The issue I would like for you to address is of course is the radical rise in the minim bid costs that many of us are seeing. To get at this problem, I spoke to one rep on the phone today as my personal rep is “unavailable” and has been all day. I sent a lengthy email to support early this morning (my rep) and left a voice mail for my rep to contact me immediately. So far the only response I have gotten was from the lower the level rep when I declined to leave another voice mail for my personal rep. She was very apologetic and nice, but didn’t know what was going on. She told me all the reps were told was to expect some changes, but that they were not told what the changes would encompass or whom the changes would affect. She said she had spoken to some customers today that had similar issues, but simply put she doesn’t know what to advise them as she doesn’t know what the new quality system looks for other than the generic stuff from the Google Ad Words page. She looked at my account, and I had her note the same ad had been running in excess of 2 years and had produced a click through rate of 26% in those 2 years, and she agreed it wasn’t really possible to increase the quality the ad itself. She had no idea how often the bot looks at the pages so you can see if changes you make actually improve your quality score.
Your employees have been uninformed and left in the dark about these major changes to your program, and perhaps more importantly your paying customers have been left in the dark as well. The smart thing would have been to come to the community months ago and said hey we are thinking about some major changes, these are how these changes are going to affect you, and here is what you can do to bring your landing pages up to snuff. That way your business partners would not be left holding the bag when they are hit with overnight radical price increases, and are forced to seek immediate answers from your employees who have also been left in the dark, and have no useful information to provide your customers. I would suggest as good business etiquette and professionalism would dictate you roll these changes back immediately and evaluate what you have learned from this. Then come forward and announce what changes you plan to make, describe in detail what accounts it will have a negative impact on, and provide in detail guidelines for producing the type of landing pages that you want. That way your business partners can make a business decision as to if they want to continue to do business with you under the new system.
Sincerely
Mark A. Libbert
Attorney At Law
P.S. If any Overture/Yahoo rep is lurking I have 10-12k a month buy for you.
Thanks again for sharing the info. Good luck to you!
Dave.
From googles point of view this is pure logic. They say: globally we are going to loose money on bad quality sites/ads etc., but by raising the CPC we can cover the loss from the clicks we would miss. Google don't give a #*$! about the internet users experience if they can earn the same amount just by raising the CPC.
pparently you can BUY quality if you are willing to raise your bids to $6 or $12. Really, you can buy quality? Isn't the landing page the EXACT same it was before though? Thus, using logic (if you have any), this is about money, not about better user experience. Anyone who doesn't see this needs to get their heads out of their *sses.
If this were simply about boosting short-term revenues, Google would have raised the minimum bid just enough to increase the amount of money coming in--not by enough to drive away advertisers. (After all, how many advertisers are really going to pay $6 or $12 for clicks that have been cheap in the past?)
Sure, it's "about money," but only in the sense that improving the user experience will make Google search network more attractive to users and advertisers over the long term.
Sure, it's "about money," but only in the sense that improving the user experience will make Google search network more attractive to users and advertisers over the long term.
You and the google experience. Give it up Mr. $hill, you'd probably name your grandkid Google if you could choose. User experience, come on, this is gr$$d.
I totally agree with Europeforvisitors. Staying number 1 searchengine is of a higher order then getting a more profitable month.
hdpt00, playground insults don't enhance the quality of the discussion (or of your arguments).
We know you think this will all help increase your adsense revenue, we get it. Stop trying to wind people up.
lol
No advertiser should become smug or comfortable just because they didn't get whacked in this round, round two is coming and increases are likely for the supposed "survivors".
And it doesn't have a thing to do with "Landing Page Quality".
[edited by: TypicalSurfer at 3:31 pm (utc) on July 19, 2006]
We know you think this will all help increase your adsense revenue, we get it
I don't think Google's recent changes on the search side will have much effect (if any) on my AdSense revenues.
And this thread isn't about me or you, so can we get back on topic?
