Sudden increase of CPC recently?

My campaigns are full of inactive keywords.

[fischermx]

I didn't review my campaigns since last week, I remember a campaign with arround 1000 keyword in which I had about 150 "inactive for search".
Today I have 750 "inactive for search"!

Does anybody get any similar to this recently?

[ConfusedWriter]

Then that is absolutely bad business on Google's behalf. For a client to spend 120k a month, and not have a dedicated manager is beyond me. If you could, I would try to go above the slacker to see if you could be reassigned to someone who actually wants to work.

[wrgvt]

The minimum bid for many of my keywords has dropped from $5 or $10, but not back to the original levels, and about 40% are still $5 or $10. For example, a set of keywords that were running in the 20 cent range now need a 50 cent bid. It's still too high.

I've been changing all my ads over to direct to merchant, and outbidding other affiliates (many of them running crappy, cheap ads). My sales are returning to normal that way, albeit with a smaller profit margin, but it's still profit. Google thinks their visitors are better served going direct to the merchant, yet I know I have more information on my pages and better comparisons of products. Google just doesn't think there's any value in that.

[drall]

Just wanted to add my 2 cents for what its worth as a publisher, on the adsense side since this was first reported we are seeing a large increase of 40% ctr across every property we own, this would translate to me after watching our stats closely for 3 years almost as a increase in the quality of the ads now showing on our properties and being much more related to what users are looking for.

We are seeing no increase in payout however epc wise but a large increase in ctr on a large volume of traffic so perhaps it is a tweak to improve accuracy as Google is stating and not a wild theory of them trying to cash in etc. Just my 2 cents.

[Simon_Says]

Drall, I'm seeing similar % increase in clicks on my adverts on the landing page from Google / search partner sites. Certainly relevance must have been improved Google's end. So well done to Google even tho my revenue and ROI are down.

I've resisted raising my bids and traffic is back to around 60% of pre 5th April.

I wonder, did anyone see more new inactive phrases for broad match than for phrase match than for exact match? This would be interesting to know.

[UncleScooter]

The same thing happened to me. After a day on the phone with the arrogant Google representatives, I discovered that it was at least partially about duplicate content.

My site is an affiliate site that uses descriptions from a merchant datafeed. I knew this would hurt me in the SERPS but the site was created with PPC in mind.

I removed the descriptions that were not my own content and within a few hours my keywords were back online.

On a side note, dealing with the people at Google and their "take it or leave it" attitude has certainly prompted me to set up PPC campaigns elsewhere in an effort to reduce my dependence on Google. Google is an arrogant company who has once again demonstrated that they will destroy the credibility of their business model before they will admit a mistake.

I pointed out site scrapers who were now occupying top PPC spots since they kicked all the good advertisers out. They said nothing. I pointed out site scrapers in the top 5 SERPS for certain keywords.

They claim to do all of this in the name of the customer experience yet they seem to place site scrapers above quality sites. Makes me wonder how many Google employees might have their own web sites.

[rstein68]

So I guess an official explaination from AWA is not going to occur here?

[hdpt00]

I'll give it you officially, from the inside: "We need more money. Selling off 1.5 billion worth of shares per month is not enough, we must get 2."

[Israel]

I wonder, did anyone see more new inactive phrases for broad match than for phrase match than for exact match? This would be interesting to know.

Inactive
Exact 32%
Phrase 24%
Broad 44%

Total Keywords
Exact 33%
Phrase 24%
Broad 43%

Seems to be across the board, Simon. I've looked for a rhyme or reason without much success. Certain times including a lesser used preposition had a 50 cent bid, without the preposition wanted $5-$10. Many sites which in my opinion are lacking in quality were untouched.

The only vague sense that I got was that text to HTML ratio may have been considered, but contradictions abound there too.

Only trends I could discern.

22% of keywords are now inactive. I met some minimums where I really needed the keyword bad, but I'd say they represent 2% - Most keywords had impressions and usually clicks. CTR could be 15%+ on an "Inactive" and a CTR less than 1% was left alone within the same adgroup.

Sorry, I'm not smart enough to understand the algo ;)

Israel

[aleksl]

<rant>This is what you get when you use "free conversion tools". All they want to know is what converts better in which niche, and guess what - you webmasters caused this M***F*** G$$gle to go "GREED ALL THE WAY".</rant>

The only thing I can suggest is anyone in their right mind to IMMEDIATELY remove any G$$gle conversion tools they have installed.

The Fool pays 10-fold.

<edit>It is a dream-come-true subject for a journalist. Imagine title "Google deceives advertisers with its 'free tracking' tools to pump up the prices of ads". I'd bet this'll get slashdotted</edit>

[etr06]

aleksl - you actually bring up an interesting point... how many of us use Google Analytics too?

I do.