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September 16, 2013 at 5:46 pm #984956Up::0
Ok, I used to use AdWords quite a bit a few years back and for the most part had no issues with it.
I just started using it again recently and have found it very irritating to use. I think they’ve been focusing on improving the user experience (the people that see and click on the ads) far too much and actually forgotten about the people that actually pay to put their ads up there!!!
My problems primarily are with their bloody “AdRank” system they now use. I’ve been having trouble getting my ads to even show with this stupid system; for example one ad I have on a keyword has above average ratings for the title and keyword relevance, but the landing page relevance is apparently “below average”; yet the landing page is EXACTLY what the user is searching for….. because of this my ad is not running; to get it running I obviously will need to pay a crap load more per click because of their stupid system!
Some other ad group I just started a couple days ago now show my ads as not running when all the relevance scores are average. These are low traffic/competition keywords, so there shouldn’t be any problems with them showing, but it’s say’s they aren’t! Why!? Haven’t they been approved yet!? Is there another reason!?
Honestly……. never thought it would be so hard to give someone money; I know Bing have a lot less traffic but think that’s where I am gonna go to avoid all the headaches and actually get some ads to show!
September 17, 2013 at 12:03 am #1150514Up::0Hi Condor,
I think g has adwords online training to become a certified adwords professional. Hopefully the training would be more about practical usage than chest beating. Perhaps you can find the answers there.
Steve
September 17, 2013 at 3:20 am #1150515Up::0CondorCreative, post: 172806 wrote:Honestly……. never thought it would be so hard to give someone money; I know Bing have a lot less traffic but think that’s where I am gonna go to avoid all the headaches and actually get some ads to show!
Actually now is a really good time to look into Bing.
Sure they don’t get google traffic volumes but when comparing organic traffic I get 11% of the volume of my google traffic from Bing. A worthwhile amount.
No-one is advertising on Bing! Not even real estate agents! They have just been dumped by Yahoo who are throwing their lot in with google. Which is no bad thing because if you think google are hard work Yahoo are impossible (see my other thread on click-fraud).
I haven’t looked at the Bing advertising system yet but I certainly will because I think there is a really cheap opportunity there. Microsoft may well still decide the whole Bing experiment isn’t worth it and pull the plug but I don’t think it will cost much to have a play.
It is my humble opinion that google are now walking a dangerous line between maximising $s, irritating advertisers and damaging the user experience. They are adding more and more paid content with product image ads, text ads getting bigger with extensions, plus google maps listings and Youtube listings that it is getting almost impossible to appear above the fold with pure organic SEO efforts. This is forcing more companies to invest harder in PPC and providing the user with a much more confusing and cluttered result. I actually like the Bing results especially now with zero paid content because the page looks like google used to when it won the search engine race.
September 17, 2013 at 3:27 am #1150516Up::0Steve_Minshall, post: 172854 wrote:I get 11% of the volume of my google traffic from Bing.What? lol, that makes my head hurt!
September 17, 2013 at 3:57 am #1150517Up::0Condor –
I believe part of the Adwords system is that you need to develop some click history with them then this helps get ranking and ‘relevance.’ You might look for some specialised Adword forums for some of the finer points.
In terms of Bing, I have had very bad experience going back a few years now. Bing/Yahoo ignores websites with the only purpose of extracting revenue from them and users. They are just basically filled with pay per click ads. I turned off the content network and this still did not help as there were spam websites the clicks were coming from and there was no way the websites would come up in search results.
Regards, Grant Mason
Gordon Executive Centre
http://www.GECentre.com.auSeptember 17, 2013 at 5:06 am #1150518Up::0John Romaine, post: 172856 wrote:What? lol, that makes my head hurt!Why?
Google gives me several thousand visitors a month and Bing gives me several
hundred. Not a huge amount in comparison but worth paying attention to. Do you think otherwise?I hope you don’t think I believed Bing makes up a proportion of my Google traffic. If you were I don’t know whether to be embarrassed by my poor English or insulted.
