Done with AdWords

[ember]

500 relevant, targeted keywords going to relevant, targeted pages in the site. Hardly a shotgun approach. 5% CTR over several months. Bids were .04. Today, wake up and Google wants $1 - $5 per click.

So that is the final straw. We are done, done, done and I hope someone comes soon to knock Google off its arrogant perch. I will not spend another dime with them ever again.

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. And the little guy gets screwed again.

[edited by: ember at 3:15 pm (utc) on Nov. 9, 2006]

[luckychucky]

The Google Rep that I've had a live chat & exchanged emails w/ said that the above is NOT true. It's the history of the keyword/phrase as a whole. It doesn't matter the slightest that you could convert for that keyword/phrase more than anyone else.

Let's say a naive noob whale with a monster budget barges into his first foolaround with AdWords. He decides to run all his keywords at $10.00 max bid so he'll trounce everyone below. He assumes he'll only pay only $0.01 above the guy below him, so he'll always sit safely at the top and nobody will displace him. Then he walks away and doesn't monitor his campaign -- until he gets the bill. He has a rude awakening, realizes the flaw in his strategy, then adjusts his bids and/or quits. Did he just establish the minimum bid for the next 6 months...or even perhaps for all time?

If you have a KW with a high CTR and a low max CPC, it is possible Google could make more money by getting rid of you completely. Fewer high-performance low bidders means more clicks to the highest bidders. {...} Google is netting higher revenue after displacing the more effective advertisers.

I would not be in the least surprised if this theory hits the nail square on the head. It may not operate as part of the algorithm for keywords which have no other bidders at all, but it might kick in where bidding gets more fierce. It's like thinning out the seedlings in your garden bed, so the highest producers can access all the sunlight and water, and grow into bigger heads of cabbage. It's all about the cabbage.

Almost anyone over the age of six years is going to know that if you want to increase revenue, you do NOT raise your prices by 1000%

I really have to agree with those who assert that Google is losing a tremendous opportunity cost. Who's richer: the haute cuisine restaurant whose tab for an evening always exceeds $100.00 per diner--or McDonalds, the chain located absolutely everywhere at only $0.99 per shot?

[Quantam Goose]

This entire thread can be summed up by the MacDonalds/Haute Cusine analogy. Google has made an affirmative decision to cater to the 100.00 per diner crowd. This may make great financial sense for google. But it sure left a lot of loyal users in the dirt.

[outland88]

Building an Adwords campaign is like building “sand castles on the beach”. If you’re getting paid to do it, have the time, energy, and deep pockets to rebuild daily, the obsession of a gamer, or made the system work for you by spamming, it’s a great thing.

The thing I’m slowly finding out though is any advertising seems to be better than Adwords. I’ve bought advertising on totally unrelated or even junk web sites that rapidly outperformed Adwords. My conclusion now is Adwords works best for people with unlimited budgets or those running hundreds of pages with Adsense or Yahoo advertising. Plus Google has become a land of web site and ad checkers which can be costly.

[sailorjwd]

Would you consider this a bad omen?

Since stopping adwords I'm getting ads for funeral homes and cemetery software on my website :{

I think G is trying to tell me something.

[outland88]

>Would you consider this a bad omen?<

Yes, it's the dreaded "Omen of the Owl".

If the Men in Black, from we dare mention there name, suddenly appear we'll just have to consider your ticket was punched. On a parting note may I say you had some lovely topic themed posts. From what the grapevine has it though you're not really in trouble until you get the late night phone calls with dead silence on the other end.