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]
With this new bidding process, will this mean that if one bids $1.00 they will actually be paying $1.00 - unlike now when you bid a dollar you never know waht you will actually pay? Will this be taking some of the google craziness out of Google?
will this mean that if one bids $1.00 they will actually be paying $1.00
i dont think this is what is intended. there will be a minimum threshold below which your ad wont be displayed, but that doesn't mean that they are getting rid of the "AdWords Discounter"
... unlike now when you bid a dollar you never know waht you will actually pay? Will this be taking some of the google craziness out of Google?
Man. If you thing this is crazy, then start to learn how to use AdWords!
Will this be taking some of the google craziness out of Google?
You havn't been playing this game very long, have you?
The day they tell me I have to pay a dollar for a click period or I can't play, will be the day the whole system folds. Shopping.com and Shopzilla (or whatever they are choosing to call themselves this week) are finding this out the hard way right now. The reason this system works is because the market determines the price not the company. Markets mostly are realistic. Companies tend to get greedy and over value their service.
I think this system should work out well for A)people who have crafted quality campaigns and B) Advertisers who have lots of money to throw at branding. One will get less competition from junk ads and one will throw even more money at branding.
Unfortunately, it's been one of those days in which I've been away from my desk far more that at it - and I haven't had the chance to post till now. I see some real concerns here since my last post - and I'd like to briefly clarify a number of points.
Here goes:
* The 'auction' will remain the same as before, and the AdWords discounter will continue to work in the same way it always has.
* We're not changing the way that we rank ads. Remember, Ad Rank = maximum CPC x Quality Score. 'Quality Score' is a just another name for predicted CTR
* It is anticipated that the majority of keywords that are active should not see an increase in the minimum bid required to show on Google (currently USD $0.05).
* The minimum bid is entirely independent of the traffic estimator - and the competition. It's 100% based on the Quality Score.
* The minimum bid is specific to your keyword in your specific ad group. Therefore, two advertisers running on the same keyword could have different minimum bids.
* I saw some confusion about 'disabled' keywords remaining in one's account. To clarify, keywords that are currently disabled will remain marked as disabled for a month after the changes are made to the system, at which time they will be deleted. This is so you'll have a month to either delete them yourself, or re-enable them (by first deleting them, then adding them back into your account).
* Once the new program launches, we will no longer disable keywords, nor will accounts be slowed. Most folks here will recognize these as commonly made requests from advertisers, along with the ability to re-use disabled keywords - which we've just discussed above.
Hope that helps to clarify things. ;)
AWA
1) AWA - please quit saying this
There are only 2 components to adrank, CTR and Bid price.
2)
Keywords with a low Quality Score will have higher minimum bids, but the majority of keywords should not see an increase in the minimum bid required to show on Google (currently USD $0.05). "and could even be $0.01Yeah.... sure.... I'm supposed to believe that when I log into all my accounts after the day of the change I'll see no "minimum" bid requirements that force me to raise my bids by significant amounts? I would love to be wrong on this one!
3) AWA - rumor has it that different accounts bidding on the SAME EXACT KEYWORD could have different "minimum" bid requirements due to differences in the "quality of the accounts". Can you shed some light on this?
4) The never being disabled is good news! Some clients have products that are seldom searched for, even less seldom clicked on, BUT PAY BIG WHEN THEY SELL ONE. Kudos to you on this one!
and finally)
If the change is as fair as Google is telling us it will be, this could be a positive change!
Put another way....
If (that's IF) the change is as fair as Google is telling us it will be, this could be a positive change!
This will increase competion as the .05 crowd will grow over time.
With the new minimum bidding (does this have a name yet?), I get a KW out of Hold by increasing the bid. Or can I do this by changing the match type? Is this what you mean by optimizing the KW?
What shall I do about KWs currently in Phrase/Exact status? Change them all to Broad and see what happens with the new min-bid?
"quality of the accounts"
AWA,
Please give careful consideration to JBGilbert's concerns, but in addition, I'd be especially interested in knowing what aspects of AdWords are influenced by "Account Quality" and how is that's defined?
If it's overall CTR, that is something we can only escape over the long term since our early learning experiences are never forgiven. They can only be diluted by an offsetting future history (and that takes some time!). For instance, I have an all-time CTR of 1.3 because it includes long ago deleted campaigns. However, each month of late, I've managed a passable 1.8 Account CTR covering a wide range of areas. Some campaigns can manage 4%, other competitive areas can only do .9% even with considerable effort. Are recent improvements taken into consideration?
Indeed, what else goes into a rating a quality account? Spend?
If we had some true, updated guidelines for what constitutes these designations, no doubt all advertisers would be striving to achieve them. However, with many such definitions held close to the vest as "part of the secret also", we're left to following board "rumors" at best.
Paying advertisers are not going to "trick" the system if they know what constitutes the most effective query matching options, etc. The quality of ads will improve if we're not spinning our wheels wondering how punctuation, matching options and variants of keywords are evaluated.
One can add to that the fact that paying advertisers deserve less tranparancy in many of these areas so everyone's objectives can be best met. Google's supposed quest for "relevant results", the searcher experience and the advertiser avoiding keyword clutter, etc. The Ads Diagnostic tool only does the job 50% on its better days.
Well defined bars of measurement would vastly improve quality all around. What the Help contains about optimization, etc is mostly common sense stuff I didn't need spelled out for me.
Thank You!
patient2all
If something comes around that is not PPC but as effective...I'll remember which companies gouge with my advertising dollars.
Trust me....our budgets will feel this ...and already Google and Overture / Yahoo have almost gouged us out of business before.
In the end this will only be good for the very large companies and will put many many many smaller ones out of contention or even out of business.
Way to go Google.... "Do not Evil" indeed
