Like many of you, I've enjoyed a nice, swift kick to the nads this week. My big money-earner campaign has suffered the most.
CPC is up 22%. Clicks are down 20%. Approximately 40% of my keywords have been disabled, with a few dozen additional keywords disabled each time I log into Adwords. I wouldn't be too devastated if things remained where they are, but I'm not confident they *will* remain where they are. If this keyword attrition continues, I will be in big trouble.
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Here's my plan:
1. Create a new campaign which will contain all the keywords from the old one (obviously, I'm going to leave the original campaign alone so that its keyword history remains intact).
2. Let's say I currently have 10 adgroups. I'm going to turn those 10 adgroups into 50 adgroups, with each sub-adgroup containing 1/5th of the keywords of the old source adgroup. Big adgroups could conceivably be a red flag. Heck, maybe I'll make 10 times the adgroups.
3. I'm going to create a keyword-specific URL for each and every keyword. I will programmatically rearrange and slightly tweak the content that I'm currently using for each adgroup on a keyword-by-keyword basis. Layout will be slightly altered, paragraphs rearranged. Sentence templates will be used to dynamically insert keyword-containing "relevant" content in several random locations per page. I may even add random outbound links with the link text set to the keyword (obviously, these guys will have to be well below the fold).
4. I might consider using dynamic keyword insertion in my ads. Long ago, I used to make use of this facility, but I found that my ROI was substantially better when I switched to entirely static ads. I also felt I was being more honest with surfers by telling them exactly what they were getting in the headline of each ad.
I hate having to do crap like this. I worked hard over several years to create a very profitable, effective campaign.
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Any thoughts on this plan? Has anyone tried anything similar, and if so, what were the results?
Finally, will the existence of the keyword in an inactive state in the original campaign preclude its "reactivation" in the new campaign? Do I need to nuke my inactive keywords first?
I did not set up new landing pages per keyword, but rather, I added what I thought google wanted to see on my existing landing pages: more internal links, some external links, much more exposition, less repetition of text, privacy policies, etc. I rolled back in content that had previously been removed to increase conversion.
And now it's RonCo time - "set it, and forget it."
I hope to recover, but I don't expect it. This has most definitely been a rude awakening. Now to figure out what comes next...
The domain theory is spot on. To everyone hit out there trying to improve quality and failing to do so, your domain has been marked as undesirable - period. The bull about improving quality is a weak, feeble attempt at providing a credible explanation for your current situation.
Even if you forget the quality smokescreen temporarily it still boils down to pricefixing. If you have an effected account you can add 'yaddayaddyayaddaya' as a keyword and it will still cost you $10 and ebay about 2c.
I am sorry but they are screwing every affiliate and ecom site out there and they need to be told.
Forget it......
You ONLY care about selling your product
Yes, ABSOLUTELY. I do not care what G$$gle thinks or needs, I frankly DON'T CARE ABOUT G$$GLE. I care about my customers, I provide as good customer support as I can, I stock my widgets and try to compete on prices.
G$$GLE IS A PARASITE ON MY BACK, and I can tolerate it as long as I get a positive ROI. So now that we are frank about it, let's not be cute, let's either do business together or move our separate ways. This is no longer a college campus
By your logic, they could just sell out all their inventory to porno sites
what twisted logic make you think that? because over 50% of all traffic is for porn? well, then, you can't fight human behavior with some dumb muddy "quality" guideline that you (i.e. G$$gle) don't even understand yourself - if you don't spell something out you don't understand it (or that is too deep, uh?).
I am not buying today, and "Boy that was a waste of my time"
Why on Earth then you typed "green widgets" query into a SE, and then clicked on "Green Widgets, great selection and competitive prices" ad? Would you tell that this link directs you to some green widget store? Is it such a hard assumption to make? I don't think so. The "bad experience" is G$$gle's term, not mine. From what I can tell, user had a great experience if she bought, and she was just looking in the wrong place when she didn't. So let's then point fingers in the right direction - G$$gle delivered that user, so it is G$$gle to blame for bad user experience.
I changed the domain on an ad in one adgroup and nothing..
Forget it......
That alone is insufficient. But it is not useless.
And for heaven's sake don't anyone post the solution in public. Only give it out in private, away from here to people you really know - otherwise it won't work next time, will it?
All this getting together to hash out a solution in public is very worthy but do you suppose Google can't read?
Go make yourselves private forums. Only invite your personal friends and ban all bots. Then discuss a solution.
