Sky-High minumum bids

why is google pricingus out of business?

[donok]

Okay -- this seems completely insane. I have a client that has started a new comparison site 9 months ago. It's strictly informational and has original content along with lists of available products under certain categories. Google is charging her a minimum of $5 and $10 per click for the main keywords -- WAY over the going price. They say the "quality score" is low. Now, that would make sense if the page was about "DVDs" and she was bidding on "Chevy", or if this was a link farm or adsense spam site, but these are the keywords that are EXACTLY what the landing page is about.

Then they send us this in an email:
"I have consulted a technical specialist, and we were able to rule out a technical issue as the cause of your keywords' poor landing page quality. Your keywords' Quality Scores are accurate. However, we are unable to pinpoint what exact factors contributed to your poor landing page quality. Therefore, you should evaluate your site to determine how you can change it to better adhere to our landing page guidelines if you wish to lower your minimum bids."

How the heck can WE evaluate and determine what the issue is if THEY don't even know what the issue is?

Is this a common problem? What can we do? What should I be looking to change on the site?

Thanks in advance for any insight.

-- Don

[netmeg]

First thing I'd do is make sure you have the keywords grouped into very focused ad groups - often with only a few keywords in each group.

The next thing I'd look at is my ad, and how relevant it is to the both the theme of the keywords in that group, and the landing page or offer.

I'd also make sure the Content Network is separated out into a separate campaign.

Mind you, Google says flat out that comparison sites might not be a good business match for AdWords:

[adwords.blogspot.com...]

[PPC Consultant]

a comparison site without unique content will not work in Adwords. The shopping content from the feeds must be surrounded with a ton of unique content. That is the only way!