Google's at it again - check your Adwords account

[gaylemart]

I was just on a mainstream forum where folks were complaining about a bunch of their keywords being made inactive for search. So I thought I better check my account. Yup, all of my keywords are inactive for search -- these are adult campaigns that have been running successfully for at least six months now and all with CTR between 7 and 15% for each keyword and average placement on the first page somewhere between the 3rd and 5th place. I've been paying between .05 and .08 per keyword with a really great ROI. Now google has deactivated all these keywords which as far as I can tell didn't just become horrible overnight. Yesterday's CTR was awesome, averaging about 11%. WTF?

Admittedly, they aren't looking for me to raise my bids to 5 dollars each like I've seen some of the mainstreamers complain about it, but the .30 they want for most of them will seriously dent my ROI and it just strikes me as just the first in a long line of incremental increases they'll be expecting?

So now what? Will bitching to Google have an effect? I was running these for awhile on Yahoo, but the ROI just wasn't there so I stopped. If I end the campaigns, my income will plummet. Crap. I was just making the move into mainstream marketing and was depending on the steady return from these campaigns to tide me over while I refocused some of my efforts, now I'm not sure what the hell I should do.

[seeandsee]

Google is BITCH! They probably earn even more when they fuck webmasters like this!

[Beejeebers]

Read the writing on the wall...

[gaylemart]

Yep, the writing is there loud and clear. I just wish it was a few months from now and not TODAY. Damn it! I've already made a few mainstream sales and my adsense income is improving a lot, but I think it will be at least six months before it can replace what I make from promoting adult on Adwords (which of course, I wasn't looking to replace -- I was looking to increase, y'know?). Argggh. They make me so mad.

[msanchez]

Ok I talked to an adwords support tech on the phone today and got the usual run around about how the algortihm periodicly rechecks sites and how the rankings are constantly be adjusted etc. etc. make a better quality landing page... all the normal vague answers I expected.

having seen this happen more than a couple times over the last couple of years I have come to believe that approximately every 6 months or so google is gonna kill all of your campaigns that have been running well. Im not saying its a fact, just what i haven seen on my own campaigns over the last two years. I dont know the thinking behind this strategy, but I dont make 150 billion or more a quarter either.

The solution is actually pretty simple but still a bit of a PITA and really is just a part of doing business with google.

[gaylemart]

Originally Posted by msanchez

The solution is actually pretty simple but still a bit of a PITA and really is just a part of doing business with google.

What's the solution??! I'm guessing the solution is "create a new campaign with the exact same ads and keywords", but if I'm wrong, let me know please

If I make some changes on the landing page to improve "quality" will Google's little robots run out and check it or do I also need to make a change to price/keywords?

My big fear at this point is if I do anything other than submit to their desire that I increase my bid, my ads will all get declined due to the domain name containing a now banned "teen porn concepts" word that was perfectly fine by them six months ago. I have another domain I could use instead without the offending word in it, but it will suck for my branding.

Grgggh .Such Bastards!

[msanchez]

gaylemart, i dont really want to post the solution on the board here just because I dont need the competition, but if you want to send me a pm Id be happy to share my thoughts on it with you.

Yeah as far as the "teen porn concept" you pretty much have to bow to them on that one and just roll with it and adjust to fit their needs.

[Dutch Harry]

How where the keywords in your adgroup matching your ad and how id your ad matching your landings page.

G want to get rid of the 1 page landingpages because it is not a good user experience so in all their wisdom they have sad the more matching content on your website the better QS (Quality Score) you get the less you pay.

I have mainstream blogs with articles on a high paying niche (finance) that i sent the traffic to and because is have a high QS i pay very little for my clicks and i am making nice sales and getting also nice adsense Clicks.

It is all about matching keywords in your adgroup and matching the ads to those keywords and matching your landingpages to those ads.

