2 weeks after the change.What effect on you?

[toddb]

We noticed a slight drop in our average cost per click. Obviously, our account is not static so it is not perfect. Over our 2 accounts we are paying about 10% less today then we did last month at this time.

We had seen a rise all summer long so this is a nice fall back in trend.

The other thing I have noticed is that with the new .10 minimum for new ads. It might reduce competition. I know it supposedly is not .10 but our new ads seem to satart there reguardless of where they end up.

[inbound]

I've seen the cost lowered by up to 20% on some campaigns.

Also a set of 2 campaigns that are targetted in different ways (local vs national) has swung 180% in how they perform in comparison to each other with nation ads performing much better than they did.

The CTR on some campaigns has increased dramatically.

None of our (or customers') campaigns have had their ave CPC increased. (for now)

[inferno]

cost is up per click, (though it will be going down as i migrate away from google in the coming weeks) converions are down, impressions are WAY down, and i see this as being a fiasco for google in that , they will lose a LOT of customers.

[humblebeginnings]

In my case, average cpc is way up and imressions are way, way down. Bad for my business. Already brought some cash to Overture and others last week. Can't judge about the results yet...

[justshelley]

Most old accounts experienced a huge jump in overall cost the first week and a half (25-40%) but that has leveled off the last few days for all but a couple of the accounts who continue to be spending more than normal.

Can't get new my new account to take off at all. I'm still fighting the "each term has to build a history as an exact term first" issue.

[bostonseo]

Prices up significantly for all clients.

[nyet]

Our cost is down 16% and impressions and clicks about the same. We are pretty happy.

[eyeinthesky]

I'm seeing more irrelevant ads ahead of me for my higher bids keywords. So the effect is I'm forced to up my cpc for these already high bids.

For lower bids keywords, some are in fact even lower than before the change.

[Dr_X]

My product is intended to fix a problem in another feild, so I bid on words in that field. Well google sees that as biding on terms that are not relevent and jacks up the min. :-\

So I can see that you can't market to impulse buyers. If I had a convenience store, I would put the ad for 'soda' right next to the 'potato chips' rack. If google had something to say about that, I would have to pay dearly to put that ad there. Like I would only be allowed to put ads for other brand chips there.

Anyone have ideas on how to cope with this? Like, I don't sell 'widgits', but I have a 'gadget' that is intended to make widgits work better? I can bid on the name of the gadget, but there's nothing else like it and the name is unique. So customers needing such a thing wouldn't even know what term to search for. So I can only really bid on the 'widgit' term and in the ad text say something like "gadget can make your widgit into a super widgit" or something like that. Doing this makes for 5 dollar clicks. :-(

-Dr.X

[nyet]

X,

Google measures relevance as CTR, so they are not "seeing" you as irrelevant unless you are not getting a good CTR and/or your bid does not make you competitive revenue wise (for google).

Nothing wrong with putting a "soda ad" next to the chips as long as it performs well. But if the "dip" ad performs better they are going to get the space and you won't.

[nyet]

X,

p.s. get your CTR up and your price will CPC will fall. Sounds like you need better ad copy or the market is not ready for your "impulse" buy.

You could also try more specific 3 or 4 word matches perhaps.

[Dr_X]

Hi Nyet. :-)

Google measures relevance as CTR, so they are not "seeing" you as irrelevant unless you are not getting a good CTR and/or your bid does not make you competitive revenue wise (for google).

Yes, I get that they don't 'see' my ads, but something must be prompting them to ask for huge bids. Some ads and keywords ran just fine at 5 cents for over a year and had a 3% ctr. I would think that made it an ok ad/keword combo, no? Other keywords I went ahead and took the dollar to 5 dollar hit to see what google would actually charge me. No go. After 3 days with keywords at high costs, (some of those words attaining a 6%ctr WOW) the min. is still high. On one phrase I was asked to bid $1 but they charged me 90 cents. It was putting me in the number one spot so i thought i could lower the bid to 90 cents. it complained and i had to put it back up to a dollar. Thought that was strange.

Nothing wrong with putting a "soda ad" next to the chips as long as it performs well. But if the "dip" ad performs better they are going to get the space and you won't.

