Has anyone actually -legitimately- gotton around NEW algo?

I did everything noted above. Also, removed all of the adwords ads, which makes my site look even better I think. Still nothing. Every new campaign every keyword $10.00. I am surprised they even still let me login. You have to admit they really do have a sense of humor, all be it an evil one. When you stop all of your campaings you get the message block, "we have noticed that your campaigns are not running, is there anything we can do to rub salt in the wounds."

I'm a publisher (i.e. my site is supported by advertising) and was hit very hard on July 12. I've been doing extensive testing of different landing pages including versions with no advertising at all. Nothing works.

My methodology was as follows: (1) set up an account just for testing (2) use an identical set of 20,000 keywords in a series of different campaigns (3) test a different landing page for each different campaign.

I've tried a dozen different landing pages so far.

Westsider,

Were your tests done on a completely different domain or were your new landing pages on the same domain as the one affected?

if there is a manual component to the landing page quality assessment, then any testing needs to take this into account. it might take several days (or longer) before the test shows any meaningful results.

People keep mentioning that they've tried setting up a new account at Google. I thought this is against Google's rules. If you're a one-person outfit, there seems to be no way to get around this. You'd be using your own name again, as well as your own address even if you switched credit cards. I suppose you could set up an account in your spouse's name, but again you'd need to use your home address (or a P.O. box I suppose). All of your credit cards will presumably use the same billing address. Google should easily figure out when someone opens up a new account.

The only success we've had is changing display URLs to be the same as landing page URLs. This is a new Google AdWords mandate despite the fact that we've never had a problem over the past two years and own all the display URLs used. Google's online documentation on this point is thin and misleading. You know the story...we woke up with all campaigns with min. bids at $10 with no explanation or warning. After a few days we finally were told that our display URLs needed to match our landing page URLs. (We were not engaging in any black hat tricks -- just found certain display URLs led to higher CTRs in some cases.) A few days after making the change, our bids were restored. Thousands in revenue lost after a week offline without any warning. We did succeed "legitimately" through manual review of the sites affected by this. Other sites remain impacted by other so-called "quality" factors leaving us what we feel is no choice but to pack up and head for adCenter.

[Were your tests done on a completely different domain or were your new landing pages on the same domain as the one affected? ]

Same domain although each landing page is created dynamically (with Apache rewrites) and is unique to the keyword. I really don't have the option to start with a new domain.

My rep keeps telling me to wait, bit it's been 2 1/2 weeks now.

The only success we've had is changing display URLs to be the same as landing page URLs.

Interesting. Do you mean having to match the entire URL Exactly? Or just having the same domain name.

Example- is it

a) www.mysite.com/product.php must display as:
www.mysite.com/product.php

or just that

b) www.mysite.com/product.php must be displayed as
www.mysite.com,
rather that mysite.com or mybettersite.com

OceanDoctor I have the same question as laertes what exactly do you mean by

our display URLs needed to match our landing page URLs

And if it is (Even though I doubt its this) -
landing page -www.mysite.com/product.php
display URL -www.mysite.com/product.php
then the problem would be to manage the display URL character limit.

He is actually correct

see an extract from hee

[adwords.google.com...]

Display URL Must be Accurate
Your Display URL must accurately reflect the URL of your website. If your actual destination URL link is too long for your ad, use a shortened version (such as your homepage) that meets the character limit for this field.
The Display URL field cannot be used as another line of ad text.
Your Display URL must include the domain extension, for example: .com, .net, or .org.
Example:
Destination URL: www.shoesforsale.com/ladiesshoes/highheels.html
Display URL: www.shoesforsale.com

[edited by: jatar_k at 6:35 pm (utc) on July 31, 2006]

The only success we've had is changing display URLs to be the same as landing page URLs.

Interesting. Do you mean having to match the entire URL Exactly? Or just having the same domain name.

