searching for my financial service might need a limo.
That's just one example of completely irrelevant ads.
I should add the for the month the limo ad ran it was always in the top slot!
Happens all the time. Bid to maximize their costs. They'll go away.
If it would help, I'd clickbombtheir ads all day.
;o)
But I think Adwords counts only one click per day per IP. Or so the rumor goes.
Don't click bomb their ads. It's not ethical.
Tru dat!
What's worse is that it's a waste of time clickbombing because G allows only one click per day per IP number.
Since Adwords is supposed to be contextual based advertising,
I'm not sure that's correct. Both Google and Overture have contextual ads, and advertisers are given the opportunity to participate and have their ads shown on relevant sites. But the core of both programs is PPC search, where the ad shows based on what the user searches for.
Now I agree that there are sometimes irrelevant ads. And Google seems to change the rules on AdWords a lot, so I'm not sure even their own people know the rules. If I were you, I'd try complaining and see if that gets anywhere.
But I think Adwords counts only one click per day per IP. Or so the rumor goes.
I don't think this is correct unless they have changed things. Also how would it handle all of the AOL clicks? Google would lose a ton of money if they did this.
Don't click bomb their ads