Better stay with the arguments, why to get personal? If you disagree then convince us. Nobody knows what the real planns of Google are. We can only assume that they will do what is in their best interest. And I doubt real bad landing pages is on long term Googles best interest. Adwords competes with the searchengine results or content on partnersites. User experience is important here from Googles perspective.
Sure, it's "about money," but only in the sense that improving the user experience will make Google search network more attractive to users and advertisers over the long term.
Well they shouldn't forget about the user experience of their advertisers. Isn't that also just as important as their visitors?
As it is, to be a google advertiser, you have to deal with a constantly changing system, no clear rules, no warnings when your account is being shut off, and even before this issue it was no walk in the park. Making a change and not having it take effect for days, impression fraud they seem to do nothing about, click fraud they do little about (although they work on fixing that more than impression fraud), and poor customer support.
The *only* good thing about the adwords system is how their ROI, but if they start jacking up min bids for everyone that doesn't own a major company like Ebay, that will go out the window quickly.
Better stay with the arguments, why to get personal? If you disagree then convince us. Nobody knows what the real planns of Google are. We can only assume that they will do what is in their best interest. And I doubt real bad landing pages is on long term Googles best interest. Adwords competes with the searchengine results or content on partnersites. User experience is important here from Googles perspective.
Its the attitude in these posts - "but google are only trying to improve things, what are you complaining about?" thats annoys me.
Trying to deny in these threads that its all a mess (intentional or unintentional) suggests people are commenting just to wind advertisers up.
Personally Im going to stop commenting on these threads now, I seem to be following EFV around countering his points, and I've got better things to do. Maybe I'll go and post some nonsense on the adsense boards just to get a reaction.
And my bid on that keyword phrase (and synonyms) has gone up 10x?
One would think that the landing page quality algo needs some work.
ps. lots of text on the page.
<added>
or perhaps the search algo sux.
If the guy spent as much time on his site as he does here defending everything google does he'd be a billionaire.
If you worked on your sites to increase their quality instead of whining and crying at forums you would be one to
[edited by: Fryman at 6:54 pm (utc) on July 19, 2006]
I have had most of my best keywords disabled.
* I have been advertising with the same keywords since 2003-2004
* I'm a fairly small publisher with a budget of about $70k per year for adwords
* My AD CTR is regularly in th double digits. I basically lead the pack in my niches and I get top position for a very small (relative) bid.
* My ads are highly targeted
* My "landing page" is NOT an affiliate site. It is my PR4 website which contains 20+ pages of solid, RELEVANT information.
* there is no adsense or any other PPC on my site.
Now if Google finds a problem with my site or my CTR fine, but what I need is some specifics and CONSISTENCY. There is no consistency in their action.
As of right now, most (not all) of my competitor ads are still showing. Their sites are similar to mine. Right now, when I do a search for one of my better keywords, most of the ads send visitors to a sparse optin page. Of course the ads by AOL and shopping.com remain and send users to non-relevant pages. So, you devil's advocates spare me with the "just improve your page quality" crap. Where is the consistency with what Google "says" vs what really occurs.
I'm not whining as I have other solutions to the issue, but it is a problem that people have the right to complain about.
It is not like eating big macs and blaming mcdonalds for making you fat. It is more like eating big macs at the same mcdonalds for 3 years and helping it become one of the top mcdonalds in the country, investing in the future of the franchise and then one day they tell you their new "policy" won't allow them to serve you a big mac because you don't meet the new customer standards for big mac eaters... BUT they will make an exception and serve you if you pay more for your big mac.
Trying to deny in these threads that its all a mess (intentional or unintentional) suggests people are commenting just to wind advertisers up.
As usual, it's hard to tell from these forums how much of a mess anything is. Every single change Google makes produces a howling rant from some segment of advertisers, publishers, or both. The folks who get hurt post, the folks who get helped don't (or get ranted at if they do), and you just can't tell what the balance is from reading WebmasterWorld.
