I don't have a big budget for my ad compaign so I just want my ad to show up at 6-8 positions. To cope with my situation, I have to check my ad placement frequently and adjust the bid price accordingly (I tried the advanced scheduling and postion preferrence function but no use).
However, the more competitive the keyword is, the more time it will take to see the result because of the server delay. Since I don't know when the new bid price will come in effect, I have to refresh the SERP again and again to see which position my ad will end up with.
Then my act was spotted by Google and there came the punishment. First Google didn't allow me to search, showing server down message (at the same time, my collegue could search fine), later Google began to show no organic results on the left except the ads on the right. Now and then I could see all the other ads except only mine.
We all know that Google is very good at playing with cookies (I manage my Adwords account and search the ad on the same computer). I can assure you that the abnormal behavior of Google is definitely not just a coincidence.
It's understandable that Google want to defend against the abuse of their search engine. But for my situation, what else can I do? The Adwords system don't show result in real time and I want to guard my money against over spending, but now Google simply won't let me do that.
Any idea I can get out of this dilema? Anyone can help?
If you think you need to watch your ads that much you're doing something wrong with your bidding. It's not supposed to be that hard!
Be aware that Google temporarily blocks access to their servers to anyone who does too many accesses in too short a time to any part their site. It is meant to prevent abuse, and it's a very good idea.
I agree with BW -- With respect, there are much better ways to spend your time.
Jim
I'm a long time Adwords user (now I'm managing both my own and my clients' Adwords accounts) and I dare to say I know all the ins and outs about Adwords.
In my competition, I notice that a quite number of other advertisers using the ad scheduling feature to get their ads on and off during a certain period of time in a day (I see one of my client advertising the same keyword has done this).
At first my plan is to find out a pattern in the ad serving so I can set up a schedule to automate the bidding process. That is, when the competing ads are all on, I let the system automatically raise the bid, otherwise, lower the price.
Before I can figure out a strategy for this, I have to check the ad frequently (but far from as frequently as to abuse the search engine) with different pricing. Then just in the middle of this process, I got punished. That's where the frustration comes.
This rate-limiting is common on many Web sites. I do it on some of my own sites, and a script is available in our very own WebmasterWorld PHP forum that does the exact same thing.
[evil] Think about this: Say I want to compete with you and your competitors. All I have to do is write a script to do searches on your keywords and never click on any of the ads. This drives your (and your competitors') CTR way down, and raises your minimum bids. So, at least some of the less-profitable bidders will stop bidding higher, opening up the bottom end for me. Or I can keep on running the script to drive your CTR even lower, and some more of your sites will drop out because with CTRs *that* low, surely there must be a "quality score" problem with your ads... Lower your CTR, raise your costs, and throw "quality" flags on sites in your keyword area: More openings for me to swoop in and capture your business. [/evil]
Google prevents these kinds of exploits (and many less-obvious ploys) to protect their advertisers.
I would think that the analytics they provide might be of some help to you in solving your problem without having to micro-manage yours bids or go click-crazy to the point of invoking their IP address rate-limiter.
Best,
Jim
I quite understand why Google has this kind of protection mechanism and I welcome it because it does me good too against any unethical practices.
In my case, I don't deliberately play around with Google. I just search/refresh the result page a little more than normal. What I do is, check the ad, change the bid, wait for 10 or so minute for it to take effect, then search again (sometimes refresh the page to let the ranking settle down), far far from making any decisive impact on the Quality Score.
The reason why I want to work out a strategy? It's simple. I'm a small player with no deep pocket. But I believe most of the advertisers coming in this forum are people just like me. We want to get the most out of what we pay for. So what's wrong with it? I see lots of posts talking about fine tuning their ads, we all are wasting our time then?
This is the second time (if not the first) I actually use the ad scheduling function. I see it as a chance to learn how it actually works, from which I can gain experience that I can use in my or my clients' future ad campaigns. For this reason, I don't see anything wrong with micro-managing the bids like I did right now.
If this will be seen as violating Google's rules, I guess I could do nothing but to give up trying. For me, in this particular case, no more "happy advertising", which idea Google's trying so hard to let their advertisers believe.
[edited by: GAds at 6:04 am (utc) on May 26, 2007]
Taking this one stap further, if you do a search for the same query twice in a short time frame it makes sense for Google to actually increase the position variations so different adverts (apart from VERY well performing ones) are shown in the top positions. If you didn't click on a top advert the first time around, why show the same ads again?
You are tinkering too often for your own good. I'd suggest trying to leave you bids as they are for a considerable amount of searches so that you get a fair measurement of performance. This will vary for everyone, but I'd say that weekly ROI checking and tweaking is probably often enough for the vast majority of advertisers with many doing it on a monthly basis.
Use Google's Ads Diagnostic Tool to view your ads or simply put &adtest=on in the search URL. Problem solved.
Great feature after I gave it a try and I found out! Thanks a million Rehan! Oh my, what a relief! I'm a happy advertiser again, ha ha!
Here's a description:
[adwords.google.com...]
But I still would like to give it a test by combining the scheduling and position preference together, and see what's gonna happen.
Thanks Jimmy for the suggestion.