Chrisuk said,
How many people must have spent their weekend trying to improve quality to get bids down, unaware that it is a fruitless endeavour once your account/domain has been hit.
Exactly. To deliberately mislead someone in this fashion, knowing they will waste hours and hours of their time - at the exact same moment their business is in crisis, is the nastiest thing I've ever seen online.
It seems designed to put them out of business before they can replace Google with a competitor.
I do hope, when everyone finally bails, they cost the time they spent trying to put into practice this 'advice'. Bill it at a decent hourly rate then deduct it from the final payment.
[edited by: Alex_Miles at 11:56 pm (utc) on July 15, 2006]
This is exactly why Google has had to make these changes. Because you don't care about Google's visitors or their experience. You ONLY care about selling your product. Nothing wrong with that, but it does not work well as a long-term strategy for Google, so they need to make changes so both their search results and their ad results remain viable going forward.
This statement confuses me. Why doesn't google want people who ONLY care about selling their products to advertise on their site?
As long as they're selling relevant products to the keywords, and are legit, non scams, etc.. why should Google really care what else is on the page or how it's presented?
As long as they're selling relevant products to the keywords, and are legit, non scams, etc.. why should Google really care what else is on the page or how it's presented?
Have you considered the possibility that Google conducted market research to learn what users thought of the "AdWords user experience," and that the status quo earned low marks?
"Market research can establish beyond the shadow of a doubt that the egg is a sad and sorry product and that it obviously will not continue to sell. Because after all, eggs won't stand up by themselves, they roll too easily, are too easily broken, require special packaging, look alike, are difficult to open, won't stack on the shelf."
- Robert Pliskin
"I notice increasing reluctance on the part of marketing executives to use judgment; they are coming to rely too much on research, and they use it as a drunkard uses a lamp post for support, rather than for illumination."
- David Ogilvy
[edited by: Alex_Miles at 1:57 am (utc) on July 16, 2006]
Greed.
Can you imagine owning a company in the fortune 500, being a multi, multi millionaire, having arguably the site with the most traffic on the internet, certainly the biggest volume of good traffic on the internet by far, more money than you can ever spend, and then dropping a bombshell on the small business owner who helped get you there so you can make even more money.
When you are already filthy rich and then treat guys who are just trying to pay their credit cards on time, the electric bill on time ect, like this so you can maintain your good standing with the surfer and make more money.
How much money does Google need? To not give the small business owner who TRUSTED in you as a business partner some kind of warning. SOME KIND OF FIX. SOME KIND OF HOPE. It IS unamerican.
I guess you can't post URL's here but there is a journalist who wrote about this a few days back saying how he had got a headache over all this and could use a couple Tylenol. Well yesterday or the day before he got a special delivered letter and a pack of tylenol comtaining two tablets sent to his office in North Carolina from GUESS WHO?
One of the top executives of Google with a handwritten little joke attached and signed his name. I won't post the guys name but he is a cofounder of Google. The journalist scanned it and posted it to his blog. I was shocked to see that.
Apparently some higher ups in Google think this is all real funny. hahaha But when you are worth what they all are I guess you can thumb your nose at the world.
I used to work in a small bus where a retarded guy came by one day selling these little messy crotched things made of yarn. Noone would buy one from him. He wanted a buck each. I could see how hard he was working to make a few bucks. I gave him a buck for one. That was over ten years ago. Today that little yarn thing hangs on my wall.
I remember that and feel good I helped the guy. It reminds me to be humble in life. I'm not rich but I am a fair businessman and a fair human being. I have my pride and my integrity.
If I was running that business, I would have been straight up. It may have cost me a few $$$ but I would have been straight up with ya guys.
Karma.
[edited by: ohwell at 2:54 am (utc) on July 16, 2006]
These!"£$%^%& think its hilarious.
You also have to feel a bit sorry for someone like that. What kind of grasp would you need on reality to do something so wicked?
They say word of mouth is the best advertising. Its also the worst. I don't want to 'undo the carnage'. I want to stop putting money in these guys bank accounts.
I have a work around. But I'll stop using it soon as MSN goes live with the ads. The site is down at present, but that is most likely due to their increased server load.
