Coming soon: Simplified keyword states and quality-based minimum bids.
In the coming weeks, your keywords will no longer be evaluated as normal, in trial, on hold, or disabled. Instead, your keywords will either be active or inactive, depending on their quality and maximum CPC. Each keyword will be assigned a minimum bid based on its quality. As long as its maximum CPC meets this quality-based minimum bid, your keyword will remain active and trigger ads. Learn more.
[edited by: eWhisper at 12:00 am (utc) on July 15, 2005]
[edit reason] Please don't copy entire pages. See TOS. [/edit]
I'm very happy to see Adwords disabling The Four Horsemen of the Adpocolypse: Normal, OnHold, InTrial, & Disabled. While it did seem to eventually sort itself out, I did feel penalized for the irrelevance of other campaigns run before I had begun my campaign.
Here's what I like about the new system (if it turns out as publicized).
1. Accounts will no longer be slowed. Good. Let me "fail fast" and move on. Also, I was never sure if by "account will be slowed" meant the Ad Group, the Campaign or the entire actual Account.
2. No more .5% Minimum CTR requirement. This doesn't look good upon first inspection. Someone can spend "stupid money" and take up the first page for virtually anything they are willing to pay for and NEVER GET A CLICK. I hope Google makes $100 per click off of them and they go away. Hopefully, Adwortisers won't be willing to do this but potentially, the entire first page of Ads could be from those willing to lose money.
3. The Quality Score is the next generation of CTR. It includes but is not limited to CTR. Here's what Google says: "Quality Score (determined by your keyword's CTR, relevance of ad text, historical keyword performance, and other relevancy factors)." This further darkens the opacity of the Black Box of Adwords Relevance. As a specialist, this is probably good news for me. For the do-it-yourself Adwortiser, this means more difficulty in understanding what's going on even if the ease of being successful stays about the same.
4. Google suggests visiting the Optimization Tips page. I already did and will continue to post on the recommendations.
which means that maintaining your high CTR is going to be difficult
Google has stated that it normalizes CTR for position. The look at where the ad is in relation to CTR, not just CTR. i.e. two ads in the #1 & #2 spot with the same actual CTR, the one in the #2 spot would be considered to have a higher CTR. At least that is what the G engineer told me at the PubCon G event.
I would imagine that carries over to this. My question is:
If it doesn't, your keyword will be inactive and will not trigger ads
You can move an inactive keyword to an active state and show ads by (1) improving its Quality Score through optimization, or (2) increasing its maximum CPC to the minimum bid recommended by the system.
So how does one improve the quality score for KWs on an ad if isn't shown? No ad, no CTR means no improvement. Which means that the only way to "improve" a keyword is to up the bid.
HALI-FRIEKEN-LLUYAA!
I guess time will tell but this is what I wanted a long time ago...
.... and today I did a major purge of in-trial/on hold/ disabled keywords....... goood thing I did a backup...
This added will all the other new stuff that is happening should make for an interesting time.
Crap! I'm going fishing in Alaska the last week of July and will have limited net access...... that should be fun..... I could come home happy or very poor if my account does frieky things....
It's all a game is what I say....
heyday
My guess, is that including the keyword in lines 2 or 3 gets you points, including it in the headline gets you more points, and including it in BOTH parts gets you max points, as far as wording goes.
The minimum bid is dynamic and will change based on the Quality Score (calculated using the CTR, relevance of ad text, historical keyword performance, and other relevancy factors).
Might be time for Google to give more info about 'relevance of ad text' and what that means if it's used to determine quality score.
but anyway, what i really wanted to say was, thank you google for giving us warning. thank you very much. it is much apreciated.
-Dr.X
... your keywords will no longer be evaluated as normal, in trial, on hold, or disabled.
Just Hallelujah!
... keep in mind, that to get 1 cent traffic, your CTR is going to have to be VERY high;
I have some 0.05 USD / 19% CTR KWs and it will be great to pay 0.01 for them :-)
Has this system been well field tested?
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Right now when I run the keyword estimator tool, it suggests $2.82 cents for a keyword that I know darn well won't take more than a dime to maintain a healthy, profitable second place. This happens constantly!
Will similar logic be used? Will similarly strange anomolies abound in the rating system?
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Will this take ad position into consideration?
I don't always strive to be #1. If a keyword consistently shows 4 ads, I do quite well at the bottom of the column vs. the middle or the top. I guess I'm asking will the rate be staggered based on positioning?
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I've been either lucky or reasonably savvy up until now. Few keywords disabled or on hold out of a 50k list and never have been "slowed". If the attainable keyword pool suddenly means most of my keywords cannot be shown at a rate that generates acceptable ROI, then you'll have another unhappy advertiser and unhappy customers who seem to like me :)
Up until now, generally I've been able to use a single bid per AdGroup. The obscure words always came in at a nickel while the more popular ones used the max CPC or near. If we have to hone AdGroups Max CPCs at the keyword level, advertisers will have to spend much more time and system I/O maneuvering bids and your allegedly already taxed system will be burdened even more so.
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You can move an inactive keyword to an active state and show ads by (1) improving its Quality Score through optimization, or (2) increasing its maximum CPC to the minimum bid recommended by the system.
Option 1 is obviously preferable to option 2.
Now as Hammerluv points out, you won't know if you can show unless you raise your bid. I doubt the max CPC will adjust based on immediate changes to the creative, especially if the ad score is another "secret".
Will any new keyword/creative optimization guidelines be offered?
I don't see any specifics pointed out on the notification page that aren't strictly common sense.
Pre-implementation real world examples of how typical accounts might be affected would be vastly preferable to the usual major change scenario. A 30 page thread will contain the laments of advertisers suddenly taken down by mysterious surprises.
I'm picturing nickel bids that worked forever suddenly becoming 50 cent mininums and no one able to shed any light on the why.
Why not work out the kinks with the involuntary regional CPCs first? Last I've read here the fix has been relegated to advertisers using workarounds.
Why not wait until the week after Thanksgiving to implement it -- :)
This just doesn't feel right already. Remember the "On Hold/On Trial" nightmare. That was well intentioned too, designed to forestall the immediate drop to "Disabled".
patient2all
end Rant
-With the new approach, could any Active keyword be required a higher bid to be re-enabled?
-Will existing keywords have any advantage over new keywords in the min bid?
And... Could I say that Google will allow lower quality, lower relevance ads in searches if the advertiser pays more? With the risk of users seeing more unrelated ads and ignoring all ads a little bit more?
