Sudden increase of CPC recently?

My campaigns are full of inactive keywords.

[fischermx]

I didn't review my campaigns since last week, I remember a campaign with arround 1000 keyword in which I had about 150 "inactive for search".
Today I have 750 "inactive for search"!

Does anybody get any similar to this recently?

[manx]

"I'm presuming many of you have submitted your
frustrations to the AdWords team. Have any of you
received replies yet? I too, am experiencing this
issue on a huge scale."

I sent 2 not very polite emails yesterday and got a
"canned" response on how to raise my quality score.

And, (from what I understand) if you accept the bid,
That is the price you pay Even if the price directly
below you is .02.

[Atomic]

it would seem an inopportune time for them considering the concurrent ramp-up of MSN's competitive product

Until very recently very little attention was paid to Google. People on the MS campus have been frantic in their efforts to catch up but they have a long, long way to go. MS may be "ramping up" and that certainly sounds good doesn't it? PR and rumors aren't going to be much competition.

[Abigail]

Now, one would expect to see a corresponding increase in the adsense payot - but, this is what I have experienced
3 days ago .29 for a particular webpage set, 2 days ago .27 for the same page, .15 yesterday for the same page, and lo and behold .05 for todays. So much for the big increase in adwords cost - it ain't goin' to the adsense people!

[Need3lives]

Seeing the same thing here - big dropoff yesterday due to a high percentage of keywords being disabled, and now asking for $1 to $10 bids. Many of these are keywords we have advertised on successfully for well over a year, with very high click-through rates on our text ads. The keywords we bid on are very well targeted to the landing page we use for each ad group. Contacted our AW rep here today to have them look into it - still waiting to hear back.

I suspect also this has something to do with Google not actually spidering the landing page, but just the site in general (home page). Our site covers a wide variety of topics, so I am sure Google has trouble determining what it is about if it is trying to look at the site as a whole, and not the individual RELEVANT page.

[Atomic]

I suspect also this has something to do with Google not actually spidering the landing page, but just the site in general (home page). Our site covers a wide variety of topics, so I am sure Google has trouble determining what it is about if it is trying to look at the site as a whole, and not the individual RELEVANT page.

I think you may be onto something here. I hope it's something like this and that it's temporary.

[wrgvt]

My campaigns that have run for years with bids in the 20 cent to dollar range are now seeing about 5% of its normal impressions and click throughs. Most of my keywords are now inactive with minimum bids now being $5 or $10. This is nuts. The bottom line is my AdWords account is now toast. It's pointless. Now I have to redirect my $70K-$100K I spend on AdWords to Yahoo, if I can figure out the Yahoo stuff.

Great business plan, Google.

[bostonseo]

The new definition of Google means greed.

[etr06]

I too, received a generic response about periodic scanning of sites, and thereby changing my Quality Score.

My pages have been performing consistently and well for over 9 months. The content on my landing pages has been updated over time to stay fresh, but AMOUNT, GENRE, and FORMAT of content haven't changed in 9 months. So if their response was indeed accurate, then they're saying that they haven't looked at my page in about 9 months to evaluate the Quality Score. I find that hard to believe. I have to imagine that they look at their advertisers more than once in 9 months to evaluate their landing pages for Quality Score.

But pretending that is true - that they didn't in fact look at my page to evaluate the QC for over 9 months - then what? I understand the market shifts, QS is adjusted, and min cpc may rise or fall based upon numerous factors. As a business person and long term Google client, I have no problem with that; in fact, I welcome it. But those changes happen GRADUALLY, not 5,000% overnight. Normal market changes happen at a pace that we can cope with - at a pace we can adjust our business model to accommodate.

If Google doesn't address this issue soon, they'll be putting me, and I'd venture to say a number of companies who's online marketing plan for lead generation is dependent on AdWords traffic, out of business.

Google AdWords people reading these posts - are you listening?

[breny]

MSN Adcenter here we come!

[fischermx]

etr06:
Did I understand well? It sounded like they were talking about a manual screening of the sites to determine quality score? Is that correct?