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.
I guess you have to spend millions a month to stay in AW, not just a puny $300,000 ;-)
Time to take the profits I still can, and hop on some other ship. Maybe become a domainer. Sell to Adsense for a while. Specializing in SE typos. ;)
[edited by: eWhisper at 4:17 am (utc) on July 14, 2006]
[edit reason]
[1][edit reason] Please don't drop links. See TOS. [/edit] [/edit][/1]
Actually I am serious about a domainer. Noone can take your domains from you. This whole adwords thing has become way too much hassle and tenuous to build a future on. Hopefully Yahoo/MS will be more dependable at least for a year or more. I think they will be. After all being a WM shouldn't be a bunch of never ending (rebuild 30,000 pages - HELLO) grunt work.
[edited by: ohwell at 2:44 am (utc) on July 14, 2006]
>If that's really true, how can you be surprised if your campaigns went dark?
Yes Netmeg. Thats how I got my ads to run again just now. I told the Adwords rep how much work I'd done on them. They felt sorry for me, and relented.
[edited by: Alex_Miles at 2:40 am (utc) on July 14, 2006]
You can't do business with someone who blindsides you and won't explain why.
This is the the characteristic of a true MONOPOLY. Call the DOJ.
Google has finally turned into Microsoft, just evil-er.
Imagine calling up your usual pizza delivery service for your favourite $15 veggie pizza with extra mushrooms and pineapple, and Luigi says "Your pizza will be there in 30 minutes sorry about forgetting the coke last time and by the way its $350 today because we don't like the look of your apartment much now would you like garlic bread with that?"
I don't care how special the brats in the plex think they are, its no way to treat a customer.
I have my keywords back at their usual price now and do you know what? I don't want them.
[edited by: Alex_Miles at 3:10 am (utc) on July 14, 2006]
Adwords game has now some rare difficulties you won't understand.
adwords means potential dark, problems, dissapointment, time and effort lost.
Now for counsultants and account managers, you can show your customers how they will end paying $10 for the same others pays 0.30!
Keep it difficult to understand, so only experts can use it, thank you!
"We are looking for sites with substantial added value that lends to a positive end user experience."
That line above from the reported email from a Google rep just blows me away. Yes, I can see this being important for the natural SERP's, but NOT for the paid listings!
Let me explain. If someone is looking for a plasma tv and clicks on an ad, do they necessarily want "added value" on the product page before they purchase the item? Hell no! They don't give a rats arse about the history of plasma tv's, or how many there are in each household...etc, etc, etc. They want to know how much it costs and if it is a better deal than the previous site they visited...then bam, they pay for it! Great user experience without the bogus, rehashed, copied content!
Imagine if in a magazine Coca-Cola didn't just have flashy ads and had a nice little story about its history, and how Joe Blow from Ct cured his cancer by drinking it? Would that add to the user experience? I think not! CC want to make sales and can do so with a flashy ad.
PLEASE G kids, do not confuse free SERP's where one can get free info with PAID listings where one wants to sell a product or service. I would venture that you are taking AWAY from the user experience by adding garbage content on a product page just for the sake of pleasing the G algorithm Gods.
G, get your head out of your arse!
That line above from the reported email from a Google rep just blows me away. Yes, I can see this being important for the natural SERP's, but NOT for the paid listings!Let me explain. If someone is looking for a plasma tv and clicks on an ad, do they necessarily want "added value" on the product page before they purchase the item? Hell no! They don't give a rats arse about the history of plasma tv's, or how many there are in each household...etc, etc, etc. They want to know how much it costs and if it is a better deal than the previous site they visited...then bam, they pay for it! Great user experience without the bogus, rehashed, copied content!
Imagine if in a magazine Coca-Cola didn't just have flashy ads and had a nice little story about its history, and how Joe Blow from Ct cured his cancer by drinking it? Would that add to the user experience? I think not! CC want to make sales and can do so with a flashy ad.
PLEASE G kids, do not confuse free SERP's where one can get free info with PAID listings where one wants to sell a product or service. I would venture that you are taking AWAY from the user experience by adding garbage content on a product page just for the sake of pleasing the G algorithm Gods.
G, get your head out of your arse!
You took the words right out of my mouth. I was just about to post a similar statement.
This is direct response advertising. It's not about providing content for Google's surfers!
Some more children's logic from Google's landing page guidelines:
-Distinguish sponsored links from the rest of your site content.
-Try to provide information without requiring users to register. Or, provide a preview of what users will get by registering.
-In general, build pages that provide substantial and useful information to the end-user. If your ad does link to a page consisting of mostly ads or general search results (such as a directory or catalog page), provide additional information beyond what the user may have seen in your ad or on the page prior to clicking on your ad.
-You should have unique content (should not be similar or nearly identical in appearance to another site). For more information, see our affiliate guidelines.
I love the second one. "Try to provide information without requiring users to register." I had a bunch of squeeze pages killed by Google probably for this reason.
Helloooo Goooogle! I am not running a charity over here! You don't let me ride for free so your surfers do not ride for free either.
[edited by: mona at 4:43 pm (utc) on July 14, 2006]
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[1][edit reason] See TOS [/edit] [/edit][/1]
Where is it stated in "that company's" TOS that this guy has to fiddle with his campaigns on a regular basis?
