Anyone is welcome to answer.
NO. G cannot charge anything they want between Min Bid and Max Bid. They have made public certain pricing guidelines and concepts (such as the Discounter) which describe how much they should charge. It's obvious that you are not aware of those guidelines. According to those guidelines, in absence of other advertisers - the lone advertiser should be charged his Min Bid. This was also confirmed by AWA2 in this thread.
Now if they turn around and charge something higher than Min Bid in such situations - 1) That is overcharging 2) That is false and misleading advertising/PR i.e. "You can bid as high as you want, you'll never pay more than is neccesary to maintain your position!"
3) That is EVIL.
QS IS a factor in determining how much you pay for your clicks. QS takes into account over 100 variables in determining how much you should pay for your clicks. Please do not assume you are talking to a load of people who no nothing about adwords. I spend over a quarter of a million a year with them - do you not think that I would have any idea how it works? As for the other bods who have taken the trouble to reply to this thread - I am sure they probably spend even more than that.
Do you not recall all the threads posted when QS was introduced? When peoples clicks jumped from perhaps 10c a click to $10 a click? The upshot was that these people were not getting a high enough QS.
My apologies to Fishermx - I did not realise you had mentioned QS earlier in the thread - but perhpas to re-introduce the subject may result in the poster grasping the issue.
[edited by: jatar_k at 4:53 pm (utc) on Feb. 8, 2007]
[edit reason] manners [/edit]
Bigdealioo - if you think you're overpaying, then just bid the minimum allowed for the keyword. I think that there's a very genuine reason why you're paying more, for the many reasons given by other posters.
If you're still not convinced, then maybe you want to sticky one of us the login so we can have a look. I'm happy to volunteer; I work for a company that manages over $300m in annual search spend.
Should I apologize to G and to all G apologists that I feel quite annoyed and displeased that G overcharges me? Maybe I should take it as an honor? Like if an emperor spits on you... that's an honor cause that's the holy emperor's spit!
Look if it's happening to me - it's happening to others. If G thought someone wasn't eventually gonna call them out on this - well, they were wrong. If it won't be me, it will be others who will notice the same overcharging, and then there will be something called class action.
I think G would be better off, instead of maintaining the "nothing's wrong" PR line - look deeply into what I'm saying, and quietly fix it before others start noticing and talking to their lawyers about it.
[edited by: jatar_k at 1:39 pm (utc) on Feb. 8, 2007]
[edit reason] manners [/edit]
You (and Google employees) can only look at specific instances of a search - from one location, at one time and with one specific search phrase. But you are claiming to know that you are the only bidder for a range of times, an entire target area, and for all combinations of search phrases that include your keyword.
Tell us some of the evidence that convinced you that you're the only one with an eligble Ad.
If you think G has no means of seeing how many and what ads were showing for ANY given keyword for ANY given period of time..
There is a big difference between being able to tell for any specific keyword, instant in time and search location, and all keyword combinations, instants in time and search locations.
Google data will provide the results from the latter - but almost certainly not broken down into all the specifics, and almost certainly derived through various algorithms. Algorithms may, of course, be imperfect and so may, as you allege, produce an incorrect answer.
However, you are claiming that you have proof that you were the only bidder. You have not explained what this proof is, and I cannot understand what possible evidence you can have that there were no other bids affecting the price you should pay. I'd be interested to know what the evidence is, and I'll try to keep an open mind that it will prove your case.
[edited by: Pengi at 8:14 pm (utc) on Feb. 9, 2007]
There's many factors that all together point to the fact that I was the only one showing - bidding on exact match, average position always 1.0, and so on and so forth.
But the real proof is that G's Technical Department researched this for me and confirmed that my ad was the only ad showing for this keyword for this period of time.
You continue to insist that G's Technical Department had no means to confirm it - which is nonsense. Somehow you know better than G's Technical Department what they can and cannot do?
You have no point. 0. Whatsoever.
You have not "proven" your case. You have provided some bases for your beliefs.
AWA has indicated that the Google technical support were in error if they told you you were the only advertiser. Maybe AWA was in error telling you this, or maybe there was some confusion over the precise nature of the question or an answer was misinterpreted. At best, this is conflicting evidence not proof.
Having an average position of 1.0 has been shown above not to provide any evidence that you are the only bidder. It is only a lack of evidence that you are not the only bidder (lack of evidence against a case does not provide evidence of the case, let alone proof).
