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.
This is going to cost us all a lot more than we budgeted for if we go forward in this NEW WORLD ORDER set up by "Do no Evil" gawfah Google. For some companies this is disaterous and we have to let them know it by boycotting...cutting back or even going offline for a day as protest. One day can hurt them and send a message...especially if we do it every few days.
I'm sick over this...there is no upside...so now I can have keywords that were disabled...Big deal when the ones that made me money are going up daily...NOT TO MENTION...the extra freaking work this is going through hundreds (and as some people pointed out thousand) of words and campaigns daily.
All of a sudden...banner adds are looking better
...it's all about lining their pockets with more of our advertising dollars.
Yes, but I don't think their goal is to increase what we pay by 10%, 20%, 80% or whatever. Their goal is to increase the number of advertisers by 100%, 200% or whatever. I think they can get many more advertisers on the system by getting the poorly performing ads off of the system. And thus, they can line their pockets with more advertising dollars.
If you think about it lol ... its just like buying a house in orange county where i live.... before it was like 200 k now u cant find shack in Santa Ana for less than 500k... motel 6's even run $150 a nite out in the OC.
Same thing for keywords... alot of keywords are just getting too competitive... but whats great about the new system unlike the old is you can bid on any keyword in the world for as little as .01 cent (most now are .10 cents tho)
i mean the minimum bid i think helps you determine also how competive a keywords is and if u need to think out side the box and get creative... guys we are talking about mispellings and all the kw's before that were auto-on-hold we can now bid on.... this is amazing for people who can see past just the bid increases ont there popular phrase and who can focus on more specific phrases....
in the long run once people get used to the new system it will work out in everyones favor...
I had a kw which yesterday needed $0.20 to be activated.
Today and after some clicks I tried to switch it to $0.10 and it worked.
This means that we now have to monitor EVERY keyword by hand and try to squeeze their costs per click.
i personally think the last system was worse, but this system is not far behind, let me explain why.
first and foremost i feel this system penalizes the person looking for niche keywords by charging them ludicrious values (whether it is an initial charge and it drops, or increases is besides the point) it is simply wrong to punish the intellignet advertiser, and reward the big pocketed advertiser. my personal favorite system was teh 1% ctr by 1000 impressions, it was very handy, and very fair, i wish they would revert back to this system :-/
in an ideal world, we would get 1 cent clicks as the minimum bid, and a 1% ctr by 1000 impressions (or a totally free market system where all ads are there period).
i did have an exploit, but slowly all my key words are once again being moved to the inactive point with an even higher activation minimum bid. i cant afford to pay more than 30 cents a click, so its seems like hourly im losing 1-2 keywords. wouldnt be surprised if my entire account was empty by the end of this month
:-/
note to self, you were midway thru the last page
I buy a key with my company name, I am fist in Serp and first on adwords on right side (I am the only bidder), then I get it inactive and they ask me 20 cents, my ctr continue to be low cause if I am the only advertiser if I pay 5 or 20 cents it's the same, the point is that people keep clicking my url on free results, so after a while I'll get inactive and the cost goes up...but not the ctr...so in one year I could be paying 2$ or more?!?
Another doubt, when my key is active is it alwyas showing for sure? This morning I had a talk to the adwords assistance and she said that even if it's active it can happen that it doesn't show if has a poor history performance...sounds strange.... Anyway I have a bug on my account and they are working on to solve it, so maybe it's another problem.
This is occuring on both active and inactive keywords.
Is this problem caused by cached content pages out there on the internet or a bug in this new system?
I'm still getting 100's of clicks across 100's of keywords and the cost is 10cents or more. However, the MAX bid price has been set to 6 or 7 cents for more than 48 hours.This is occuring on both active and inactive keywords.
Is this problem caused by cached content pages out there on the internet or a bug in this new system?
I believe that when your key is inactive is still showing, for a small period but it's slowed down, so if in this period improve its ctr is probabily coming back to the active state.
I filtered the ad group to only show inactive keywords.
Then I copied them all and saved them in excel.
I then deleted them all from the ad group.
Then re added them from the excel spreadsheet.
Now I only have 55 inactive keywords.
Go figure.
When one part of the system is calculating whether to set the keyword to active/inactive it is not taking into account the negative keyword list.. But when adding new keywords the calculation is looking at the negative keyword list and that's why readding keywords causes them to go active.
Just a programmer's guess..
They keep talking about the incentive to be relevent and then they create a system where you do not have to be.
Yes, but I don't think their goal is to increase what we pay by 10%, 20%, 80% or whatever. Their goal is to increase the number of advertisers by 100%, 200% or whatever. I think they can get many more advertisers on the system by getting the poorly performing ads off of the system. And thus, they can line their pockets with more advertising dollars.
That's not how the corporations I've worked for in the past think. Their mindset is to get more business and maximise as much money out of present customers as they can get away with.
Stuff I had turned off at .05. I turned on and they are much higher then .05. I am thinking Google needs some history to determine where the lower bid needs to be?
by providing a very real financial incentive to advertise using very targeted keywords and ads, while also allowing them to decide for themselves exactly how valuable their less relevant keywords are.
Hmmm, well that would be true if the precise algorithm for calculating the minimum price were available. As it is now, the unpredictability of the trial/hold system seems to have been exchanged for the equally unpredictable "because our quality rating that you can't see says so" system.
