[adwords.blogspot.com...]
There will be a quality score column in the adwords interface which has been in beta testing for some advertisers to show how Google perceive the quality of a given keyword & ad combination.
Also an update to the quality score algorithm which is concerned with predicting lower quality ads better, dropping rank and increasing the costs on those poor ads and making it easier / less costly to get a new high quality ad into the listings.
or is it going to be even worse next week?
Just tell your investors, employees, lenders, suppliers, etc. that you're really not sure how business will look next week. For all you know, your biggest source of traffic could fall off a cliff and you'll be out of business entirely. I'm sure they'll understand.
If you ask me, Google has underestimated the importance of there being some degree of predictability in a business. Their penchant for flipping switches and making massive changes overnight will eventually wear paying customers out. Even if customers haven't been "hit", can they really afford to take the risk of it happening?
Google has underestimated the importance of there being some degree of predictability in a business
By making our businesses less predictable Google Increases RISK for us, which by its self inherently diminishing our ROI's and the value of our companies.
They should get their story straight
Finally, we can see what we've all believed for years. :)
Anyways, this is an example:
Advertiser A
10% CTR $0.10 CPC $0.01/search
Advertiser B
2% CTR $0.25 CPC $0.005/search
Advertiser C
4% CTR $0.20 CPC $0.008/search
Total Search Value to Google = $0.023/search
On first glance, it would be in the best interest of Google to put Advertiser A on top. With all things equal, Advertiser A will make the most per search. Overall, Google makes $0.023 per search. But this doesn't take into effect the impact Advertiser A has on the CTR of Advertiser B and C.
So lets say you eliminate Advertiser A from equation as they have the best CTR, but lowest overall bid price. Everyone else's CTR goes up as you just eliminated a CTR hog from the first page.
Advertiser B
5% CTR $0.25 CPC $0.0125/search
Advertiser C
8% CTR $0.20 CPC $0.016/search
Total Search Value to Google = $0.0285/search
It's an improvement of $0.0055 per search on that result. While very minor, if you do it across every account and every search, it can bring huge profits in to Google.
It's the most logical explanation and if you really look through your accounts. There is no other reason "buy red widgets" would cost $5 and "red widgets" would cost $0.10. Does the quality of your site, ads, etc suddenly decrease 50 times over with the addition of 1 word to the phrase? Of course not. It's simple statistics and their way of maximizing every search possible.
But I don't think the formula is as simple as above. I think they do take into account history, spend, and other factors in determining which search phrases you may be hurting them on profit wise. I also have no doubt that on-site factors do play a role in it as well (albeit smaller than most people realize). Consider it a penalty of sorts for being too good at playing their system. It's like a blackjack table in Vegas. The minute you start cutting into their profits, you're out the door.
As for the "technical glitch", I call BS. A company the size of Google doesn't make "technical glitches" that effect nearly their entire advertiser base on accident. The update had been planned, people knew about it, and even the reps on the phone seem to know what was going on. I don't have a problem with Google doing what they need to do to maximize their profits, but don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.
Uh, yeah. Statements like that sound great, though, don't they?
Come on people, it's this simple. They are a public company. Their biz model is HIGHLY based on ppc advertising.
They (and Yoohoo) have a problem, though. See, they have already signed up everybody who IS anybody for their programs. Very few 'new' businesses are going to come along in any sector and make a big bang, meaning they are left with 'scraps' in terms of new customer acquisition.
First year or two, these companies could show astronomical growth (keeping the stockholders happy) simply because they were signing every successful business up on the ppc program.
Now, that part of their growth is GONE. The only way to keep growing (and keep stockholders happy) is to figure out how to gouge their current customer base.
I'm not picking on Google by any means - this is the simple business model the ppc companies are faced with, and their job is to make more money each quarter and each year, pure and simple.
With ALL of these companies, you can and SHOULD expect to see this 'tweaking' 3 or 4 times a year, and accept that each tweak is designed to make THEM, not you, more money, no matter what pretty 'slant' is put on it.
If this is the preview... We can imagine the mayhem waiting around the corner...
Dave.
Google, we need more stability with the Adwords interface and the whole Adwords ranking system. Advertisers spend hours generating tightly focused ads which appear to be going strong over the months, then we deal with some Algo update that now state these ads are no longer good, requiring extremely high min. bids to reactivate.
So do I get hit by USD 10 again next week in the new QS update. What is the value of a GREAT keyword? If Anything?
More transperancy is good but transperancy without any consistency is WORSE as it makes us scratch our heads and curse...
Min bid .20, my bid .10 keyword status 'Inactive' QS score: OK. Google search shows ad in #1 spot.
Maybe this means my keywords will go active next week?
[beginning widgeting] - Great $0.04
[beginner widgeting] - Poor $10.00
Something is still not right.
Today 90% have become active again and even the remaining inactive ones do actually work and the ad does get displayed.
What I find a shame is that Google did not inform anyone about the issue officially, or did they?
Unless you had a direct contact with Google or found out about the issue in a forum like this one, then you are in the dark.
They could easily have put a message on the adwords console page stating that you may be experiencing a technical hitch. They could even have sent out emails. But as far as I can tell there is nothing.
However I have plenty of messages in the console informing me to increase my overall budget to get more hits :-). They are very efficient at this type of communication! Ahh that's business for you I suppose
[edited by: TrafficGal at 5:52 am (utc) on Feb. 18, 2007]
In G. we trust.
In G. we trust.
If anyone sees a ‘AdsBot-Google’ crawling please share the info.
Thanks
Wes
Ads-bot crawls my site entirely every day.
Strange, i see "googlebot" crawling our sites just about everyday, but i haven't seen ‘AdsBot-Google’ in my logs.
And i was under impression that "googlebot" and "‘AdsBot-Google" are different entities.
Plus i couldn't figure out how last week google changed some min bids for some of my keywords without sending "AdsBot-Google" to my landing pages.
Any comments?
Plus i couldn't figure out how last week google changed some min bids for some of my keywords without sending "AdsBot-Google" to my landing pages.
Here's what Matt Cutts of Google has to say about Google's new "crawl caching proxy":
[mattcutts.com...]