Too bad WebmasterWorld doesn't have a feature for some random sampling of registered users (I know, it's a skewed population to start with, but any random sampling would still be better than just counting upset postings). A thousand people in various categories (publisher, advertiser, etc.) who "promise" to respond to polls could offer some much-needed sense of proportion about the actual effect whatever the most recent Google hootenanny is about.
this lack of transparency in the new model just doesn't seem right. essentially they're saying "Advertise with us, but we dont know if you'll make it in our magazine nor what the cost of your advertising will be"
i'm wondering how google would feel if a large community would boycott AdWords for a day and pause all campaigns.
In short, if you are actively using GA, you are providing grist for the next round of "Quality Score" profit-taking. Do us all a favor and please protect the community by not making the value of every word absolutely transparent to Google.
[edited by: eWhisper at 11:11 am (utc) on July 21, 2006]
[edit reason]
[1][edit reason] Please don't drop links - See TOS. [/edit] [/edit][/1]
The travel products compared on my website give a number 1 ranking in the organic Google results (flightticket in our language). For the related keywords adwords does not allow me to advertise!......
History:
I started a price comparing service long before Google Adwords existed. No income, just months of programming work to make an automated system. Consumer associations have praised the website. After a few years the companies that profited from my website offered payment through affiliate links. What have I done wrong Google?
I can only hope that no one on this message thread is currently using or preparing to use Google Analytics.In short, if you are actively using GA, you are providing grist for the next round of "Quality Score" profit-taking. Do us all a favor and please protect the community by not making the value of every word absolutely transparent to Google.
Read more here: <snip>
It is scary to me how someone with very little business acumen can write a blog about business and have people take them seriously. Perhaps he needs to learn about public companies, (which includes most of the Fortune 500), or business partnerships. It is not uncommon to share information with key partners in order to maximize a relationship. It also smack of thinking tht Google is just out to screw you. Google needs to protect the future of their visitor flow. They also, however, need to have good relationships with advertisers on top of that. If the advertisers ultimately win, so do they... But not at the cost of all their visitors.
If someone thinks there business partner is just trying to rip them off at every turn then they need to find a new business partner. Not scheme ways to keep them from ripping them off further.
I don't know who Matthew Roche is but he clearly lacks fundamental real world business experience, as it shows through in his writing. And for anyone who buys into the hysteria and conspiracy, go find another partner then. It makes you a fool if you continue to foster a relationship with someone you view as crooked or shady with your only action being trying to limit their ability to rip you off less. If you actually believe such things, the only SANE thing to do would be drop Google as a partner.
Number 1 in organic Google results but not allowed to advertise! (sounds evil)
Have you requested a manual review?
"Landing Page Quality"lol
No advertiser should become smug or comfortable just because they didn't get whacked in this round, round two is coming and increases are likely for the supposed "survivors".
You are right.. This will continue to evolve, and some less than capable sites that did not get hit now will get hit in the future. Convesely some sites that might have been unfairly penalized now will likely get a boost in terms of their quality in the future. The process just started.
And it doesn't have a thing to do with "Landing Page Quality".
It is almost like a 5th grade business basics class is in order. I know everyone wants to believe in conspiracies and evil plots, but if you seriously do believe in such things, you better find a different way to make a living.
Google has rolled out lots of stuff when it was not complete or perfect. I think alot of the upset customers is just do to the algo not being that accurate.
What? This isn't MySpace? My Bad... oh, yeah, ebay sux.
c ya
I do not see any data to support that they are using their other sources of data against us.
Well, this should be an easy one.
Look at the end-user agreement and/or privacy policy for Google Analytics. (I don't use GA, so haven't read them.)
Does it say that Google can use the data? If so, you have to assume that they are doing so.
Why chance it? Google Analytics isn't best of breed, by a long-shot. There are plenty of other choices. The only reason to use Google Analytics is laziness.