Example- is it

a) www.mysite.com/product.php must display as:
www.mysite.com/product.php

or just that

b) www.mysite.com/product.php must be displayed as
www.mysite.com,
rather that mysite.com or mybettersite.com

www.mysite.com/product.php can be brought down to:

www.mysite.com

mysite.com

and you can probably even get away with removing the .php, so:

www.mysite.com/product

I've also never had a problem trimming large URLs..

www.mysite.com/category/category2/category3/product/

to:

www.mysite.com

or...

www.mysite.com/product/

They haven't been as strict as long as your site doesn't lead to a different site, or your product doesn't even come close to matching, for example:

display URL:
www.mysite.com/bluecars/

dest URL:
www.mysite.com/houses/newhampshire/brickhouses/

They'd probably be upset at that

I wonder why jenstar removed the google/yahoo ads from her opening page at jensense dot com?

I noticed that a couple of weeks ago. Was she banned or what?

In our case we were using different display domains. For example:

Display: www.bluewidgets.com

Actual: www.widgets.com

If a particular AdGroup was targeting folks looking for blue widgets, we found that using the www.bluewidgets.com domain for display yielded a higher CTR. Google allowed this until now and still has no written documentation expressly prohibiting it.

With the recent algorithm change, the Google Quality Bot has a major cow if the *domain* in the display URL is different from the domain of the landing page. I explained to them that the display domains we were using were owned by us and linked to the ultimate landing page anyway without duplication of content, but they were quite emphatic that it be changed.

Fortunately, it seems that the URLs don't have to match exactly as long as the domain is the same. My display URL is now: www.widgets.com with landing page www.widgets.com/startmeup.php and this has worked without penalty for all of the affected AdGroups for the past week or so.

It was suggested to me (by an affiliate network rep, not a Google rep) that we explore use of subdomains to achieve the same end, i.e., blue.widgets.com. Has anyone using such subdomains experienced any problems in the post-July 10 world?

No, I wasn't banned, LOL, and it was nothing to do with the adwords landing page algo.

The Yahoo Search Marketing bot went crazy (the one that is used for YPN targeting) hit my blog 83,000 times, averaging 1-3 hits every second - on a SINGLE page - for just under 24 hours straight. I removed YPN in response to that, and removed AdSense so I was not playing favorites. Considering no one clicks contextual ads on a site about contextual advertising, I don't think my blog likely made enough to cover the 3 GB of bandwidth this bot burned through.

I got around it, when the cost of a word goes to $5 or $10 move it to Yahoo and MSN and Delete it off Google.

I have seen a 9% increase in revenue.

Others are seeing 30% or more.

Now thats quality!

I've done all the changes i'm going to do for a while: 25,000 words of added content and more precise landing pages; several new pages added.

I am ignoring the new min bids and just leaving them were they were. I notice many inactive keywords are still showing while at a reduced frequency.

Overall Landing page quality changes are:

75% of keywords marked inactive

CTR down 30% due to increased content visitor percentage.

Visitors down 25%

Revenues down 50%

I asked Adsense support why they recommended I put ads in the visual hotspot since Adwords implies I'm smacking the visitors in the face with an ad block. Here's the answer: silence

Patiently waiting for a re-review.

How can anyone run a legitimate longterm business with such piss poor customer service. To think their stock is over $30.00 infuriates me.

legitimate longterm business

Too early to call it long-term. Give it a couple more years. This story -- company has brilliant idea, company does great, company thinks it's special and the basics (like customer service) don't apply, company gets its a** kicked by another company who is slower but has a better grasp of the fundamentals -- is ancient. I expect MSN to be eating a big piece of Google's pie next year.

For the other sites we've had affected (beyond the aforementioned display URL issue), rather than wasting effort second-guessing what Google wants, we're moving out. We've just relocated the first 40 AdWords AdGroups to adCenter and hoping for the best. I think MSN is hungry -- they just announced an upgrade scheduled for the weekend. Among other things, support for FireFox 1.5 -- bravo. Competition is a wonderful thing.

