Increase quality or bid $10.00 to activate

why trying to force me to bid $10?

[sandor]

just set up adwords account
set up campaign blah blah .. most of the key phrases i am bidding on i am using phrase matching and exact matching .. nothing broad

all my keywords are shown as inactive for search with the status message:
Increase quality or bid $10.00 to activate

so why is adwords trying to force me to bid $10 on these phrases when they only have one or sometimes two other persons at most bidding. in some cases they have no ads at all showing for some phrases.

as a test i went ahead and changed my max bid amount to $10 .. i got one click, and it cost me the $10! #*$!?

[Hiccup]

You bid $10 and they had the gall to charge you what you bid?

Wow.

[benevolent001]

I too have been in similar situation many times , except that i cannot even think to bid $10 so never experimented

as per adwords we need to do following things at that situation

make keywords and landing pages much more relevant
make ad text much more related to your landing pages and overall this is what they call to increase quality

what about your quality score? it must be poor i guess at this juncture for this keyword

you may also want to drop this keyword and think of other alternatives , or see how you can improve quality

at times i feel how can i improve quality this is the best keyword , landing page combination i have designed , but again we cannot argue with Google adwords afterall its just a robot which dont understand my rubbish :)

[sandor]

some of these key phrases were suggested by their very own robot based on its 'analysis' of the page. so its own bot is saying these phrases are relevant to my page .. but yet, i must bid $10 to activate.

this is thievery .. and i won't be trying adwords further if this is how it all works. i've seen them advertise that any john doe with no knowledge can get campaigns going and blah blah .. but that's not true if this is how it works. i'm no rookie to search marketing, just a rookie to buying traffic and this really sucks

[Green_Grass]

"i've seen them advertise that any john doe with no knowledge can get campaigns going and blah blah .. "

I guess, this means, you got to spend some time on this forum reading up various threads on Quality Score and how to optimize landing pages. The John Doe seems to be better informed than you.

The adWords game is no longer a simple game. There are many complications and twists, so get on top by studying the forum threads.

[simonuk]

I'm also in the same boat as you.

I found a niche, no competition for the majority of the time and when there is any it is only a maximum of two others. My CPC has gone from $0.05, $0.25, $0.50, $2 and now it's running at $2.50.

I logged onto MSN and got 23 other people to do the search and they all said I was either the only one or there were one or two others (mostly evenings). I've done this at various times with various people and it's always the same results.

It has a lot of searches (thousands a day) and my CTR is low but nowhere near rock bottom.

It is frustrating for me when I have other campaigns where I'm against 30+ other competitors but it's costing me 80% less than my lonely add sat there with no competition.

[benevolent001]

Since the introduction of Quality scores things have changed a lot , i have dug myself into Adwords help pages since many days to see how this system works

i have paused all my campaigns at moment , i cant afford to loose much money when i dont know how to system actually works these days

[Angelis]

I had this recently, rang Google and they fixed it.

[benevolent001]

Should i call my Google support in own country? Does Google have centralized support for each of of us irespective of my target customer country?

------
Ok now i have just started my campaigns , all my kewords are GREAT or Ok , my bid is few cents more then whats asked by google , lets see what happens now

This system is driving me crazy , i am awaiting how it goes

[sailorjwd]

I thought that with all the new quality scores, indicators, min bids that I'd be able to see what I'm doing wrong or right.

I look at an adgroup with 100 keyword phrases listed. The QS ranges from Poor to Great. I try to compare the difference between a poor keyword and a great keyword looking at the ad text and my landing page.

I can find little logic to the system. Sometimes for a Great keyword (3-word phrase) one of the words doesn't appear in the adtext and is only mentioned once on landing page..

Then looking at a Poor keyword phrase I have all three words, in order, on the 2nd line of the ad text. Keyword also matchs H1 header on landing page and in the leading paragraph of the page.

I don't get it.

[narsticle]

they dont really want you to bid $10, they want you to up your quality score.

[ccam96]

Are you mainly targeting affiliate programs on your pages? The keywords on your page matching the listing seem to not have as much weight as you may think. If you have a lot of affiliate links or "spammy pages" , then they will up your bid to unreasonable levels. Also, as you and I have found out, $10 means $10.You will not get a lower price even if your CTR is 30%. It's an obvious move at eliminating affiliate type landing pages for their CPA initiative.

[arieng]

I have a lurking suspicion that your overall account history has something to do with the QS. I've been working with AdWords for 6+ years and rarely do I have a minimum bid over $0.50 -- even with some marginal key phrases. OTOH, I've helped others getting started and seen ridiculous minimum bids for very relavent terms.

If this WAS the case, you're best bet would be to find some very uncompetitive (loooooong tail) words that are very cheap and build very targeted landing page. Once you establish some history, I wouldn't be suprised if you're QS improved and competitive terms became affordable.

