Reporting has gone mad!

[Jon12345]

I have a group where my max bid is $2.50. It is a competitive area and I am normally seen in the #2 spot. However, the reporting function says I have paid 6 cents for a click! There was only one click. My average position was 1.3.

Surely this is a mistake? Is this a known bug or something?

Jon

[keywordguru]

Hey Jon,
Adwords calculates bid prices and positioning in a different way than overture. You can be in a better position, and pay almost half of the guys below you. It is a calculation between CTR and all that good stuff. So if you are getting the right formula of clicks to impressions, you will be rewarded with cheaper clicks

KG

[Jon12345]

Yes, I understand that. But the drop seems too large. I have similar stats where I am paying $1 per click for another keyword.

That's why I thought to myself, "Huh, it doesn't seem to match up here!"

Just wondered if anyone else encountered something similar.

Perhaps an important question is, over what time period does google make an assessment for your click through rate and then position your ad accordingly?

i.e. does it look at it over a 1 week period and then adjust its position? Or does it doing it daily? Immediately?

I ask because sometimes I have a 4% clickthrough yet the keyword status is still moderate. This tells me they must not just be looking at the same day but the history as well.

Jon

[realgames]

Perhaps an important question is, over what time period does google make an assessment for your click through rate and then position your ad accordingly?

i.e. does it look at it over a 1 week period and then adjust its position? Or does it doing it daily? Immediately?

I ask because sometimes I have a 4% clickthrough yet the keyword status is still moderate. This tells me they must not just be looking at the same day but the history as well.

I keep asking the same question and never get an answer. What I have established so far is that:

Bid Rank = CTR (for the matched keyword) X Max CPC

I think (but am not sure) that the CTR used for bid rank is real time. Others say it is updated after every 1000 impressions but I think they are getting confused with the keyword status (which determines whether a keyword is suspended) which is reviewed every 1000 impressions.

One big unknown is when Google starts using the actual CTR for new keywords. I think it starts using a default CTR (probably the average for existing bidders on the same keyword) and after some number of impressions it switches to using the real CTR. This can be a real problem when you add a new keyword in a niche market where the impressions will be low as it seems to me that it takes forever for the real CTR to be used and so the quality of your advert, the effort you put into producing a list of negative keywords and high real CTR is not reflected in what you pay and how your ad is ranked. In this case all Google preaching about rewarding those with the highest ad relevancy goes out of the window and you are dumped with the average CTR for the keyword.

But then perhaps Google does not care about us niche advertisers who only pay a few thousand a year for our clicks.