Message:
We've simplified our keyword status system.
Your keywords will now either be active (triggering ads) or inactive (not triggering ads). Quality remains the most important factor in your keywords' performance. Each keyword will now have a minimum bid that is based on the quality of your keyword and ad text. If your maximum CPC doesn't meet this minimum bid, your keyword will be listed as inactive.
What you should do differently:
If a keyword is listed as inactive, improve its quality through optimization, delete it, or raise that keyword's maximum CPC to the minimum bid indicated. (Raising the bid will re-activate the keyword.) If your keyword is active, you don't need to do anything.
What's interesting is that I am a publisher at the same time and my earning this month down 30% so who will benefit from this? It looks like Google but they can not.. Cause lots of lots of people say they will not raise their min bids.
does google want us to have a full-time job of tweaking our keywords?
does google want us to edit our tens of thousands of keywords every minute?
this is ridiculous.
It doesn't show any increase of Impression or Click. I search for my keywords, and my ad is there, and I know people are clicking because I see it on my web stats.
It just doesn't show up in adword stats and doesn't update how much I owe them. Free clicks?
For example, prior to the change I was able to get the following keyword: <the crocodile hunter> at 5 cents. Now it tells me that the minimum bid is $5! This is crazy!
There are many keywords like this!
The Content network is now delivering GARBAGE traffic...
I cut my bid pices in half tonight... 15,974 active keywords before.... now down to 15,000
Let's see what happens tomorrow.....
heyday
Google, please listen. The idea sounded fine, when it was pre-announced, but the implementation is either very buggy or very wrong.
What I don't understand is, why I'm I showing impressions on keywords that are inactive?
I think Google doesn't want us to understand, that's the problem.
I'm seeing no impressions for many of my active keywords (previously huge impressions).
So what you see may not be what you get afterall.
Why would google alienate a lot of the small to medium sized advertisers by raising the cost of keywords by so much?
I thought it was because they wanted to make more $$ for their shareholders.
Is this true...possibly, but i don't think it's the reason for the change.
I think this is the reason :: Google is trying to re-kindle it's raison d'etre, and get back it's claim to fame as the Best Search Engine that delivers the Best Results.
They are thikning long term, and about the efficacy of their search results for years to come.
Let's face it, with our affiliate marketing bombardments, we have bastardized a lot of the ads in the search engines. Sure, a lot of our ads are relevent, but many are not.
This will force us to do what only the best of us can do...adapt, think bigger, and/or think different.
Am I pissed? hell yea, i spending over $2k less a day now at Google....and it's costing me $1.24 for a click that used to cost me $0.06.
But hey, when Florida hit, we survived...and expanded.
And that's what we got to do...expand expand expand.
As for saving money for a rainy day...
well, it's pouring.
On the other hand, for my highly targeted keywords and new ads that are carefully written for a small number of key word phrases, generally no more than 11-12, my average CPC is down by 20%, CTR is up from 6% to 9%, Cost/conv is also down, total conversions are about the same, and my daily spend is rarely capping out, so my ads now run 24x7 instead of 20x7.
The only down side is that where I used to have one ad and a few broad match terms for my city/state targeted ads, now, in order to optimize for the new QBR model, I had to build eight new ads with very specific headlines and ad text to match the key words. For each key word phrase, each word in the phrase is now in its corresponding ad headline at least once, and sometimes again in the ad body. Because state name is part of the targeting, the full state name is used in one variant, and the two character state code in another variant, doubling the number of ads for each city. If not for that, I could have done 1:4 ad cloning instead of 1:8.
So, for me, after adjustments to the ads, it is working. As a one-guy shop with just four campaigns, and only 12 original ad groups in my largest campaign, now 96 due to cloning/tuning, it's aggravating but managable to re-build everything for the new pricing model. My sympathies to all the rest of you with huge campaigns and lots of clients to deal with!
But then I stopped – Haven’t I been through this once – Yes I did. It was called Florida update (I have heard many theories why it is called Florida – I believe because it send good chunk of old fashioned webmasters to retirement and that’s why they used a famous retirement place :)) )
I will not hide, I was retired by Florida update for quite some time too. As of today perspective, I see Florida as something unavoidable. It was simply the future just it came much faster than all of us wanted to.
