I have my own web site on which I sell my own e-book. I used to get a fair income using adwords until 10th of July, 2006 - the date of the change.
My sites are relevant to the keywords I advertise on, my ad groups had a good conversion rate, still, I'm forced to bid $10 per click.
The funny thing is that my competition who have similar web sites (these web sites are simple sales pages, there is no real difference) are still have their ads showing.
Can someone explain this?
One little note:
In the Google keyword tool, I asked Google to suggest keywords for my landing page. When choosing those keyword, I'd have to pay $10 too.
When I tried the suggestion tool on my competition's web site, Google suggested totally irrelevant keywords.
One note: As it seems to me now, Google is taking search engine positions into account! It's like they are using the standard Googlebot to determine the relevancy of my landing page!
But why would anyone want to advertise a web site that is #1 in natural search result?
That is the BIG question for which we are all seeking answers.
There is no clear answer. Obviously they have a high Quality Score.
Why?
Try to check their website and find what they have on their site that you don't? Maybe you can get some answers there. Then update us please.
Carefully compare to two sites looking at EVERYTHING including all external and internal links. Also, terms of service links, privacy policy links, etc.
Based on what I have read on google's blog, privacy policy's may now be a factor.
Dave
Carefully compare to two sites looking at EVERYTHING including all external and internal links. Also, terms of service links, privacy policy links, etc.
Based on what I have read on google's blog, privacy policy's may now be a factor.
Dave
Three top sites, which mine usually came under. One of which has always been top (which I'll refer to as Site 1).
Landing Page - Site 1 has a highly linky arrival page, plenty of keywords all over the place but hardly at spam levels. The arrival page is actually the site homepage too.
One of the other sites contains a big wadge of text, though again it's not spammy. No text links at all, just a couple of buttons. Again, the landing page is the homepage.
The last one is virtually all flash. The keyword appear no where in text. However, the page name is the keyword.
Code - Behind the page of Site 1 is nice and clean. No hidden spamming going on. The only thing which wouldn't be visible to the user is the cookie creator, but that's all.
The same is pretty much true of Site 2.
Site 3 is a real nasty mess of java and flash bits, but again nothing spammy going on.
Around the Site - All three sites have clearly linked privacy statements, something which my site doesn't have. And they aren't short statements either - they are pretty huge. These are linked from all pages on the website. Site 1 also features a legal page, again vast, and an accessibility page.
It's hard to see what these sites have got going on really. The only similarities between the three of them is the extensive privacy pages. Other than that, only one of the sites had a high keyword density, the second was rather sparse and the third had nothing outside of flash.
I thought for a moment it might be linking, perhaps the bot struggling to find its way through the site. But while Site 1 was great linking, Site 2 is minimal (or in certain cases, no links at all on some pages), and Site 3 is a crazy mess of java and flash links.
In addition, none of these sites are ranked all that well. Site 1 is pretty good for a few terms, but the others are completely invisible - Site 3 even when searching for the url.
So, at a quick review... maybe it is the privacy policy. Weird.
Ahhh, the mysteries of life!
The funny thing is that my competition who have similar web sites (these web sites are simple sales pages, there is no real difference) are still have their ads showing.
I've tried just about everything else here, so now I'm trying a link to a privacy policy from every page. I'm not holding my breath though.
I will try the Privacy thing and see if that helps.
Good luck. I took a browse through your site, and couldn't find any value added content, or even useful content, other than names and addresses.
I get better information from the library browsing a yellow pages for an area. I'm really not knocking you, but I think your issues probably arent' going to be solved by a privacy thing.
(I DO like the map thing -- it's cool. Not useful given the lack of any other information, but cool.