[gaylemart]

The keywords and the landing page are very targeted. It could be the "one page landing page". I wonder if I can fix that by providing links to the rest of the site. I have a blog on that site and a home page and some galleries. I suppose maybe if I link out to it all that might help. Right now the landing page is an island unto itself. If none of that works, I will try linking to the blog directly from Google. I do make sales from the blog on its own so maybe that will help. I think I may just start from scratch with a new domain though since I'm sure any changes I make will trigger a "teen porn concepts" decline on the url.

Fortunately my mainstream stuff seems to have picked up so now it actually looks like it might be possible to replace this income a lot sooner than I was expecting. It really helps that with at least one of my adult sponsors, I get a LOT of rebills. So if I can replace the new joins with mainstream sales that helps fill in the gaps. Hah! Take that, Google! I might try a few mainstream campaigns on adwords. We'll see how that goes.

[freechess]

30 cents a click they can go fuck themselves as far as i am concerned

[curvyplump]

I was trying to create an Adwords campaign for my Japanese streaming video site. Ad kept getting rejected due to "teen porn concepts," without any elaboration. Fuck Google. They're getting to be as bad as all of those other big companies.

[gamemint]

hopefully they improve.....

[Head Boy]

Cut out the middle man - buy your clicks from the domain owners and the aggregators.

[mikesinner]

That's fucking crazy. I have an account with them but I won't pay that much for keywords. I think they are also lowering some sites search results to in order to increase their keyword profits

[hardcoreblogger]

bitching and moaning is of no use, either you play the game by their rules or you don't play it. their intentions have been clear for a long while. they're fine with affiliate sites (i don't see that they make any difference between mainstram and adult other than the "teen porn" and some other keywords they don't allow), but they want webmasters to build quality sites that give value to the surfer. this latest quality score update was purely about the landing pages.

Originally Posted by Head Boy

Cut out the middle man - buy your clicks from the domain owners and the aggregators.

most advertisers turn the domain/search partner traffic off in adwords, especially on competitive keywords. adwords is about the google search traffic, the domain traffic doesn't convert anywhere close to it. still, all the big parking programs all work with google, miva & co... advertising on highly relevant generic domains with lots of direct type-in traffic is a different story, you have that on offer?

[hardcoreblogger]

Originally Posted by mikesinner

That's fucking crazy. I have an account with them but I won't pay that much for keywords. I think they are also lowering some sites search results to in order to increase their keyword profits

lol yeah of course, they drop all your sites in the index to make you pay for your clicks. i'm not a fan of google at all, their power is fucking scary, but this claim is ridiculous. instead of swearing you'd better learn how to decrease those min bids.

oh, i forgot, prolly too much work for you, posting stolen content on your blogs is easier, right? it's not such a bad thing google does these updates, if it keeps people like you out

[msanchez]

Originally Posted by hardcoreblogger

most advertisers turn the domain/search partner traffic off in adwords, especially on competitive keywords. adwords is about the google search traffic, the domain traffic doesn't convert anywhere close to it. still, all the big parking programs all work with google, miva & co... advertising on highly relevant generic domains with lots of direct type-in traffic is a different story, you have that on offer?

Yup was pretty much thinking the same thing.

[Beejeebers]

The fastest fix is buy a new domain or even better move your campaign to an old domain that you haven't used for adwords before. Make sure you have an "about us", "contact us", "privacy policy", "sitemap" and "terms and conditions" page. Also, if you can get inbound links you'll do even better. One last thing they LOVE is sites that are updated frequently.

Basically you have to have a domain that has pages indexed with them and follow the above tips and you will get low bids and never be slapped.

[thomasbyers]

Bump to the top

[_LB_]

I know whats going on, and affiliates are going to get a major attacking over the next years as google tries to kill the middle man.

This is not a relevancy or keyword issue, its more of a landing page issue, and there are only a couple of things you can do to combat it. I have enough adwords experience to know what needs doing, and after talking to others I share info with I have confirmed it.

I hope you guys don't rely on adwords too much because its going to dry up. My adwords rep recently admitted they are not happy with affiliate marketing on adwords, and will be taking sweeping steps to punish surfer landing pages not up to scratch.