Anyone else seen this and why would this be when everything is relevant? BTW I don't use analytics or anything else to allow any tracking of conversions from their side, but I can tell you the kw's that got bumped up high were converting.
I guess they helped make my business profitable, and now they can crush it too. It just doesn't make sense why they would actively hurt themselves in the process. I supply thousands of pages valuable free content to a population of people that can really gain a lot from my hard work.
It's nice to see that adsense ads displaying on my site ads from 'competitors' that I never considered competitors in the past - because their product was CRAP. Good to know that they are allowed to stay.
I had some .30$
Yes. But I bet there were more advertiser paying higher ppc for that specific keyword. Now that your $.30 is gone the combined average ppc is higher and Google visitor will be clicking on one of the remaining higher paying ads.
Everything goes by keyword search level so theoretically a $5.00 keyword could go inactive if there are other advertisers that are paying $6.00 - $10.00. Why would Google want someone to click a $5.00 ad instead of an $8.00 ad?
Of course there is a little bit of randomness to the algorithm thrown in so it doesn't look like an obvious price hike. This way every advertiser has a different story to tell.
It isn't a coincidence that Google beats earnings estimates every quarter.
iPo
Damn. How can I make my sites into spam sites so I can be accepted again?
I sent you a sticky message. Let me know if you didn't get it.
cabbagehead:
Amount of content should not reasonably be the issue here
And it isn't. But neither is a "quality score". This is classical money grab by Google, this has been gradually going on for over a year now, with threads popping up here once in a while.
These threads got brushed away with comments like "improve quality", or "affiliates get the short end of the stick". Neither of these statements is true. This is a gradual money grab, after YOU and your competitors basically handed Google your commercial stats FOR FREE with Google ANALytics and various other data mining techs. Google is expert on data analysis, we all got what we deserved - a price hike on topics that Google's data analysis said earns money and can be hiked.
You may still be able to find holes, but they are getting smaller by the day.
Was this coinsidental with the date eBay pulled their ads off Google, by any chance?
Damn. How can I make my sites into spam sites so I can be accepted again?
insert your own site into an iframe on a new URL (buy a domain). if does not work, set up a new account and start the new campaign there.
if you try both, it will take you up to 30 minutes total. looks like worth a try.
Remember the walls have ears or eyes...whatever that saying is.
idolw:Remember the walls have ears or eyes...whatever that saying is.
Yes, soona99, but no need to worry - as evidenced by this thread - the walls are completely DEAF and DUMB!
Got your sticky - Thanks! :)
I've read a lot of people saying their best converting keywords took the biggest CPC hit. There are only a few ways that Google would actually be able to attempt to correlate this data if you didn't have the code in place. If you did have it in place it would certainly change Google's stance about providing those tools for "your" benefit.
Rgds
Damon
I use G's conversion tracking and Analytics and have not been hit: sailing along with much the same (low) bid prices as for many months now...
Me too, across eleven accounts.
In retrospect I use test sites and have always limited giving as much data to Google as possible but have I left a hole you could drive a freight train through. It may be the passage of time but my domains were the most trouble free when they weren’t tied into any Google program. The thing is would this turn me into an affiliate of myself. I need to experiment.
Thank you Google, keep up the good work, I love making money with you.
Anyway, just wanted to put in that I'm an affiliate, sending most traffic to my affiliate site, and also some direct to merchants. However, I didn't experience any changes over the last week. *knock on wood*
I wish everyone luck getting things sorted out. My best advice is to stop investing so much time and energy in G because it's probably too risky, at least for affiliates. Ever since the QS got me the first time around and put the fear into me, I have used my time wisely and put more effort into building up campaigns with Yahoo and MSN, as well as finding various other places to advertise. Because regardless of what happens, DIVERSIFICATION is going to be the best thing you ever did. I promise.
I need to dig a bit and see if it is all because of decreased competition or losing some higher priced stuff. Decreased competion is clearly more then 50% of the savings.
What are you seeing now?
1. unhappy users are less likely to click on AdWords ads
2. advertisers with quality sites see higher advertising costs when they are forced to compete with ads for poor quality sites
After spending $3MM+ with Google over the last 2 years I think they no longer want my money
Confirmed with my Adwords account rep that now as part of the editorial review process, reviewers also flag poor QS landing pages/domains :-(
Done everything to have the best QS in my niche ... far more than my competition ... but no luck
This is all part of the evil Google empire to squeeze more $ out of advertisers under the guise of "Quality" ... Improving quality and increasing profits must go together :-(
Eventually advertisers will be forced out of the game ... In fact in my niche (which is fairly large) most advertisers have already quit
This is all part of the evil Google empire to squeeze more $ out of advertisers under the guise of "Quality" ...... In fact in my niche (which is fairly large) most advertisers have already quit
to squeeze more $ out of advertisers under the guise of "Quality"
QUALITY – please, when i bid on "blue round metal widget" and i have it on my page for sale and there is no one advertising, telling me 15 cents minimum because of ok quality is non-sense.
I have been slapped hard, 90% of traffic 5 domains. I got 130% of the traffic back, the problem is that i got it at 23% higher price that i paid for it before.
As for quality if i have a privacy policy and you don’t that mean you have to pay 1 cent more for the same traffic? And what if i have a sitemap and you don’t another 1 cent? Come on that’s b#llsh#t.
That sounds like me too.. My account rep was downright insulting to me and told me that adwords might not be right for my business..
I have a very wide variety of sites, some survived and some didn't.. It seems they kept some of the weaker sites and killed some of the better ones..
I feel that might be one of the reason of your quality index going from "Great" 0.03 bids to "Poor" 0.50 bids.
Traffic leves are down and more expensive. I have NOW started to seriously look at new alternatives as it seems G will in the long run try and squeeze as much as possible. Their arbitrary judgement of qualty vs non quality is a major instability factor and scares the heck out of me.
Today I am high quality....but who knows what will happen tomorrow.
Google saying they are trying to clean that up is good, lets hope they manage.
My biggest beef is with their own spamming of adwords ads in their own content network. a one tenth of one percent ctr screams of needing better targeting imo. When you add the fact that, at least in my experience, 80%+ of your budget goes to the content network of non targeted visitors its time to switch back to search only for adwords and disable content, broad match etc..etc.
I'd like google accountable for how they spend their advertisers budget. one tenth of one percent clickthrough is horrible and wasting 80% of a budget on that is ludicrous. Why can google spam an add until its budget is exhausted but we cannot chose where we advertise outside of adwords without penalty?
If google places an add in their content network and it under performs due to their targeting to the tune of a one tenth of one percent ctr... it should be free! If google adjusts their network to guarantee at least 2.5% ctr for example through better targeting on their part i'd pay more.
I once saw an atv ad on a diaper website. the alt tag of a toy baby baseball doll image in the lower left corner was "hummm, honda, huminee, huminee weeeee" and the atv ad was a honda. Not great.
