Google requires that I raise my CPCs

[whitemagic]

I have a few sites at parked.com and utilized Adwords to drive traffic to those sites. Google inactivated all my keywords and requires that I may much, much more per click than I did before. Why did this happen, is there a way to revert back to my old CPCs, and what can I do in the future to prevent this from happening?

Will MSN AdCenter do this as well?

Thanks!

 

[bradskid]

I'm guessing you were bidding far too low on your keywords. What was your average position for most of your keywords? If you bid too low on every keyword they will flag you and you will get the treatment you received. I have only been running arbitrage about a week but I haven't had any problems. I generally keep myself in the middle of the other advertisers. I.E- I bid at a price that is about halfway between the highest and lowest bidders. And how long after you had started running arbitrage did they do this to you?

 

[whitemagic]

I'm guessing you were bidding far too low on your keywords. What was your average position for most of your keywords? If you bid too low on every keyword they will flag you and you will get the treatment you received. I have only been running arbitrage about a week but I haven't had any problems. I generally keep myself in the middle of the other advertisers. I.E- I bid at a price that is about halfway between the highest and lowest bidders. And how long after you had started running arbitrage did they do this to you?

My average position is 1.3.

I have only been running on these words for a day.

If my position was really low I would maybe understand, but I was positioned fairly well. They are now asking that I bid 10 times what I originally had! Is there any way to go about "fixing" this?

Next time, what should I look for when placing bids? How do I go about finding what the highest and lowest bidders are?

Thanks!

 

[John Doe]

I have a few sites at parked.com and utilized Adwords to drive traffic to those sites. Google inactivated all my keywords and requires that I may much, much more per click than I did before. Why did this happen, is there a way to revert back to my old CPCs, and what can I do in the future to prevent this from happening?

Will MSN AdCenter do this as well?

Thanks!

Seems you have low quality score and you must optimize your keywords used in Google ads with content and keywords of advertised sites. What is your CTR? Google relies much on CTR in their ad quality and bid calculations.

 

[goodkarmaco]

Just because they recommend you pay 10 times more, you don't have too, just bid the minimum amount they will let you place the ad for.

 

[John Doe]

Just because they recommend you pay 10 times more, you don't have too, just bid the minimum amount they will let you place the ad for.

Doesn`t help much if they deactivated these keywords.

 

[netmeg]

Yes, you have gotten what's called the Google Slap, and it's an indication of low quality score. It's not easy to keep a good quality score on parked domains.

First thing, you can go into your Adwords console and customize the display to show you the Quality Scores (it adds a column)

Things you can do include adding real and unique content to your parked pages, and also grouping them a little more tightly - how many keywords do you have in each ad group? Google doesn't say as much, but I believe that ad group plays an important part - I have revived some inactive keywords with poor quality scores by moving them to a separate ad group, and rewriting the ad text for them. And speaking of ad text - are your ads really focused and relevant? Also makes a difference.

Contrary to what a lot of people believe, it's all automated and handled by the Google ad bots. You happened to have it hit you right after you put your campaign up (victim of timing); more often you get a week or two of 'honeymoon' and then suddenly wake up one morning with all your minimum bids raised out of whack.

The bottom line is, Google doesn't really like arbitrage, and they make it very difficult to do it successfully with parked domains. They don't feel that pages full of nothing but ads are necessarily a good user experience, and they know that if users lose confidence in the Google ad network, *everyone* loses. You might not be able to recover, and may have to try another ad network. Did they leave you with ANY keywords running at all, or did they slap them all?

 

[NPKJB]

Netmeg..... you questioned how many keywords he/she had per group.

Is there any set formula as to how many keywords are ideal for each campaign?

BTW.. Thanks for the tip on adding the Quality Score column. I didn't even know it was an option.

 

[metronome]

yea, after doing domain parking - arbitrage for some time, I would say it is not easy.
google will try to do some slaps on ya:D.

it is understandable tho.....since the traffic generated by arbitraging the domain parking vs google is not that good.

 

[netmeg]

Netmeg..... you questioned how many keywords he/she had per group.

Is there any set formula as to how many keywords are ideal for each campaign?

BTW.. Thanks for the tip on adding the Quality Score column. I didn't even know it was an option.

There's no set formula. The most important thing is actually not how many (or how few) keywords you have in your ad groups, but how tightly focused they are for relevancy to the ad and the landing page, and that tends to favor smaller numbers of keywords. On the whole, I rarely have more than five or six - even if I have thousands of keywords. It's a lot of work to set up that way, but it makes a difference (and with the AdWords Editor, it's a lot easier and faster)

Also, it works a lot better to set it up that way to begin with, than to try to recover from a poor quality score. Once your campaign has been slapped, it is virtually impossible to bring it back from the dead, short of starting all over, on a different domain and with different ads, etc. It can be done, but it could take weeks or months, and even then, no guarantees.

I always advise people start small, with just a few keywords, and gain some history and some knowledge of how AdWords really works before pouring everything into it - but they always want to throw everything at it at once.

 

[Gene]

Great info Netmeg. Rep added!

