So with Editor I smoothly moved all my campaigns to a new account and paused the old ones, as we know they will not simply change the currency for you.
Now my account and it's campaigns and keywords have no history. I knew this would happen and that it would take time to rebuild. But how much time? For my biggest campaign my traffic has been cut in half mainly because the majority of my keywords are marked as 'POOR', wheras they used to be 'OK'. I am a little tempted to pause the new campaign and unpause the old one to get the traffic flowing again. (The old campaign has history going back for about 5 years)
I can wait a bit longer I suppose (it's been 2 weeks), but I'm wondering if anyone has dealt with this. Any of you have experience getting a duplicate version of a campaign going in a new account, and dealing with the quality score issue as a result?
(as a side note, another campaign which was 'great' in the old account is running as 'great' in the new one, with very little changes.)
Other than that, why would AdWords’ system treat your site differently in regards of QS?
Just recently I had a case of having two different display URLs pointing to the same site (within same account). One was doing “great” and another “poor” in regards of QS. At the same time the “great” one has lower CTR. Go figure what was really better.
…and if you phone the support, they’ll simply tell you that things are changing all the time.
I hope that my first thought helps a bit. Time will show if I was right. In contrary, if it does not change within another two weeks, you may consider increasing your bids and waiting for another week or so.
We've run into this too on client accounts. Unfortunately, you're being affected by the account quality score, which takes into account historical data and your spend. We actually encountered the opposite where we launched a new client account under a new Adwords account and we couldn't get anything to show. Google blamed it on our account quality score, but they were otherwise unhelpful and cryptic. Finally, we sacrificed an old account, moved everything over, and our account quality problems were erased instantaneously. I would recommend running only your very best campaigns in terms of CTR on the new account. Run the rest of the campaigns on the old account. After you spend enough money and achieve a high enough CTR, you'll be in good shape to start unpausing the other campaigns.
The best idea though, would be for adwords to find a way to change the currency of a long standing account, rather than sending us off to create a new one with no history and a terrible qs.
The best idea though, would be for adwords to find a way to change the currency of a long standing account, rather than sending us off to create a new one with no history and a terrible qs.
I am 100% with you.
I even thought about being able to setup currency on a campaign level. Let us mix, as long as we are able to pay in certain currencies.
Same here. I am a Canadian and I just switched my adwords account from Canadian dollar to US dollar because of the exchange rate. The weak US dollar has been killing me because my revenue is in US dollars and I was paying adwords in Canadian dollars.
I have just set up a new adwords account in US dollars and I am waiting for it to "rebuild" but it is doing it very slowly. I was also tempted to unpause my old account in order to get the traffic flowing again. But I am telling myself to be patient.
(Short version: "When converting currencies, we receive a daily feed from Citibank and use the average of the buy and sell prices to determine the exchange rate. Because this calculation is so granular, there is no advantage to bidding in one currency rather than another.")
Just try to minimize the actual currency conversions (where you lose a percent or two to the bank for the transaction) throughout your cash flow cycle.
Having said that, it would be great if changing currency was made easier by Google.
[edited by: Rehan at 3:19 am (utc) on Nov. 25, 2007]
Mine is "climbing" slowly.
Most other campaigns are doing well though. However it is a little disheartening to get emails like "now that you've been with us a couple weeks here are some tips... blah blah." Why can't they somehow link the accounts or have my account manager adjust the new account so the algo doesn't input the "newbie factor" into it's calculations?
Rehen, when I changed currency it wasn't because I though G was giving an unfair exchange. In fact, I was buying $CA ads with a $CA credit card. But like Jamie I make my income in US dollars and I buy so many ads that I was having to convert money way to often. Now its US$ income to US$ credit card to $US dollar advertising.
But like Jamie I make my income in US dollars and I buy so many ads that I was having to convert money way to often.
Conversion loss and multiple conversions isn't the only reason. There's also time factor.
If income and expenses were both instantaneous, this wouldn't be an issue. But income and expenses aren't instantaneous.
If your income is in US$ (a declining currency) and expenses in CDN$ (an appreciating currency), and the trend continues, what happens when income and expenses float for 30 or 60 days?
You earn income, but have to wait, say, 30 days before you actually get the income. In the mean time, the currency you are paid in is worth less once you are paid than it was when you earned it.
You incur expenses, but get to wait 30 days before you actually pay. While you *may* have an option to pay sooner, it's inconvenient - the system is set up on periodic credit-card billing. By the time you are billed, the currency you are paying in has increased in value. You're stuck with the exchange rate from 30 days ago, while today's exchange rate would buy you more product.
It gets a bit more complicated, as you also have to account for interest rates. But the simplification above is close enough for the present situation.
You've lost both ways.
If you do enough business, you can hedge with currency contracts.
For most small businesses, it's better to try to arrange to have payments and expenses in the same currency. In this case, the poster has no control over one (income) but is able to switch some expenses over to the weaker currency.
Going back to “poor” performance, we definitely support the idea of having a possibility of either:
- transferring a history and QS from existing to new accounts (regardless of currency), or
- being able to convert existing accounts to another currency with no impact onto ad/keyword performance
Google AdWords system seems to be acting differently where it should not. That means it needs an improvement.
The whole thing is still a big guess… which we all hate a lot.
AWA can you chime in here to let us know if this would work as a quick workaround?
This one is like koncept’s case, from CAD to US. Last bid in CAD was $1.75 which was getting average position of around 3 and CTR of 3.29%.
In new account, right now I am bidding $9.00 US, average position is 3.8 and CTR is 0.35%.
Ads are same, keyword in this example is the same, landing page the same, site the same, too.
So, how can that be?
I had campaigns moved before and they would not suffer that much or not at all. If my old account is prized just based on its age, while I like that, I also see it as a kind of discrimination.
Who cares about account history if ad text and landing page are good and give good user experience?
Why that specific keyword has QS of Great and minimum bid of $0.06 CAD, while in a new account, QS is OK, and minimum bid $0.20 US?
The end is to go back to CAD account and live with it. Still I hate whatever influences the system to be this way.
