AdWords Damage Call Thread

Let's start a tally - how much $ are you going to take away from Google?

[toomer]

There's been a number of references to AdWords budgets that have effectively been destroyed by todays changes. They're spread across various threads -- so if you're comfortable with restating those numbers again ... let's put them all here in one simple thread so that some intrepid journalist can find a quick and easy reference to tally up. And start writing about.

I'd recommend trying to keep the discussion to a minimum so that the thread doesn't go off track - just sticking to the basics of how many of your keywords have been destroyed, the %age increase you're being expected to pay, and - most importantly - the total amount of money you won't be spending on AdWords now due to the changes. Based on what I've seen so far ... it's in the millions already.

[toomer]

I manage client accounts,
Due to the new algo,

$400K less per month!

Holycow, Holyearth! ;-)

So that puts us at $573,000 per month that Google has decided they don't want. A tangible $6.8m in annual revenue that is gone right now.

How many more? At this rate, I bet we could find almost $20m in annual revenue impact -- and given that there's probably 10-100x more people out there that have been impacted that are reporting here ... those would be some significant numbers!

[sailorjwd]

I just created my MSN Adcenter account and first campaign... yippie

If I switch totally it will be about $200K in Adwords revenue gone to MSN. I suspect MSN won't be able to provide enough clicks to eat that up though.

[xor0]

23-24k a month just went down by about a third.

[bboyv]

since Google will make less money now, since everyone is wiped out, earnings will be down, lets make money by shorting GOOG stock

[Finalclue]

Down by 30k/month... more SEO from now. That probably safer :)

[cjshu]

Yep, got setup with MSN and Yahoo.

What ticks me off is I had some keywords already inactive suggesting 50 cents or something and now they want $10!

Thanks for screwing us and yourselves Google.

CJ

[trannack]

Although some of my older campaigns have been severely hit, I have noticed that campaigns added only in the last month, with different urls, have remained unaffected. Having spoken to numerous friends with big adwords accounts, they have all, without exception, been hit. The trend seems to be a slow decline, with the number of inactive keywords increasing per day - mainly after they have received a click! Considering that I believe Google makes 95% of its profit from advertising what are they playing at? Personally with numerous tweeks I am just hanging in there with no change, the changes that hit hard several months ago reduced my spend by 60% to £4K/month.

[Rosalind]

This change has clearly driven some advertisers away, but what about the other side of the coin? Will there be other advertisers who are more attracted to the programme because it's now more exclusive? In other words, your ads won't appear alongside as many MFA ads, so your site isn't associated with other poor-quality sites.

Is anyone actually considering increasing their Adwords spend as a result?

[jim2003]

Corollary questions to Rosalinds question: Are there any advertisers who ever chose not to advertise on a keyword on google because of the quality of the other advertisers on that keyword? Do you think you become "associated" with other advertisers because you advertise on the same keywords?

[ebuilder]

How can you increase your spend. I would like to know how. Ive gone from 30k to 30.00. Funny thing though, I was only getting 1 sale per thousand visitors before this happened. Yesterday I got 1 per 100 visitors. So I actually like this better, I just wish they would stop cancelling the keywords that are converting for me. How is this a quality issue. 1 out of 100 purhcase a product and then they cancel the keyword. I don't know about anyone else but 1% conversion is pretty good by my standards. At least a lot better than 1 in a thousand.