Yes, you have gotten what's called the Google Slap, and it's an indication of low quality score. It's not easy to keep a good quality score on parked domains.

First thing, you can go into your Adwords console and customize the display to show you the Quality Scores (it adds a column)

Things you can do include adding real and unique content to your parked pages, and also grouping them a little more tightly - how many keywords do you have in each ad group? Google doesn't say as much, but I believe that ad group plays an important part - I have revived some inactive keywords with poor quality scores by moving them to a separate ad group, and rewriting the ad text for them. And speaking of ad text - are your ads really focused and relevant? Also makes a difference.

Contrary to what a lot of people believe, it's all automated and handled by the Google ad bots. You happened to have it hit you right after you put your campaign up (victim of timing); more often you get a week or two of 'honeymoon' and then suddenly wake up one morning with all your minimum bids raised out of whack.

The bottom line is, Google doesn't really like arbitrage, and they make it very difficult to do it successfully with parked domains. They don't feel that pages full of nothing but ads are necessarily a good user experience, and they know that if users lose confidence in the Google ad network, *everyone* loses. You might not be able to recover, and may have to try another ad network. Did they leave you with ANY keywords running at all, or did they slap them all?

 

[goodkarmaco]

Yes,

good info here.

I use to do a good amount of adwords in Google a couple years ago. At that time they did not want you to use it for parked pages. Great to hear now you can if you do it right and not over do it.

I'm going to restart the engines.

 

[bradskid]

Right now, I am only running arbitrage on parked domains that have one click landers but also have added content. I am also only running it on ccTLD domains, and ONLY in the country that they relate to. I have found that since there are not as many people competing for ad space or bidding on such specific terms in targeted countries, google may not care as much if it is a parked domain. My most successful campaign I have been running for about 2 weeks, am using 16 different keywords, and am bidding at a price level that puts me right smack dab in the middle of most advertisements. Not too high, not too low seems to be what is working for me. Currently, my quality score for all my keywords is "OK". Knock on wood, but it seems to be working for me so far. I think you just have to keep a real close eye on what you are doing.

 

[NPKJB]

I guess Google Adword bots must be making their rounds. I just checked one of my campaigns and 6 of my 12 keywords have been set to "Inactive for search". They asked me to raise my current bid 10 cents higher than its set right now.

Since those keywords were not generating any clicks, I decided to leave them paused. The other six keywords are the money makers so I'll focus on them.

 

[netmeg]

Here's another thing Google won't tell you - there's no harm in leaving the terms inactive, because they *might* go active again on their own, specially if they have a Great or OK quality score. (If it's Poor, they probably won't) There are only three choices for QS, by the way - Great, OK and Poor. Google may have different indicators that they use internally, but that's all they'll show us.

*******************************

So I had a campaign that I started a while ago that had gone almost totally poor. I actually had activated it before I had the domains properly optimized and ready to go. Maybe 42 ad groups, with eight keywords in each - four for blue widgets, and four for red. It worked great for about ten days, and then got socked with $1.00 minimum scores all the way around. So I just left it there and went on to work on other things, including improving the landing pages and adding some more content to them.

Last night I went back and took a good look at what I had. I figured that even thought the QS was listed as Poor, I probably wasn't past the point of recovery, because the minimum bids were mostly $1.00 instead of $5.00 and $10.00. I was already bidding $.75 anyway. But I didn't want to pay a dollar.

So the first thing I did was to make 42 MORE ad groups, for the blue widgets, so I had a total of 84 - 42 for blue widgets, and 42 for red widgets. Now, this sounds like a lot of work, I know, but with the AdWords Editor (if you're doing AdWords, you really NEED this tool) it really didn't take too long at all - just copy, paste and edit.

So in the original ad groups, I left the red widgets, and I changed the ad, and made it more red widget specific.

In the blue widget group, I left the original ad running.

Miraculously, this seemed to reset all my Quality Scores to ok and great - even the poor ones! I don't know that it will last till the next time the bots come by, but for right now, I got a do-over. This is great, because my ads are better, my landing pages are better, and my ad groups are more tightly focused, so I have a better chance of keeping more of my keywords running at the CPCs I want to pay.

Your mileage may vary. But if you're having problems keeping an AdWords campaign going, you might give it a try.

 

[NPKJB]

Great info AGAIN Netmeg!!

BTW... I nominated you for NamePros Member of the Month.

Are these parked domains that you're running Adwords on? Or developed sites?

 

[netmeg]

Both.

 

[Gene]

Great stuff. Can you tell us which parking companies are allowing the use of adwords to drive traffic? Many do not allow this. Thanks.

 

[netmeg]

They're all very cagey about saying either yes OR no - not sure why. The only one I know of for sure is Parked.

Maybe I'll hit you up for advice on affiliates/commision programs sometime, since you're Mr. Commission. It's on my list to delve into, some day. I need a 48 hour day is what I need.

 

[hitchhiker]

another thing to do is to group your keywords by quality score . . . it helps the good ones stay "Great" (as adwords would say)