He should be surprised because they were his campaigns and he should have been given fair warning they were about to go dark. I'm sure his credit cards were being debited.
Anyone else sick of "this company's" way of publicly speaking. They try to lookK so professional to the business world. jeesh just speak normally like we do on this board.
They must have hired someone to write all their form letters cause they all have that same corporate mumbo jumbo quality to them.
"substantial added value" is awfully vague. Probably on purpose.
[edited by: mona at 4:51 pm (utc) on July 14, 2006]
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[1][edit reason] language [/edit] [/edit][/1]
I can tell *them* how well the user experience went by my sales. No algorithm can replace that.
Heck, I dont even go by CTR. I go by profit. Just business. Some keywords I use have ca bad CTR, but great gross profit percent. Now why on earth would I mess with it?
[edited by: mona at 4:55 pm (utc) on July 14, 2006]
[edit reason]
[1][edit reason] See TOS [/edit] [/edit][/1]
Im sure those that click get a positive user experience.
That's the whole problem the last year. Everytime you check in "the system" has found 85 KWs that need your attention.
Sheesh. I feel like a 12 year old "go for" at his first job rather than a partner everytimne you leave the stats and return after say a day or two. They can write algos but they can't write a system that can run without having it's hand held every two hours!
The problem is that Google doesn't look at quality with a business definition. No one knows what google's definition of quality is, but it definately has nothing to do with making money.
To update you as to what has happened since I posted this: First off my rep called me first thing the next day after I posted this and apologized for being unavailable. My rep was very courteous and polite, and it was a long conversation. I felt he sincerely tried to help. The ultimate conclusion of the conversation was my rep telling me to not make any changes to my landing page yet because he doesn’t know what to tell me to change at this point.
Now this next part is strictly my opinion, so take it at that. Google tried something new, and it produced unintended consequences in a lot of cases. I really don’t think it was a money grab as I see so many vacant ad spaces I suspect it generated a negative monetary result for them.
And a request if I may be so bold. I would ask all of you to be nice to the Google reps you speak to. What happened wasn’t their fault, and I have felt all of the ones I have spoken to sincerely want to help, but just lack the knowledge as to what will remedy these problems.
"The customer is always right" "Service with a smile"
Googles Mantra
"The customer is always wrong" "Only we know best"
[webmasterworld.com...]
Has nothing todo with the update - everyone gets vacation time.
Exactly. A couple of my listings that were "banned" were sent directly to the site the surfer typed in. For example as an affiliate to widgets.com
KW = [widgets]
destination URL = widgets.com
yet it is found to have a bad "landing page" and jacked to $1.00 CPC. No the real reason is it was at 1-5 cents and was making me (not them) money.
That is proof this is not based on the landing page.
The landing page can't get any more user friendly. They are where they want to be!
Like widgets.com is gonna redesign their site after I write them and tell them, "Um Hi widgets.com. Um the google bot doesn't like your page and raise my CPC 100 fold. Thus traffic has stopped. Umm could you redesign your site please"
: )
It would be comical if it wasn't so sad.
[edited by: jatar_k at 5:35 pm (utc) on July 14, 2006]
One thing that bothers me is that another advertiser I know, who does have a dedicated rep, received her reply today that basically said sorry, and please review the quality guidelines.
So I'd consider yourself lucky that your rep is trying to find out what part of the quality guidelines you're being affected by..
I'm not holding out much hope for more than a cut/paste personally..
[edited by: ohwell at 4:51 am (utc) on July 14, 2006]
(1) They begin doing PPC
(2) They sign up a massive amount of advertisers in a short period of time
(3) Their revenue zooms
...so far, so good. But then...
(4) All of the sucessful people in every genre are already customers. There is very little 'new blood' for them to harvest.
(5) Stockholders expect to see massively increasing revenue
(6) Without adding new customers, they must increase their bottom line by coming up with new ways to gouge their current customers.
(7) These ideas each quarter (almost like clockwork) are known as new 'features'.
-------
We'll be having this same conversation, with different terminology, again in 90 days.
I absolutely cannot believe they are doing this and getting away with it. I am truly at a loss for any other words to describe this situation.
Good luck to all attempting to pick up the pieces and move on.
I'm not happy. I'm out of business. But I saw it coming. I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner. I can't blame them. Every business including your own tries to maximize profits and squeeze as much as you are able to out of your customers. When you reach the price at which the market will bear no more, you back off.
I think Google will back off a bit, but the new minimum will still be $3-$5. And that effectively eliminates EVERY affiliate, and mabye a lot of small online stores.
An affiliate like myself using Google AdWords is dead. No affiliate can make a profit paying $5-$10 a click. I did fine if I kept it under $.20 a click. So it's not even close at these new rates. Google knew this would kill the affiliates. But that's business and they killed us in cold blooded fashion. They don't need us anymore. That's the facts.
I'm not sure if the little online stores can survive and continue to run their ads. Maybe only the biggest stores will be able to advertise on Google now.
So, it is back to trying to get some clicks from the free, organic SERPS. That and what little traffic I can pick up on Yahoo and MSN.