[bferriolo]

I maintain my own campaigns and own the business. We will spend $40-$50k less per month totaling $500k ish a year. This is a drop in the bucket for google yes, but this lost traffic will cost me anywhere between $800k-$1mil in revenues per year. I understand the need for a quality search...and quality sites. What i dont understand is why google feels like they are GOD of the online advertising world. I'm paying for placement and clicks to promote MY BUSINESS, which obviously they dont care about. I pay their rate per click I keep outstanding click thru rates, I constantly change my copy trying to better my last ad. All of which is caring about google's business(more clicks more money). The only thing that I ask in return is I can try and sell these people or convert these people to a sale(hence the ONLY way I can make money) Mr. Google I have paid you for the customer which I'am very grateful, now that you have been paid which adds to the $$billions$$ you already make can I please try and convert this customer to a $8.00 sale. Let us legit advertisers use our creative advertising saviness to make a fair living, and in the meantime make you the 800 pound gorilla you already are. PPC101 stream line the process and give the consumer exactly what he wants, he searches,he reads copy, he CLICKS, he reads he converts. Everyone is happy....hmmm he converts....he converts....he converts meaning the consumer..he found what he was looking for, must not have been that bad of a "google experience" We convert 1000's of customers a day to sale......How is this bad for anyone, everyone wins!

[docluv]

I am a puny fish, but last month the spend was $200, so far this month I was up to $125, then the algo change. It affected me two ways, Adwords $$$$ and Adsense Revenue.

I have one big site and a few small ones I was just getting off the ground. For the big one (which is still small in traffic with only 3000 visitors a day). Those ads were unaffected by the algo, but the EPC on the adsense went from $0.22 to $0.09. This made me stop the Adowrds for this site because I actually went negative for revenue. I have other revenue streams for the site, but Adsense was the most consistent.

So yes Yahoo and MSN are getting more of my money now. I may not even bother with Adwords for a while and I seriously think many others will too.

[RockSolidWes]

Well our account, on the average, is spending 3-4 grand less per day. Our rep is working with us to get our keywords up and running again. However, we will no loger be dependent on Google AdWords for our traffic. And this little disaster has diversified our PPC sources to include Microsoft AdCenter (in addition to Y!SM). Early data from Microsoft AdCenter suggests that the traffic quality from AdCenter is better, so in the future more of our budget MAY go to AdCenter. Especially since the new internet explorer browser will default to MSN search, MSN may in the future match Google's traffic.

[Alex_Miles]

I manage accounts. Google just lost somewhere between $60-80k per month.

[Soze]

Those ads were unaffected by the algo, but the EPC on the adsense went from $0.22 to $0.09. This made me stop the Adowrds for this site because I actually went negative for revenue. I have other revenue streams for the site, but Adsense was the most consistent.

See, that is the problem. You are paying for adwords just to make money from adsense. That is what is contributing to this algorithm change. They are tired of it.

Forgive me if I misunderstood you.

[toomer]

The approximate tally (not counting sailorjwd, who I don't know if his/her $200k is monthly or annually) is now up to a cool $750,000 per month.

$9,000,000 per year less revenues. All from our statistical little sample here on WW. Makes you wonder if the real impact to Google's top line is going to be more like $90m or $900m, doesn't it?

[Nefig]

Google lost about 140k/year of my adwords money; Don't know about other campaigns I used to manage in my company - I'm about to quit, but will take a look soon. Most probably 100-200k more.

[local]

Why is everyone assuming google lost revenue because you are no longer giving them as much money?

Most of the keywords we participate in have 10's of advertisers. If google drops a few of them, the rest will just pick up the slack.

[Fryman]

Agreed. And since this was made to get rid of crappy landing pages and MFA sites there will be more people interested in using this service.

Instead of whining about it go improve your sites.

[Khensu]

My comment of 5/27 on a thread about MFAs (and directory pages):

<start>

If you were Google and were going to wipe out a whole sector of websites from Adsense would you tell anyone what you were planning or when you were going to do it?

No.

Be patient, it is a cancer they have and when they take it out and it will be quick, decisive and ruthless.

It will make BIG headlines and their stock will shoot up and everything will be better for everyone who is left.

Timing and positioning is everything in life.

</end>

Now granted if you are a publisher of substance I am sure a manual review will solve things. Big money doesn't equate to quality. The two sites I have been able to look at of people complaining in this thread should be taken down.