September 17, 2013 at 5:56 am #1150519Up::0Grant Mason, post: 172866 wrote:Condor –In terms of Bing, I have had very bad experience going back a few years now. Bing/Yahoo ignores websites with the only purpose of extracting revenue from them and users. They are just basically filled with pay per click ads. I turned off the content network and this still did not help as there were spam websites the clicks were coming from and there was no way the websites would come up in search results.
Regards, Grant Mason
Gordon Executive Centre
http://www.GECentre.com.auYes I have had a shocking time with Yahoo this year and I was amazed at how blasé they were about click fraud that I reported to them.
However, the problem was with Yahoo not Bing. Now Bing are starting from scratch there may be some opportunities there for cheap clicks that are actually worth having (definitely avoiding any network ads). I haven’t looked at the Bing advertising system yet and don’t know how it works but I think it may be worth investigating. I know you can import from Adwords so I suspect there will be some similarities.
Yahoo only announced they were splitting with Bing a couple of weeks ago so the system is brand new and I literally haven’t seen a single advertiser yet on the search page, not even ebay, nothing. So the system either isn’t running yet or no-one I can find has jump in.
I really do think this is one of those situations where the nimble small business can grab an opportunity to get a head start. I believe Bing already has enough of the search market to pay attention to and as google continues to push its revenue generating to the detriment of users then Bing will only grow. But I am no analyst that’s just my humble opinion.
September 17, 2013 at 8:57 am #1150520Up::0Well I’ve started using Bing Ads and so far they seem a bit more user friendly; not as convoluded as the AdWords system IMO. My ads are up and running.
Wasn’t aware they split from Yahoo though as I still see it mentioned in their ad system; guess it will be removed soon – not to worried though, who uses Yahoo these days anyway!? lol
Quote:It is my humble opinion that google are now walking a dangerous line between maximising $s, irritating advertisers and damaging the user experience. They are adding more and more paid content with product image ads, text ads getting bigger with extensions, plus google maps listings and Youtube listings that it is getting almost impossible to appear above the fold with pure organic SEO efforts. This is forcing more companies to invest harder in PPC and providing the user with a much more confusing and cluttered result. I actually like the Bing results especially now with zero paid content because the page looks like google used to when it won the search engine race.Don’t get me started on Google…. the company that is supposed to do “no evil” has really been annoying me lately; whether it be with AdWords or the fact that they are seriously trying to ram Google+ down everybody’s throats – forced link up via YouTube and trying to get you to use your own name, screwing up a lot of youtube to try and integrate it with Google+, getting rid of google talk in place of google+ hangouts, getting rid of google places so they could force businesses onto google+) and I’m sure there is more. So I’m not their biggest fan right now.
September 17, 2013 at 10:43 am #1150521Up::0Sounds like your problem is around the QualityScore for your keywords.
Landing page and ad text do have some influence over that but the main influencer is the click thru rate (CTR) of the ad (adjusted based on ad position).
Some keywords naturally have poor CTRs. e.g. broad single word keywords and therefore they get bad QualityScores and a higher basic bid price. They also often get poor scores on ad and landing page if they cover such a broad set of meanings.
Your original QualityScore is estimated based on global data for a keyword so those broad keywords tend to start quite low even if you get good CTRs from them.
The system is designed to save you money if you focus in very specific keywords, provide relevant ads for them and send people to what they want. You pay less per click and should get a higher conversion rate.
So I suggest focusing on more specific keywords and see if they work better for you.
If ads aren’t showing you normally are shown a reason. Low traffic is one.
I’d have to admit that AdWords has got a lot more features now, which make it a lot more complex to use. Must be daunting for a business owner to get into it.
September 17, 2013 at 11:11 am #1150522Up::0Ok, for example..
One keyword I have shows “Eligible”; however when I mouse-over it it says “Ad’s aren’t showing right now”. Quality score is 6/10 with all average ratings. It doesn’t tell me the reason it’s now showing, just has a link to a generic “What can I do page”. Useless.
…and well some other ones I have problems with as I mentioned before have incorrect scores for the landing page which is affecting my adrank sacore (which is 7/10) but my ad still doesn’t show. On the rare occasion it has shown it has an average position of 2.3.
Tiggerito, post: 172914 wrote:Sounds like your problem is around the QualityScore for your keywords.Landing page and ad text do have some influence over that but the main influencer is the click thru rate (CTR) of the ad (adjusted based on ad position).
