The bad account history shows in the initial high cpc when I start a new campagn ($1.75 instead of $0.45)
Do you think, maybe from your experience, this account can be saved?
Content CTR does not affect QS.
In almost every case, an account can be 'saved'.
The most time consuming part of AdWords (and the best chance for long term success) is to have very granular keyword to ad copy relationships.
just opening a new account may violate their terms, far better to work on improving than to risk it all.
and it's been my experience that the decay of past history is logorithmic, meaning recent old is more important that very old and oldest... so just work on improving. it wouldn't surprise me if improvement was one thing they judge when viewing history...
have fun!
[G, if you're listening, stop giving so much historical significance to affiliates who bid (aka poach) on trademarks and domain names -- sometimes a high CTR doesn't indicate quality at all!]
[edited by: RhinoFish at 4:14 pm (utc) on Feb. 25, 2009]
90% of the impressions - about 10 mio - came from the content network. I run a new campaign for almost 2 days and got only $1,25 and above clicks. With the exact same campaign I get $0.40 clicks on the new account.
How long would it take to get back to the "normal" CPC, I don't plan to invest a fortune in saving an adwords account ;)
don't overbid to try and repair what you think is a historical drag down of an account, just manage it and move forward, it'll work itself out in short order if you're improving the specificity and relevance and appeal and focus.
regarding CPC, "normal" is a very difficult word for me to compute.
:-)
big for your goals... like exposure, ROI or whatever they may be. Saving an AdWords account should never be on that goal list, because both it needn't be and shouldn't be.
[edited by: RhinoFish at 3:45 pm (utc) on Feb. 26, 2009]
well, I think I will give it a try with the right keywords (those that wont drain my money away in no time).
don't overbid to try and repair what you think is a historical drag down of an account, just manage it and move forward, it'll work itself out in short order if you're improving the specificity and relevance and appeal and focus.I beg to differ on this. Google's quality score is subjective at best.
Your wasting your time if you think you can recover it. Might as well move it to a new domain.
I've got some sites that have great score, content, rich blah, blah and do great. I also have few that are content rich, LP are tweaked, etc. and they do not so great. Then I have some thinner sites that have been doing great for quite a long time.
I've now got my content rich sites doing great in the serps, but have made other sites just for adwords since they don't like the content rich sites.
So go figure.
Then I have some thinner sites that have been doing great for quite a long time.
So go figure.
And that is just it - no rule that one's brain could comprehend.
I see one page affiliate sites (PR 0) with not less than 20 affiliate links on that single page - they're doing just fine. They get QS of 7 just like that, even higher in some cases. They have no other but duplicated content from their parent partner, and they even copy ideas and layout from their affiliate competitors.
I dunno how many times I have to keep saying this. It's how the landing page, the ads and the keywords ALL WORK TOGETHER.
I dunno how many times I have to keep saying this. It's how the landing page, the ads and the keywords ALL WORK TOGETHER.
I have a site all about blue widgets. It has lots of original content about blue widgets, it has great inbound links from other widget related sites, it's been around for several years, it does great in the serps. It also sales blue widgets, the site is about blue widgets, the landing pages and the ads are all about buying blue widgets.
What more can be done?
I had another site in same boat about 8 months ago that got the same treatment so I put up a new domain with thin content just for selling the widget and it has had a QS or 9 and 10 since then.
Is Google Adwords trying to tell me they would rather see thin sites as opposed to content rich sites.
The same sites in Yahoo, get great quality scores and do great.
I had another site in same boat about 8 months ago that got the same treatment so I put up a new domain with thin content just for selling the widget and it has had a QS or 9 and 10 since then.I forgot to mention I used the EXACT same ad as the one the got slapped. So, the site that is content rich about the widget was slapped, and the very thin site that is not content rich has been doing great for quite a while.
I pesonally think it's hit or miss with Adwords. You may get not get slapped, but then again you may so it's important to have a backup plan if your serious about earning with that widget your targeting.
