like they dont have enough of my money already...
every freaking day my budget goes over by $3, $5, $4.78..
cant they keep my budget under by $2-$3 instead of charging me for one or two extra clicks and jacking up my budget?
why is it the banks have legal recourse to charge me up the ass if i overdraw my account, but if Google overdraws on my daily budget, i have to sit on it...?
i am not happy and lookign for legal recourse.
It's quite common for AdWords to slightly overdeliver clicks on a day-by-day basis then make adjustments so that by the end of the month you are not charged more than your average daily budget. Check that out before you start phoning your lawyer.
On a different note, if you're consistently using up your daily budget, your ads might be showing less often than they could. Consider lowering your bid prices a bit because even if you're riding lower in the ad column, you might be able to get more impressions and more clicks for the same daily spend.
I'm not saying that you have $3 max cpcs, but Google would have to exclude you from a lot of auctions when you start to get close to your budget - even though you might not actually get that next click that would take you over.
I agree they could be a litter tighter with their control though.
If it makes that much of a difference, lower your daily budget cap by 5-10% to avoid going over your "hard" limit.
why does google do that?
tonynoriega, this is called 'overdelivery' - and as buckworks has said, it is not unusual for this to occur - particularly in a system in which many tens of millions of searches are performed every day, for each one of which a real time auction takes place to determine position among all eligible advertisers, and actual CPC for a click, if it occurs.
In the above scenario, I'd even call it an expected behavior - to the point that there is AdWords Help Center content on the subject:
Why am I being charged for more than my daily budget on some days?
[adwords.google.com...]
On the above page you'll note that if Google overdelivers your ads, resulting in more clicks than your budget allows, your account is credited.
On a different note, if you're consistently using up your daily budget, your ads might be showing less often than they could.
If it makes that much of a difference, lower your daily budget cap by 5-10% to avoid going over your "hard" limit.
These are good points, to which I'd add that if your campaign seems to hit or exceed it's daily budget frequently, it is an almost certain sign that your daily budget is too low for the keywords you have chosen (specifically meaning the amount of traffic they are capable of delivering.) If this does happen frequently I'd advise:
* Trimming the number of keywords in your ad groups down to only those that are most important/useful/successful for you, or
* If you are tracking your results (which I highly recommend, by the way) and know that you are making a profit with your advertising, then raise your daily budget so that you are not missing out on traffic that could be bringing you additional profit - as was noted by buckworks.
AWA
every freaking day my budget goes over
That's the key: Most of people think about it as daily, because that's how it's called and set, but it's actually being calculated on monthly bases.
AWA has provided you with the link that explains it.
Basically if your monthly total is over the number that you get when you multiply your daily budget by number of days of your billing cycle, you get the credit. Otherwise - arrivederci!
And I agree that it's almost impossible for the system to figure when to really stop your campaign. Plus, they obviously want their money for the legitimate clicks that have happened so they don't really want to give up on every single cent that went "over the budget".
There are still unanswered budget related questions in the help center like:
- what if I change my budget few times during one billing cycle?
- how the budget is calculated if my campaign was paused for some time during one billing cycle or if I used scheduling?
BTW, it would be nice if we could divide budget between Google and other search. By percentage or number. Some people may prefer to spend 80% of their money on Google only and keep testing other search with the remaining 20%. Maybe...
For example; if your budget is $10.00 per day, your CPC is $1.00, and let's say you've received 9 clicks so far today. That means $9.00 of your budget has been used.
Let's also say that there are three people who walked away from their computer an hour ago to get a cup of coffee. All three return to their desk to look over the last search results they made, and all three click your ad.
Google will send all three to your landing page and charge your account. So you end up spending $12.00 that day.
Google can't remove ads from people's computers once the daily budget has been reached.
The more impressions and ad has the more likely some impressions will still be active after the daily budget has been reached.
