Minimum bid keeps increasing !

[anjanesh]

Im pretty new to adwords as so far I depended on non-paid results through SEO.

I started a campaign > ad-group a couple of weeks back.
I set the max CPC to Rs 2.00

Every couple of days in my campaign CampaignManagement I get the msg that all keywords are inactive and Min bid has increased to almost double and had to increase my default max CPC.

Today I had to set it to Rs 15.00 - almost a month after I started adwords !

What does this mean ? Someone else is bidding higher each time I place a bid ? Or is it google thats changing it ? If latter, how so ?

Thanks

[BrandNewDay]

There could be many reasons. One of the possibilities is that Google decides that your CTR is too low and then they raise the cost per click. See it like this: if your ad is shown a million times on the network, and very few people click your ads, it will cost Google money. So they raise they price for your keywords ir order to at least break even. If you CTR is really low the price of your keywords could raise up to 10 USD per click.

By the way: how much is Rs 15.00 in USD or Euro?

[edited by: BrandNewDay at 11:13 am (utc) on May 11, 2008]

[anjanesh]

if your ad is shown a million times on the network, and very few people click your ads, it will cost Google money.

I thought we're paying for every 1000 impressions on search ads.

I have one campaign and 1 ad group.
So far, since April 13 (almost a month)
Clicks: 89
Impressions: 73,539
CTR: 0.12%
Avg CPC: 3.58
Cost: 318.98
Avg. Pos: 5.9
Daily Budget: 50 (1 USD = approx Rs 40)
Default Max CPC : 15 (which I set yesterday)

I have a total of 16 keywords (pretty broad though)
Will having 50 keywords hurt the ad ?

I added a few more keywords yesterday and now I see that the minimum bid has lowered to 4.50 (except for one keyword which is still at 9) !

[BrandNewDay]

I thought we're paying for every 1000 impressions on search ads.

You can make your own choice, paying for clicks or impressions.
Then numbers you give us show that you have been paying for your clicks, not for your impressions.

Your CTR is not extremely high (depending on the nature of your site). Try to experiment with your ad copy, ad positions and keywords to improve your CTR. Higher CTR usually means that your price per click will drop.

If you have Adsense ads on your site, Google is likely to raise the price of your keywords rather sooner than later.

[anjanesh]

I dont have adsense on the site.
Its a small site with 100% flash done by a designer - Im getting the website redone with textual content.

Btw, Cost: 318.98 - thats because initially I had the monthly budget to 200 - only a few days back did I change it to 1500/month.

[BrandNewDay]

Its a small site with 100% flash done by a designer

Perhaps you might want to have a look at the landing page quality guidelines at

[adwords.google.com...]

If your landing page consists of mainly flash animation, there is a chance your are 'punished' by means of letting you pay a higher CPC.
Google wants advertisers to have landing pages with relevant content.
So indeed, redoing your sites with relevant textual content could perhaps solve some of the problems.

[edited by: BrandNewDay at 3:22 pm (utc) on May 12, 2008]

[MadeWillis]

Do you have Google Anaytics? Check things like bounce rate and ctr's for your ads. Be sure to run 2-3 ads for each ad group and set it to optimize based on performance. Constantly remove underperforming ads and replace with new copy.

If you are only using broad match terms you may be displaying ads on less relevant search queries. Consider adding phrase and exact amtch where it makes sense.

Run a "search query performance" report to expose queries in which your ads display, but the keywords may not related to your products/content. Then add these as negative keywords to the appropriate ad groups.