When Google slaps some of my stuff, I can have a new site up and ad running in less than 15 minutes. It's a pain, but it's their sandbox and I'm just playing in it.
Don't get me wrong, I love all the free traffic they send me for the slapped site since it holds very high spots in the serps, but I also don't want to leave money on the table by not using Adwords since the return is pretty good.
My meager 100 a day I spend on Adwords is not much, but when you have a 150% ROI on it, it would be stupid not to use it.
I then gave the content another domain name and QS was instantly 100% better. The old domain was a only a month old (with no history), so I figured it must be because of the keywords within the domain name that was the issue.
and it's been my experience that the decay of past history is logorithmic, meaning recent old is more important that very old and oldest...
my G account manager insisted in this. Moste recent account history outweighs longer term history, thats the mechanism google has for saving accounts/keywords etc ...
Slash and burn domains is fine its that doable, but many corporate clients would never just change there domain name due to a QS slap.
A rep at Google has told our agency that it is easier to create a new account and work up, than it is to try to save a hurt account.
I heard those kinds of things when starting to try and turn around our account. But we wanted to persist with it anyway. I took one campaign at a time and restructured it, made sure each ad was focussed on just one key phrase, and was pointing at the most relevant landing page.
I have been working on it off and on over the last few months and some of those campaigns have gone from a CTR of less than 1% to almost 5%, and this was purely from making sure the ad text and keywords were really targetted and focussed. I haven't even started much on landing page optimisation yet. So I would say yes you can turn it around, but be prepared to do lots of reading on the subject!
G, if you're listening, stop giving so much historical significance to affiliates who bid (aka poach) on trademarks and domain names -- sometimes a high CTR doesn't indicate quality at all!
I second that. Unfortunately I've seen screenshots of Google spam team employees as they browse Google themselves... they see adwords data included with every listing in the serps. This isn't going to change anytime soon.
I see one page affiliate sites (PR 0) with not less than 20 affiliate links on that single page - they're doing just fine. They get QS of 7 just like that, even higher in some cases. They have no other but duplicated content from their parent partner, and they even copy ideas and layout from their affiliate competitors.
Take a look at the incoming links on that single page site and you'll probably see that there are some (or maybe you won't see them because google isn't showing them yet even though they know about them and are counting them). Quality incoming links to a one-page site can out do a site with lots of content with no incoming links. Good SEO of a site is counted as a part of the QS for adwords.
The PR 0 that you see is near meaningless. The PR shown in the toolbar is not the real PR that google uses to rank sites. Also the PR that you see in the toolbar is only updated quarterly or so while the real PR that google uses is nearly constantly updating as the the dynamics that go into QS change.
RE: domains
Sometimes a domain is just cursed and there's nothing you can do about it. I've had a domain get poor adwords QS no matter what was done. I've taken the exact same content, site, layout, structure, etc. and moved it to a new domain and had it instantly get great QS. I've had this happen twice with unrelated sites in unrelated verticals.
RE: getting a new AW account or keeping the old one
I've found that sometimes an account gets so badly off that it's not able to be revived. Even if it is able to be improved over time, why waste your time and money doing that? It doesn't make business sense to pay higher than you need to for some sort of personal goal of "saving" an account. Don't get emotionally attached to campaigns or accounts.
For $5 you get a new account and a clean slate. You copy the campaign over in adwords editor in 5 seconds and you're up and running again.
I was talking to a google rep last week and we were looking at a high-quality account I manage. Everything was fine there.
Then I asked him to check out something on another account that I manage, which has a less than stellar account history. I could hear the tone of his voice change and I asked him how to fix some issues and his exact response was "you might want to consider opening a new account." That's about as solid an answer you're going to get from google.
Here's a tip that might help some folks out. Use one or two accounts ONLY for new campaigns. Do all your testing there. Then when you've found out if the campaign is worth continuing, and most importantly, when you're sure that it's a high-quality campaign in google's eyes (good QS, high CRT, etc) only then copy over the high-quality stuff to an account that you keep for only high-quality campaigns. That way you never tarnish your "money" account with negative things.
