At first, I thought the keywords affected were only those of the new ad group but when I checked my other ad groups, a lot has become inactive. Im quite sure the changed were today because some of the keywords that has become inactive were still able to receive clicks and impressions. Not so sure though if they become inactive when I made this new particular ad group (thus making it a bug).
What's ridiculous is that, meaningless keywords such as "sdfsdfs" has ridiculous minimum starting bids now (like .40). This happens when I put the meaningless keywords in ad groups that contain inactive keywords. They do fine and is active if I put them in ad groups that doesnt have one. So what is this? Flagging has become on an ad group basis now?
So are you people experiencing the same? Pls tell me so.
As far as meaningless phrases, I've been told by a Google rep that this is the normal and correct behaviour. If nobody has ever bid on a keyword, the system has no history on it, and they start the bidding fairly high.
I had no luck convincing them that nobody is going to bid $5 on very specific keywords that could only refer to a $15 book.
The best they could do is suggest that I just pay the high price and the price would come down once I started getting clicks.
However, this only happened on one adgroup. So, I think it had to be some sort of glitch. I just said "phooey" on that ad group and moved on.
The min bids were either .50, $1, $2, or $5, depending on how specific the keyword. The more specific, the higher the price.
BUT, the landing pages are as relavant as relavant can be.
If my keyword is "Greenish Blue Widgets that can fly 1200 mph", you bet my landing page is all about that.
I have been advertising on Google with these keywords for years, and have spend close to a grand a day. Why would they all of the sudden do this?
I am not about to to start loosing money, so I am just going to go with overture and market strong with the keywords that Google disables.
The way I see it, every keyword they disable - the more money I give to YSM and not them.
Why pay $1.00 per click when I am trying to make a RETURN of my investment.
So whatever...
All I can say is over the past 8-10 months, Google has became VERY money hungry.
I am an affiliate and I make my own niche products for affiliates to promote as well (I only have a few out there so far). Believe it or not I make WAY more money doing affiliate marketing. Looks like I will spend the majority of my time creating more and more niche products for others to sell.
What can I say, I guess you just have to adapt. If you don't adapt you loose the internet marketing game.
But, IM NOT ADAPTING TO GOOGLES HIGH PRICES ;-)
MSN Adcenter will be one of my next moves as well.