The eagle has landed!

Adwords has changed their bidding

[humblebeginnings]

Hi folks,

As of now Adwords seems to work with their new bidding system. At least, where I live (Europe). Was this already implemented elsewhere? Keywords have a minimum bid. If you don't bid the minimum, your ad will not be shown in relation to that keyword. A lot has been said about this. We will see what this will do to our income...

[humblebeginnings]

And now suddenly Adwords seems to have revoked the new system. Keyword bidding is again exactly the same as yesterday. Is Big G a bit confused today?

[humblebeginnings]

Me again folks, I was just reading a comment of Adwordsadvisor in the Adwords forum saying:

"The changes have not actually launched yet - and what you are seeing is some limited pre-launch testing as we get things ready for prime-time."

Eh..?
So I guess we still have to wait a little while to see the effects on our income.

[DavidDeprice]

Yes, the system started to work, I've used it and then it revoked back.
Here is what I've learned. Despite the promised 0.01 minimum, the reality is that there is a 0.10 cent minimum for all new keywords. For instance, you can bid on some garbage, like "ffhgt14" or "F6MINNL", so you know there is not a single advertiser other than you for that keyword and you ad won't get triggered unless you bid 10 cents. So basically Google went the Overture's way
However (this is my assumption) it is possible to get below 5 cents per click, provided the keyword was used by other advertiers before you - I guess Google has a library of discounted keywords based on the prior (poor) performance with other advertisers. It certainly looks like the new system will take over starting with August 19, so I am adding new keywords like crazy (the new reality 10 cent minimum does not apply to existing keywords, provided they are active) because it looks to me like the 5 cent days are over and we have only a few days.