Two things are incorrect in their statements about how bidding works:
1) If no-one else is advertising then I do not need to bid even a micro-cent more than a competitor to get impressions. There is no-one else.
2) Even if someone else were advertising it is most unlikely that my bids per keyword would have to rise in £0.06 increments from my start point in order for keywords to remain active.
To give you some background, let's go to dear old Scunny again. I am geographic targetting Scunny. So the advert is restricted to what Big G perceives as a Scunny IP address, presumably.
Lets assume Scunny has districts like 'Greenspace', 'Redspace' and 'Scunny Park'.
I am using broad match for each of these and am using them as keywords with an advert tailored with the {keyword} function to show the sought after keyword three times when the advert is served. Thus I am relevant. Or I think I am.
I have IP access to the Scunny area and I see either no other adverts but mine, or just occasionally adverts from people like eBay who think you can buy or sell Scunny Park on eBay. (Good targetting, guys! - it's a place!)
Even so, every hour or so, Big G tells me that I must incease the keyword quality (Joke! - I have shedloads of negative keywaords to do just that) or raise my bid. And when I search on the newly inactive keyword there is no-one else advertising.
Now I grant you that other people may be advertising 'Redspace' in regions other than Scunny, but I am not competing with them. I am not advertsing in their area so their bid price should not even be relevant to me.
Before I put this to Big G, do any of you have a clue what is going on?
See my post.
[webmasterworld.com...]
And the most recent.
[webmasterworld.com...]
I am using broad match for each of these and am using them as keywords with an advert tailored with the {keyword} function to show the sought after keyword three times when the advert is served. Thus I am relevant. Or I think I am.
{keyword:default text}
The default text is whatever you want a searcher to see if something happens that prevents the keyword from being displayed. I’m not too sure what would interfere with the keyword being displayed other than simply running out of characters. If the keyword + any text you have in the ad is more than the number of spaces that Google gives us on a line then your default text would be shown. If you don’t have any default text then you might have some funny looking ads being served once in a while.
The person searching sees the keyword in the ad, but Google only sees the default text. If the person creating the ad has done their job by making sure that none of their keywords + any text go beyond the character limit then the keyword would be in the ad 100% of the time. I think that Google should consider the keyword as being in the ad where that all important RELEVANCE is concerned, but I don’t work for a billion dollar search engine, so I must be wrong.
Can’t Google’s programmers PLAN around this? All they have to do is write another line of code into the algorithm that COUNTS THE NUMBER OF CHARACTERS in the keywords and any text in the line while the ad is being set up and prevent the most common error from causing the default text from being shown.
You know I don’t think I have EVER seen the word relevance more often than I have recently. It SEEMS that Google LOVES relevance, but talk is cheap. I’ve seen keywords that are being used in my ad rise in price and I have seen keywords that aren’t used in my ad rise in price.
I have IP access to the Scunny area and I see either no other adverts but mine, or just occasionally adverts from people like eBay who think you can buy or sell Scunny Park on eBay. (Good targetting, guys! - it's a place!)
It looks like G is trying to squeeze us out of the business. I can’t see paying $5.00 a click on an image ad just to see what happens, and as for the $0.50+ (and rising) keywords in my text campaigns I won’t increase much more. I’m just learning, and so far I haven’t made any money back. I won’t waste my money just feeding a money pit that keeps asking for more and more.
I have just created a new campaign, and been able to set the inadequate max CPC of £0.01. I appeared predictably in position 84 or worse. I was happy because I coudl then gradually increase CPC to aim for top 20s.
But no!
Google let me make 2 increases. I got £0.02 saved.
Then I got 0.03 saved.
Whammo. As soon as I saved it Google says cheerfully "1 keyword inactive", and asked me to raise it to £0.06.
Obsviously it was quite unable to do that when I rasied it (1 minute before, and my error because Iwas jumoing to £0.03 but miskeyed) to £0.02!
I get the feeling that Google notces that we edit things, spots a piece of low hanging fruit and grabs us in mid edit.
Or I could just be paranoid!
