Last few weeks has been so negative about adwords, that i almost think Google has been taken over by some lunatics hell bent on destroying the model which made me, others and Google so much money.
I have no problem with algo tweaks etc etc, but when every 2nd post is about a problem, something just aint right.
So without being rude folks, here is your chance to tell the world and Google what is wrong with Adwords at present...
Shak
Me too - being unable to bid on trade marks when selling that product. Don't think we are going to see a solution to that in the UK for a long time.
Slowness of server to respond. Enter login details, go put keetle on, have cup of tea, come back and look at the stats that should be near instant. Takes ages to ad adverts etc.
It seems the algorithm has becoem too complex and there are glitches that make some costs per click relative to rank inexplicable. Then a agian I could be being stupid, then again I am a customer (and one that feels he knows the way round the system pretty well)
Me too - cost effective advertising, yes please
[edited by: Shak at 3:09 pm (utc) on May 21, 2004]
[edit reason] NO specifics please [/edit]
My experience
I have started using Adwords since Aug. 2003. The first month, I had many problems and contacted them by E-mail on a daily basic. The next month the communication becomes weekly and by the third month, I hardly wrote to them anymore. Of course, I still have some problems. Most of these can be solved by myself, by reading or asking the questions in this forum and by letting the time to solve by themselves (patiently). The remainders, I just gave up. I’m currently managing over 5000 keywords consisting of several industries. 10000 keywords are very near in future. I am still learning.
My observations
Google is in a process of "trial and error" and in some cases, they don’t know what they are doing. They are still learning. They know the theory but have very little in practical. Most of these problems are either:
- they don’t know the answer
- they're not sure
- they don’t know the cause
- they have lack of communication from the experts to technical personnel
- they have been flooded with the inquiries and are unable to handle all. Most of these may not be a real problem but lack of experience, patience and guideline compliance.
Just my thought.
Have a nice long weekend!
I say, screw all that stuff. All of that stuff, barring major problems via communication can be solved if you spend the $10k/month or more...they'll assign you an account manager.
I say the major problems I have had are the following:
1) Clicks per day have dropped dramatically since the beginning on May. Some of this is related to increased competition, however some of it seems unexplainable. Could it be because the summer is approaching and less people are online? I think something changed in the system that affected dozens of my campaigns.
2) Inability to use Adsense revenue towards Adwords expenses. It just doesn't make sense to send all of us cheques that always take forever to get here, when they can just assign that value directly to our Adwords account. I know some people claim that tax reasons benefit Google for sending us separate cheques, but this is not the case. Google is still able to seperate the Adwords vs. Adsense on paper, which is good enough for the IRS, CCRA, etc.
3) Inconsistent responses to keywords and ads. Somebody mentioned that different google reps have different viewpoints on what is acceptable. Fine, I guess there will always be an element of that...however, when I am running a successful campaign for months, and then all of a sudden I get one of those annoying Google Adwords Approval e-mails, it's a LOT more than frustrating.
4) Fraudulent Clicks - I would say about 10% of my overall budget is fraudulent. I guess this is acceptable only in the case that you're still making profit.
Lastly, I agree with all those that said that Google is still one of the best options online for PPC. By far the most aggravating is the reduction/decline of overall clicks. More clicks = More money. Less clicks = FRUSTRATION!
I say, screw all that stuff. All of that stuff, barring major problems via communication can be solved if you spend the $10k/month or more...they'll assign you an account manager.
Yes, but it doesn't speed up the delays. I have sent questions via the web interface and waited, then eventually contacted the account manager who found the questions and dealt with them personally. I have regarded the account manager as a sales person, not a superbeing who is good at editing, fraud detection, technician etc, so I have stuck to the form as the initial point of contact.
I say, screw all that stuff. All of that stuff, barring major problems via communication can be solved if you spend the $10k/month or more...they'll assign you an account manager.
Apart from your comments assuming that spending more gives you a better services (which it doesn't always, I know), it's difficult to spend 10k a month when they keep taking your account down for no reason.
My account is back online now with no changes or anything. I haven't received an apology or explaination.
I think I will give them a quick call.
My account is back online now with no changes or anything. I haven't received an apology or explaination.
1) Our account switched off without warning. We only found out when the ads weren't showing up. Nothing on the control panel to indicate anything was wrong. In the end it turned out to be that they's assumed the account was associated with another adwords account run by a company we have that did a chargeback. In reality we are only a partial shareholder there. (Google eventually refunded the chargeback too!)
2) Canned replies when we write about problems and bugs. The people at the sharp end should be trained be trained better to know when to involve a technician.
3) Ads appearing for no reason. One ad appears for the wrong city! It looks like some sort of spell correction or word association.
4) Massive click fraud. Why can't I block IPs of my competitors from seeing/clicking my ad?
