Google so unfair and unstable!

google unfair, adwords pricing, keyword price, minimum bidprice unfair

[Jan_Jaap]

Hi!

This is my first message on this forum, I am an internet developper and use Google AdWords to feed my sites with traffic.

I have spent at most aprox. 20.000 euro per month in AdWords so I know quite some about it, and also noticed how really unfair and unstable the google pricing system is (aldough it's working out for most of my sites, but I really can't trust it one bit!).

I can for example start a new ad for a site on domainA.com wich will get banned to the max (after 10+ days) with minimum bid prices like 8 euro per click for almost 95% of the keywords (aprox. 1000 keywords)!

Then, I start a new campaign and used domainB.com for the exact same site and it got aproved and remained at the lowest possible prices for aprox. 80% of the keywords (0.03/0.05 euro, aprox. 800 keywords) untill today, aprox. 3 months later. Was it really only the domain? The first domains was something like allaboutsubject.com, the second domain was subjectforum.com (it was a forum).

I am promoting a lot of other forums, and some are aproved for most of the keywords and some just for a few keywords while other keywords are "just" out of reach with prices like 0.09 and 0.12 euro. But just now, one verry high quality service forum was banned again with prices like 0.80 euro per click!

They tell me with these high prices that they don't want me to advertise with them because my site is low quality, but I offer such a high quality service for the target audience that I know that this is unfair and must be a flaw in the google adwords system.

Asking them about this isseu will get them to return standard messages about Quality Pricing and when asking them further about it they really respond personaly with detailed information and even a custom Site Quality check wich is ofcourse verry nice. But it remains so unfair, if you have people checking a website, they can see things they like or wich they don't like. You can always see bad things about a site, like on one of my sites they checked it was marked as low quality because my site offers a free way to post messages and this might get unrelevant content on the site. This was the single reason they told me. (Is this really true? It might, but doesn't have to... and in reality, it's working great, not 1 single spammer for over 3 months, 100% relevant messages).

I can not trust Google AdWords, I can not say to a client: "Yes, I can have your site advertised in Google at reasonable costs.". What if Google will ban the site of my client? And askes like 8 euro per click? My client will hold me responsible, I can say "it's up to google to determ if they like your site or not" but will they take it? I don't want to take that risk for clients I don't know personaly.

Anyone else experienced this?

Best Regards,
Jan Jaap

[humblebeginnings]

Indeed, Adwords has been extremely unstable for the past year. I have tweaked my campaigns continiously to maintain my traffic and spendings. I have managed for a long time but this blow is really too much. Come on Google, I thought we had an understanding here.
We advertisers bring in the cash, we sell our stuff and publishers get their share. And especially dear Goog, don't forget the only reason why you can afford to have that fancy office in Mountain View is because we advertisers pay for it. Don't pull the plug because it will mean the end of our and your business.

[RonnieG]

I rarely comment on this subject, only because all of my campaigns and results have remained relatively stable, affordable and productive for 2-1/2 years, no matter what changes G has made.

The only significant changes I have made to my ads and landing pages in that time have been to make them more highly targeted, and therefore relevant, right after the QS update was first announced, and before it was implemented. Since then, I have seen nothing but gradually improving results, consistantly good ad positioning, and steadily decreasing average CPC across all of my ads and campaigns, with minimal "tweaking" on my part, and that ony a few cents at a time, usually downward, to keep specific keywords in an average position of 1.5-2.5 without over-bidding.

Maybe it is because I don't tune and tweak them constantly?

I have not changed any of the ad text or landing page URLs of my longest running ads for over 6 months. I have very community specific and targeted ads, with a small number of highly specific keywords, ad text and landing page URL to match, and a landing page on my site that is strong with the same keywords as the ad and its keywords. When I add a new community to my campaign, I "clone" an existing ad group, including its ad text, keywords, negative keywords, and its landing page URL, changing only the community name where needed. As a result, I have never experienced any delays in ad approvals, and the new ads seem to perform very well right out of the chute, needing only minimal bid tuning to get their keywords into the top 2-3 positions for my service in that targeted community.

[edited by: RonnieG at 11:30 pm (utc) on Sep. 17, 2006]

[vphoner]

Jan Jap, you hit the nail on the coffin. I considered becoming a google professional and offering my services to help small businesses. I cannot do that now. Not without a million dollars worth of insurance. I will get my *ss sued by these clients if google starts to turn off their campaigns. Especially if they go and buy a larger building, buy more inventory or hire new employees, hire more webmasters in anticipation of more sales. Only to be slapped down with a hammer by google and possibly go bankrupt from losing their advertising.

Google has introducted the most unstable advertising platform in human history (in my opinion).

No way would I risk my clients with such an unstable and illogical, hard to predict system of advertising.

Sooner or later google will have to get rid of the landing page quality as a parameter. It just does not work. It introduces instability. No sane businessman should risk their business on it.

[trannack]

I too recently took on someones Adwords campaign. However after seeing so many people suffering from changes in algo's etc, I made it very clear from the beginning that I had no control over these things, and that I could not guarantee stability within the Google sector. Whilst I will and do strive to provide my client with a good, honest and professional service , one cannot predict what effect the next algo change can have on his business and advertising regime. I have advised him to investigate other mediums - ie MSN - to run in conjunction with Google to perhaps stabilise the unpredictable. So far everything is working OK - but who knows what October is going to bring!