Same here, just used the msn import tool to import all of my adwords keywords. It was nice to see that msn had line for line description how to specifically export from Google and Import into MSN. Very nice touch..http://advertising.msn.com/Home/Article.aspx?pageid=709&articleid=3205

pdivi has got a point.

MSN is slowly and methodically planning to grab a much larger percentage of the search market. IE 7 might be a small step in that direction...

Vista however, well thats another story altogether! Vista may change everything, Vista could potentially give MSN the overwhelming majority of the search market. Sure vista is a bit in the future, and even once it's released it might take years for everyone, or the majority to upgrade.

As I've seen everywhere people suggest the big three in order are Google, Yahoo, MSN. I have no doubt in my mind that MSN is preparing over the course of the next 2 years to blow yahoo out of the water and at the very least end up neck and neck with google as far as market share is concerned.

Google is well aware of this. They think long term, all good business models are planning for 5-10 years from now or more!

In reality google has only 2 ways of maintaining their market share, 1) make their natural results and ppc results so perfect, so wonderful, so like a luxory vacation to disney world, that future vista users will say screw this I am setting google as my home page again... (hence the increasing focus on "quality score" and "user experience) or 2) somehow strike a deal with apple to get built into their OS the way msn search will be built into vista.

Personally, I suspect, even if they were to accomplish both, MSN is still going to grab a very signigicant share of google users with the release of vista. In fact, if I were MSN and vista was ready to ship right now, I would let it sit on the shelf another 6 months or more while I get my search engine in order.

For years google and yahoo have been the 2 big boys on the block, that IS going to change, MSN will grab a significant share of searchers from both, and you can bet that any dramatic changes either of those 2 make is a direct reaction to the coming giant, aka MSN.

While I am still awaiting manual review of my newly updated landing pages in hopes google will approve, I myself have just opened and MSN account and setup campaigns. MSN IS the future, google knows it, yahoo knows it, and if you'll acknowledge you can prepare too!

Back to google... I spent the last several weeks dramatically improving the quality of my site in hopes google will accept it, if not, I am fully prepared to get my traffic elsewhere, i.e. MSN, SEO, etc etc...

End of my rant, good luck to everyone! Plan for the future! The writing is on the walls, heed the omen and be prepared.

Good Luck,
Justin

Another thread hijacking in progress.

I find it amusing that some of you think that Microsoft will accept bad sites and landing pages as advertisers. They might intiitally, but they will eventually wisen up and realize they have to protect their assets which are their visitors. When they do that they will make the same changes and adjustments.

If you think there is ever going to be a king of the hill again who lets advertisers do whatever they want while still retaining quality visitors... well it is going to be a long rest of your lives.

Hear that sailor, we have bad sites and bad landing pages..lol...that is the problem.....3 out of about every 4 ads that I used to click are worthless..people are begining to realize this so google is rainsing the price..that's all...MSN will make Google a $30 stock with nothing but top8sites ads in very short time...lol

I find it amusing that some of you think that Microsoft will accept bad sites and landing pages as advertisers.

I think you can pretty much look forward to the same people who complain about google eventually complain about MSN. It should be interesting given the horror stories from people trying to use the MSN ad interface, and the reporting, budgeting and other problems.

And they'll come and complain on every thread they can weasel into.

And, they'll come and try to figure out how to game the MSN system.

...and on it goes.

Another thread hijacking in progress

Translation: Criticism of Google

Translation: Criticism of Google

Yes, and dire predictions and stock prices, etc. Apparently the concept of having threads and different discussion areas is too complex for some people. There IS a place for such discussions, where they are on topic.

To enter into discussion topics JUST to push an anti-google agenda just ruins things for everyone, just like email spammers do, and click fraudsters, etc.

I feel sorry for people who start threads with the hope that they will get help and information, and see the threads go back to the same dumba** places hijacked by the same dumb*sses.

Anyway, if anyone reads this and has a suggestion re: some alternatives to webmasterworld where I can actually read intelligent non-hijacked threads, please offer 'em up.