Example: Google informs me that one of my long-running $.05/click keywords is disabled, and I must either "increase the quality" or pay $.10/click. The problem is, it has a higher CTR than all but one of the other $.05/click keywords in the campaign, and a higher "average position" than half of them. How can I increase the quality of that ad when I can't figure out why Google thinks it's not high quality in the first place? The only thing I can see that Google could be looking at to lower the quality rating is that this is a very low-traffic keyword.
Overall, I suspect (I hope!) the system will be a net cost savings for me. But if, as my particular example jibes with, Google is upping the minimum for low-traffic keywords, then I suspect the system will be a net overall loss for both me and Google. Trying to ding low-traffic ads that have a very good CTR seems like a good way to step on the "long tail" that's been a very good deal for both Google and cheap bottom feeders like me. No matter what the actual financial result is, there's a strong psychological barrier at this point to pay double the former minimum bid for a keyword that I know has low traffic and very few bidders -- especially when Google's own CTR indicates that "quality" isn't really the issue.
I will suggest that "quality rating" was an unfortunate choice of nomenclature on Google's part. They should call it something more black-boxy like "dynamic costing model", since the algorithm is clearly capable of producing results that contradict human conventions of "quality".
I have 3 account, I have set up a new campaign on all of them, this campaign is having just a group with 2 keywords inside.
I have choose 2 impossible keys with exact match, I mean that I am sure at 99% that no one else is bidding them because they are something like [the travel diary of batman and robin].
Now when I created the first campaign I set up 0,05 max bid and it went live. At second campaign (2° account) after I set up the max bid 0,05, the system put inactive one keyword of two and asks me 0,10! (the other is fine at 0,05). I give ok and it goes live.
At third campaign the system put inactive both keywords and asks me 0,10 for the one that is 0,05 on the other 2 accounts and 0,20 for the one that is 0,05 and 0,10 on the other accounts...
So, what I guess is that the system keep increasing the miminum cpc in multiply of 0,05 cents and even if there are no real competitors (I mean with a real history) and it asks me 0,20! It could have asked me 0,06 and 0,07 on third account....
Now my question is, how much do you think I'll pay a keyword that is asking a minimum of 0,20 when the other are paying 0,10 and 0,5 and no history at all?
Until G can get all the kinks worked out, I definitely am not going to spend hours going manually thru each keyword.
Organic G updates are named on this board, how about an Adwords update name - anyone have any creative ideas?
How about "Update BiPolar"
Yes. I believe I have seen different min cpc. Since i reactivated or deleted most of my inactive keywords, I can' confirm 100% but I am pretty certain.
I also agree with the suggestion that "quality" rating rubs too many people (at least those with inactive keywords) the wrong way. I think Google should change the terminology to "comparative relevency rating". I think that would be more descriptive and less likely to offend. If your word went inactive, it would just be saying that your ad is less relevent than others bidding on the same keyword. Less offensive than being told you have a low quality ad.
THIS FEELS LIKE OVERTURE. So far all I can see is google is going to make MORE money of ads. Leap frog bidding.
This sucks for lack of a better word.
If your word went inactive, it would just be saying that your ad is less relevant than others bidding on the same keyword.
Unfortunately, there seem to be cases where there's really nothing to do with "relevance" at all. For example, in the keyword of mine that Google wants me to "increase the quality" or else pay $.10, the top ad position on the page is taken by a well-known auction website, with one of their dreaded, totally generic ads. Position # 3 (which is about the position my "inactive" keyword held) is now held by a well-known shopping site. This keyword is about a specific make and model of automobile, and the shopping website's AdWords ad says "Shop for Furniture!". The only quality formula that can judge that one "relevant" is one that factors in how much somebody is willing to pay (which is not what humans do when judging "relevance").
No, the thing that Google is calling a "quality rating" really doesn't have anything to do with the quality of the ad in this case, as far as I can see. At least, not in the sense that any human would judge "quality".
As others have pointed out, the pivotal issue in this AdWords change is whether or not it lowers the overall relevance of AdWords ads. Relevance was already declining, IMO, with all the generic ads that Google permitted from folks like the well-known auction site. If this change has the effect of driving out little folks who were barely willing to pay $.05/click for the "long tail" keywords, then all that will be left will be those generics, further training searchers that that column of ads to the right of their search results is irrelevant.
My impression is that google doesn't attempt to simulate "human relevence" for its adwords listings (it clearly claims to be the best at "human relevence" for its objective listings.) I think "adwords relevence" is measured solely or nearly solely by click through rate.
Whether I like it or not, searchers may be more inclined to visit ebay, than my website. This could very well hold true even if my ad is more on topic, and my website is the best authority on whatever topic the searcher is looking for.
Since Google has zero incentive to run ads on its search network that no one clicks on it seems logical to me to assume those ebay ads get a decent click through rate. Probably better CTR's than my ads. :(
It seems to me that they’re quoting everybody differing rates and in many cases different rates on probably the exact same thing.
Since Google has zero incentive to run ads on its search network that no one clicks on it seems logical to me to assume those ebay ads get a decent click through rate. Probably better CTR's than my ads. :(
You're right -- I can't prove that people searching for a particular classic car aren't clicking like hell on that "Shop for Furniture" ad instead of on the ads actually devoted to that keyword. However, Google AdWords was founded on the concept of relevance, and I can state with confidence that furniture is not relevant to classic cars.
In a sense, Google is now extending the same lack of relevance offer to the little guy that they've been offering to the big guys for some time: if you pay us enough, we'll forego our original standards and run your ad anyway.
Getting the same deal as the big guys is great. Lowering the relevance in exchange for short-term profits at the expense of long-term user participation is not so great.
