"widgets"
was paying 26 cents and according to google was in the number 5 position.. was getting as i just checked 18 clicks today on that.. with a 6.0% click through.. so i thought ok thats not bad.. maybe i can drop down my price as i heard google lets you do that if you have good clickthrouhg.. actually i heard they are meant to do it automaitcally but they havent.. im still paying 26 cents.
anyway i drop it to 21 cents... and that deactivates it.. they say it must be 25 cents.. Im like WHY? isnt 5 cents meant to be the bid minimum not 25 cents. plus im getting good clickthrouhg.. this doesnt make friggin sense.. they are forcing me to pay them 25 cents and cannot go lower..
so the guy below me if im in 5th position and there are 8 spots.. i wonder what hes paying? I mean if i dont want to stay in 5th position i should be able at this point to lower my bid and take 7th or 8th position.. but according to google they wont let me.
Why?
[edited by: mona at 3:52 pm (utc) on April 21, 2006]
[edit reason] no specific KWs, please - thx! [/edit]
Today I changed the domain for one of my ads to a more relevant domain name, and what I was paying for yesterday at .08/click now wants me to pay $5.00 a click to activate. Currently for the keyword, there are only 6 ads active, so I am completely stumped on why I need to pay $5.00 a click.
(At least, that's the theory as I understand it)
One thing that bothers us the most is the seeming arbitrariness of the $1, $5 or $10 minimum bids to go active. I mean, if this was simply the algorithm trying to improve relevancy (user experience) of ads, taking a regression with a variety of factors to determine what your initial minimum should be, why these big, clean numbers; it makes no sense.
Furthermore, instead of forcing you to pay these absurd click prices temporarily, why not take into consideration, let's say, the fact that an account has been around for 2 years with terrific overall results, CTR, etc., and assume that hey, this new ad/keyword is probably pretty darn good as well. Sadly, I think that it all boils down to squeezing that extra cent out of you.
One other thought; do you think (or if not, do you think it would be a good idea) that Google measures comparative bounce rates (i.e. immediate clicks "back" to the SERP by users) of landing pages to determine relevancy of the site/landing page being advertised? To be honest, this could be a very effective way to determine (rather than more traditional search algo bots or human determination) effective and targeted landing pages. Admittedly, this would be subject to abuse, but no more so than click fraud, impression fraud, etc.
Thoughts?
Shouldn't meeting the mininum bid required to show place you at the bottom of the list?
Instead, once I "give in" and activate a keyword by bidding the requested amount, I shoot right into the top positions. Quite often #1, rarely lower than #3.
If I didn't deserve to show at all because of "page quality scores" or whatever, why is my presumed sub-standard ad suddenly rewarded with a highly coveted position?
Instead of these 100 fold increases in bids which quite often defy reason, poorer ads should have their bid multiplied by some penalty factor that we'd scarcely notice. An additional premium tacked on like (NormalCPC * 1.125) which advertisers would hardly be able to pin down or get righteously indignant about.
Something that fits in better with the notion of a calculated CPC, not "let's just multiply the current bids by 10 or 100"!
Funny how in the darkest days after April 5th, the only ads that continually showed were the spammy "we'll give it away for free" type. Those "buy a phone plan, get a free CD" schemes must be highly profitable!
I still think the machine is broken.
Israel
A guy meets a woman in a bar and asks her if she would be willing to spend the night with him for $1 million. She is sort of flattered and figures its a good deal so she agrees. A friend of the first guy walks over and joins the conversation. He asks the woman rather bluntly if she would perform a certain act on him in the alley for $20. She is indignant and demands "just what kind of woman do you think I am"? He responds "my friend determined what kind of woman you are, now I am just negotiating price".
In the old and maybe more virtuous days Google disabled keywords that they determined weren't relevent or had poor landing pages. It was reasonable for them to tell advertisers that "user experience" was the top priority. The ultra high CPC says user experience is still a high priority but that they are willing to degrade user experience for a price.
Shouldn't meeting the mininum bid required to show place you at the bottom of the list?Instead, once I "give in" and activate a keyword by bidding the requested amount, I shoot right into the top positions. Quite often #1, rarely lower than #3.
Yea, that is something that really bothered me about some of the disabled keywords. Some appear to be normal, like going from 0.05 to .10 to activate, but it is absolutely nuts when it goes from .05 to .50+ and you shoot all the way to the top of the list. It's like google telling you 'hey, we really don't like your site, so you're either going to pay top price or you're getting no play here'.
I say that because I had a campaign that had...
domain a - not relative at all domain name - 2.0% avg CTR
domain b - old domain I think I used before months ago, but very relevant - 8.0% avg CTR
domain c - brand new relevant domain - 8.0% avg CTR
I went from domain a to domain b, and with the better CTR, all of the sudden 95% of my keywords became inactive with most requiring at the min .30 to re-activate. I tried a few, jumped me up to top place, but I couldn't afford that. The ROI wasn't good enough.
So, I went to domain c, and the keywords became active, and back down to the .05ish CPC rate. No ad text change except the domain name, and no landing page change. Just the domain name. I wonder if domain b was banned or penalized for something I did when I first started up adwords, who really knows at this point.
