New Adwords minimum first page bid = crap

[jschmidli]

I have been using adwords for over 3 years. Yearly budget of about 250k. So I am pretty familiar with google and their slaps and how to get around them.

This new first page minimum bid though is an outright joke. Let me explain.

I set up a new campaign for "widgets.com"

Keyword "cheap widgets" = 5/10QS Bid is below first page bid estimate of $2.25

Now how I understand it to be is that there are other people advertising for that same keyword and for my ad to show I will have to bid at least $2.25. So I go to google.com and search for "cheap widgets" just to see who my competition is for this keyword.

Guess what I find....................

There are not any ads at all. Hmmm... I say.

I check over 500 of this campaigns keywords and over half of them are that way. One is even at $100 minimum first page bid with no ads at all but when you search for that keyword! I do not have any quality scores of less than 5 on any of these keywords. So what gives?

anyone else ever see this problem?

Seems to me that it is still the same old crap of $10 inactive keywords that we had before.

J

 

[blanko05]

I think it's time for you to explore other traffic opportunities, besides google. So many ppl are completely leaving google now, and still doing well.

 

[maximus]

I think it's time for you to explore other traffic opportunities, besides google. So many ppl are completely leaving google now, and still doing well.

Although there is truth to being able to make money outside of Google, nothing else compares in terms of volume. If any affiliate can make Goog work it would be stupid not to.

@ jschmidli: Although your situation is frustrating, I wouldn't give up yet.

 

[bb_wolfe]

I think it's time for you to explore other traffic opportunities, besides google. So many ppl are completely leaving google now, and still doing well.

Oh Lord I totally disagree with you.

 

[Jsmith]

I think it's time for you to explore other traffic opportunities, besides google. So many ppl are completely leaving google now, and still doing well.

I am glad that these people are leaving. Less competition for me.:1bluewinky:

 

[jschmidli]

No worries I am not leaving Google. Just getting it out in the open so we can find a work around. The more people that talk about it the more success we will have.

Google is really the only option when it comes to advertising online (and soon to be offline as well) greedy bastards. The other guys all combined do not even equal half of G's traffic. I wish that there were other options but right now there isn't any. Maybe someday there will be.

The $100 first page bid really pisses me off when there are no ads at all! Heck if it were for mesothilioma or something and there were high dollar ads showing I could understand.


J

 

[gdubs12345]

ive been getting alot less traffic from g since they put in the 1st page bids. Im getting good quality scores, but alot less impressions

 

[itchy]

its because their qs robot hasn't been round yet. hovver you're mouse over the qs recommendations box and click the details link and you'll see something like "not enough information yet to properly calculate...". leave it a few hours and come back, the bot would have been round and even iframes for me were getting at least 6/10 and the minimum bids were gone (well to a reasonable level). failing that run the campaign anyway, following day they'll be gone for the same above reason. i've been setting a lot of campaigns up recently, at least 30 in the last day or so and the same thing has happened on nearly every one.

 

[jenzkc]

I've had a $10 minumum bid -once- out of 100s of campaigns. The second highest was $5 once. Maybe you need to improve quality score.

 

[smaxor]

If you believe Google is the only good big traffic source you're truly limiting yourself. We currently run almost nothing on Google other then a little content. $/hour of time you put into making things work on Google there's better places to buy traffic in my opinion.

Just my 3 cents.