Adwords ranking tricks

now matter how much bid is increased, cannot get #1

[thanhthanh]

Dear All,

I wonder if anyone out there faces this problem:

I run a 3-year old Adwords account with high CTR rate, quality score (7-10)

recently, i got a competitor (whom i guess hire some Adwords manager account to run their ads) - their site ranks #1 for all keywords no matter how much I increase my ads bid, i cannot beat them (2.00 USD to 20 USD or even higher)

I think there is some tricks behind given that their site is new, they can not have high quality score and CTR rate in compared to our account long history.

The hints here are: whenever i increase the bid, their ads disappears, and a few minutes later, their ads appear #1 position. So i guess they set something automatically because i tested this with all campaign, all times even midnight or early morning, their ads respond to my action immediately.

My Guess is:

1 - how come they can optimize it that much?
2 - is there any chance they use "dirty money" or money laundering involvement since there is no way to survive with such high CPC and given the product price is just 10-20 USD (while clicks cost 5-6 USD)

Anyone here can figure this out? is there any chance that Adwords system was exploited by their trick?

Thank you so much.

A

[doctor gerlis]

Are you using the ad preview tool? It will give you more reliable data on where your ad is appearing.

[adwords.google.com...]

[thanhthanh]

Hi Doctor, sure, i used ad previewing tool to check the rank. to my best guess, the competitor funds their account with fraud credit cards.

[BlackHatters]

Are you on exact match? If so, keep raising your CPC by incremental bids to see when you appear in P1. From there lower it to just below their bid and click on their ad 3 times (no more of Google click fraud kicks in) and then you'll start costing them money. The keyword will prove to be unprofitable for them and then they'll lower their bid and you can take back P1.

[LucidSW]

>> they can not have high quality score and CTR rate

You don't know that and there's no way for you to know that. You can make educated guesses (my CTR should be better than his because of A, B, C) but in the end, the vote belongs to the searchers.

>> no matter how much I increase my ads bid, i cannot beat them

The basic ranking formula as many know is bid times QS. But obviously, there's more to this formula, a bid buffer of some sort. Otherwise, it would still be a straight auction and advertisers would bid sky high knowing there's no way they'd actually pay anywhere near those amounts.

>> I think there is some tricks

No tricks. The system is fair and all play by the same rules. They obviously are more knowledgeable and have a high quality campaign.

Echoing the Doctor, use the ad preview. Also, changes you make are not instantaneous. They must be propagated to all data centers and that could take a few hours. Not to mention that one search means nothing, it's insignificant. What is your account's data telling you?

>> click on their ad 3 times

Bad advice. First, the click fraud algo would count only one click. It would therefore not cost them more money. It assumes they keep a close eye on things and remove unprofitable keywords. Second, you are actually helping them improve their CTR and QS.

What's so bad about the second position? You can still get a fair amount of quality traffic.

[engine]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, thanhthanh

click on their ad 3 times

Oh dear, that's not good to do that, and I agree it's bad advice.

Concentrate on conversions, not positioning. Good conversions result in more money for you to compete, if that's important to you.

In any case, if you ad is generating more clicks you'll find it'll do better without raising the bid, saving you money.

Try experimenting with A/B testing and keep testing.

Don't get hung up on what the competitor bids, focus on your own ROI.

[DrifterFB]

I am having the same issue with an advertiser. I even created extremely similar ads to see what the CTR was... way worse!

Also, I looked at the new "Relative CTR" feature in my adgroups, and they range from 1.5-3.0 so I'm overall maintaining higher CTR ads, and bidding fairly aggressively.

Th eonly thing different from thanhthanh for me, is he has more history than I do.

I was hoping there comes a point where history trumps bid so to speak. Sounds like from this post that isn't the case.

[thanhthanh]

Thank you all for your replies.

any chance that they fund their Adwords account by fraud credit cards?

Will Google catch this? it seems the Adwords billing system is much easier than Google checkout which I think Adwords should apply to avoid fraud.

[LucidSW]

There's virtually no chance of that happening. I think you are worrying too much about what the competition may be doing and not enough on doing things to improve your own campaign.

[thanhthanh]

Hi Lucid,

Thank you very much, let me explain more.

Without those bogus, all my campaign CTR rate is 25-30%, am I doing bad here? the answer is NO, i have high CTR, high QS. So i am pretty much sure that they may use fraud cards, are you sure that there is NO chance of that happening?

[LucidSW]

I don't follow your logic at all. What has your CTR to do with what you suggest?

Regardless, a big company like Google checks the credit cards. Your campaign won't even begin to show until they are satisfied. The info you give them (address, phone) must match the CC's info so I find it hard to see how someone can use stolen card numbers. The chances are very remote in my opinion.

The bottom line is, you have a competitor that is beating you fair and square. If you want to regain position, you'll have to improve, optimize in every way you know how. Things change, especially of late, so there may be things you don't know yet.

[thanhthanh]

Hi Lucid

no, that is not true, Google only checks the credit cards when the account is newly set up. however, after a period time, you can add or remove cards quite easily. I experienced it, I use my friends cards (of course with their permission) and the address of the friends card does not match the billing information. moreover, I can add any card to backup if i want, so i think the billing system is not human monitored... you can try what I wrote above.

you still disagree?