Decrease 0r Increase Adwords Budget after Florida

How many of you do

[newsphinx]

I would like to know how many of you (me included of course) who suffered from the recent unsatisfactory update will increase your adwords budget.

[Tropical Island]

Have already and reactivated another account for a site that disappeared.

The new program is pulling 4+% CTR and has been graduated to premium posistion some of the time. The results are so bad under one term that searchers basically have no choice but to click on the AdWords if they want our services.

[MarkWolk]

I did increase my bids, however it is exactly the opposite here.

About 9 months ago I had made a point of being #1 on Adwords on all my search phrases and kept that for 3 months.

Then I reduced all my bids to minimum (and still received some very targeted Adwords traffic).

I increased my bids a few days ago again and I am now #1 in AdWords on most of my search phrases; the clickthrus are around 1% - and the impressions are around half of what they used to be in the past.

So, based on this short experience, it looks like users are going away from Google altogether. That is my personal experience.

[yetanotheruser]

I really hope that wasn't Google's intention - I can't really beleive it would be, seems a bit suicidal.. but.. count us in.. we may have to. Grr. :(

I've moved to AV..

[Nicola]

Having surfed around a large amount of other webmaster boards (which I won't mention), I have seen very similar comments about using Adwords in the short term.

According to the majority of webmaster posts I have seen, Google are public enemy number 1.

Which is a shame, because people quickly forget the amount of free traffic they have enjoyed in the past from Google.

If it is so easy for webmasters to turn and bite the hand that fed them, then how will surfers react as the serps become filtered?

It's human nature not to click on "sponsored links".

[agent20]

we have removed all adwords bidding at the moment as conversion and traffic has substantially dropped. We only spent about $2000 a month with adwords but we tested the system and on spending around $60 a day for 6 days since the update we didnt convert one booking!

Traffic is down, quality is down, MSN, ask and other engines are now supplying us with 60% of our traffic and sales are starting to increase..

From our point of view google has dropped from a 60% introducer to less than 20% in under a week.

Is this the norm for people?

[jim_w]

agent20

I concur. I have dropprd my ads as well because of a lack of ROI.

[Nicola]

(according to Alexa)

Google page views per user are DOWN 5%
ATW page views per user are DOWN 5%
Yahoo page views per user are UP 1%
AV page views per user are UP 5%
MSN page views per user are UP 5%
Excite page views per user are UP 4%

Google seems to be seeing an overall INCREASE in traffic, so any poor ROI is not down to numbers.

[merlin30]

Perhaps you're seeing a poor ROI because users are actually quite pleased with the SERPs they are getting!

They may click on your ad out of interest, but the SERPs results being shown to them lead them to the buy site!

[jim_w]

Doesn't Alexa only track people that visit sites with their tool bar installed? I've had Alexa numbers go down while actual traffic went up. Only G knows accurately if their traffic increases or not. And these days I take what they say with a grain of salt.

[oodlum]

I've just opened up a new AdWords account but it's just an experiment. I expect the bids are too high in my area for it to be worthwhile.

merlin30 - for some, maybe. Certainly not in my field!

[Nicola]

merlin30, perhaps you have been just lucky so far.

[merlin30]

Nicola, no I haven't.

Survival, though, is all about lateral thinking.

[agent20]

Unfortunately, the serps in our market, TRAVEL, are very poor. I can understand google trying to broaden the SERPs to push users in to the adwords system to increase revenues, but you cannot second guess consumer reaction.

I am not here to complain, just to get theories for lateral approaches. Our sales havent dropped, in fact they have increased since google has changed. It is just that the traffic is now coming from other sources..

This is too much to be a coinsidence, i expect google to change again and quite soon i would think, maybe over the weekend.

None of what has been said makes sense, because all the conspiracies and theories can be dissproved in more than one way in most cases..

This is all very interesting and in my eyes, anything that makes a search engine concentrate on quality sites with quality content has to be a good thing..

[superscript]

I would rather chew on broken glass than throw money at Adwords. In my sector it is a mugs game. I'm going to stick it out - at least if I fold, I will have gone down with some dignity.

p.s. The above works on the assumption that I can find said glass,

I'm thinking perhaps 'glass broken +consumption -window
-d43rtH*£n'

[buckworks]

I did not suffer under Florida, but I'm spending more on Adwords and other PPC these days just because it's prime shopping season. I have a permanent base of PPC advertising in my mix.

The key to making it work is to figure out the maximum bidding levels that return a positive ROI for you and stay within that no matter what other bidders are doing.

[algarveb]

We operate a Travel website and since Florida our G traffic has dropped significantly. I firmly believe that the poor SERPS are in order to push people to click on the Adwords perhaps because the Adwords accounts had started to shut down due to lack of interest. As you say agent20, "you cannot second guess consumer reaction" and it is a general reaction not to use 'sponsored links'. I believe that G will be forced to reintroduce good SERPS (hopefully pre-florida) as it struggles to find a balance between revenues and customer satisfaction - a balance we all struggle to find! At the end of the day, in my opinion, poor SERPS will drive people first to Adwords, and then eventually to other Engines.

[Nicola]

This message board is full of people who are in totally different markets. So some will think Adwords is worthwhile for their market and some will think not.

I firmly believe that filters are in place to encourage Adwords accounts on selected keywords.

To all those people who are happy with their market niche - beware, your keywords may be added in phase 2.

Censorship of the serps in order to push Adwords will make surfers go elsewhere.

[Just Guessing]

Traffic (and therefore cost) from Adwords has doubled in the last week.

This is long term b2b stuff - nothing to do with Christmas!

My guess is that users are not finding what they want in the normal SERPS.

Overall traffic is about the same - less from SERPS and more from Adwords. Happy Christmas Google!

[newriver]

I was wiped out from Florida, and have had to increase my adwords spending significantly.

[deanril]

I wouldnt give Google a dime!

Oveture all the way!

[buckworks]

Are you aware that Overture partners with Gator and it's not possible to opt out from having your ads shown on Gator popups?

(At least there was no provision to do so last time I asked.)

[ronhollin]

I believe Overture gives you the choice of showing up on "Content Matching" sites or not. I'm wondering if Gator is a Content Match site.