Google AdWords Testing Bid Price Structure Changes
Google is making some changes in pricing of the AdWords program and currently testing them in the AdWords interface according to a Webmaster World discussion. In the discussion, dubbed Google AdWords Pricing Change Goes Into Affect, AdWordsAdvisor (a Google rep) confirms the testing. Honestly, I’ve been a bit out of the loop recently with managing paid search campaigns on AdWords but after checking into my current account I read up on the pricing change.
Google AdWords is going to be placing minimum bids on individual keywords based on the quality of that word and competition. From Google AdWords : “Each keyword will now be assigned a minimum bid that is based on the quality (also called Quality Score) of your keyword in your account. If your keyword or Ad Group’s maximum cost-per-click (CPC) meets the minimum bid, your keyword will be active and trigger ads. If it doesn’t, your keyword will be inactive and will not trigger ads.”
Once the testing of the AdWords Quality Score pricing is finished, the program is planned to go live and Google will be notifying current advertisers via email, a blurb in the AdWords account, or perhaps a phone call or meeting (for the lucky ones). What about changes to the account made in the “testing” phase? AdWordsAdvisor posts “In the meantime, for those few that do see the ‘new’ pages, please know that you are seeing testing, that your account will run as normal during the testing, and that any changes you make in the ‘test’ interface will be saved.” More to come.
The bottom line is the the new “improved” keyword program is costing me 2 to 4 times as much as I was spending on the Adwords program. Most of my keywords (over 400) have become inactive as a result of the new program.
Furthermore, I swear it looks like they targeted the most relative (important) keywords to my business and raised the price of them by a disproportioned amount.
I have posted this question to Goolge and I am waiting for a response.
I am advertizing a music fan site. I make no money on this. I started out bidding .10 per click. The next day my keywords went inactive. I upped my bid to the new minimum of .20 per click. The next day it went to .30, then .40 then .50. At that point the price went crazy to 1.00 and then to 5.00. I never bid over .50 for anything yet some of my searches want $10.00 per click now! Some of these produced less than a handful of impressions! This is so crazy that I’ll probably just cancel my whole account. I’ve never seen anything so stupid in my life. I’m starting to suspect Google’s motto “Don’t be Evil” has been replaced by “Lie, Cheat, and Swindle.”
I’m about to drop Adwords. I believe also that they are putting the CPC up on words that are most relevant to my business.
Whenever I e-mail them asking to explain they copy and paste some answer out of the help menu. Adwords seems to have the opposite philosophy to Google. What other product goes up 50-100% in one day? Grrrr…
Prior to Googles changes I had a $75.00 daily budget and received 50 clicks per day, or an average of $1.50 per click. Now I can’t even get an ad to display for less than $10.00 per click. There are alot more cost effective methods to market our customers. But I guess that Google doen’t know this or just doesn’t care.