* Important billing info - we haven't billed you enough this month...(oh, thanks!)
* Adwords will be offline between this time and that time...
* New disapproved ads tool.
Is adwords actually trying to communicate or is it just a case of synchronicity?
Syzygy
I have contacted Adwords and after 5 days they responded that they had some system problems with reporting clicks, etc and this may have had to do with the campaign deterioration. Today things are better but still far away from where it used to be before the 18th.
It sucks when you try to optimze your campaign and than crapp like this happens.
Hopefully they can put everything back to normal soon.
Important reporting and billing notice
Due to a recent system delay, your account reported fewer clicks than you actually received. We have resolved this delay and adjusted the number of billable clicks from all affected days in February.
Are they just kiding?
I ran some reports this week, sent it to clients, charged the clients for the clicks.
So, I am going to write to my clients now:
"Hey I was wrong, Google says, the stats are not right - the Google boys (and girls) has found some clicks under thier table. Here is another invoice for the clicks, that were found."
The worst thing is this - they make the mistake and I have to re-run all the reports and look for the differences.
So, if they are not kidding, I really would like to see, how many clicks were found under the table for every day in February.
Client 1, the time period February 1st - February 20th:
No difference - the same number of clicks.
There is no other client in this account.
Why they write to me
your account reported fewer clicks than you actually received.?
The first speculation - they do not BOTHER, if the particular account was touched or not - they just write to all.
The worse version of the first speculation - they do not KNOW, if the particular account was touched or not.
The second speculation - the problematic clicks appeared after February 20th.
Client 2, the time period February 1st - February 22th:
No difference - the same number of clicks.
But there are other clients in this account and I did not ran the report for them this month, so I cannot say, if the whole account was touched or not.
Thanks AdWords folks - I have another greate Friday evening.
Got the same three. Interesting, I though at least the first would not be a general message...
Exactly, I thought it was unique to me...
Syzygy
"I have noticed a huuuge dropp in my ctr's from Feb 17 to Feb 18th. That was pretty disturbing. Before the 17th i was no 2,3 for my top keywords, on the 18th campaigns dropped to pos. 8, 10 while paying 3 times the money per click.
I have contacted Adwords and after 5 days they responded that they had some system problems with reporting clicks, etc and this may have had to do with the campaign deterioration. Today things are better but still far away from where it used to be before the 18th."
We noticed exactly the opposite on the same dates. Average CPC on all of our keywords that had been added in the last month took a giant tumble. Our CPCs went down 4x to 5x while maintaining and/or increasing position. This was apparent on multiple campaigns across hundreds of keywords.
Something very strange definitely happened on Feb 18th and Google is not letting on to it.
See posts from:
[webmasterworld.com...]
and
[webmasterworld.com...]
My guess is that Google started to play with the algo and there were unintended consquences. Now they're trying to fix.
maybe adwords revenue didn't meet its' target goal, so some "extra" clicking was necessary :-)
I just truly hope that the IPO didnt get to their heads and they wont become just another overture. Those Aspen get aways better do them some good.
Its just really hard to work/optimize a campaign when this kind of thing happens and throws everything off the cliff.
