Smart Pricing Also can Apply to Search Network

[irish_john]

However, you will be pleased to know that the Smart Pricing model which we use for our Content Network also applies to sites in our Search Network.

[Tropical Island]

Is this something new?

[irish_john]

I always had thought that it applied to Content Targetting only, but when going over a campaign ( that had no content targetting), found a click that had been charged at $0.03. So I wrote in and was told that smart pricing actually could be applied to the search network as well.

[sem4u]

I haven't heard about this. Is it in their FAQs or something?

[irish_john]

I hadn't heard about it either until I had emailed Adwords Support with a dedicated question, where I found I had been billed $0.03 on a particular keyword, when the minimum accepted bid if $0.05.

I don't think its in the FAQ either. Thats why i thought it might be newsworthy.

[inasisi]

That is good news. There are a few Search Partners, for whom the conversion rates are poor. Also, if any content partner has a search box in their pages, the resulting ads are considered as part of the search network. This again leads to possible fraud within the search network from the content partners. This kind of smart pricing could reduce such instances.

But it would be better if Google was more careful at the time of accepting partners in the first place. That would cut down on all this heart ache for us and Google.

[mike_ppc]

I feel that Search Network is slowly going down .....towards Content!

There are a lot of Search Partners that provide "questionable traffic" . Too bad about those that still bring quality traffic, as we might be forced to disable "Search Network" soon if things continue like this.

[sem4u]

I might start doing that as well mike. It would be good if we could block some URLs like with content sites...