[edited by: Alex_Miles at 2:57 am (utc) on July 16, 2006]
Yes, I did create new campaigns that were somewhat like the ones that were nuked. I didn't even bother to delete the previous ones. Those remained. I just created new campaigns, new titles , new descriptions, NEW DOMAINS, in short, it was like starting from scratch. It didn't seem to matter that I had existing campaigns with the same keywords. The new ones seemed to superseed anything that was existing and they started from scratch. For instance, my #1 keyword started again at the # 36 position and then gradually moved up to where it is now, At or around #12 slot... Paying about 4 cents more than I was originally before all of my ads got nuked. This took about 7 weeks. For me, it seems that new domain names is the way to go because all of my old domains are shot. It seems to be true that once a domain has been targeted, it is history. There's nothing that you can do about it. Try restarting your whole campaign with a new domain name and you should be able to some different results. Also keep in mind that different publishers see different results. Like I said before, my account was one of those that was affected in April and now it seems that EVERYONE is seeing some kind of change. It is apparently a dynamic situation so even my successes are subject to change (as someone pointed out). G will eventually find a way to get the results that they are after. Use at your own discretion and risk!
My ROI is in a free fall and the new "quality control" pricing structure is no longer viable using adwords.
I can only hope that MSN is watching and learning from this exercise in "quality control".
I will let any ads requiring a 2nd mortgage on my house to now go dark. For the remaining ads, I am now looking at how I can gradually ween myself away from them and my goal is to eventually close down my adwords account completely.
Basically, I feel that the paying advertisers have been betrayed by Google with the new "quality control" (whatever they are?) measures.
I guess you can't post URL's here but there is a journalist who wrote about this a few days back saying how he had got a headache over all this and could use a couple Tylenol. Well yesterday or the day before he got a special delivered letter and a pack of tylenol comtaining two tablets sent to his office in North Carolina from GUESS WHO?
Google for "Dr. Google Sends Pain Relief" - you'll find the blog
Well yesterday or the day before he got a special delivered letter and a pack of tylenol comtaining two tablets sent to his office in North Carolina from GUESS WHO?
Cheap #*$!. Special delivery?
Should have brought it in the jet...
Have you considered the possibility that Google conducted market research to learn what users thought of the "AdWords user experience," and that the status quo earned low marks?
Sure, EFV.
And I bet the problem is with ads in content network not in search. I see ads by google everywhere. On cool sites like yours and on some MFA sites that use Adwords to gain traffic to their pages with more ads.
AND THAT IS THE PROBLEM!
Google should concentrate on Adsense publishers first.
I am wondering what would you say if Google removed Adsense from your website saying they newest cool algo says it is not pretty & sweet enough?
Have you considered the possibility that Google conducted market research to learn what users thought of the "AdWords user experience," and that the status quo earned low marks?
Yes, and I bet a lot of people would say they hate that the ads on google are always trying to sell products. Was Google was foolish enough to listen to them and make changes based on that?
I *hate* nearly every commercial on TV. They all stink. I wish they didn't exist. Little do I realize, w/o commericals, there wouldn't be the show i'm watching...
Honestly, i'd just be shocked if Google really listened to their 'market research' that much and make changes based on that. Bobby Knight (a basketball coach) once said something along the lines of "If you make the moves your fans want, you'll soon find yourself sitting with them"
Should junk pages with just 2-3 links of completely irrelevant text been removed from the results? Absolutely. Did they have to go to such extremes? I don't believe so. I believe they got rid of plenty 'relevant' ads in the process and whether users realize it or not, hurt their experience.
And I bet the problem is with ads in content network not in search. I see ads by google everywhere. On cool sites like yours and on some MFA sites that use Adwords to gain traffic to their pages with more ads.
AND THAT IS THE PROBLEM!
It's one problem, and it does need to be addressed. (I suspect that it will be addressed in the months ahead.) But ads on third-party sites aren't as integral to the Google-branded user experience as search ads are, so I imagine that's why Google dealt with search ads first.
I am wondering what would you say if Google removed Adsense from your website saying they newest cool algo says it is not pretty & sweet enough?
I'd be unhappy, just as I was unhappy when I lost 70-90% of my Google Search referrals for two months last year. But I'd try to be rational and figure out what to do next (as I did last year, thanks to the helpful advice that could be found amid the usual rants on the Google Search News forum).
But I'd try to be rational and figure out what to do next
I do think it's revealing that you've chosen to attack the messenger, not the message.
Google for "Dr. Google Sends Pain Relief" - you'll find the blog
On the principle that it is best to know thine enemy I went and found Adam Laznik's site.
After listening to his so-called 'music' I wouldn't mind a headache pill myself.