[vinhboy]

do you think pagerank has anything to do with it?

i am getting a lot of $5 minimum bids too.

*sniffle* .. sucks..

[arieng]

Interesting idea, but I doubt it. Many of landing pages have horrible PR with $0.03 min. bids.

[vinhboy]

You know, I was just curious about this, does having too much text on your landing page maybe decreases QS?

According to the optimization tips, being too broad or too specific can be a bad sign.

[benevolent001]

being too broad is for sure going to decrease our quality score , its frustating at times when you try to adjust your landing pages according to quality scores , but what i feel is ultimately we are going to get advantage of this , but for sure many times i am too angry on this Google adwords bot

[Pengi]

Improving the quality score is not just about revelance to the Ad and Keyword. Repeating the keyword and ad text hundreds of times will be "relevant" and would attract relevant Ads - but it does not warrant a good Quality Score (Probable the opposite).

To improve QS you need to work on providing content that is useful to someone searching on the keyword concerned and clicking on the Ad.

[Green_Grass]

IMO, the G algo is a little more complex than maybe we suppose...

Just matching words on ad text and landing pages does not necessarily lead to a high QS ( as Pengi just said).

You do need to provide some value and unique content to get those low bids.

[karamkshetra]

I think raise bids and get a good ctr on it...

The cost will reduce..... LOL

Craete a new ad campaign I think that shuld help... basically the CTR decides the cost per click... so think of improving on CTR...

Regards,
Karamkshetra

[sandor]

yeah, but how can i even start to have a CTR if they are forcing me to make a minimum initial bid of $10 per click. i can't afford that.

i'm new to ppc .. this is my first attempt at buying traffic and now more convinced that it's a sham and i need to stick to viral and natural seo. why the hell should i be paying $10 per click when there is no one else bidding.

this is a new campaign so how do they expect you to build up good CTR and all that if they force your minimum bid to be $10

[vinhboy]

I read somewhere else that CTR play an important part in QS, is that true?

But that is like the chicken or the egg dilemma.
How can i have high CTR if i can't get my keyword listed?
I guess I can try being more "specific" with my keywords, but does that really work? Also, once I have achieved great CTR with "specific" keywords, how can I transfer that success to less "specific" keywords to reach a wider audience.

If CTR is a big part, all the people already hogging up the business would have a monopoly on it... doens't make sense.

[DamonHD]

It means that you need to start slow, with highish bids in some cases, gradually demonstrating to G's stats monsters that your ads work, and then increase volume and lower your bids gradually.

IMHO G is trying to squash the Get Rich *Quick* (or deceptively, but that's another story) Merchants, since they are often sleazy and dishonest and tarnish G's name.

Getting rich is no problem, but if you think it can be done instantly and with no work then G and their advertisers probably don't want to do business with you.

So, take it slowly.

BTW, G will sometimes try a few clicks here and there well below its advertised minimum bids to test its own stats, so we hear in places like this.

Keep your budget low and bid what you can afford, and be patient.

Rgds

Damon

[Jaunty Edward]

let me bring in a new twist here with my case.

Recently my credit card did not process adwords bill for some reason, all campaign stopped. We paid using the other card and they restarted....but with a much higher per click cost.

following are some of the keyword details

Business Name which you used to be 5 cents is now $0.4 there is no one else advertising for that keyword.

Competitor name, which used to be like 10 cents is now over $3, I can agree that may be we do not have a very very relevent content for this keyword but its like, if I am Mercedes then I am bidding for keyword Lexus....

there are these other over 2000 keywords for which we used to pay 5-10 cents are now over $0.3... for some of them we even paid that much but google kept going up now they are asking over $3-4 for the once we were ready to pay for.

We have been running this campaign from last 7 months and I don't know what went wrong... every morning when I login google says my 300 keywords are deactivated because the bid was low.

I have started my studies on QS but for keyword "Business Name" where no one is doing a bid how come it has gone up so much? and my pages are definitely optimised for Business name.

I don't know what to do.... is there any google contact center I don't mind calling even the US team if they are ready to help.

my study for QS is on, but for keyword Business Name, I am shocked.

thanks
bye

[arieng]

Whoa! That pretty much kills every explanation around quality. For something like that, I'd get in touch with your support rep. They've got to be able to do something about it.

[eWhisper]

The majority of times that a minimum bid is over $1, it's related to the landing page.

Items to consider:
Are your keywords specific? (i.e. television is not specific, television repair is somewhat, plasma television repair is specific)
Are the ads tightly related to the landing page? (if you write one very specific ad copy with one user intent, does the ad copy describe every keyword?)
Is the page spiderable?
Does the page contain unique content?
Does the page contain content in text (or is it all images/flash)?
Does the landing page about the keywords you're bidding on?