The same is with this ADWORDS update, yes it is all capitalized now (yes it is now ADWORDS, not as someone tried to suggest here - adwords)
OK now to the point for everybody who have not realized it already:
- No $0.05 keyword make any sense for G or anybody else – even if you are the only one bidding for it. No more GIFTS for any of you guys,not from G, not from all of the Adsence publishers
- G does not need more than the first page (10) Adwords advertisers for any particular phrase to be efficient! If they have more than 10, the only good cause of their existence is the pressure on the CPC on the first 10.
OK it is as simple as that: Just think for a second - HOW many BIG organization live and prosper only from the brick and mortar advertising money they receive?! G is totally dominating the internet! Even if they have to share it with 2 or 3 competitors over time, if they stop charging 10 – 15 less than the real world advertising prices and move to 3-5 times less, this must bring A LOT of money… oh don’t tell me G will loose your 5-10c business – look at you local TV station – Do they care about your $0.10 ads you want to run on their network?
- Significant part of the G revenue (close to 50%) come from the Adsence – to serve efficient money making ads G needs just a couple (2) GOOD PAYING advertisers for any keyword phrase (+ 3-4 highly related phrases with similar ads.) Actually this is the master plan:
-in a couple of days G will start slowly rolling over percent of the increased prices/revenue to the Adsence publishers (as a beginning the publishers will be excited to get rid of all this $0.05 crap). For the next reporting quarter G will report revenue from partner sites between 52 and 55% (up from the 46% for the last quarter). For the next 3 to 4 quitters they will continue improving the new system (getting real bucks for advertising) and slowly increasing the partner’s share until it reaches the levels of a week or so ago of 60-70%. The constant effort of the adsence publishers (lead by significant and constantly improving incomes) will add more and more speed to the wheel of this muster plan. As a result for the next 3 to 4 quarters, after Sept 30, G will report a significant increase its overall revenue (15+20% quarter over previous quarter) , and the % of that revenue due to partner sites will continue to grow faster than the revenue from g.com/ g.uk etc. itself, especially in the last 2-3 quarters of this period;
-What they gonna do after this year or so?
I lot of choices – they can buy Yahoo or hire the 10000 best minds to work on better search results…
DSZ
At the end of the day a click is worth what it's worth to who it's worth it too so if someone is daft enough to pay £2.75 for what has been a 25p term then google are going (over time) to engineer it so they do pay that or as close to that as they can if the term/sector is worth that.
Google are thinking long term and they are looking at the bigger picture where it doesn't matter if you spend $1k or $10k a day as they have clients that spend many many times that per day and don't #*$! and moan like we do.
Who are some of google's biggest clients? AGENCIES and many agencies get paid on a % of spend basis.. how much must they be rubbing their hands at the prospect of increased bids!?
I won't raise any of my bids until this all calms down as I think if we jump to the bar then what's the hope of it coming down later if this has been a buggy implimentation and yet we all jumped from 5p to 55p or 20p to £2.75 a click just because google said JUMP
DONT PAY ANY MORE THAN YOUR CLICK IS WORTH in the short term sure you may lose money, your competitor may make money but how much a click do you want to be paying in a year?
pay YOUR max cpc and no one elses :(
and on the I wont raise bids.. I didn't and they've fallen and all but 4 have gone active now at the intial bid price I put in even though google was requesting 55p to £2.75 for each term over the last few days they are live at 10p
Plus Big G wouldn't know a relevant ad if it bit them in the a**
My hat used to be white
Then it started to get a little grey
Now it is turning black...
"Advertisers on the WebMasterWorld.com forum were more blunt.
"As I suspected...the prices are going up already. Minimum bids to activate a keyword were 4 cents yesterday. Notice it was not showing today and yes of course it's now 40 (cents) to reactivate," someone with the alias "Voxman" wrote. "I have reduced our campaign by 50 percent to start and (am) now looking at other ways of spending the ad money."
[news.com.com...]
I will determine my ROI not Google. We run a very efficent operation, and we have a fair ROI. I will be in charge of my advertising budget, not Google.
This is turning into a public relations diaster for Google, and they will eventually see it in the bottom line.
Adwords was already a cash cow for google, and I don't know why are are playing with it.
Can you imagine what the stock market would be like, if their was minimun share prices, that stocks could not go under. Same principal.
Agree or Disagree?
As per the article, publishers are happy since they are earning more.
I differ on this, along with my friends, who have seen a fall in adsense revenue.
So - where is Your money going to?
It is not coincidental that Google is doing this just as new competitors come online. They are obviously shifting from a monopolistic approach of "be all things to all people" to a competitive strategy of "take the most profitable segment and leave the rubbish to your competitors". No one should think of this as a bad thing, since those who stay with Google are going to be the better quality advertisers and publishers. It's a win-win for those who can survive.
