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?

[bostonseo]

Google is desperate for cash revenue for the latest earnings report. Just because they have 2 Billion in the bank doesn't mean anything to investors - you need to prove revenue growth; not profitability and they are not show the revenue growth Wall Street wants to see.

[sherwoodseo]

On a (possibly) related note, I've been hearing about a lot of account holds recently, with "fax your credit card" visual checks being requested to resume ad display. It happened on a couple of my accounts as well - for different clients with different cards. Any experiences?

The connection is that if there's some credit card fraud going on, that might explain the spike in click prices. Bidders who "liberate" funds don't care much about ROI ;)

[ralent]

Someone mentioned they had thousands of keywords and only 2 or 3 went inactive. Is it possible that the clients are already paying top price?

[ralent]

I do have to add in all fairness that the campaign of mine which got hit the hardest didn't have the best landing pages.

I switched two ad groups from my pages to direct to merchant and they came back tonight.

[Israel]

They don't mind letting the undesirables run on the content side because most people don't realize it's a G ad anyway. The only way this is affecting you is b/c large numbers of those affected are turning on content in an attempt to make up for the loss in traffic which translates into a better pool to match from, which traslates to better targeting.

hannamyluv,

You've hit it on the head with this and several other observations you've made in this thread. Desperation has sent those with "Inactives" to turn on their Content switch, hence the greater pool for Google to pull from (as you just said).

It's also a boon for the truly endless number of MFA sites, which in turn is great for Google revenue. MFA's are obviously not constrained by "page quality scores".

Israel

[hughie]

[EDIT] - just found what i'm after [/EDIT]

[trinorthlighting]

Hmm, google changes the algo... All the scraper sites peak which causes users to click on advertisements.... Sounds like another class action lawsuit might be on the horizon....

[drall]

"Hmm, google changes the algo... All the scraper sites peak which causes users to click on advertisements.... Sounds like another class action lawsuit might be on the horizon.... "

now that is just being silly.

[netmeg]

Someone mentioned they had thousands of keywords and only 2 or 3 went inactive. Is it possible that the clients are already paying top price?

That was me (and it's NETmeg, not NUTmeg, ork ork)

In some cases, yes, but mostly not. I have several thousand words that are purposely placed to rank 5-8 or even lower; we want a presence on those terms, but they're either too expensive or the product they represent isn't lucrative enough to justify more of an expenditure. I have one keyword where I'm maintaining a steady #18 position at 3 or 4 cents per click, and I still get several hundred clicks a day on it. All the client has to do is make one or two sales a week; but if we were paying $4 or $5 per click (which is what I think the top spot is currently going for) it wouldn't be worth it, even with all the extra exposure. As with everything, it's a delicate balance.

[hughie]

netmeg, we're in a similar position, quite happy to go along positions 5-10 for our keywords on the back of an excellent click thru rate for the money, now we're forced to pay more, the click-thru has gone up and we're getting positions 2-3.

Surely if my click-thru rate is so good they would let me lower my bid, there are 40 advertisers below us, what are they paying?

also just got asked to bid £5.50 for an on-topic keyword in one ad-group and it's running at 0.22p in another.....

crazy business