Does anybody get any similar to this recently?
edited :
I can't believe, a keyword jumped from $0.05 to $5.00!
This must be a freaking monster mind in the plex who put that kind of joke. Really, it had to be a joke, a programmer joke, like if I was trying to workaround the system and I receive a punish instead!
Someone dares to try it just for fun?
I think I did it three times, so go and delete some inactive keywords and readd them, three times and see what happens...
This problem seems to be with newer client accounts, even though I use some of keywords are the same as those for other clients.
Today they have increased a Major portion of my keywords from below $1.00 to $5 - $10.
These are campaigns that have been running for LITERALLY Years!
This is Absolutely ridiculous.
My thoughts are they are trying to get rid of the Little guy -- anyone who doesn't spend $10,000 a month.
For example I have one keyword that has generated 34,000 clicks over the last couple of years, generating nearly 30k of for google. The CTR has been consistently around 3% while being ranked between 5 and 7 during that time. The min bid was raised to $10 today. Hard to fathom.
However, you should write to Adwords!
Popped over to this forum to see if a post has been started on this - or am I the only one.
Happy to see it isn't just me and hopefully this is a problem that Google can fix. Not happy to dwell on the fact that this could be a permanent hike.
It's a constant battle to maintain traffic levels in Adwords and surely this shouldn't be the case. I've been using Adwords since the beginning but not sure I will be there at the end!
Have had a friend email this thread to Google but have had no response of yet.. We have been buying ads at a fairly constant rate for a long time, and now this. It's bizarre.
Some of my colleagues are wondering if the new position reference feature may have triggered something?
[adwords.google.com...]
I'm 100% sure it's just another change motivated by greed and the fact that their stock (while climbing again) has been pretty beaten up this year.
Since Google went public, they're not the same company.
The annoying thing though is I don't see any increase in overall quality in the results. The main sector I work in is actually much worse than it was since they added quality score. I think right now quality score is a failure, but that's just my opinion.
AdwordsAdvisor, please comment on these comments.
Has anyone posting on this thread had any feedback about this issue. I am not referring to the longer term issue of higher minimum bids, but rather just the changes in the last 48 hours...
As I review this thread, I too see a mix of (maybe 8 or 9?) folks who are talking about increasing minimum bids in the last few days, and several folks who are talking about something that they've noticed more long-term.
Speaking specifically to increased minimum bids for some advertisers in the past few days, this increase may well be due to ongoing changes in the algo concerned with the landing page quality for AdWords ads. As many will recall, landing page quality has been included in one's Quality Score since December of last year, and the algorithm does certainly evolve.
Please see this page for guidelines regarding landing page quality:
[adwords.google.com...]
(BTW, the above page is linked-to from the Editorial Guidelines which may be found at [adwords.google.com...] - specifically, under the "Links" section.)
My best advice to those who are seeing a 'sudden' increase in minimum bids would be review your landing pages in light of these guidelines.
Having done so, if you feel that your landing page quality is already very high, then I'd advise contacting AdWords support and having them take a look, as suggested earlier in the thread by Armi.
Since the WebmasterWorld TOS prevent me from linking to a blog post in which landing page quality was discussed late last year, I've pasted that post, from 12.08.05, below. It's a bit long on the long side - which makes my own post particularly long - sorry.
A new addition to the Quality ScoreIn August, we introduced the Quality Score along with the launch of quality-based minimum bids, letting you know that we evaluate many factors, such as your ad text and clickthrough rate (CTR) to determine the minimum bid for your keyword. Today, we started incorporating a new factor into the Quality Score -- the landing page -- which will look at the content and layout of the pages linked from your ads.
Why are we doing this? Simply stated, we always aim to improve our users' experience so that these users (your potential customers) will continue to trust and value AdWords ads. Have you ever searched on a keyword, found an ad that seemed to be exactly what you wanted, and then clicked on it only to find a site that had little to do with what you were searching for? It's not a great experience.
Incorporating landing page assessment into the Quality Score will help us improve the overall advertising experience for users, advertisers and partners by increasing the quality of the sites we present in our ad results.
Advertisers who are providing robust and relevant content will see little change. However, for those who are providing a less positive user experience, the Quality Score may decrease and in turn increase the minimum bid required for the keyword to run. To help define site quality, we've created a general set of website design tips and guidelines that should help you evaluate and optimize your site.
So, take a look at these guidelines and remember that the more valuable and relevant your site is to your user, the more effective your advertising will be -- and the better your chance of converting a click to a customer.
Finally, you may rest assured that feedback from this thread has already been passed on to the right folks here at Google.
AWA
Nonetheless we will await any feedback you may have.
Incidentally, if we changed the landing pages and made them 'ideal' do you know if the minimum bid would be reduced again, and if so how often does the QS get calculated. Again I know you probably cannot gice specifics, but there would be no point in putting right what was wrong if it made no impact.
What was the problem? Customers were buying like crazy when they could see my ads. Google was making a lot more money from me when I could afford the bids.
This must be a glitch. There is no rhyme or reason to what was raised.
My "Inactives" were down to a handful and the page content hasn't changed for the most part.
They're playing around in the live environment again....
Israel