5) Getting an account manager. Google told us their policy is that we could have one when we spend $5k more. I asked them $5k more than what? They didn't know. Weird.
6) Lack of support. The phone number for your nearest support centre should be plastered all over the control panel. Instead you need to go searching for it. YOU CAN'T HIDE FROM YOUR CUSTOMERS GOOGLE! That's the classic mistake made by many online businesses. Being online is not an excuse to bury your head in the sand. Most companies would rip my arm off for the money we spend with you. You should be kissing my feet.
7) Difficult control panel. Should be must easier to copy -ve keywords and campaign settings from other campaigns. I have trouble explaining it to the staff.
8) Tracking ROI difficult. You need to insert some variables at the end of the target URL. Can't google do this ****? At least maker it an option.
well that's enough now. Maybe I'll write some more later. GRRR!
It went back online today? On a sunday?
Sorry, mis-information. It went on again Friday. My week is Sunday to Thurday (Weird I know). So only found out this morning. Still, it was down for 10 days in total.
I think for the most part, AdWords has been good. I do have a few complaints, and I really did hate it when you guys changed the look of the ads over a month ago, (Although that just might just be because I liked the old look).
1. I wish you could pause KeyWords within an AdGroup. Right now, if I want to pause KeyWords within an AdGroup, I have to setup another AdGroup, put in the KeyWords that I want, and pause the other one with the unwanted KeyWords.
2. I always get errors when using the AdWords Account Manager. You can almost count on it.
On a good note, I see the new feature where you can add negative KeyWords to every AdGroup/across the whole Campaign... This is very handy.
All The Best,
C.K.
P.S. Just remember that the success of Google AdWords is based upon your Advertisers. You scratch our back, we scratch yours.
On the downside. I probably get about 80% of my campaigns and ads disapproved. At first they told me to put the affiliate status in the ads. So I started doing that and it was fine. Then I'd set up another campaign and put the aff at the end and then I would get all those disapproved on the grounds of "Your ad text sentence drops off is not a complete sentence." So I take it back out and get the same affiliate status complaint again.
But the most popular dissaproval is for when they say my link has pop ups. But the odd thing is I don't have my pop-up blocker on and I visit these same pages and can't find any pop-ups or pop-unders on my computers. When first opening the pages or when leaving them. I wrote them about it and all they say is that they see them. I don't understand how a pop up would only target certain computers and not mine? Sites that I know have pop-ups always work on my computer. I don't know if they are going deep into the site and finding them on "some" page within it, but I thought the rule only applied to the exact landing page the link is sent to anyways...
Another annoying thing is that I never know by there stats what position my ad is truely in. It's always wrong for the most part. When I hit the estimate keywords button it is way off. For high competetive keywords that I am only bidding 5 cents with it will say Average position - 4.5 or something. But when I search for that keyword there are pages and pages of ads and mine will usually be on the 2nd or 3rd page. Not the 4th or 5th position on the first page. It keeps saying this same average position though while it is running and receiving impressions even though it is wrong and way off. I'd be more like the 16th position. And when I would up my max CPC for that keyword the CPC would go up in what they charge me but it would not affect the actual position at all or there false position in the stats. It would still say 4.5 in the stats. And in reality when checked it would still be the 16th or so position. With just a higher cost per click! And this kind of innacuracy is widespread throughout most of my keywords....
Very innacurate! Hard to manage bids or positions. Not to mention that despite having the budgets for each campaign about 4-5x what they recommend it still doesn't always show at all. I mean I have a total budge of $340 per day in adwords and yet I'm still only getting about 30-50 clicks per day with the ads not always showing on each keyword. Surely my budget should be high enough to cover it being shown each time. I'm really only pay $1-9 per day. I want to improve that and improve my CTR but with the inaccuries of the stats it's hard to manage my bids or make sure that there position really went up for each one. I have thousands of keywords accross many campaigns and adgroups and don't have time to check each manually for the real data!
Then there are keywords that say get 0 impressions. But when I search on these keywords I don't see the ad at all and in the sats even a day later I don't see my search calculated as an impression for it. I suppose because they didn't show it for that term. I don't understand why not either. I wonder how often these keywords are getting searched and impressions but they are just not showing my ad. And I mean on pages with only a few other ads on them. Not ones where I would be burried on page 9.
Then there was another campaign I set up with hundreds of keywords and it said it was active but it wasn't. I got ad disapprovals for some other campaigns but not for this one. I got no notice of any disapprovals or keyword disapprovals for it. In the account area it shows that it is active and shows no disproved keywords or ads. But 0 impressions. And these are from very highly searched keywords according to Overture. And when I search on these keywords sure enough my ads don't come up for it.
Very sloppy...