They assume if your ad doesnt get clicked through enough for keywords.. they disable it.. and instead of saying ok you was paying 5 cents.. now you can turn it on for 10 cents.... they either basically
want you to get rid of that keywords
want you to change your site
want you to put that keyword in its own ad which is more releveant and has a landing page thatr more relevant..
then making you pay the top amount... you will be up the top and if you dont get clicks there.. then its safe to say your ad or site is irrelvant.. I can kind of see what their doing but it sucks.. makes out job of adverting a hell of a lot harder.. more work.. maintaing, stipping out keywords etc etc..
Maybe I am lucky or what , but I pay the same PPC for the last 4 months for my main keywords. It is a very low price and with a 1.5% CTR. Maybe because I am targetting only one country for local country sales. Maybe the world costs too much :-)
Maybe , maybe , maybe ...all guesses...
Yeah the minimum G allows is 1 cents . This you can activate on few content network ads. I have one campaign at 2 cents with 3 % CTR on the content network.
How do you think MFA's make their money? Not to say I am one..but the logic holds.
If you are bidding on 'widgets' does your landing page have a high keyword density for 'widgets' - and have 'widgets' as the most dense keyword? Does it have widgets in the title? The URL?
All these things help.
I went from a minimum of 30 cents a click to now paying 3 cents a click just by making a new landing page for each term and focusing it upon the giventerm.
I went from a minimum of 30 cents a click to now paying 3 cents a click just by making a new landing page for each term and focusing it upon the giventerm.
Interesting. Do you just use the 'destination URL'? How many keywords do you have? If a lot, that must be a lot of maintainence if you want to make a change, say an affiliate stops converting or something.
The once which you find are costing you more than you think they should should each have their own destination page using the destination url (not display url!).
Black-hat tip alert: It is easy enough for Google to see a customised high-keyword-density destination page whilst everyone else sees something else. It is also possible to use the destination URL itself to supply the keywords for that landing page.
Supply, demand and maximum return should be what rules at Google and I suspect it does. What would be Google's motive for excluding bidders unless they've got plenty of advertisers lining up with higher bids?
Their system is about as fair as it gets.
Supply, demand and maximum return should be what rules at Google and I suspect it does. What would be Google's motive for excluding bidders unless they've got plenty of advertisers lining up with higher bids?
You would think so, but one of the keywords where they randomly made me inactive and told me I had to pay 600% of what I was originally paying to get it active again, there were only 6 ads showing for that keyword. So I don't understand it.
one of the keywords where they randomly made me inactive and told me I had to pay 600% of what I was originally paying to get it active again, there were only 6 ads showing for that keyword
That is the quality and relevance issue, I presume. I had a bid at around 25 cents when I was _the only_ bidder. Whilst the keyword was highly relevant to the page, the page did not contain the keyword. When I optimised a new landing page for that keyword the minimum bid went to 3 cents.
What that indicates is that it is not soley a case of supply-and-demand - but an effort on the part of Google to force us to improve the relevancy of the ads to the keywords!
What that indicates is that it is not soley a case of supply-and-demand - but an effort on the part of Google to force us to improve the relevancy of the ads to the keywords!
I think that could be called an astute observation, vincevincevince. ;)
As to the observation made here and elsewhere that Minimum Bid seems unrelated to the number of one's competitors for keyword, that is quite correct.
Below are a few paragraphs on the subject posted back in January on an online AdWords resource:
...Let's start by first defining what minimum bid really means:The minimum bid, also known as the minimum CPC, is the least that one can pay to have an ad appear for a particular keyword in a particular account. It is very important to know, however, that one's minimum bid is entirely unrelated to how many other advertisers are using the same keyword. Instead, since August of 2005, the minimum bid has been quality based. To put it simply, the higher the Quality Score of a keyword, the lower one's minimum bid will be for that keyword.
So, very low minimum bids are earned by creating highly relevant ad text and keywords that get outstanding Quality Scores. And only the most relevant keyword and ad text combinations will earn a minimum bid of $0.01 (or its equivalent in other currencies).
It's worth noting that every keyword has a minimum bid that is unique to how successfully that word has been used in an advertiser's particular account. So the minimum bid for the keyword 'Kansas City BBQ sauce' will be different in your account than in your next door neighbor's account, who happens to be using the same keyword.
How can you lower your minimum bid? The short answer is to improve your Quality Score by optimizing your ads.
AWA
Whilst the keyword was highly relevant to the page, the page did not contain the keyword. When I optimised a new landing page for that keyword the minimum bid went to 3 cents.
Man, where were you weeks ago when I was pulling my hair out over this issue? haha. Great tips, i'm going to really try to optimize my landing pages for specific keywords.
Btw, I have a few small questions if you don't mind. I've been testing for awhile but haven't found the right combo, or is it really hit and miss depending on the ad group?
Anyway... (if you don't want to answer just ignore ;)
- Content Network? Yes / No
- Search Network? Yes / No
- Broad Keywords? Yes / No
- Price in Ads? Yes / No
I have a feeling like there really won't be a set answer for each, but had to ask anyway. Thanks!
