Quality Score - Minimum Bid for Branded Terms Ridiculous

[gav240z]

Hi Everyone,

First a bit of history we have several websites which we run PPC campaigns for. Originally the last person who ran these, did so from the same account. Eg: 3 Websites with 1 PPC account.

One of the first things I did was split this into 3 separate accounts, mainly for clarity in reports, but also for conversion tracking. For a brief period of time we have not been running a campaign for 1 website.

We have now decided to run a campaign, however it seems that we are scoring very low for quality score and the only reason I could see this happening is because of account history.

I have made this assumption based on the following:
- These are brand related terms (terms that related to our business only!).
- We are using these specific terms on our website (its in our page content) including heading tags, title tags and the like.
- Some of these terms are domain name related searches.

Yet we have been stiffed by Google with Min Bid of €0.30 cent to €4 this is absurd.

FWIW I have also used these terms in our creative text, before we were Google slapped we had a couple of conversions (high conversions). I don't see how Google makes such a judgement call, honestly I can't see how this is fair for us. (I know there is an Adwords Spider - so might double check its not being blocked).

Other than that I'm stumped, any advice? I am thinking of contacting Google about this.

Cheers,
Gavin.

 

[gav240z]

One other point.

I should also point out that we are currently tracking the campaign with our analytics package.

To do this we pass the user to the Analytics package server.

http:// my analyticspackage.co.uk/?campaign= etc...

which then redirects to our landing page. I have asked Google previously about any problems with landing page quality etc.. using this kind of redirect but they said it shouldn't be a problem.

 

[Redfly]

Depends on the redirect Gav. Is it a 302?

Also, are the terms you're bidding on TM terms that the site owner does not own?

I have noticed that TM's cause a lot of problems. While it's possible to bid on them, Google keeps the TM owners happy by pricing competitors out and still remaining "open and fair" by letting competitors theoretically use them.

And I wouldn't consider 30 cents that bad in most markets.

Finally, have you checked the loading page time factor in the QS diagnostic section? It's possible that the AdWords bot is experiencing delays going through your redirect and assigning a poor QS based on that.

 

[gav240z]

Thanks for the replies..

Depends on the redirect Gav. Is it a 302?

Yes its a 302.

Also, are the terms you're bidding on TM terms that the site owner does not own?

We own the terms, although they are not all directly trademarked, we have taken steps to register them as trademarks to prevent competitors bidding on the terms, however given the recent changes that seems futile now.

I have noticed that TM's cause a lot of problems. While it's possible to bid on them, Google keeps the TM owners happy by pricing competitors out and still remaining "open and fair" by letting competitors theoretically use them.

And I wouldn't consider 30 cents that bad in most markets.

Yeah only a few are €0.30 cent, but most are in the ridiculous €4 mark. It shouldn't cost someone that much to bid on a domain name related term that is our domain name.

Finally, have you checked the loading page time factor in the QS diagnostic section? It's possible that the AdWords bot is experiencing delays going through your redirect and assigning a poor QS based on that.

We recently revamped the website and it uses lots of compressed CSS and load times are way faster than before. Definately less than 10 seconds for most pages.

We do not even have a robots.txt file, so no bots should be blocked and as far as my IT manager is aware we are not actively blocking any bots from accessing the sites.

 

[Redfly]

What I meant about the load time is the load time of the REDIRECT. How long does it take the AW bot to get through it?

What does the load time indicator in AdWords say?

 

[gav240z]

Finally, have you checked the loading page time factor in the QS diagnostic section? It's possible that the AdWords bot is experiencing delays going through your redirect and assigning a poor QS based on that.

I just re-read the question.

QS Diagnostic section? I know under tools you had a Diagnostic tool that allows you to see if your ads are showing, however I see nothing in relation to page load times or any feedback from the Adsense bot?

Am I looking in the wrong section perhaps?

 

[Redfly]

Hover your mouse over the "magnify glass" icon to the right of the KW. It's an ajax thingy that gives a quick overview.

Once that pops up, it has a link in to to "view details". The second tab on the details page has the load time indicator and advice IIRC. It was only introduced last week.

Let me know if you have any problems.

 

[gav240z]

Thanks...

Hi Dave,
Thanks for that tip, I wasn't up to date with this new feature .

Details of the quality score Keyword Relevance
This keyword is not highly relevant.
Based on the keyword's relevance to the associated ad text, CTR, historical keyword usage and other performance factors.

Landing Page No problems found.
Landing Page Load Time No problems found.

Just checked a few different keywords and it seems this is the consistent problem.

 

[Redfly]

So KW is in Title of ad, description of ad, subdomain and subdirectory of ad...

In title of lander, in content of lander?

CTR decent?

In that case, a new account might be best. I'd say it's your CTR though.

I don't care what Google says, I still believe that CTR is nor 100% normalized to position.

Here is something to try.... enable conversion optimizer for the campaign if you have 200+ conversions. Leave ti running for an hour and disable it again.

I wouldn't bother contacting Google about it but you can try

 

[gav240z]

Thanks again.

So KW is in Title of ad, description of ad, subdomain and subdirectory of ad...

In title of lander, in content of lander?

CTR decent?

In that case, a new account might be best. I'd say it's your CTR though.

I don't care what Google says, I still believe that CTR is nor 100% normalized to position.

Here is something to try.... enable conversion optimizer for the campaign if you have 200+ conversions. Leave ti running for an hour and disable it again.

I wouldn't bother contacting Google about it but you can try

So KW is in Title of ad, description of ad, subdomain and subdirectory of ad...

Title - Yes
Description - Yes
Display URL - Yes (no subdomain or subdirectory used)

In title of lander, in content of lander? - Yes and Yes

CTR decent? - Not really - I just launched it on Friday and it was in a lower position due to bidding €0.05 cent and the fact our website ranks number #1 organically. It was really just put there for branding and to keep our competitiors lower and of course have a customised call to action.

I had 14 clicks on Friday and 2 conversions!! Then over the weekend it went to crap and they were disabled. CTR was about 1.4%, which considering I think was ok, given position and search volume and the fact that we are already number 1 and most traffic goes to that listing anyway.

I can't see myself starting a new account. I would have to get CC details from the boss again and set up everything again.

We do have a dedicated account manager at Google because we spent a decent amount of money with them or at least have in the past. So it might be worth getting them to give it a look over. I think the issue here is CTR and account history.

 

[Redfly]

We do have a dedicated account manager at Google because we spent a decent amount of money with them or at least have in the past. So it might be worth getting them to give it a look over. I think the issue here is CTR and account history.

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?

 

[gav240z]

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?

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).

 

[gav240z]

Just an update FYI....

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.

 

[Redfly]

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

 

[gav240z]

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

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.

 

[gav240z]

Just an update..

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.

 

[AlexAcosta]

I read the entire post because I had a similar experience once. In my case, the CPC dropped after 1-2 days to more normal values. I believe it takes some time to judge correctly all the factors of their Quality Score. Also in my campaign, I didn't get any clicks so it wasn't because I increased the CTR of the campaign