More pointedly, if you're having trouble fitting in with the new paradigm then maybe it's because of you and your strategies, not Google conspiring to be "evil"?
If I have an very targeted adgroup of 120 very specific keywords that goes to a targeted site with a targeted advert that provides the user with EXACTLY what they searched for.
Then who is google to tell me I have to pay £2.75 to activate a bid on it....if google want to stay in business that is.. sure it's their engine but a bid is worth what it's worth.. not what google says it is.
each keyword may be worth a different amount to different layers of the advertising strata.
To a merchant it may be worth £2.75
To an affiliate it may be worth £1.00
To a wholesaler it may be worth 10p
If no merchant is selling directly can google expect the affiliate or wholesaler to pay £2.75?
I put targeted terms live with bids that reflect their value to everyone else that was currently bidding on there before the change and GOOGLE is saying to me "JUMP HIGHER BOY" pay 10, 20 or even 40 times more
I for one wont be jumping!
A click is worth what it's worth to who it's worth it too.. sure google want to sell advertising space but they have to sell it to the guys that are prepared to pay the relative cost to them, merchant, affiliate or wholesaler all work on different pricing models.. not what google thinks is the across the board cost.
Ok fair point but not totally black and white...
I choose to advertise on that term on google so ultimately it boils down to what that click is worth to me and the other people prepared to bid on it..
Google can't show an ad on a paused campaign for a keyword I've chosen not to pay £x to activate.
It's their BLANK real estate in that case and worth nothing to them...unless someone can make it work at that price.
A click is worth what it's worth to the advertiser and not £2.75 because Google say so.. sure they CAN charge that if they can find anyone dumb enough/that can still mile profit from it (ohh look just when we'd forgotten about agencies ;) lol)
either way.. regardless of who sets the bid price.. we'll simply advertise where we can afford to pay a realistic click price.... now that is black and white
You have made two posts on AdWords forum and both your posts are highly in favorable of the new Algo. All your other posts seem to be in the AdSense and one of them praises how the new Algo is getting more money to the publishers. I can bet a horse's A$$ that you don't have any idea what issues we advertiser's are facing and you are only trying to turn the discussion in Google's favor because it is advantageous to you publishers.
Just remember, Google is becoming more and more greedy. If they are going to take a share of the Advertiser's Pie today, tomorrow it will be a share of the publisher's pie.
Also, how are you finding your inactive keywords? I've had to use the Bulk Download tool because the 'Change & Edit Keywords' in the 'Tools' section is wildly inaccurate.
And there will always be people that will pay the price, at least in competitive markets. You are right when you say that in niche markets where you might be the only advertiser it is ridiculous to pay more than 10 cents for a click, but Google will bait you on it anyway. If you fall for it, then you're stuck paying the "suggested" amount. If you don't fall for it, the price will slowly decrease until somebody is willing to pay that price. They know we track our stats on a daily basis. It will only take a couple of weeks for them to figure out how willing we are to play their game.
Luckily for our company, we already spend over $150,000 on Adwords per month with a average CPC of roughly $2.00. We are typically number one for 95% of our search terms. So if this new system kills advertiser #11 through #200, we could care less. We never see them to begin with. Google gets to keep all the money they were previously making (and probably a lot more) and they don't have to devote the real estate to ads that will never convert anyway.
The point being, is that in the markets where the money truly comes from, there will always be someone willing to throw the cash around, just to stay on top. I feel bad for those out there who don't have the resources. After all, I'm just playing with someone else's money to make them more money. Maybe natural SEO should be the focus from now on, but as long as everyone has enough patience, things should level out. However, knowing the typical Adwords advertiser, this probably caused another nationwide panic that sparked another bid war (remember the whole "local CTR" fiasco?). Just my thoughts, don't take them as law. Thanks...
And why shouldn't Google be greedy? For that matter, why consider them greedy for making money on ads? Heck, they give away the organic search results for free, plus a bunch of research and other tools; they have mouths to feed and research to fund themselves, not to mention the shareholders, and nobody ever said they were a non profit or in it for the public good. So let 'em be greedy. If they price themselves out of the market, they'll know it soon enough. I've had plenty of arguments with them (on the phone and in email) since they started the Adwords program, and I probably will have plenty more, but I have no problem with them trying to make as much money as they can at this. That's what we're all trying to do, isn't it? And it is, after all, their own backyard.