[edited by: Khensu at 2:20 am (utc) on July 14, 2006]

[holyearth]

Oh Google, we are waiting for a ROLL BACK.

[BriGuy20]

Requoth the Khensu:

If you were Google and were going to wipe out a whole sector of websites from Adsense would you tell anyone what you were planning or when you were going to do it?

No.

Be patient, it is a cancer they have and when they take it out and it will be quick, decisive and ruthless.

It will make BIG headlines and their stock will shoot up and everything will be better for everyone who is left.

Timing and positioning is everything in life.

I think their stock will go down at first. Booting out those MFA arbitrage sites will probably decrease their earnings a bit at first. I think it will be a positive development for the stock in the long run, though.

[Lady Seraphim]

I think their stock will go down at first. Booting out those MFA arbitrage sites will probably decrease their earnings a bit at first.

I actually don't think it will hit their earnings by much, if anything. For every savvy webmaster here, there will be the naieve ones who do not visit forums like this. And they probably will play Google's game and up their bids. So, for every person here who won't up their bids from, say $1 to $5, there will be someone who *does*. So google is now taking 5x as much revenue. Does it really matter to them unless MORE than 1 in 5 people stop paying for the ads? (and I don't believe that will happen).

However, this might be great for Yahoo/MSN if those who defect from Google go to them. Roll on Yahoo's new system because that sounds great and that's where my money is headed ;)

[DamonHD]

Hi,

No bad changes on my AW a/c, per-click costs and cost-per-conversion and volume steady/OK.

Indeed, partly to load-test a new server, and with the new ability to ad schedule, I just increased my spending to the grand total of ~GBP100/day! B^>

I hope that G will clean up the traffic in the "Search Network" next, or at least let me filter bad sites from it!

Rgds

Damon

[edited by: DamonHD at 11:36 am (utc) on July 17, 2006]

[charliemunger]

unless they are going to sort it, they are probably going to lose $30k a month from me

[bnhall]

About 300k per year they are not allowing me to spend with them. I don't want to take it away, they're throwing it away.

[vphoner]

A good point was brought up on this thread. That is those that are unaffected or that get their words back, will never trust google again, and will diversify, which enriches the other search engines.

As someone who consults and does ad campaigns, I cannot recommend google search to a client without the risk of being sued after constructing a campaign, only to have it go inactive in a couple of weeks. Google has introduced FEAR into advertisers and those google professionals that promote them. They have literally shot themselves in the foot. There are serious repercussions and ramifications to this policy which makes me recoin the phrase "quality score"
to "uncertainty score".

This means that as advertisers there is great uncertainty with google. We shall never trust them again as an honest partner. Hello MSN, ASK, YAHOO and all the fair search engines who play it straight. Goodbye to Google who has a black box and uses it as an excuse to ruin people's businesses.

Anyone that is smug and has their words working, don't be surprised if you someday are bitten by this ugly policy.

[rbacal]

A good point was brought up on this thread. That is those that are unaffected or that get their words back, will never trust google again, and will diversify, which enriches the other search engines.

BS. Or rather, they may never trust again, BUT the people who are complaining the most are also going to be the first people to advertise on google as soon as (and I mean not a minute longer than necessary) it's profitable.

And take one guess who's going to be the first people to complain and threaten and moan about those "other search engines" as soon as something doesn't line their pockets?

There's at least one proto-mouth who, while complaining and maligning google, and "taking his money" to MSN, has been actively trying to game google, at the same time, and is now claiming success, and guess what? Where do you think he's advertising? Erp. On the hated google.

[skibum]

Have seen no CPC increases for any clients & have had to lower CPCs on some campaigns because traffic went up (as other sites got knocked out?) and didn't convert as well. Right now, more traffic, lower cost = more profits.

No intermediate sites (affiliate, MFA, etc...), all traffic going straight to merchant sites, mostly pretty big ones with recognizable names.

[Joybro]

My google spending is down about $15K per month. I am setting up accts at Yahoo and MSN.