Bid Prices Drastically increasing

[gamergl]

How does Google control the minimum bid prices and how can a minimum keyword bid price go up by $5.00 overnight?

How does the 'little guy' compete when that happens? - I thought Google's quality score algorithm was supposed to allow equal competition by focusing more on the content in the site..... so how could prices skyrocket overnight?
How do they expect the smaller businesses to keep up?

[Krasny]

If your account is new it will cost more at first until you can increase you CRT, and relevance score. When I first started I was paying around $4-8 a keyword and I was usually between 5-8th place. I inserted keywords into ads, and used exact match option to clime the ranks. Since this is my first advice on this forum have somebody confirm this.

Also bookmark this forum, it is priceless.

[Lynda]

I'm having the same problem, and I'm not a new user, either. Basically, Google probably doesn't like something you're doing. The $5.00/$10.00 words tell you that. Check titles, tags, keyword matching. Check to see if someone is plagiarising your content. Best I can tell, no effort is made to see who swiped the content.

Google won't help you, and it's hard to find somebody trustworthy to help you. Too many wannabe SEO's that don't know any more than you do. It's tough, the little guys will be pushed out before it's over.

I wish I could help you more, but I'm in the same boat.

Edited to say: Please post here if you find out more about why they are slapping you.

[PPC]

Google is turning into the most evil corporation in the world. Congrats!

[Karomesis]

I am extremely new to adwords myself, but from what others describe it seems like the initial high CPC could be something of a "testing" ground similar to the sandbox for their organic listings but much faster, to weed out the unserious advertisers and let the real players battle it out.

I think this could also be part of their "QS" that they have been reluctant to discuss, I could be wrong about this though, it's just a theory.

I'm trying o understand adwords as best I can, and then launch my campaigns, as opposed to losing much more cash learning the same stuff the hard way.

BTW, PPC you have a PM

[Lynda]

It happened to me, and I'm not new. I had a substantial budget, up to $1,400.00 per day. I paused my Adwords to work on some things. When I took the campaign off pause, my 52 cent words were $10.00.

[gamergl]

Lynda,
How long was your campaign paused, and did you pause the entire campaign or ad group?

Please share, as this info would benefit more than just me, I'm assuming.

BTW - thanks to everyone for their replies.

[Lynda]

Originally Posted by gamergl

Lynda,
How long was your campaign paused, and did you pause the entire campaign or ad group?
Please share, as this info would benefit more than just me, I'm assuming.
BTW - thanks to everyone for their replies.

The campaign was paused for several weeks. I only sell four things, and the wholesalers of two of the items were out, due to extreme market pressure on the items.

Now I have the merchandise and no website.

The last few algorithim changes were really hard on non-professional site builders. We all know the way it's going for the little folks, it's no secret.

If I could give the non-pro builders one piece of advice, it's this: Google does not "see" your site. If you have a beautiful, content-filled, money-making site, it doesn't matter. If people love you, gush how wonderful your site is, fill your e-mail with roses and website referrals, it doesn't matter. If you ask Google why you have been given the button of death, you will get a mail that says you have no content, you have no useful products, your site is poor, and you need to go elsewhere to advertise.

The deal is this: You MUST fix your site for the spiders, for the algorithim, for Google. After you figure it out, it will change again. It's 100 times more than a full time job, ask the pros.

You will never actually be able to compete equally, the way the system works is against you in a million ways. But if you dot every i and cross every t, maybe you can get enough ROI to survive. Or maybe we're all dead meat, and the ten dollar word is a permanent message for us. I guess I'll find out in a week or so, when I finish my update.

[gamergl]

Thanks Lynda for your advice - I have a lot to learn.

Ok - so I'll come to terms with the fact that the $10 words are simply out of my price range and remove them from my campaign or suck it up until my CTR increases - a decision I'll have to make.

Krasny - how long was it 'til your bid prices started to decline?

[RBM Morgbert]

For every new campaign we have launched in the past few months-- for a very wide variety of clients-- the CPC has shot through the roof immediately. There was clearly an algorithm change and the results are very ugly. We have been used to launching campaigns with very low CPCs and then easing it up as required, but Google's new algorithm makes that impossible-- most of the keywords are disqualified immediately and the minimum bid set to $5/$10. If we don't pay it, we literally can't run the campaign. They can talk about quality scores all they like-- this is literally every client from start up to F1000, and the majority of terms. We didn't see this behavior 6 months ago, and that tells me that it was an algorithm change. Even a company's own brand terms and other terms that have almost no competition are typically getting set at $5/$10, which is completely outrageous to me.

We have been able through vigorous testing and bid-watching to ease prices down, but frankly we're having a difficult time getting good performance out of Google because the average CPC is now about 10X what it was for our campaigns six months ago. I'm guessing they figured out that maintenance-wise it's smarter to make more money from fewer advertisers, which isn't good news for the little guys.

[Lynda]

This technique must be working for them, their profits are up.

Oh, well. It's not like they made the message subtle. The $10.00 click is about as clear as it gets that they don't want our business.

[AussieWebmaster]

Originally Posted by RBM Morgbert

For every new campaign we have launched in the past few months-- for a very wide variety of clients-- the CPC has shot through the roof immediately. There was clearly an algorithm change and the results are very ugly. We have been used to launching campaigns with very low CPCs and then easing it up as required, but Google's new algorithm makes that impossible-- most of the keywords are disqualified immediately and the minimum bid set to $5/$10. If we don't pay it, we literally can't run the campaign. They can talk about quality scores all they like-- this is literally every client from start up to F1000, and the majority of terms. We didn't see this behavior 6 months ago, and that tells me that it was an algorithm change. Even a company's own brand terms and other terms that have almost no competition are typically getting set at $5/$10, which is completely outrageous to me.

We have been able through vigorous testing and bid-watching to ease prices down, but frankly we're having a difficult time getting good performance out of Google because the average CPC is now about 10X what it was for our campaigns six months ago. I'm guessing they figured out that maintenance-wise it's smarter to make more money from fewer advertisers, which isn't good news for the little guys.

If you change your ads you can get the bids lowered... use inserts ... or even small adgroups with the ads written with the keywords in them.