My min bids and quality score are jumping like crazy

for new campaigns. Am I the only one?

[chinara]

My new campaign quality score and bids are jumping this way:

Minbid:-- quality score: time:
.10 ----OK -------------10am (start of campaign)
.02 ----great ----------12.01pm
.10 ----OK -------------1pm
.50 ----poor -----------1:30 pm
.05 ----great ----------2pm

Am I the only one who is seeing these for new campaigns?

What is going on? Any suggestions what should I do?
Does anyone know what is causing it?
Thanks in advance.

[netmeg]

If it's a new campaign, and your account doesn't have any history yet, it can take up to a couple of weeks for things to settle down while AdWords decides where your bids need to be. Even moreso if the keywords you picked don't have a lot of history themselves.

That said, the minimum bids DO jump around a lot, even for campaigns that aren't new. That's one of my current biggest frustrations with AdWords. I'm not even talking about going back and forth between Ok, Great and Poor - I'm talking about all GREAT or OK scores, that maintain their GREAT or OK status, but the minimum bid part changes, sometimes several times a day. I can either set it at the high end and be sure my ads are always running (although often at a higher rate than I want to pay) or I can set it where I want it to be, and resign myself to the fact that even though my QS is listed as GREAT, my ads aren't going to show for some part of the day. And I'm told by AdWords support that's the way it's supposed to work.

Is a puzzlement.

[Green_Grass]

This is one of the reasons why traffic is really down for me. Also they seem to have made some changes to the algo causing new accounts/ campaigns to really struggle for a long time. It seems this is a side effect of their anti arbi campaign also.

[chinara]

I can either set it at the high end and be sure my ads are always running (although often at a higher rate than I want to pay)

I am sure google would love that. pushing advertisers for a higher bid.

GREAT or OK status, but the minimum bid part changes, sometimes several times a day.

WHY? Your site is the same, your ads are the same. Your minimum bid should be the same. Your site either rocks or sucks... Google needs to get their s$%t together and stop jerking us around. Google, you don’t like my site ban me. If you like it set the min bid and i will get to work. I have a lot of work during the day i don’t have time chasing bids all day long...

[netmeg]

I dunno - they love me in the morning, but by dinner time, the honeymoon is over.

(ain't that always the way)

[outland88]

>I have a lot of work during the day i don’t have time chasing bids all day long... <

Really the system is now set up for people who don’t worry about prices, those who run Adword accounts for a living, and those who have unlimited amounts of time to tinker with it. If you’re trying to save money it will likely draw time from your normal activities.

[chinara]

Really the system is now set up for people who don’t worry about prices

I think we all worry about prices. And google is leading the way trying to squeeze every penny.

Why else would they ask for .10 – .15 cents min bids for highly relevant long tail keywords that no one else is bidding on?

And these jumpy min bids are a good way to make advertisers put in higher bids.

After some testing this week, I believe google calculates some sort of value for each keyword and min cpc are the product of CTR ad relevancy and landing page, where google’s perceived keyword value has very high weight.

So on some keywords you can work you butt off and you will not see those beautiful 2 cents min bids.

[outland88]

Don't misinterpret. I worry about prices and it is quickly getting to rich for my blood. The thing though it is more than a bargain for some companies in my sectors and quiet a few other sectors. I’m seeing companies actually adding domains as they see advertisers who are unwilling to pay above 20 cents a click get bumped. You can tell they’re getting more bang for the buck than from any other form of media even at one and two dollars a click. The thing is though they’re quickly learning they can place two to four domains on the first two pages at 30-40 cents a click.

[chinara]

I dunno - they love me in the morning, but by dinner time, the honeymoon is over.

This is interesting because google usually treats me better in the afternoon.

[sailorjwd]

One thing that could cause the min bids to hop around between early morning and afternoon is that I suspect many advertisers (like me) turnoff their campaigns during the night time in the USA.

I turn on my campaigns between 7am and 9am Eastern USA time. Then turn them off somewhere between 7pm and 10pm.