Conversions have been very inconsistant!
Shelbee's Mom, If I remember correctly you were promoting products from ClickBank, directly to the Merchant, no? Remember that if you are LUCKY, that only 1 out of every 10 products that you try to promote from ClickBank will sell through AdWords.
Thought I might point that out. The majority of ClickBank Products do not sell through Google AdWords directly to the Merchant.
C.K.
No, No, No Shelbees Mom. Have you made any sales yet? If so, then you must know that you can make a commission sending customers directly from AdWords to the Merchant Site. Yes, you can most definitely make great profit doing this, and yes you can make great profit doing this with ClickBank Products.
All I am trying to say, is that most ClickBank products do not seem to convert to sales when sent directly from AdWords to the Merchant page. Is this ClickBanks fault? No. It is usually because the KeyWords you are using for that Campaign are not targeted enough, or the Merchant's Sales Page simply doesn't get the customer to buy/doesn't convert.
I know a few people that are making over $3000 a month just sending people straight through AdWords to a Merchant Site... And this is just from promoting ClickBank Products, nevermind that there are a bunch more Affiliate Networks to promote too.
Hope that answered your questions.
C.K.
I just sticky mailed you ShelbeesMom.
C.K.
Why can't I block IPs of my competitors from seeing/clicking my ad?
Probably because comparing the IP address against a list would slow down the page, when we are talking about millions of page views across the system every day - for a handful of advertisers.
You have no foolproof way of knowing the IP address of your competitors. They don't need to look at ads only from the office. Smaller offices use dynamic IP addresses such as the kind you might get with ADSL.
This would also mean that you might not see the ads of your competitors - either you will see gaps instead of ads (you could have fun devising alternative ads for competitors), or undeserving low bidders would appear high - making you think that they are new competitors.
My head is spinning thinking about it.
Ash
That's not true. Google already does this. If you click an ad a couple of times Google stops showing it. So they are already doing IP blocking.
In any case, I don't mind the ad being displayed. It would be enough that I can block certain IPs in the control panel and when clicks come from those IPs I don't pay for them.
That's not true. Google already does this. If you click an ad a couple of times Google stops showing it. So they are already doing IP blocking.
Not sure what you claim is not true. I read it to mean that you didn't want your competitors to see your ads, ever, not just on the third click. In fact, no advertiser wants anyone to click their ad more than once.
I am saying that you're not in a position to assemble a list of IP addresses of your competitors. How do you know where they are clicking from? AOL, from the office, from the IP address of their web server, from the IP address of the Akamai server? etc :)
Similarly, Google can't always know if a click is from a competitor. They have fragments of info, e.g. cookie tied to Adwords, toolbar, Adsense, etc, but given the small number of advertisers compared to the general searching population, I can't see it being worthwhile for Google to do this.
Advertisers are likely to click their competitors ads at least once, just to see what/who they are competing with. How could they bid meaningfully if they couldn't see any competitor ads?
I know who is clicking my ads. I'd just like to automate the refund so I would not have to write begging for money each time it happens.
Is it possible to contact US AdWords-support by E-mail?
However, logged in today and was extremely excited to see a conversion rate of 33%. Wow, I thought, a gift from google for my bad experience.
I'll look a little deeper. That's odd, I thought, this breakdown only says I have ten clicks and have only spent £4. But the campaign summary says I have spent 104.
What's going on!?!?!? Are the reports now complete nonsense? I mean, good grief.
[webmasterworld.com...]
AWA
They explained, that the lack of showing of my ads was due to the fact, that AdWords-specialists reviews campaigns (accounts?) when they have reached a certain amount of impressions. Apparently, we reached this limit (around 1,5 mio?) and they took all the campaigns down for review. And now it's back - after review.
Is this standard practice? And, if so, why take the campaigns down while reviewing? This doesn't make any sense to me - maybe they didn't want to admit that they made a mistake...
I bid on a few mid-volume keywords and one of the most important ones was labelled 'at risk'. I upped the CPC limit and changed the adcopy (just as they advise you to do) but after a day or two the ad was disabled. I feel it is utterly stupid for them to work this way disabling ads for 2 main reasons:
1) the advert had been changed but and they didn't give it time to improve the CTR. They shouldn't include the previous CTR and ad history if you've made their recomended changes.
2) even though the CTR was low it was bringing in a few £ a day for google. Now that the ad is disabled they are down in revenue and I am down one vital advert - neither of us are in a perfect scenario. Why can't they just leave it as it was? Why bother with the CTR 'at risk' & 'disabled' features so much? Overture works perfectly without them!
If the conversion rate is high then surely both the keywords and the advert are relvant to the user (although, of course, this system can be manipulated).
Actually, thinking about it, this is a silly post, apart from the first line. Ignore me.
