Google Adwords – I did a Mistake

[KSew]

One of my campaigns had a good CTR. I was getting clicks at a very low rate – at about 35-40 cents.

I have another website selling the same service. Almost everything is same except the logo.

Since I wanted to test this site too – I “Edited” the Ads (only changed the URL) to point to my second site.

The next day I got the shock of my life. 90% of the keywords went inactive, the bids were raised to $5/$10. The ones that are active are NOT getting as many impressions as they used to get pre-edit.

Now I am deeply worried.

What can I do to get back my keywords active with the “SAME” cost per click?

Any help would be great.

[BasicECommerce]

It sounds like your low CPC was grand-fathered in by AdWords. After changing the ad, it no longer had the same history and is required to pay current prices.

Any time you want to test ad variations, 'Pause' current ads and create new ones. This is why the option to do so exists. You can compare the two side by side or do time analysis.

Best advice is to monitor your ad and keywords closely. It will have to rebuild its quality score and should dwindle slightly with time, impressions, and clicks.

-BEC

[abbottsys]

...
The next day I got the shock of my life. 90% of the keywords went inactive, the bids were raised to $5/$10. ....

Yes, because you changed the landing page AdWords is now recalculating your Quality Scores. Wait one or two days to give it time and see where you stand. If things are still bad after that try changing the URL back to the original and give that a couple of days to recalculate.

[Discovery]

These are two good points by BEC and Asys. Another important factor touched on is that when you change your ad you lose your history, specifically this means you lose that statistics related to that entire Adgroup!

The mistake that often happens is that a marketer will get into an adgroup to review bids/performance and make either a change to an ad and lose its history, or will edit the Max CPC lose all the performance data for the rest of the adgroup so they have nothing to analyze the remaining keywords with.

So be sure to take their advice, create new ads and pause old ones; when you are editing bids, change all bids at the keyword level FIRST then if necessary make your global change at the adgroup level.

Discovery

[Baylow]

One quick question - Did your landing page URL match your display URL?

Did you ad still stay www.AAAA.com while you were sending people to www.BBBB.com,

If so that's against google TOS and they'll ding you for that.


Also there may be issues just in general when you change over to a new domain. Did you change ALL of your ads in that particular account over to the new domain. You cannot advertise 2 domains with the same content at the same time.

[KSew]

Did you ad still stay www.AAAA.com while you were sending people to www.BBBB.com

No, nothing of that sort.

Did you change ALL of your ads in that particular account over to the new domain.

Yes, I did.

I think what the experts are saying here is quite right. Google is recalculating the quality score. But I have seldom seen that once they raise their bids to such high levels, they rarely bring it back to the previous level. Do they?

One more question is how long should I wait for Google to recalculate the quality score? 1 week, 1 month or 6 months? OR, I should just change my URL back to what it was and hope everything gets back to normal.

Thank you all for your important suggestions.

[BasicECommerce]

Google takes about 2 weeks to recalculate your QS. After that is when you'll begin to see your bid price slowly decrease. Your QS will continue to change/improve with time, but the basic recalculation will be 2 weeks.

To see a significant amount of change in your bid amounts, you will probably have to wait about 2 months.

[kenix]

It sounds like your low CPC was grand-fathered in by AdWords. After changing the ad, it no longer had the same history and is required to pay current prices.

Any time you want to test ad variations, 'Pause' current ads and create new ones. This is why the option to do so exists. You can compare the two side by side or do time analysis.

Best advice is to monitor your ad and keywords closely. It will have to rebuild its quality score and should dwindle slightly with time, impressions, and clicks.

-BEC

Hi Friend,

I am sorry if my question sounds silly, i am totally new to adwords,am planning to promote affiliate programs via this channel.

May i know what are the factors that Google uses to calculate quality score?

Another question is, do you mean that it is not advisable to alter the existing ads? How do we monitor and fine tune our ads then?

I have read through Brad Callen's ebook on Google adwords made easy, is that sufficient for me to start off with adwords? After reading through this post, seems like there are still a lots of things that I am still not familiar with, when it comes to adwords.

Really need help badly...:o

[BasicECommerce]

May i know what are the factors that Google uses to calculate quality score?

https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=10215&query=quality+score&topic=&type=f&%20onclick=

Another question is, do you mean that it is not advisable to alter the existing ads? How do we monitor and fine tune our ads then?

Fine tune your ads by constantly testing your current ad with a new ad, find the 'winner', and then create a new ad to test the 'winner' against it. Personally, I almost always have two ads running concurrently. When one outperforms another, I pause it and create a new one to run concurrently. Thus, always improving but rarely hurting my campaigns.

I have read through Brad Callen's ebook on Google adwords made easy, is that sufficient for me to start off with adwords? After reading through this post, seems like there are still a lots of things that I am still not familiar with, when it comes to adwords.

Never read it. All of my knowledge is from hands-on experience. So, I've made many of the same mistakes as others.