Some keywords naturally have poor CTRs. e.g. broad single word keywords and therefore they get bad QualityScores and a higher basic bid price. They also often get poor scores on ad and landing page if they cover such a broad set of meanings.
Your original QualityScore is estimated based on global data for a keyword so those broad keywords tend to start quite low even if you get good CTRs from them.
The system is designed to save you money if you focus in very specific keywords, provide relevant ads for them and send people to what they want. You pay less per click and should get a higher conversion rate.
So I suggest focusing on more specific keywords and see if they work better for you.
If ads aren’t showing you normally are shown a reason. Low traffic is one.
I’d have to admit that AdWords has got a lot more features now, which make it a lot more complex to use. Must be daunting for a business owner to get into it.
September 17, 2013 at 11:20 am #1150523Up::0Stopping Google sounds like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If you get 10% search traffic from Bing, that means you are getting 90% from Google.
Personally, I think most small businesses trying to run Google Adwords themselves is going to have a tough time of it.
I understand Google Adwords better than most small business owners, and I wouldn’t touch it with a 10 foot pole. I have a Google Adwords certified professional on our team, and I find she get great results, and ends up costing less, with way less headaches.
If you can get a professional to do something better, ultimately cheaper, and with less headaches, why wouldn’t you?
September 17, 2013 at 11:40 am #1150524Up::0CondorCreative, post: 172916 wrote:Ok, for example..One keyword I have shows “Eligible”; however when I mouse-over it it says “Ad’s aren’t showing right now”. Quality score is 6/10 with all average ratings. It doesn’t tell me the reason it’s now showing, just has a link to a generic “What can I do page”. Useless.
…and well some other ones I have problems with as I mentioned before have incorrect scores for the landing page which is affecting my adrank sacore (which is 7/10) but my ad still doesn’t show. On the rare occasion it has shown it has an average position of 2.3.
That doesn’t sound helpful. Eligible and 6/10 should be good. Have you tried the Ad Preview and Diagnosis option bellow the ratings in the bubble? It may hi-light an issue.
You could also try support. It’s the only part of Google where they do respond.
September 17, 2013 at 11:59 am #1150525Up::0Tiggerito, post: 172920 wrote:That doesn’t sound helpful. Eligible and 6/10 should be good. Have you tried the Ad Preview and Diagnosis option bellow the ratings in the bubble? It may hi-light an issue.You could also try support. It’s the only part of Google where they do respond.
I tried what you suggested and all that page told me was “The keyword phrase you’ve entered doesn’t currently trigger any of your ads.” – Yeah, would be nice to know why lol
As for support, I have contacted them previously and it seems they have outsourced their support to India now and some of the English is very poor and quite embarrassing for someone supposed to be representing Google. But at the end of the day the support wasn’t all that helpful, so I now don’t really bother.
They have also been spamming me with emails about calling a 1800 number to talk with their specialists, but I have been putting that off because I fear that will connect me to someone in India as well which I will have trouble understanding and vice-versa.
September 17, 2013 at 12:00 pm #1150526Up::0MatthewKeath, post: 172917 wrote:If you can get a professional to do something better, ultimately cheaper, and with less headaches, why wouldn’t you?Where do you find these experts and what do they charge!? Are they as good as you say they are!?
September 17, 2013 at 12:25 pm #1150527Up::0CondorCreative, post: 172922 wrote:I tried what you suggested and all that page told me was “The keyword phrase you’ve entered doesn’t currently trigger any of your ads.” – Yeah, would be nice to know why lolAs for support, I have contacted them previously and it seems they have outsourced their support to India now and some of the English is very poor and quite embarrassing for someone supposed to be representing Google. But at the end of the day the support wasn’t all that helpful, so I now don’t really bother.
They have also been spamming me with emails about calling a 1800 number to talk with their specialists, but I have been putting that off because I fear that will connect me to someone in India as well which I will have trouble understanding and vice-versa.
Hmm, I’d suspect that means none of your ads in that group contain the problem keyword.
My AdWords support has been very good when I get one one one with a person. But lately I’ve found my contacts have gone AWAL.
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