Google recently announced they were updating the Adwords Quality Score, however it appears that there is a bug that raises the prices form any advertisers:
Google AdWords Quality Score Has Major Bug
Google AdWords Adds Quality Score Column & To Improved Quality Algorithm from Wednesday warned us of the new changes coming but apparently there is a bug that makes good performing ads prices spike through the roof.
GrowMy » Blog Archive » Major Google AdWords Bug With Quality Score Increases CPC Prices
There are dozens of reports of people noticing their CPC prices in Google AdWords jump through the roof. With the launch of a new AdWords quality score, a bug has been released and verified by Google to increase the bid…
SearchAnyway PPC – Online Search Marketing Guide for Webmasters: Costly Google AdWords Bug
It seems that Google AdWords’ new Quality Score feature has a bug, and that are driving cost-per-click prices on certain keywords through the roof.
Google Plans AdWords Algorithm Change; Expects Complaints | Marketing Pilgrim
It looks like Google’s pushed the button too early – and it could be the wrong button too. Lots of people are complaining that their Quality Score has gone crazy.
While Google is aware of the problem and is fixing it they refuse to rollback the code and are content to charge advertisers more until they fix it. So if you went to the store and the cashier said I know this item only costs you $1 but the register is broken and I have to charge you $2, but we’re working on it, would that be acceptable? C’mon Google do the right thing, do no evil rollback the code.
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{ 13 comments }
How come every “quality score update” means Google makes a ton more money =P
wild stuff.
Well, a bit of clarification is needed. And while I will rarely be jumping to Google’s defense, (I think hell might be freezing over as I type this) I don’t know how much extra money they are making.
I am one of those people that have been complaining, but I haven’t been spending anymore the past two days. In fact, I’ve been spending 75% less. Why? Well because they jacked my minimum CPC up to $10.00 a click (as I talk about here: http://www.seorefugee.com/seoblog/2007/02/16/minimum-bid-1000-on-google-ppc/)
and when that happened, I wasn’t all of the sudden charged $10.00 per click, those words simply became in active for my account.
So in fact, I’m estimating that Google is actually losing millions per day that this bug isn’t fixed. I have no idea why the hell they havent rolled the changes back but I don’t think their greed (and believe me, they are VERY greedy) plays a part in this one.
Google is not losing any money…trust me on this one
Right Matt?
Tony, how wouldn’t they be losing money? I mean seriously do you think there are people out there that increased their bids to 10 bucks a click?
I only have my own experience to go off of, but I think we’re a pretty typical advertiser and they certainly have lost money from us over the past two days. So, if they are losing money among me and other accounts, where would they be making it up?
SEOrefugee, do you really think the big players are willing to “let it ride” for a while, and simply choose not to advertise with google? No. Google gets most of it’s money from sites like eBay, which will most likely not change the amount of advertising so quickly.
Is eBay exempt from the quality score? I can’t believe that Google just makes an algo update and eBay says, “no problem, this extra $500,000 is ok.” Or how about the horrendously off-topic ads?
Personally, I’ve completely killed off my Yahoo spending. They need to quality control their employees before they worry about advertisers. I had ads running on the content network after disabling it, ad copy changes (which they admitted and put a stop to, and so on.)
Yeah, nobody is going to drop everything and leave google…especially to go to Yahoo. Now there is a mess!
I think that I agree with both SEOrefugee and the other posters…I think that in the short term, Google is losing money because they lost a bunch of “average” advertisers money like myself when the minimum CPC was changed to $10 for some words and consequently I (we) dropped that word and money that we would have spent on it. But in the long run, they will be making more money as the people who can actually compete on that level will be spending more and more money. And of course no one is going to move to Yahoo or Live.
John
http://www.monomachines.com
John, I wasn’t talking about the long run. I just meant while they had the minimum bids at 10 bucks a click for many terms, they’d lose money. It now appears that they’ve fixed it for the most part as the most agregious mistakes and prices are back to more “normal” levels. However, I’m still seeing Minimum bids at 5 bucks which I’ll not be paying for.
I noticed $10.00 min bids on many of my campaigns, even the ones with 5% or better CTR. Also, as a warning, positions preferences is also not working as advertised. As an experiment I tried to allow the $10.00 per clicks, but set my position preferences to display at position 8+ – however my ads showed in position 1-3 overnight and I woke up to 9 clicks at $210.00 – I am disputing the charges with Google, but have received no response in 72 hrs. Has anyone ever been able to work with Google on this type of issue? Any suggestions (other than don’t change your settings before bed)
I had this happen to some of my keywords. When your minimum bid gets raised, it is because Google doesn’t believe your content is relevant to the keyword. When this has happened to me in the past, (minimum getting raised but not as high as $5.00 or $10.00) it would force me to go in and look at the keywords, my ads, and the content on the landing page I am sending the click to and to make changes and adjustments to make sure it is more relevant.
In this case, I know something was wrong because suddenly I was asked to raise my minimum bid to $5.00 and $10.00 for keywords I was already having success with at a muvch lessor rate. As of this morning, my minimum bids are gone and things are back to normal so Google must have addressed the issue.
So the short term answer is Google would loose money on your account since you would have to raise your minimum bid to restart it. I myself would not raise it without looking into what I stated above. Those who would would be paying way to much and not keep the account going for long.
Sincerely,
Ken Frazza
Yup, for the last 3 months (Since NOV 15, 2006) this has been my worst experience with Adwords + Adsense. As you might all know, both must be connected. The right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing, right? Wrong! Both work to make the “money machine” healthy.
Now to the bi+t++ching + moaning: PPC campaigns have halted to a dreadful 10 – 20 hits a day. Thanks Adwords, but at that rate, I could produce more hits with ingenuity.
Adsense – someday the eCPM is at $10 and other days it is at $3 …. needless to say, when it is at $10, I break even. When it is at $3 — I loose money. On few days do I make a profit.
Now, someone is going to have to explain to me the purpose of loosing money. I would rather pay a website with many visitors $50 dollars for individual ad units, than keep on buying this traffic … that for all intended purposes, seem to be fraudulent at times.
I’ve been using for a few years and at the beginning really liked the Adwords. But now they jump the prices like crazy. I placed an ad a few months ago. Went in and the search words were inactive. One the price had trippled and the other went up 6 times. I always liked Google but there greed now places them right there with M$. On second thought I think they have exceeded M$. Perhaps they should be known as G$$$
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