I believe this is the fist time you have stated that you were bidding on an exact match. This supports your case, but still does not provide proof.
You still have not indicated whether the keyword was a single word or a phase, or the nature of the Geographical area you are bidding on. These are issues that would appear to affect the perception (by you or the Google technician) of how many bidders there are.
[edited by: Pengi at 12:18 pm (utc) on Feb. 10, 2007]
Forgive the unsolicited advice. I thought , I would just jump in ..Now I better jump out..
QS plays a vey important role in determing bid prices
This is true. I can see why, if you had a bad QS even in the event you "were" the only bidder, with a poor QS you should expect to pay more. The QS was designed (in part) to keep out or discourage possible abuse. A poor landing page is very likely a red flag for big G and that's what the QS is for.
A poor landing page is very likely a red flag for big G and that's what the QS is for.
I don't buy the whole quality score thing for so many reasons. I've seen pages show up in the first ten results of the natural listings but get a bad QS for AdWords using the same search term. So a page can be good enough to rank with the free algo but not good enough to pay the minimum with the pay for algo? Either charge me the minimum or tell me to go away completely and not charge me anything.
I'd even be OK with Google penalizing a bad QS page in the natural search so I would at least know the page really is bad all around :-/
JAG
The OP is not complaining about the level of the minimum bid - only that he is being charged more than that.
However, I can't help wondering how stable the minimum bid value would be for a term that has few if any searches or bidders. Maybe it is the variation in the QS minimum bid that is causing the apparent overcharging.
I wnder how many clicks we are talking about - another instance of not being provided with any of the relevant data.
But the real proof is that G's Technical Department researched this for me and confirmed that my ad was the only ad showing for this keyword for this period of time.You continue to insist that G's Technical Department had no means to confirm it - which is nonsense. Somehow you know better than G's Technical Department what they can and cannot do?
It's interesting that you mistrust what google and awa tells you about how things work on one hand but you trust what the google rep told you on the other.
You seem to be wanting to believe what you want to, selecting whatever meets your agenda.
It's certainly possible that people from google can be mistaken, or you misunderstand what they have said.
Why do you trust what one google source says, while suggesting other google sources are deceiving?
Only write what they want to 'hear'.
rbacal, the answer to that should be obvious. But here it is:
AWAs here essentially amount to PR people. They're not from G's Technical Department. I don't think they know better than G's Technical Department what G's Technical Department can and cannot do. Moreover, if G's Technical Department couldn't confirm it - they would say so. Instead, they did confirm it.
Note, that noone here is arguing that it's OK to charge me over Min Bid when there's no other advertisers! Instead, all they're doing is trying to cast doubt on whether there were no other advertisers.
Your beloved and almighty G's Technical Department has confirmed that I was the only ad showing. So drop this "doubt casting" effort already.
G's Technical Department has confirmed that I was the only ad showing.
AWA and all the experienced posters here have cast doubt on the ability of G's Technical Department to tell this. We can see how they could say this from a specific sample (i.e. when they look from a specific location, at a specific time and for a specific search), but we cannot understand how it would be possible for them to confirm it is still the case for all combinations that could generate eligible bids from other sources.
Given how you seem to choose to refute all points made that don't fit your hypothesis and choose (sometimes misinterpreting) only those points that do (in your opinion) fit your case. It seem to me that it is at least possible that you are misrepresenting what G's Technical Department actually intended to tell you anyway.
You have consistently ignored requests to provide any more information that could help expain why you may have been charged more than the minimum bid. (e.g. "What was the minimum bid as a percentage of your maximum bid and the amount you were actually charged?", "How many impressions and clicks is the data based on?", "What was the time period concerned?", "What was the geographical area the bid was targeted at?".
It seems to me that you didn't really want an answer to your original question, you just wanted others to support your view that Google has overcharged you.
GOOGLE == EVIL
and be done with this thread. Save a LOT of bandwidth...
Note, that noone here is arguing that it's OK to charge me over Min Bid when there's no other advertisers! Instead, all they're doing is trying to cast doubt on whether there were no other advertisers.
NOt exactly. I don't know if there were no other advertisers, and neither does anyone else here, and YOU don't know firsthand either. YOu just don't want to admit you don't know.
You'd probably get a lot more support and even help from others on this if you approached it with a different "tone", you know, and you'd probably get more help from google itself.
It's easy to write off people who sound like cranks.
