Google Fishy behavior continues

[kg84]

I have seen something very strange with a client account the past few days. To give you an overview, the client bids on somewhat competitive keywords and has an average position of 2.5. However, lately when I check the keyword analysis on all their words I get this message :Your bid for this keyword is too low to place your ad in the position you prefer.

Furthermore, the estimated 1st page bid is $0.30, they are bidding just below $3.00, which is a decent increase from their bid a few days ago. I find it surprising that all their competitors significantly increased their bids and pushed them off the first page for all these words.

However, their stats do not reflect this drop, with the exception of a few words. The stats show they have kept about the same position. Whenever I go to preview the ad I can rarely find it on the 1st page and when I do they are very low.

Does Awords Rep or anyone else have explanation for this, or seeing similar things?

[AussieWebmaster]

The average position may be measured over a longer period of time and will chnage as numbers dilute it.... always go with what you seen in actual SERPs

[kg84]

Originally Posted by AussieWebmaster

The average position may be measured over a longer period of time and will chnage as numbers dilute it.... always go with what you seen in actual SERPs

That is good point Aussie. What I am most concerned with is that a bid of $2.70 over the estimated first page bid will not get them on the 1st page. Especially since this is well over a dollar more than what they have been bidding. Why the sudden and drastic change? I should also add their quality score is 8/10 for almost all of these words.

[Mel66]

Originally Posted by kg84

I have seen something very strange with a client account the past few days. To give you an overview, the client bids on somewhat competitive keywords and has an average position of 2.5. However, lately when I check the keyword analysis on all their words I get this message :Your bid for this keyword is too low to place your ad in the position you prefer.

Do you have Position Preference enabled? I ask because I've never seen the message "your bid is too low..." in any of our client accounts.

[kg84]

Originally Posted by Mel66

Do you have Position Preference enabled? I ask because I've never seen the message "your bid is too low..." in any of our client accounts.

No we do not have position preference enabled. I have been doing what I can to get them back up to a good position. It has taken bidding over $3 more than ever before to get ranked decently on the 1st page. Furthermore, the clicks are only about $1.25. I have seen overbidding like this before, but not so sudden across a large set of keywords.

[searchengineman]

The reason you may not see your Ads in the Adpreview.

Now that’s its hitting the blogosphere its only a matter of time, before a major newspaper carries the story.

This article compares coverage of Yahoo.
mentioning Richard Stokes of ADGOOROO

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01...ret/print.html


Searchengineman

[AussieWebmaster]

it was good good article

[kg84]

Interesting article....
This qoute I believe to be untrue:
"To wit, if you bid on the keywords "pork dumplings," your ad will likely appear on only a small fraction of "pork dumpling" searches. And you have no way of knowing how small that fraction is."

Isnt the impression share stat from the campaign performance report exactly this? It shows you what % of impressions you are getting...

[kg84]

Update:
I just realized in my original post that I pasted the message being displayed once I started experimenting with position preference. Below is the message I have been receiving in keyword analysis that was originally concerning me.
"Although your ad is showing, its rank is not high enough to place it on the first page of search results. "

Once again, I am currently bidding almost $2.50 MORE than ever before and still cannot get on the 1st page consistently, it has been off and on. The est. 1st page bid is $0.25.

[searchengineman]

Only 6% of advertisers are getting 100% coverage according to Stokes.
I started noticing this rotation, by the reduction of impressions in some of our more solid campaigns.

Think about if 20 advertisers are getting on to the first page for the same term...they can't all be there at the same time.

Google ultimately controls who they're going to show. Since I heard Google Servers suck back 1.3% of the power grid in North America. If you're not clicking on a relevant Ad, Google can't pay its power bill!

Frankly Google should come straight up with Ad Coverage as an indicator in the panel. We are all big boys and girls.

ie: 10% coverage
47.5% coverage


Searchengineman

[kg84]

So I decided I wanted to waste my time and contact Adwords support he is what they had to say. Magically, the problem seems to be gone now. Hmmm....

"I have reviewed the account and find that the quality score of the
keywords in the ad group is good and also I am happy to inform you that
the ad is showing in the top position.
I have not seen the error message that you have mentioned in your email.
Please provide me more details of the keyword which you are concerned, so
that I can troubleshoot accurately.

However, you may want to confirm the ad position by using our ad preview
tool. For your convenience, I have attached the screenshot of the ad in
the ad preview tool.

There can be situations when you don't see your ad even though it is being
shown. This happens due to the dynamic nature of our ad serving system.

To ensure an optimal user and advertiser experience, your ads may be shown
in different positions depending on the search query of the user. For this
reason, what you see may, sometimes, not be representative of what most
other users see.

If you have trouble locating your ad on Google, we recommend searching for
your ad using our ad preview page. This page will show your ads the way
most users see them, without accruing any additional impressions for your
ads."