What's different with adwords, its not behaving the same

[MASSEY]

Whenever work got quiet, i'd set up some ads using exact match and some broad match modifier to increase traffic. For local services business.

I'd do this, write the ad and set a relatively competitive cpc which meant my ads would show in the top positions for clicks until i'd got work and then pause the ads.

It seems that right now i can only get my ads to display at the bottom of the page. i cannot get them at the top.

I even set the cpc at ten pounds for one term to see if the ads on the right being taken away meant cpc had risen, and it still wont crack the top.

And the ad quality / relevance is good, i have the main phrases and keywords in the ad etc. Which some ads showing at the top positions do not.

I am confused here. It seems that they are favoring people who now spend a great deal more, and are using the broad match and phrase option, the mega expensive one.

But on the other hand i feel that cannot be right, because if im bidding a very high cpc to push the other ads down, and increase the bidding costs of others, it should be working.

So what's changed?

Nick

 

[Graham Tyers]

Google certainly does have secret knobs that they tweak for certain accounts.

It takes a while for their 'rip-off-the-advertisers' software to spot the increase in CTR and move you up the page. You can either just put £10 a click on and wait probably. Go into the settings and change the ad-rotation to display ads evenly and turn off everything that does automatic stuff - that'll speed it up.

Is the site responsive and reports well in webmaster tools and checks out as sound html?

 

[MASSEY]

I had changed ads to accelerated to see if that would make a difference so just changed it back. The cpc etc is all manual.

And yes it's a responsive site, relatively basic nothing fancy on wordpress so it shouldn't be the problem.

If ctr is going to be important, im fighting a losing battle if i am displaying at the bottom of the pages for every impression ?

 

[Graham Tyers]

It's getting the CTR up that'll make the difference. It'll probably work its way up the page over the next few days. If not you could try deleting and re-making the campaign possibly.

I presume you're seeing the adwords-bot spidering the site like mad. It may be worth checking that it's not being blocked or filtered.

Calling google and blowing smoke up their rear-end may also help. They get fed up with people complaining to them but will tweak the knobs for people who tell them how wonderful they are.

 

[MASSEY]

I think you may have helped me in a way, the sites not indexed in google right now. Whether the bots are being blocked i dont know, i have clicky analytics and not sure it registers those sorts of visits but ill look.

I was tempted to call them today but always get a feeling that i'll just get no where with them.

 

[Shopclicks]

Nick. You mention that you increased your cpc to £10 and it made no difference. Did you increase your daily budget accordingly? If your Ads are showing but in a lower position, I doubt it's a crawl issue.

 

[Erno Horvath]

First of all, I don't see too much increase on CPC due to the removed right hand side bar, and I can't include link here, but on average I think it's around 10% max, so if you have had Max CPC £5 and now it's £10, there should be other problems.

The expected click through rate is based on the ad position, so you won't get lower quality score just because your ad position is 6 or 7 now. The expected click through rate is always relative to your position, so if you have a good ad you still can have QS 10 at position 7.

AFAIK you don't even have to indexed by the Google bot to start PPC campaigns, so your landing page's quality score won't be effected by that fact if you let Google crawler in or not, you even can block Google crawler and you still can use Google Adwords. The landing page experience is calculated by other factors.

What are the exact Quality Scores for your terms?
Do you use ad extensions?
Do you use different bids for mobile/desktop traffic?
Do you use 'People in my targeted location' setting?

PPC is just get more complicated for the average users, but keep in mind it's not Google that increased the prices but your competitors. It's a real time bidding system and you shouldn't judge a keyword by its cost/click you should judge it based on the money you make from it.

Probably your competitors are using better landing pages so they can convert more customers from the same amount of traffic and that's why they can afford to buy clicks at around £10.

 

[MASSEY]

That's the different thing though, its unlikely that they are even bidding close to ten pounds. This is stuff i could rank top for 8 months ago for around four pounds a click.