Very disappointing

[Jazzy]

Made a minor change just in dest url, for better tracking. Now for a week I get almost no hits.
Went from mostly in top three spots for most words to practically not showing or like 15th plus.
Add exactly the same! Was working good before.
No answers to emails. Nice how they post they undercounted/underbilled me in FEB, that's always great for ratio figuring.
And this cancelled/on hold stuff with no impressions is simply rediculous. One on hold with over 3%, lots of others with 0 impressions.
In fact every time I try using google more it's dissapointing, I have my stuff set to spend 10x what I am now.
I've heard some negative about overture, but now I am committing myself to learn their system.
Is there any others with real worthwile traffic?

[limitup]

If you're serious about it, make an honest effort to learn how Google works - and how to best take advantage of. It's well worth the effort.

You see, Adwords is one of the only real PPC systems that rewards people who learn how to use the system. With Overture you have nothing - no real way to gain an edge. It's just a big bidding war. With Google you have the potential to be rewarded handsomely for putting in the time to learn the system.

We pay about 35% of what most of our competitors pay at Google, for the same clicks, because we have learned the system (for the most part - still have a ways to go). This obviously puts us in a very good position ... one you could be in if you put forth the effort.

Start by reading every thread in this forum and/or purchasing a good Adwords ebook/course such as those offered by Perry Marshall, etc.

[christh]

Yeah, Goog's just disappointed me somewhat now. Had an adgroup running that's direct to merchant - looks like it's been leading to a 404 for a least a few days now (it's a CJ merchant and their EPC has dropped by 80% in the last 3 days). So much for Goog checking adverts so often.

Oh well, "lesson learned" looks like I'll have to check my ads more.

[wayne]

It's not Google's responsibility to make sure the
site you link to is always up, that is your
responsibility.

[christh]

Thanks for that Wayne, very helpful. Google have a responsibility to their users too, if people click on a bunch of AdWords ads and they all 404, what does that say to the user about Google? And will they be so likely to click on Google's adverts in future?

In the past Google have notified me very quickly if one of my links was doing bad things. The merchant in question has sorted it out now, but the links certainly weren't working for a good week. I'd assumed Google check links on a fairly regular basis based on past experience. I guess it's true what they say about assumption eh?

[Jazzy]

Thanks limitup.
I have learned a good deal so far. That was my best campaign. So you see the frustration. I still don't have a clue why almost no clicks are comming now.
Possibly a glitch, or waiting for a review for over a week? Mabey I can call them.
I thought so much about other ppc engines quality.
Still a lot to learn. Like you said, if I'd learned that here first, I wouldn't have touched it. Now I just wanna understand why it happened. Wow. one click today (on that campaign), was bringing in hundreds a week ago and good profit, on exact same ads and bids, except minor url dest change for tracking. Someone tell me that's a fair, or intelligent way of doing things. I also noticed a while before that many people had similar when they took off -aff.
I hope someone at google answers.

[AdWordsAdvisor]

Made a minor change just in dest url, for better tracking. Now for a week I get almost no hits...

I still don't have a clue why almost no clicks are comming now.

Jazzy, when you make any 'editorial' change to your ad copy, or either of the URLs, then the ads will not show on partner sites, until they can be reviewed and approved.

This can account for a substantial drop in traffic, as it amounts to the difference between showing on Google alone (as an ad will do before it is approved) and showing on potentially many hundreds of sites (as an ad may do after it has been reviewed and approved.)

The time-to-review varies with volume of new and edited ads which have been submitted. But as a general principle, ads submitted late on Friday afternoon will take substantially longer to be reviewed than ads submitted mid week. This is because ads are reviewed on a very limited basis over the weekends.

So, whenever you have the choice, it is best to edit your ads (including the URLs) in the middle of the week.

Many on this forum also recommend creating a second ad rather than editing the first. This way the original ad will continue to show on partner sites, while the new one is being reviewed.

AWA

[Jazzy]

No that's not it at all. Been a month now. Never used google's partner sites or search network right from the start. Still now daily almost no clicks nor impressions with even higher bids. What placements I am getting are too far into the mix to get noticed.
Just a sucky situation with no real answers. Just wish it wouldn't have involved my best campaign.

[incrediBILL]

Google have a responsibility to their users too, if people click on a bunch of AdWords ads and they all 404, what does that say to the user about Google? And will they be so likely to click on Google's adverts in future?

Nope, sorry.

I would've assumed you read all the rules before you started using it.

Will you still charge me for clicks if my URL is inaccessible?

Google AdWords is designed to give you the power to manage all aspects of your account for maximum performance. Because all accounts are self-managed, it is our advertisers' responsibility to ensure that the destination URL in each ad is accurate. Also, if an advertiser's website is unavailable, the advertiser is free to pause or delete any campaigns for that site.

If you're serious about spending big money advertising you'll do what the pros do and get a URL monitoring system that pings all of your advertised URLs every 15 minutes or so. When the site goes down you hurry to Google and turn off the ads.

[eyeinthesky]

No that's not it at all. Been a month now. Never used google's partner sites or search network right from the start. Still now daily almost no clicks nor impressions with even higher bids. What placements I am getting are too far into the mix to get noticed.

I think by editing your destination URL, your ad's CTR has been reset. So your ad rank has fallen, resulting in less impressions & clicks. It has nothing to do with partner sites.

The thing to do is to create a new ad and wait a few days (or a week) and then delete the old one.

That's the way Adwords work. I recently had the frustration of having to change my URL due to a server problem at a particular host. Of course, I lost my ad rank :(

[Jazzy]

Had to ad this.

Status- Disabled 7 clicks 159 impressions ctr 4.4%

That's just on a real new campaign. I've got many others from 1-4% and even many with 0 impressions.
Very frustrating. Wonder how google explains things such as frustrating, confusing and not allowing customers to spend MONEY to stockholders.
Time to visit GOOG forums and see, what a mess.
I now spend 1/20 of what I'd like to, and have continually tried again and given up, over the last 2 years, due to such silly things.