Well, I do a search with my keywords and the only other ads i see are other 'chips', so it's not the dip i'm having to compete with, but the chips that have been forced to raise their bids since the new system has been implimented.

I'm thinking I may just have to back completely out. That maybe adwords just isn't going to be worth it for me. Before the new system, i was happy to break even just to get the product and name out to new markets, but now it just costs too much (small profit on my gadget). I think with the new system, you can't make money unless your product has a much bigger profit involved than what I have.

Thanks for the input Nyet.

-Dr.X

[patient2all]

I've been spending a very profitable $800.00 a week or so for a year. I was too busy with another project to do much with my campaigns in the period leading up to "the change".

Very fortunately, I've noticed little change. My overall average CPC went from a range of .18-.19 to .18-.20 and sales seem to have improved a bit. CTR went from 3.2 to 3.6 which is significant for my most profitable campaign.

Perhaps I should have been more proactive like some wise posters here and I would have been able to cut my CPC, but I suppose it's not too late.

Of about 45000 keywords covering a wide range of products, Google make about 5000 inactive and that # seems to keep going down on its own every day. Of the inactive keywords, 1/3 I would have gotten rid of anyway, 1/3 maybe deserved a slightly higher bid and the other 1/3 were wildly misinterpreted by AdWords as to my meaning and context for them. I've let them be except as I go into AdGroups and say "hey that's a good word, I'll up it".

Sounds like they went by a list which said "gold", okay, very valuable word, even if they were gold t-shirts I was selling (for example purposes only).

patient2all

[Syzygy]

Two weeks down the line and avge cpc is exactly where it was prior to 'the change'. Those kw's I'm now paying more for are balanced by those I'm now paying less for.

The only thing that's missing are the kw's that required cpc's way above what was being paid before in order for them to be active. I might seek to reintroduce these this week and see whether they become financially viable again (ie, cheaper).

Syzygy

[Murdoch]

Over the course of the past two weeks, we restructured our entire account. The fact that this coincided with the update resulted in a drop in impressions of about 65%, clicks and cost went down, ROI doubled or tripled in some cases (which didn't really matter to us since the volume is what we're most worried about). However as of yesterday everything has returned to normal. Has anyone else seen a return to normality? We typically do not need to deal with the minimum bid since we are in a competitive industry with $4 keywords, so that never came into play, but the trickle down effect of the update definitely churned something to cause the sudden drop in impressions. Did anybody else experience this phenomena and if so are you back to normal? Thanks...

[wrgvt]

I've two totally different effects. Basically, my campaigns are for two different sites. One is doing well with the new changes, and one is doing terrible with it.

Site A sells items that range in price from $40-$1400. Most CPC bids are in the 20 cent to a dollar range. With the new changes, I've been able to re-use keywords that had been disabled. Costs are about the same and ROI is up.

Site B sells items that sell of $15-$20. You'd think I couldn't make money with AdWords with this, but I was doing pretty well. Average CPC was 7 cents. If I add a new product and a new AdWords ad for it, I can't buy any keywords in the 7 cents range. If I'm lucky, I can get a very targeted (too targeted) ad for 10 cents, but the most popular keywords are in the 20 cents to 40 cents range. Existing ads for existing products are running about the same ROI, but I can't get new ads to run for new products without paying through the nose, even if there's nobody else bidding on these keywords. I may have to shut this campaign down completely soon.

[poster_boy]

CTR - up 4%
CPC - up 3%
Average position - flat

Daily impressions - up 7%
Daily clicks - up 10%

Just launched a set of several thousand keywords that I could never get to stay active in the past. Now, I'm #1 or #2 for all (at, sure, a healthy CPC), but overall I'm happy.

[toddb]

Now 3 weeks out. We have seen a healthy increase in traffic but we have increased ad exposure. But a really nice decrease in CPC, 20+% across the board.

[Import Export]

Being that a significant percentage of the US is in turmoil, right now might be a bad time to truly understand the differences..

[toddb]

Do you think it would effect CPC? 1-2% of the US is effected. Not a huge thing. The back to school effect is bigger imo.

[Dr_X]

The back to school effect is bigger imo.

Zakly

-Dr.X