In that case, give them a shout but it definitely sounds like CTR so.

I'd increase bids to break even or possibly a slight loss and see how you get on. I never EVER recommend starting off low. Always start at the top, lose some money and slowly move down to a more profitable position.

RE: Account history, general consensus is 2weeks to establish base history. How old is the account?

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Web Design | Search Engine Marketing | Pay Per Click Management

I agree with you with regard to starting off a little higher and then dropping down after a Quality Score or Account History has been established, but I'm in a bit of a predicerment in that we have a fairly low daily budget and at €4 a click it will only take a handful of clicks before the entire budget is expired.

It can be quite difficult explaining the in's and out's of PPC to upper management on a level they understand and this will just make it even more difficult .

Unfortunately in the past reporting and tracking hasn't been strictly done (by my predecessor) and as a result, faith in Adwords and PPC in general is quite low around here.

The account itself is quite old, but has generally had no activity until last Friday. (The Campaign was uploaded maybe a week ago and only unpaused on Friday).

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Adwords Qualified Individual | Search Engine Marketing Consultant | Web Analytics (Google) Expert | Web Designer (XHTML / CSS)

Datsun 240z 260z Club of Australia
Classic Japanese Cars

Just an update on this.

It appears minimum bid for many terms has dropped from the extravagant €4.00 down to a more honest €0.80 cent. Hopefully over the coming week or two it will drop further.

I believe this indicates an account history issue and possibly CTR has not been helping.

For now I'm focusing more on non-brand related terms.

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Adwords Qualified Individual | Search Engine Marketing Consultant | Web Analytics (Google) Expert | Web Designer (XHTML / CSS)

Datsun 240z 260z Club of Australia
Classic Japanese Cars

Thanks for the update Gav. Any chance you could plot the decrease on a graph over time? Might be useful.

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Web Design | Search Engine Marketing | Pay Per Click Management

I will try, can't say it will be 100% accurate.

Just checked Google and it appears that they don't record changes in Min CPC its just a static value for whatever it is at a given time.

This means I'll have to manually observe min CPC over time. What im really watching is just one particular keyword, which related to our brand.

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Adwords Qualified Individual | Search Engine Marketing Consultant | Web Analytics (Google) Expert | Web Designer (XHTML / CSS)

Datsun 240z 260z Club of Australia
Classic Japanese Cars

Just a bit of an update. I didn't keep track of this too closely. Anyway I placed alot of these on pause till a few days ago.

I resumed them and alot have gone down from €0.80 cent min bid to €0.30 cent. I suspect with a bit more work I'll get them down to the €0.15 cent range etc..

So as I sort of suspected having a campaign or adgroup on pause will not make a difference, you need to be bidding and unpaused.

Also it did take a few weeks, but that was with pausing in between.

Many keywords moved from Poor (Quality) to OK to Great.

None are in the ridiculous range of €0.80 cent €4.00 anymore.

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Adwords Qualified Individual | Search Engine Marketing Consultant | Web Analytics (Google) Expert | Web Designer (XHTML / CSS)

Datsun 240z 260z Club of Australia
Classic Japanese Cars